Klaus Hildebrand

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Klaus Hildebrand (born 1941) is a German conservative historian whose area of expertise is 19th-20th German political and military history. Hildebrand was born in Bielefeld. In the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute) of the 1980s, Hildebrand sided with those who contended that the Holocaust, while a major tragedy of the 20th century was not a uniquely evil event, but just one out of many genocides of the 20th century. Furthermore, Hildebrand argued that the crimes of Joseph Stalin were just as evil as those of Adolf Hitler. In Germany, Hildebrand is well known for his disputes with the Mommsen brothers, Hans and Wolfgang over how best to understand Nazi Germany, especially evident at a conference held at the German Historical Institute in London in 1979 which resulted in numerous hostile exchanges^[1].

Hildebrand is an Intentionalist on the origins of the Holocaust question, arguing that the personality and role of Adolf Hitler was a crucial driving force behind the Final Solution. Writing in 1979, Hildebrand stated "Fundamental to National Socialist genocide was Hitler's race dogma...Hitler's programmatic ideas about the destruction of the Jews and racial domination have still to be rated as primary and causative, as motive and aim, as intention and goal of the "Jewish policy" of the Third Reich"^[2]. Along similar lines, in a 1976 article, Hildebrand commented on left-wing historians of the Nazi Germany that in his view they were "thoeoretically fixed, are vainly concerend with functional explanations of the autonomous force in history and as a result frequently contribute towards its trivialization"^[3]. In 1981, the British historian Timothy Mason in his essay 'Intention and explanation: A current controversy about the interpretation of National Socialism' from the book The "Fuehrer State" : Myth and reality coined the term "Intentionist" as part of an attack against Hildebrand and Karl Dietrich Bracher, both of whom Mason accused of focusing too much on Hitler as an explanation for the Holocaust.

Through Hildebrand is a leading advocate of the totalitarianism school and rejects any notion of generic fascism as intellectually inadequate, he does believe that the Third Reich was characterized by what he deems “authoritarian anarchy”. However, Hildebrand believes in contrast to the work of Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen that the “authoritarian anarchy” caused by numerous competing bureaucracies strengthened, not weakened Hitler’s power. In Hildebrand's opinion, the "Hitler factor" was indeed the central causal agent of the Third Reich^[4]. Hildebrand has argued against the Sonderweg view of German history championed by the Mommsen brothers.

In the 1970s Hildebrand was deeply involved in a rancorous debate with Hans-Ulrich Wehler over the merits of traditional diplomatic history versus social history as way of explaining foreign policy. Together with Andreas Hillgruber, Hildebrand argued for the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik (Primacy of Foreign Policy) approach with the focus on empirically examining the foreign policy making elite. Wehler by contrast argued for the Primat der Innenpolitik (Primacy of Domestic Politics) approach which called for seeing foreign policy largely as a reflection of domestic politics and employing theoretically-based research into social history to examine domestic politics^[5].

In regards to the Globalist-Continentalist debate between those argue that the Hitler's foreign policy at world conquest against those who argue that Nazi foreign policy aim only at the conquest of Europe, Hildebrand has consistently taken a Globalist position, arguing that the foreign policy of the Third Reich did indeed have world domination as its goal, with Hitler following a stufenplan (stage-by-stage plan) to reach that goal^[6]. Together with Andreas Hillgruber and Gerhard Weinberg, Hildebrand is considered to be one of the leading Globalist scholars. Through Hildebrand does not maintain that Hitler was a free agent in foreign policy, and accepts that there were structural limitations upon Hitler's room to maneuver, he contends that these limitations only had the effect of pushing into the direction that he always wanted to go^[7].

Since 1982, Hildebrand has worked at the University of Bonn as a professor in medieval and modern history, with a special interest in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hildebrand’s major work has been in diplomatic history and the development of the nation-state. He served as editor of the series concerning the publication of the documents of German foreign policy. As one of the historians who more or less supported Ernst Nolte in the Historikerstreit, many feel his reputation has been somewhat damaged in the public eye. At first, Hildebrand praised Nolte's 1986 article Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will ("The Past That Will Not Go Away") as "path-breaking", but as the controversy caused by the Historikerstreit increased, Hildebrand increasingly wrote less and less in support of Nolte and more in the favour of his mentor Andreas Hillgruber. In a 1986 review of Nolte's essay "Between Myth and Revisionism", Hildebrand aruged Nolte had in a praiseworthy way "to incorporate in hisotoricizing fashion that central element for the history of National Socialism and of the "Third Reich" of the annihilatory capacity of the ideology and of the regime, and to comprehend this totalitarian reality in the interrelated context of Russian and German history"^[8]. In an 1987 article, Hildebrand argued that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian, expansionary states that were destined to come into conflict with each other. Hildebrand’s critics such as the British historian Richard J. Evans accused Hildebrand of seeking to obscure German responsibility for the attack on the Soviet Union.

[edit] Work

• Vom Reich zum Weltreich: Hitler, NSDAP und koloniale Frage 1919-1945, Munich: Fink, 1969.
• "Der "Fall" Hitler" pages 375-386 from Neue Politische Literatur, Volume 14, 1969.
• Bethmann Hollweg, der Kanzler ohne Eigenschaften? Urteile der Geschichtsschreibung, eine kritische Bibliographie, Düsseldorf, Droste 1970.
• "Hitlers Ort in der Geschichte des Preussische-Deutschen Nationalstaates" pages 584-631 from Historische Zeitschrift, Volume 217, 1973.
• Deutsche Aussenpolitik 1933-1945; Kalkül oder Dogma?, Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer 1970, translated by Anthony Fothergill into English as The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, London: Batsford, 1973.
• "Nationalsozialismus oder Hiterismus?" pages 555-561 from Persönlichkeit und Struktur in der Geschichte, Düsseldorf, 1977.
• "Monokratie oder Polykraties? Hitlers Herrschaft und des Dritte Reich" pages 73-97 from Der 'Führerstaat': Mythos und Realität Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches, Stuttgart, 1981.
• Das dritte Reich, München : Oldenbourg, 1979, translated into English by P.S. Falla as The Third Reich, London : G. Allen & Unwin, 1984.
• Von Erhard zur Grossen Koalition, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1984.
• Deutsche Frage und europäisches Gleichgewicht : Festschrift für Andreas Hillgruber zum 60. Geburtstag, Köln : Böhlau Verlag, 1985 edited by Klaus Hildebrand.
• German Foreign Policy from Bismarck to Adenauer : the Limits of Statecraft, London : Unwin Hyman, 1989.
• Das vergangene Reich: Deutsche Aussenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler, 1871-1945, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1995.
• No Intervention: Die Pax Britannica und Preussen 1865/66-1869/70 : eine Untersuchung zur englischen Weltpolitik im 19. Jahrhundert, Oldenbourg 1997.

[edit] Endnotes

1. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 page 69.
2. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 page 98.
3. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 page 18
4. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 page 74.
5. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 pages 9-11
6. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 page 136.
7. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 page 143.
8. ^ Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold, 2000 page 232; orginal remarks appeared in Historische Zeitschrift, Volume 242, 1986, page 465.

[edit] References

• Evans, Richard, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape the Nazi Past, New York, NY: Pantheon, 1989. ISBN 0-679-72348-X.
• Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold; New York: Copublished in the USA by Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Marrus, Michael, The Holocaust In History, Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987. ISBN 0-88619-155-6.
• Piper, Ernst (editor), Forever In The Shadow of Hitler? : Original Documents Of The Historikerstreit, The Controversy Concerning The Singularity of the Holocaust, translated by James Knowlton and Truett Cates, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1993. ISBN 0-391-03784-6.