Nazi research

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As Nazi research the German-speaking summarizes historians all historical investigations on the period of National Socialism since 1945 together. This generic term includes empirical studies on individual areas, conditions of origin and effects as well as overall interpretations of Nazi rule and its research methods and forms an important part of contemporary history research .

overview

Essential topics of Nazi research are

As research into contemporary history , German Nazi research in particular fulfills an important function for the identity of the Federal Republic of Germany , as its social system legitimizes itself as a comprehensive moral, political, social and structural departure from National Socialism . Since the 1960s, there have been intense and at times strongly polarized historical controversies about the interpretation of the Nazi era and its relationship to the rest of Germany's history. These also influenced international research and continue to have an impact today.

post war period

Apologetics of the nation state

The first important works in German history after the Second World War are by Friedrich Meinecke ( Die deutsche Katastrophe , 1946) and Gerhard Ritter ( Die Demonie der Macht , 1948). They tried to exonerate the Germans from the charge of collective guilt , which they believed to be widespread in the form of Vansittartism among the Allied occupying powers. Meinecke and Ritter saw National Socialism not as a result of specifically German, but rather pan-European developments; Meinecke blamed the Prussian "masterminds" and the "internal foreign rule" of a "criminal club", Ritter the pan-European Jacobinism as heir of the French Revolution and the "demonic" power hybrid of Adolf Hitler for the Nazi crimes. In doing so, they emphasized the continuity of the German nation-state and wanted to overcome the "wrong track" of National Socialism by resorting to historically proven German traditions.

Institutionalization

From 1950 the files of the first Nuremberg trials were available for research. With the Institute for Contemporary History founded in 1949, Nazi research was established as a systematic special discipline. The quarterly journals for contemporary history appeared from 1953 and still play a central role in the progress of the historical discourse on the Holocaust and the Nazi era, also in terms of the theory of science.

A department for modern history was also set up at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute , which was founded in 1951 and was founded in 1951 , and Holocaust and Nazi researchers also work there.

This was the start of detailed empirical research on the rise and takeover of the NSDAP, from which the first overall presentations emerged. These combined event sequences and structural analysis of the Nazi regime. This methodology set standards and quickly made these studies standard works.

Studies on the "seizure of power" and the structure of rule

A first work that the power structure in the Third Reich themed, was Eugen Kogon's book The SS State (1946). He painted the now outdated picture of a perfectly functioning terror regime , but without penetrating to a consistent empirical inventory and penetrating analysis of the various authorities, groups of perpetrators and degrees of responsibility involved.

In Austria , on the other hand , Walter Petwaidic highlighted the institutional chaos of Nazi rule ( The Authoritarian Anarchy , 1946). He tied in with the works by Ernst Fraenkel ( The Dual State , 1941) and Franz Neumann ( Behemoth , 1944), which he wrote in exile : The Nazi regime did not carry out the war and the Holocaust as a single bloc, but as an interplay between the power centers of the NSDAP and administration , Wehrmacht and large-scale industry. Their competing interests resulted in partially contradicting procedures and chaos, which only the “ charismatic leadership power ” of Adolf Hitler could tame. Kogon and Petwaidic anticipated two basic theses of later research.

Karl Dietrich Bracher published The Dissolution of the Weimar Republic in 1955 . As early as 1956, in the essay Levels of Totalitarian Synchronization , he described the juxtaposition of centralistic synchronization and the chaos of offices of the various Nazi power groups. However, he saw no weakening in their opposition, but rather a prerequisite for Hitler's leadership role.

This was followed by the National Socialist seizure of power in 1960 with Wolfgang Sauer and Gerhard Schulz . Schulz described the central power as “'polycracy' of tightly centralized departments” that became more and more independent, and attributed this to the “unbridled urge to move” of National Socialism. This fragmentation had just established Hitler's "overarching absolute authority". Schulz interpreted the contradiction between total claim to power and the chaotic structures of the Nazi regime as two complementary aspects of the “Führer state”.

Also in 1960, Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey published a fundamental anthology on The End of the Parties in 1933 , which dealt with the behavior of the most important political parties in the final phase of the Weimar Republic and their destruction by the Nazi regime that was establishing itself.

These Nazi studies of the 1950s anticipated later questions, but integrated structural and ideological factors of National Socialism into the political explanatory model of totalitarianism , as Hannah Arendt defined it in Elements and Origins of Total Rule in 1951. The latter did not compare National Socialism and Stalinism in order to equate them, but in order to grasp more precisely their respective peculiarities compared to older forms of dictatorship and thus to solve "the riddle of the structurelessness of the totalitarian state" (ibid., P. 618).

Interpretation controversy

Martin Broszat's book The State of Hitler from 1969 was a first overall presentation of the domestic and foreign policy of the Third Reich, but limited to the phase from the accession to power in 1933 to the start of the war in 1939. This was followed by the methodological fundamental debate, whose participants increasingly fell into the categories of intentionalists or Programmologists and structuralists or functionalists were classified, between whom the debate polarized.

Intentionalists

The intentionalists assume that Hitler's early thinking, for example in Mein Kampf , already contained his intentions and goals and that these were realized in the politics of the Third Reich. You see Hitler as a decisive leading figure.

  • In his book The German Dictatorship, Karl Dietrich Bracher outlines the emergence of the National Socialist ideology and the prerequisites for its reception in Germany. He emphasizes the primacy of politics : The Nazi controlled the realization of his ideologically defined targets.
  • Eberhard Jäckel already expresses his central assumptions in the title of one of his main works: Hitler's worldview, Hitler's rule, Hitler's path to ruin. For Jäckel, the annihilation of European Jews is a clear consequence of the anti-Semitic ideology of the 1920s: “What is certain is that Hitler's anti-Semitism, as presented in 'Mein Kampf', had bellicose features. It started from war, demanded martial methods, should be implemented in war, and it was logical that it reached its bloody climax in the next war, which was planned from the beginning. "
  • Saul Friedländer refers in his essay From Anti-Semitism to the Extermination of the Jews: A Historiographical Study of the National Socialist Jewish Policy and Attempt to Interpret the Existence of an explicit order from Hitler for the extermination of European Jews. However, he considers this fact unsuitable for explaining the entire Holocaust. Friedländer explains: “Since no one has yet discovered a written trace of this command in the sources researched to date, and since this is unlikely, it is the duty of historians to date it as well as possible by resorting to interpretations. Especially since the methods and hypotheses on this topic are very numerous, we are faced with very different opinions. "
  • Klaus Hildebrand formulates his central theses with a proposal for a definition of the term that one should not speak of National Socialism, but of "Hitlerism".
  • Gerald Fleming points to the biographical continuity he suspected. He claims that there is a straight path from the Linz high school student Adolf Hitler to the first mass shootings.
  • Ino Arndt explains the "euthanasia" program known as Action T4 as a technical preparation for the " final solution to the Jewish question ". He regards this as an example of continuity and intent in National Socialist politics.

Functionalists / structuralists

In contrast to the intentionalists, the functionalists emphasize that Hitler's activity in the Third Reich was limited to so-called worldview issues. Otherwise, the actual politics would have resulted from the opposition and togetherness of rival groups, from their own dynamics and self-created practical constraints (regardless of rhetorical representations). The main characteristic of National Socialism is the improvisation of decisions, characteristic is the cumulative radicalization of competing groups. Friedländer defines the basic functionalist assumptions as follows: “The National Socialist system of rule was largely chaotic, and important decisions were often the result of a wide variety of endeavors, with a lack of any central planning, preliminary deliberations or clear orders from above that specified the goals and means of implementing a policy. “The designation of the“ functionalists ”is, however, not without controversy. Thus says Hans-Ulrich Wehler of "structuralists", "as they strictly speaking no means good neo-Marxist, considered the leader dictatorship for a function of social power relations."

  • Hans Mommsen calls this phenomenon polycratic rule . He emphasizes: "Wherever he [Hitler] was confronted with concrete alternative courses of action, he did not act as agitator, but gave preference to the less radical solution." Mommsen mentions this as an example of the lack of plan in National Socialist policy Nuremberg Laws of 1935.
  • Uwe Dietrich Adam is of the opinion “that there can be no talk of a planned and controlled policy in this area, that there was never an overall plan about the type, content and scope of the persecution of the Jews and that the mass killing and extermination of Hitler most likely did not exist either was striven for a priori as a political goal. "
  • Martin Broszat interprets the Shoah in a functionalist manner when he observes the development of extermination anti-Semitism from phrase to deed:

“The selection of negative ideological elements [...] that took place during the process of seizure of power and in the course of the later development of the Third Reich also meant an increasing radicalization, perfecting and institutionalization of inhumanity and persecution. […] However, there could be no infinite progressus in discrimination . As a result, the 'movement' had to end here in the 'final solution'. [...] That is why Hitler's 'consequence' had nothing to do with planned action. […] The phraseology finally had to take its word for it, it had to be stated literally, which objectively only made sense as a worldview instrument to mobilize willingness to fight and belief in the future. [...] The secret extermination of the Jews, with which anti-Semitism was logically buried as a propagandistic tool, illustrates the delusional exchange of the symbol of struggle and the ultimate goal. "

The existence of a general extermination order is now doubted by many historians. Broszat brings that attitude to the point: "It seems to me, however, that it has ever been no comprehensive general extermination order, the 'program' extermination of the Jews rather from individual actions out until the spring of 1942 gradually institutionally and effectively developed and after the establishment of extermination camps in Poland (between December 1941 and July 1942) was given a decisive character. "

Civilization break thesis

The term civilization rupture coined by Dan Diner opens up an argumentative and semantic framework for a field of questions that arise in the tense field between the Holocaust and memory in terms of an interpretation of the history of the 20th century . Pointing beyond an analysis of the Holocaust, which understands the mass murder of European Jews from the perspective of perpetrators and victims, the term civilization rupture places historical events in a universal dimension that extends to the history of Western civilization or the history of modernity. In this way, memory is also assigned a universal scope that extends beyond the cultures of memory in the countries concerned.

On the one hand, the term expresses an "anthropological irritation" emanating from the victims (Dan Diner): the fundamentals of social action in the modern age, which was based on "assumptions of reason that guide action" and the trust in the logic of a human being's reasonableness based on self-interest, are overridden: "by the fact that people could be annihilated for the sake of mere annihilation, the foundations of our civilization anchored in consciousness were also profoundly shaken - yes, as it were denied." Tense relationship between the factuality of the event and its decades-long repression. The question of the reasons for this non-perception as well as the recognition of the historical facts as a singular caesura form starting points for considerations of the history of collective memory and perspectives of memory.

Even Jürgen Habermas developed in the articles claims settlement One type , the Public Use of History and historical awareness and post-traditional identity theory of civilization break. He asks three questions to begin with:

  • In what form does Karl Jaspers ' thesis of “collective joint liability” apply today?
  • What is the singularity of Nazi crimes?
  • What does civilization break mean?

Habermas answers the first two questions in three theses:

  1. One cannot become the legal successor of the German Reich and acquire the tradition of German culture without assuming historical liability for the way of life in which Auschwitz was possible (Jaspers today).
  2. We can only be liable for the origin of the Nazi crimes through solidarity-based remembrance and a reflective, scrutinizing attitude towards our own identity-creating tradition.
  3. The less common the collective life context in which Auschwitz was possible, the greater the burden of reconciliation that is imposed on the next generation.

From this follows as a summary the singularity thesis in Habermas' sense: The preceding three assumptions forbid downplaying the unjustifiability of the liability expected of us through leveling comparisons.

Second, Habermas developed the so-called civilization breach thesis: Auschwitz is the signature of an age. A deep layer of solidarity between everything that bears a human face was touched there. Until then, the integrity of this deep layer had been unquestioned. But Auschwitz destroyed the naivete from which unquestionable traditions drew their authority and from which historical continuities drew. Therefore, the conditions for the continuation of historical life contexts were changed by the Nazi crimes.

Historicization of National Socialism

Definition and definition

If you want to define a term, this can best be illustrated with a word from Martin Broszat: “When the Third Reich begins, the author keeps his distance. Empathizing with historical contexts breaks off, as does the pleasure in storytelling. "

Saul Friedländer distinguishes four elements of historicization in a systematic presentation:

  • Studying the Nazi episode should be like studying any other historical phenomenon.
  • National Socialism should not only be viewed from its catastrophic end and the morally conditioned black and white image of the Nazi era should be replaced by the representation of all contradicting elements.
  • The time frame 1933–1945 should be put into perspective and the Nazi era should be fitted into the larger trends of historical developments.
  • The aim is to remove the self-imposed distancing of historians from the Nazi era, i.e. the syndrome of required reading.

example

What historicization means can be explained using the example of Lutz Niethammer's study on "Good Times - Bad Times". Contemporary witnesses were asked about their assessment of what time they subjectively remembered as good and bad times. The result is summarized as follows:

  • 1930–1942: good times
  • 1942–1948: Bad times
  • 1948–1999: good times

From this it can be concluded that the subjective assessment of one's own life situation ignores the political system boundaries and is not based on moral criteria.

Phases of historicization

Special way debate

Research on social history in the 1950s and 1960s suspected - partly with reference to Hans Rosenberg - that the main cause of the political growth of the National Socialists in the Weimar period was the constant fixation on authority of the German population, which in turn was caused by the lack of a real political and social revolution in the 19th century Century is conditional. This led to the assumption that Germany's ruling elites had survived from the German Empire to the Weimar Republic and the “Third Reich” to the early Federal Republic . This resulted in the political attempt to replace these ruling elites with modern performance and management elites, and the demand for a social and political modernization of the Federal Republic, which was actually fulfilled in Willy Brandt's era .

Causes of modernization

After the traditional German ruling elite had been delegitimized in the young Federal Republic, research in social history continued to develop in the 1970s: At a time of social and political modernization, social history posed the question of the beginning of this modernization in Germany, from which the Controversial thesis developed that this push towards modernization had its origins in the politics of the Nazi government.

Historians' dispute

Conservative historians now used the historicization paradigm and turned it against politically left-wing interpretations of history, accompanied by historical revisionist explanations, such as the questioning of the German Reich's undisputed war guilt in the Second World War by Ernst Nolte . This resulted in a confusing mixture of questions and problems: If you consider the middle ruling elites in the Third Reich as the main actors and place National Socialism in a historical continuum between Weimar and the Federal Republic, you get a considerable legitimation problem and, in case of doubt, even come close to revisionist Positions. This then expresses itself in concrete scientific disputes, for example about the point in time when the Nazi regime “made a decision” about the Holocaust .

National Socialism in Comparative Dictatorship Research

Even in contemporary discourses, National Socialism was often the subject of comparative dictatorship research. The dominance of the singularity thesis within Nazi research and the predominantly empirical research community have led to an extensive containment of comparative approaches since the late 1970s and up to the present, which, however, remain present in the research discourse. Examples of the current presence are the work of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism in Dresden or Timothy Snyder's widely acclaimed study on the National Socialist and Soviet extermination policy in the Eastern European countries. The scientific discussion about how National Socialism should be classified politically and historically was always shaped by the major political conflicts of the respective epoch and the associated political standpoints.

National Socialism as Fascism

After the end of the First World War and in the further course of the interwar period, movements and parties emerged in many European states, which based their self-image, ideology, appearance, agitation and violence on the model of Italian fascism under Benito Mussolini . Although Mussolini himself tried to make the term fascism universally usable in the 1930s , the use of the generic concept of fascism and the formulation of scientific theories of fascism remained the domain of liberal and, above all, Marxist theorists. Classic theories of fascism are Stalin's social fascism thesis , the so-called Dimitrov thesis or agent theory , August Thalheimer 's theory of Bonapartism , the thesis of middle-class extremism and the theory of authoritarian character from the Frankfurt School environment . Later approaches come mainly from the Anglo-American region and often rely on a typological approach that takes ideological, phenomenological and praxeological similarities between the various movements and regimes as the starting point for comparing dictatorships. Representatives of this movement include Roger Griffin , Stanley Payne , Robert Paxton and Juan Linz .

In this fascism-theoretical perspective, National Socialism was generally perceived as a specific manifestation of a more comprehensive phenomenon of fascism, regardless of the specific explanatory model. Critics of the classification of National Socialism as fascism do not see the ideological and sociological differences between National Socialism and other authoritarian movements and regimes sufficiently taken into account in this concept, or criticize the theoretical narrowing of the research perspective. In addition, in view of the systemic conflict in the Cold War and the politicization of the concept of fascism in Marxism-Leninism and especially in Stalinism , the theory of totalitarianism had developed a counter-model for which the basis of the dictatorship comparison was the degree of extremism of a regime, but no longer the concrete ideological content represented. The approach of these theories was therefore no longer the comparison of fascism, but the comparison of National Socialism and Stalinism.

National Socialism as Totalitarianism

After the end of the Second World War and with the beginning of the systemic conflict in the Cold War, approaches based on the theory of totalitarianism developed into a determining research concept within comparative dictatorship research. Ideal-typical models such as that of Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzeziński or Hannah Arendt's historical-genetic theory of totalitarianism were important references for the scientific discussion of the Soviet Union and the social discourse. However, their importance for empirical research on National Socialism remained minor. In contrast, Ernst Nolte's totalitarian theory-based thesis on the European civil war led to the so-called historians' dispute in the mid-1980s . His assertion that the Gulag was more original than Auschwitz, that is, the National Socialist extermination policy was a reaction to Bolshevik crimes, provoked a debate conducted both within the academic world and in the media, but could not prevail within research on National Socialism and was often used as an attempt to relativize the NS- Understand crime.

National Socialism as a Political Religion

In 1938 the Austrian philosopher and political scientist Eric Voegelin introduced the interpretation of political religion into the contemporary discourse on National Socialism. The starting point of the Enlightenment-oriented writing is the inventory of human alienation from God, in Voegelin's words the “decapitation of the transcendent God.” Voegelin interprets modernity as the culmination of a centuries-long history of decline in Christian culture, the result of human hubris and the mystification of secular ideas such as Nation , race , class and state . Hence he sees National Socialism only as one manifestation of this development among others. He expressly includes Bolshevism and Italian fascism in his considerations . Other authors who have described National Socialism and other dictatorship systems of the 20th century as political religions include Raymond Aron , Hans Maier , Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch , Michael Burleigh , Michael Ley and Klaus Vondung. Within conceptual research, there are definitely differences with regard to methodological access, the interpretation of the causes and the evaluation. While Eric Voegelin interpreted National Socialism without systematic recourse to concrete sources in the sense of a substitute religion or a religion substitute for the normative counter-model of Christianity, other concept representatives such as Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch and Michael Ley have, through the evaluation of written testimonies, Christian motives and beliefs as prerequisites for identified National Socialism and the Holocaust . Other approaches focus primarily on the staging and formal language of National Socialism, which repeatedly borrowed from the Christian liturgy. Although the research concept of political religion was open to system comparison from the start, many researchers in the past have focused on the consideration of National Socialism. Your interpretations of National Socialism to explain the regime's popularity or the cause of the Holocaust also met with criticism. Critics of the concept, for example, criticize the empirical basis of the conceptual research and the terminology of the concept. Numerous studies, in particular on the political religion of National Socialism, were not based on studies of the history of mentality, but on the interpretation of writings by individual leadership figures, which is why conclusions about motivation and willingness to follow the population could not be substantiated in this way. In addition, with the classic ideology term and the term Charismatic Rule, coined by Max Weber and used by historians such as Ian Kershaw and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, an analytical vocabulary already exists, at least for the history of National Socialist rule, which grasps historical reality more precisely. In addition, the theoretical scope of the concept is sometimes questioned. Hans Günter Hockerts has pointed out that the designation as political religion "[is] suitable as an aspect concept, but not as a general concept; it does not hit an Archimedean point" that could justify its use as a superordinate explanatory model.

See also

literature

  • Karl Dietrich Bracher: The German dictatorship. Origin, structure, consequences of National Socialism . 5th edition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1976, ISBN 3-462-01143-X ; Unabridged edition based on the 7th edition, Ullstein, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-548-26501-4 .
  • Martin Broszat: The State of Hitler. Foundation and development of his inner constitution . Original edition, 15th edition. German Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-30172-4 .
  • Martin Broszat: Plea for a historicization of National Socialism . In: Merkur , May 1985.
  • Wolfgang Benz: The defense of the past. A problem only for historians and moralists? In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 17-33.
  • Michael Burleigh : The time of National Socialism - an overall presentation . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000. ISBN 3100090055 .
  • Dan Diner: Is National Socialism History? On historicization and historians' dispute . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-24391-2 .
  • Dan Diner: Between aporia and apology. Beyond the limits of the historicizability of National Socialism . In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 62-73.
  • Dan Diner: Negative symbiosis. Germans and Jews to Auschwitz . In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 185-197.
  • Saul Friedländer: Nazi Germany and the Jews . Two volumes. Harper and Collins Publishers, New York 1997, ISBN 0-06-019042-6 . German: The Years of Annihilation. The Third Reich and the Jews 1939 . ISBN 3406549667 .
  • Saul Friedländer: Thoughts on the historicization of National Socialism . In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 34-50.
  • Raphael Gross : Stayed decent. National Socialist Moral, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2010. ISBN 978-3-10-028713-7 (On the intentional connection between the perpetrators. Post-war reception).
  • Jürgen Habermas: A kind of claims settlement . 1st edition. edition suhrkamp, ​​es1453, new series volume 453, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-518-11453-0 .
  • Jürgen Habermas: The post-national constellation. Political essays . edition suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1998.
  • Ulrich Herbert: Work and Destruction. Economic interest and primacy of the “world view” in National Socialism . In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 198-236.
  • Eberhard Jäckel : The murder of the Jews in World War II. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 1987.
  • Eberhard Jäckel: Hitler's rule. Implementation of a worldview . 4th edition. Dt.-Verl.-Anst., Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-421-06254-4 .
  • Ian Kershaw: The Nazi State. An overview of historical interpretations and controversies . Rowohlt TB, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3499607964 .
  • Michael Mayer : States as perpetrators. Ministerial bureaucracy and “Jewish policy” in Nazi Germany and Vichy France. A comparison. With a foreword by Horst Möller and Georges-Henri Soutou. In: Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, 80, Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-58945-0 .
  • Hans Mommsen: Fascist dictatorship in Germany. Historical foundations, social requirements, political structure . Klett, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-12-966710-5 .
  • Hans Mommsen: processing and repression. The Third Reich in the West German historical consciousness . In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 74-88.
  • Lutz Niethammer : "Normalization" in the West. Memory traces in the 50s. In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 153-184.
  • Ernst Nolte: Fascism in its epoch . Piper Verlag, Munich 1963.
  • Ernst Nolte: A past that does not want to pass . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 6, 1986.
  • Kurt Pätzold : fascism, racial madness, persecution of the Jews. A study of the political strategy and tactics of fascist German imperialism 1933–1935 . Berlin 1975.
  • Detlev JK Peukert : Everyday life and barbarism. On the normality of the Third Reich . In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 51-61.
  • Hagen Schulze : Explain the German catastrophe. The benefits and disadvantages of historical explanatory models . In: Dan Diner 1987, pp. 89-101.
  • Michael Werz and Peter Maroldt: Anti-Semitism and Society . New Critique Publishing House, Frankfurt 1995.
  • Harald Welzer : The War of Memory, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 3596172276 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Intentionalists, Structuralists and the Theory Deficit of Contemporary History. In: Land without lower classes. New essays on German history, ed. v. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Munich 2010, pp. 151–157.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Rothfels : Contemporary history as a task (PDF; 531 kB). In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1, 1953, issue 1, pp. 1–8.
  2. ^ Karl Dietrich Bracher: The German dictatorship. Origin, structure, consequences of National Socialism. Cologne / Berlin 1969. pp. 399-401; quoted from: Saul Friedländer: From anti-Semitism to the extermination of the Jews . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 29.
  3. ↑ Eberhard Jäckel: Hitler's Weltanschauung. P. 71f.
  4. ↑ Saul Friedländer: From anti-Semitism to the destruction of the Jews . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 47.
  5. ^ Saul Friedländer: L'Allemagne nazie et le genocide juif . Gallimard, Le Seuil 1985, pp. 177f.
  6. ↑ Tim Mason: Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National-Socialism . In: Gerhard Hirschfeld, Lothar Kettenacker (ed.): The Führer State, Myth and Reality . Stuttgart 1981. p. 29.
  7. ↑ Klaus Hildebrand: Monocracy or Polycracy? Hitler's rule and the Third Reich . In: Gerhard Hirschfeld, Lothar Kettenacker (ed.): The Führer State, Myth and Reality . Stuttgart 1981, pp. 73ff.
  8. ↑ Gerald L. Fleming: Hitler and the Final Solution . Munich 1982, p. 113f .; quoted from: Saul Friedländer: From anti-Semitism to the extermination of the Jews . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 28.
  9. ^ Ino Arndt, Wolfgang Scheffler: Organized mass murder of Jews in National Socialist extermination camps. A contribution to the correction of apologetic literature (PDF; 1.5 MB). In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 24, 1976, issue 2, pp. 105–135, here pp. 112–114.
  10. ↑ Saul Friedländer: From anti-Semitism to the destruction of the Jews . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 30.
  11. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Intentionalists, Structuralists and the Theory Deficit of Contemporary History. In: Norbert Frei: Martin Broszat, the "State of Hitler" and the historicization of National Socialism, Göttingen 2007, p. 72.
  12. ↑ Hans Mommsen: The realization of the utopian. The “final solution to the Jewish question” in the Third Reich . In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9, 1983, p. 386; quoted from: Saul Friedländer: From anti-Semitism to the extermination of the Jews . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 31f.
  13. ↑ Hans Mommsen: The realization of the utopian. The “final solution to the Jewish question” in the Third Reich . In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9, 1983, p. 385; quoted from: Saul Friedländer: From anti-Semitism to the extermination of the Jews . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 31f.
  14. ↑ Uwe Dietrich Adam: Jewish policy in the Third Reich . Düsseldorf 1972, p. 357; quoted from: Saul Friedländer: From anti-Semitism to the extermination of the Jews . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 32.
  15. ↑ Martin Broszat: Hitler and the Genesis of the "Final Solution". On the occasion of David Irving's theses (PDF; 1.7 MB). In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25, 1977, issue 4, pp. 739–775, here p. 753, note 26.
  16. ↑ Martin Broszat: Social motivation and leadership bond of National Socialism . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 18, 1970, pp. 392–409 (PDF; 917 KB), here pp. 405–408.
  17. ↑ Klaus Hildebrand: The Third Reich. Munich 2009 (7th edition), p. 274 f.
  18. ↑ Dan Diner: Introduction, in (ders.) (Ed.): Civilization break. Thinking after Auschwitz, Fischer Taschenbuch 1988, p. 8.
  19. ^ Jürgen Habermas: Historical consciousness and post-traditional identity. The West Orientation of the Federal Republic . In: Jürgen Habermas 1987. Jürgen Habermas: A kind of claims settlement . In: Die Zeit , July 11, 1986. Printed with an addition in: Jürgen Habermas 1987. Jürgen Habermas: From the public use of history . In: Die Zeit , November 7, 1986. Printed with an addition in: Jürgen Habermas 1987.
  20. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: From the public use of history . In: Die Zeit , November 7, 1986. Printed with an addition in: Jürgen Habermas 1987, p. 140.
  21. ↑ Cf. Karl Jaspers: The question of guilt . Heidelberg 1946.
  22. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: From the public use of history . In: Die Zeit , November 7, 1986. Printed with an addition in: Jürgen Habermas 1987, p. 144.
  23. ^ Jürgen Habermas: Historical consciousness and post-traditional identity. The West Orientation of the Federal Republic . In: Jürgen Habermas 1987. p. 163.
  24. ↑ Martin Broszat: Plea for a historicization of National Socialism . In: Merkur 39, 1985, p. 375.
  25. ^ Saul Friedländer: Thoughts on the historicization of National Socialism . In: Jäckel 1987, p. 37f.
  26. ↑ Jürgen Schreiber: Political Religion. Historical perspectives and criticism of an interdisciplinary concept for researching National Socialism. Marburg 2009, pp. 11-30, XIV-XV.
  27. ↑ Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin, 5th edition, Munich 2015.
  28. ↑ Arnd Bauerkämper: Fascism in Europe 1918-1945, Stuttgart 2006, pp. 13–46.
  29. ↑ Wolfgang Wippermann: Fascism theories. The evolution of the discussion from its beginnings to today, 7th revised. Edition, Darmstadt 1997
  30. ^ Wolfgang Wippermann: Theories of fascism. The evolution of the discussion from its beginnings to today, 7th revised. Edition, Darmstadt 1997, pp. 92-106.
  31. ↑ Wolfgang Wippermann: Theories of totalitarianism. The development of the discussion from its beginnings to today, Darmstadt 1997, pp. 21–34.
  32. ^ Ernst Nolte: The European Civil War 1917-1945. National Socialism and Bolshevism, 5th edition, Munich 1997
  33. ↑ Eric Voegelin: The political religions. Edited by Peter J. Opitz, Munich 1993, p. 31.
  34. ^ Raymond Aron: About Germany and National Socialism. Early Political Writings 1930–1939, Opladen 1993
  35. ↑ Hans Maier: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 2, Political Religions, Munich 2007
  36. ↑ Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism. Munich 1997
  37. ↑ Michael Ley: Apocalypse and Modernity. Essays on political religions, Vienna 1997
  38. ↑ Klaus Vondung: German ways to redemption. Forms of the Religious in National Socialism, Munich 2013
  39. ^ Klaus Vondung: Magic and manipulation. Ideological cult and political religion of National Socialism. Göttingen 1971
  40. ↑ Jürgen Schreiber, Political Religion. Historical perspectives and criticism of an interdisciplinary concept for researching National Socialism, Marburg 2009, pp. 73ff.
  41. ↑ Hans Günter Hockerts: Was National Socialism a Political Religion ?, About Chances and Limits of an Explanatory Model, in: Klaus Hildebrand (ed.): Between Politics and Religion, Munich 2003, pp. 45–71, here p. 71.
  42. ↑ The English original edition received the 2001 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction; Reviews on perlentaucher.de.