Hitler Studies: a Field of Amateurs Ben Novak Events, Governments Often Keep Documents the 1960’S, a New Wave of Interest in Hitler Sealed for Fifty Years Or Longer

Home , Fritz Stern, Ian Kershaw, Joachim Fest, John Lukacs, Ron Rosenbaum, The Mind of Adolf Hitler

HAOL, Núm. 10 (Primavera, 2006), 157-168 ISSN 1696-2060

HITLER STUDIES: A FIELD OF AMATEURS

Ben Novak City University of Bratislava, Slovak Republic. E-mail: [email protected]

Recibido: 10 Noviembre 2005 / Revisado: 14 Diciembre 2005 / Aceptado: 9 Enero 2006 / Publicación Online: 15 Junio 2006

Resumen: One of the greatest mysteries of the September 11, 2001. Imagine further that in the century must be the failure of professional intervening years all the work of interviewing historians and biographers, for more than half a witnesses and gathering the testimony, upon century after the event, to show much interest in which subsequent investigators would have to actually explaining it. The fact that Hitler rely if the whole story were ever to be told, was continues to be a mystery, however, is not a fact left to amateurs. Imagine next that FBI officials like other facts, to be recorded as a datum of were loathe to explain the event, insisting that it history and passed over. A mystery, by was the “product of conditions”, describing it in definition, is the appearance of something “metaphors”, and insisting on giving abstract surprising or unexpected that fairly calls out for causes for it that were devoid of concrete facts an explanation. But, is it not one of the purposes as well as inherently implausible. Finally, of history (indeed, the major function of imagine that Osama bin Laden became a man of historians) to explain historical events and to mystery and intense public fascination—his make them understandable? Professional face, even in caricature, known by almost every historians have consistently refused to get their school child on the planet; his birthday, like the hands dirty investigating the many mysteries of birthday of Hitler (the dreaded 4/20) known by Hitler’s life and career by going into the field to almost every high school student; the high and interview witnesses. Historians have not only low points of his life the subject of docu-dramas failed, but have been charged by fellow on prime time television and countless popular historians with “evading,” their duty to weave books, articles, novels, plays, and movies. the facts of Hitler’s life and career into a Imagine an entire academic industry grown up coherent and comprehensible narrative. to insist on the mystery and inexplicability of Palabras Clave: biography, Germany, the man. historians, historiography, Hitler, nazism. ______Impossible to imagine? Of course. But consider the attitude of professional historians to the case f the career of Adolf Hitler is one of the of Adolf Hitler, and the analogy may not seem most catastrophic events of the entire as far-fetched as one might think. I twentieth century, including in its wake the most destructive war as well as the greatest Indeed, I intend to argue that it is a fair analogy crimes against humanity in human history, then to describe the failure of historians to investigate one of the greatest mysteries of the century must the case of Adolf Hitler, the man behind the be the failure of professional historians and most catastrophic events of the twentieth biographers, for more than half a century after century. the event, to show much interest in actually explaining it. Of course, this would not be a fair analogy for most historical events. Historians are not the Imagine, for example, the U.S. Federal Bureau FBI, and they do not normally investigate of Investigation (FBI) waiting until some time current events, or even recent events. There are after the year 2060 before interviewing several reasons for this. witnesses and commencing its investigation of Osama bin Laden to discover how he was able The first and most important one is that rarely to plan and carry out the attack on the World are the documents available until long after the Trade Center and the Pentagon that occurred on event. In the case of major political leaders and

© Historia Actual Online 2006 157 Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs Ben Novak events, governments often keep documents the 1960’s, a new wave of interest in Hitler sealed for fifty years or longer. Thus historians appeared as the first generation born after World do not usually waste their time writing War II matured. In Germany, this was called the “histories” when they know that the most “Hitler Welle”, or “Hitler Wave”. Normally a important information bearing on what “wave” has a crest and a trough; however, as happened is not available. Second, history is an John Lukacs observed thirty years later in 1997, ongoing process that tends to change the the “trough has not yet appeared”2. Indeed, the understanding of events as they later develop “wave” continues to grow. In 1975, it was and come to fruition. Often events that seemed reported that more than 50,000 serious books unimportant at the time acquire greater and scholarly articles had already been significance with the passage of time; decisions published, and bibliographers were complaining that seemed wise or foolish in the short run are that their numbers were so high that it was sometimes seen to have been the height of folly becoming impossible to keep track of them. By or wisdom in the long run. Historians quite 1995, it was reported that this number had rightly do not wish to describe and explain increased by 70,000, to more than 120,000. To events until they are fully played out. Thus get some idea of the enormity of this research, historians usually wait until many decades after that computes to more than twenty-four an event to describe both its genesis and its scholarly books and articles on Hitler and consequences. Nazism published every working day for twenty years—and the number is growing In the case of Hitler, however, the analogy is exponentially. Thus public interest in the pertinent because all of these preconditions were mystery of Hitler continues to grow, with no end fulfilled by 1945 or, at the latest, by 1946. First, in sight. the eruption of Hitler and the Nazis came to a crushing end amid the ruins of the Third Reich. Second, there were numerous witnesses After the suicide of Hitler and the unconditional available to be interviewed whose testimony surrender of Germany, there was nothing more would be vital to understanding solving the of Nazism to be developed or played out, except mystery. Historians were under a duty to track perhaps the trial of its leaders as war criminals down these witnesses, interview them, and and the judgment at Nuremberg, which was preserve their testimony before they died. rendered by the end of 1946. After that, Nazism was as dead as a doornail and Hitler was nothing Third, and most importantly, Adolf Hitler was, but “history”. Second, almost all of the and is still, an unsolved mystery. Biographer documents and records of the Third Reich and Robert Payne calls the rise of Hitler “most the National Socialist Party were captured intact crucial and mystifying event of our century”3, by the Allies, and, in a virtually unprecedented while Eberhard Jäckel calls it “the seminal action, opened up to historians immediately after question of the twentieth century”4. Percy Ernst the war. Finally, the Nuremberg trials sealed the Schramm speaks for all historians when he judgment of history on these events; there would writes: “By virtue of his personality, his ideas, be no re-interpretation. There were, therefore, no and the fact that he misled millions, Hitler poses good reasons for historians not to begin writing an historical problem of the first magnitude”5. a coherent biography of Hitler immediately after H. R. Trevor-Roper writes that, despite the the war. passage of half a century, “Hitler remains a frightening mystery”6. In addition, there were several very strong reasons for historians to do so. First, public The fact that Hitler continues to be a mystery, interest in and, indeed, fascination with, the however, is not a fact like other facts, to be strange and mysterious career of Adolf Hitler recorded as a datum of history and passed over. and the bizarre events of the Third Reich has A mystery, by definition, is the appearance of been high, not only in Germany but among the something surprising or unexpected that fairly publics of the victorious Allies as well. Gordon calls out for an explanation. But, is it not one of A. Craig notes that as early as 1950, “appalled the purposes of history—indeed, the major by the flood of books and articles about National function of historians—to explain historical Socialism that was pouring from the printing events and to make them understandable? Are presses, a German journalist wrote, ‘He has historical problems of the “first magnitude” to played a trick on us. This Hitler, I think he'll be simply declared “inexplicable?” Is Hitler to remain with us until the end of our lives’”1. In live on as history’s greatest mystery—the most

158 © Historia Actual Online 2006 Ben Novak Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs unique and inexplicable man who ever lived? If “Hitler virus”8. The danger, as Saul Friedländer the answer to these questions is “no”, then we warns, is that such continued fascination may must inquire into the responsibility of historians result in an “inversion of signs and the as to why the mystery remains. beginning of a new discourse about Evil”9.

In light of these questions, what are the duties of It is the purpose of this article to discuss the professional historians? Theodor Mommsen responsibility of historians for the continuing long ago set out criteria for what is minimally mystery of Hitler and the corresponding expected of historians: “History”, he said, “is fascination it attracts, in terms of the two duties nothing but the distinct knowledge of actual that Mommsen laid upon them: 1) the duty to happenings, consisting on the one hand of the investigate and gather the facts necessary to discovery and examination of the available solve the mystery; and 2) the duty to weave the testimony, and on the other of the weaving of facts into a coherent narrative. this testimony into a narrative in accordance with one’s understanding of the men who 1. THE FAILURE OF HISTORIANS TO shaped the events and the conditions that INVESTIGATE prevailed”7. Thus historians have two minimal duties: 1) to discover and examine the available The most fundamental and difficult question in testimony; and 2) to weave it into a coherent the field of Hitler studies is the question of how narrative. this uneducated high-school dropout and bum from the streets of Vienna ever came to be one In regard to the rise of Hitler, historians have of the most outstanding orators and political failed this definition on both counts. On the first organizers in German if not all modern history. count, professional historians have consistently Strangely, the professional historians have refused to get their hands dirty investigating the avoided this question as though it were a case of many mysteries of Hitler’s life and career by AIDS. Surely, unless there were some miracle in going into the field to interview witnesses. Were Hitler’s life at the age of thirty when he attended it not for a handful of amateurs who ventured to his first political meeting10, any historian worth go where the “angels” of the historical his salt would be looking into this man’s early profession feared to tread, we would not have life to find the secret of his success at gaining many of the materials upon which historians are power. Yet, instead of going into the field to now relying to solve the mystery. find and interview every person who ever knew the young Hitler, as any good private detective On the second count, historians have not only would have done, the professional historians sat failed, but have been charged by fellow at their desks for fifty years, leaving all of the historians with “evading,” their duty to weave tracking down and interviewing of witnesses to the facts of Hitler’s life and career into a amateur historians. Fortunately, there were coherent and comprehensible narrative. Instead, several amateurs who stepped in to fill the gap, Hitler remains an unexplained mystery, an and it is to them that we owe most of everything “unperson,” unique in all human history, that we know of the young Hitler other than declared to be “inexplicable.” what this most secretive of men chose to tell. The first of these was Franz Jetzinger, author The reason for the vast and rising public and Hitlers Jugend: Phantasien, Lügen, und die scholarly interest in Hitler, I submit, is simple: Wahrheit (1956)11. Jetzinger was not a historian he continues to be a mystery. The attraction but a Social Democratic politician who served as involved in such a mystery was once described a deputy in the Provincial Assembly of Upper by Albert Einstein, who said (in another context Austria for fifteen years before the Second but nonetheless applicable here): “The most World War. After the war he secured a post as beautiful thing we can experience is a mystery”. librarian of the provincial archives in Linz. Jetzinger hated Hitler with a passion, and in Hitler become beautiful? This is a terrifying 1946 began searching for every document and thought. But the fact is that the most horrible interviewing every witness he could locate in things—from Frankenstein to Dracula to connection with Hitler’s youth. It is to Jetzinger Godzilla to the Slime Monster—can become that we owe much of our knowledge of the fascinating and attractive when wrapped in documents of Hitler’s family, his ancestors, his mystery. Peter Wyden has written of the father’s change of name, and where the family increasing public fascination with Hitler as the lived.

© Historia Actual Online 2006 159 Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs Ben Novak Jetzinger’s interviews of those who had known German academic historians”16 (One is Hitler and his family have also proved reminded of the attitude of professional police invaluable, perhaps the most important of which forces toward private detectives in mystery was his discovery of Hitler’s only childhood novels: their results in solving cases are friend, August Kubizek, whom Jetzinger grudgingly recognized, but the detectives located, interviewed, and goaded into writing a themselves are looked down upon). much longer set of his own memoirs. The latter were published in 1953 as Adolf Hitler, mein To give some idea of the importance of both Jugendfreund12, and constitute the only Jetzinger and Maser, it is worth noting how testimony we have from anyone who knew much their work is relied upon by professionals. Hitler as a youth. In Ian Kershaw’s recent biography, Hitler: Hubris 1889-1936, for example, ninety of the Kubizek’s memoirs are important as the first and 164 footnotes to the chapter on Hitler’s youth only insight into, as H. R. Trevor-Roper writes (Chapter I) cite Jetzinger, Maser, or Kubizek— in the Introduction to Kubizek’s memoirs, the and almost all of these are for factual incipient character of the man who “without any information—while of the remaining seventy- other natural advantage besides his own four footnotes, twenty-seven cite to Hitler personality, became the most powerful and himself (i.e., Mein Kampf), or are largely terrible tyrant and conqueror of modern interpretational. Thus, almost everything we history”13. It was only through the indefatigable know of the facts of Hitler’s early life, except work of Jetzinger, however, that this witness what Hitler himself chooses to tell us, comes was discovered and his testimony obtained from these amateurs who did the primary before he died. If if it had been left to the research, and gathered the testimony while the professional historians, we would never have witnesses were alive. known of Kubizek, and his memoirs might never have been written and published. John Toland, author of Adolf Hitler (New York, Doubleday, 1976), is the next amateur to begin The next amateur to do what professional doing what the professionals should have done. historians ought to have done was Werner Toland began researching his biography of Maser. Maser was a simple soldier during the Hitler in the 1960s by visiting every place Hitler War who spent time in both American and had ever lived and talking to people who knew Russian prisoner of war camps and, upon his him. Toland located over 250 witnesses, and release, studied in East Berlin. Emigrating to the was amazed to find that many of them had never West in 1952, he worked first as a journalist been interviewed by a professional historian17. before realizing that the investigation of Hitler was being completely ignored by the Perhaps the most damning evidence of the professional historians. He set out to fill the failure of professional historians to do primary vacuum. research, however, is Brigitta Hamann, author of Hitler’s Wien: Lehrjahre eines Diktators “Maser’s main achievement”, writes John (1996)18. Hamann is a historian of the nineteenth Lukacs, “was the unearthing of large quantities century who left her normal field because of the of data through his tireless research”14. Much of glaring failure of historians to check their this data came from Maser’s relentless efforts to sources. She was the first scholar to evaluate the track down the testimony of witnesses who mass of conflicting testimonies from the Vienna knew Hitler, and his determination to collect and period of Hitler’s life. preserve their testimony before they died. Between 1965 and 1973, he produced four huge During the 1930s and later, many highly volumes on the history of the National Socialist questionable sources came forward with exposés party and Hitler’s early career, followed by a about Hitler containing much sensational and book on Mein Kampf, a biography of Hitler, and contradictory information. Professional a book on Hitler’s papers and documents15. historians were in the habit of uncritically roaming through these materials to quote Though Maser was clearly carrying out the first whatever random piece of information fit their duty of a historian according to Theodor theory. Until Hamann, it rarely occurred to Mommsen, his work was not appreciated by professional historians to actually study the professional historians. Rather, as Lukacs notes, materials evaluate their credibility, to correct he was excluded from “the higher circle of inaccuracies, or resolve contradictions.

160 © Historia Actual Online 2006 Ben Novak Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs Hamann’s work provides a healthy and we speak of the Age of Napoleon or the Age of necessary corrective to the works of many Charlemagne. And yet, for all the harsh professional historians. obviousness of its imprint on the world, how elusive his character remains! What he did is In conducting her research, Hamann also noted clear; every detail of his political activity is the names of many people whose existence had now—thanks to a seizure and exploitation of long been known to historians, but who had documents unparalleled in history—historically never been interviewed. One such man, for established; his daily life and personal behavior example, roomed with Hitler in Munich in 1913- have been examined and exposed. But still, 14. Of course, by the time Hamann did her when asked not what he did but how he did it, or research, this man was dead, and she could only rather how he was able to do it, historians evade interview his surviving relatives. But the point is the question, sliding away behind implausible that few professional historians until Hamann— answers”20 (Emphases added). half a century after Hitler’s death—did what one would expect them to do, namely, locate, Trevor-Roper then goes on to offer a list of the interview, check, and evaluate the sources. implausible theories given by historians, which have changed little in half a century: Thus, the field of Hitler studies is considerably poorer because of the failure of professional “To the Marxists—most old-fashioned of all— historians to carry out their first duty, that of he was simply a pawn, the creature of a dying collecting and preserving the evidence. Further, capitalism in its last stages. Others have seen they waited for historians from outside the field him as a charlatan profiting by a series of to even begin the most elementary evaluation of accidents, a consummate actor and hypocrite, a sources. When one hears professional historians sly, cheating peasant, or a hypnotist who claiming that Hitler is “inexplicable” because of seduced the wits of men by a sorcerer’s charms. the lack of evidence19, one should ask: what did Even sir Lewis Namier endorses an account of professional historians do to locate the witnesses him given by a disgusted German official as a and to gather their testimony while they were mere illiterate, illogical, unsystematic bluffer still alive? Why did they uncritically accept and smatterer. Even Mr. Bullock seems content sensational testimony without performing the to regard him as a diabolical adventurer most elementary evaluation of its accuracy, animated solely by an unlimited lust for power”. reliability and credibility? Unfortunately, the field of Hitler studies has been a “field for Trevor-Roper insists that these are not amateurs”. explanations but evasions—negative labels that explain nothing. In dismay he asks, “Could a 2. EVADING THE HISTORICAL mere adventurer, a shifty, scatterbrained PROBLEM OF HITLER charlatan, have done what Hitler did, who, starting from nothing…nearly conquered the The charge of evasion is not a new one. In fact, whole world?” But in answer to his question, it was first raised as early as 1953 by the man Trevor-Roper is met only by the silence of who is often called the “Dean of Hitler Studies”, statues: “So we ask”, writes Trevor-Roper, “but H. R. Trevor-Roper. Eight years after Hitler’s we seldom receive an answer: the historians death, Trevor-Roper published an essay entitled have turned away, and, (he adds, sardonically), “The Mind of Adolf Hitler,” in which he like antique heroes, we only know that we have accused historians of “evading” the two been talking with the immortals from the fact unanswered questions that constitute “the that they are no longer there”. In other words, in problem with Hitler”. Those two unanswered the face of Hitler, like a Medusa, historians have questions are: 1) Who was this man? and 2) turned to stone. How did he do it? In the first paragraph, Trevor- Roper starkly charges historians with evading After Trevor-Roper’s charge of evasion, one both: might have expected an avalanche of articles contesting his charges, and a multitude of new “Who was Hitler? The history of his political biographies of Hitler to come from the pens of career is abundantly documented and we cannot professional historians in order to prove him escape from its terrible effects. A whole wrong. Instead, one was met with, as Trevor- generation may well be named in history after Roper suggested, the “silence of statues”. One him and we shall speak of the Age of Hitler as searches in vain for an article denying the

© Historia Actual Online 2006 161 Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs Ben Novak charge, and equally in vain to find a professional their desks drawing very good salaries and historian writing a coherent biography of Hitler dreaming of an “inexplicable” Hitler who would that truly addresses the questions Trevor-Roper absolve them of their obligation to write history. raised. The first major biography of Hitler to appear A review of the major biographies published in after Trevor-Roper made his charge of evasion the first half century after Hitler’s death amply against professional historians was William A. confirms Trevor-Roper’s charge21. Prior to 1953, Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. there were only two postwar biographies of Shirer, too, was not a professional historian; Hitler that could be called major, well- rather, like Frauendorf, he was a journalist- researched works. The first of these was Alan turned-amateur-historian. Shirer had been an Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, published American correspondent in Berlin in the 1930s in 1952, the year before Trevor-Roper’s covering Hitler after he came into power. In accusation—and, indeed, the work that 1943, he published the memoirs of his provoked Trevor-Roper to make it. The second experiences as Berlin Diary: The Journal of a was Walter Görlitz’ and Herbert A. Quint’s Foreign Correspondent 1934-194122. Adolf Hitler: eine Biographie, also published in 1952. Görlitz and Quint’s biography was as In the Preface of The Rise and Fall of the Third much on Trevor-Roper’s mind as Bulllock’s. Reich Shirer records his reasons for becoming an amateur historian. A review of them amply In the next forty-five years after Trevor-Roper confirms the charge of “evasion” made by made his charges against professional historians, Trevor-Roper. It is worth quoting Shirer at there have been only three other major length for the light he sheds on the attitudes of biographies of Hitler that are worthy of mention the professional historians he encountered when as new, significant, in-depth, scholarly, well- he began his biography. researched, and complete attempts to write a narrative history of this man. These are: 1) “Though I lived and worked in the Third Reich William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the [Shirer explains] during the first half of its brief Third Reich, published in 1960; 2) Joachim life, watching at first hand Adolf Hitler Fest’s Hitler, published in 1973; and 3) John consolidate his power…this personal experience Toland’s, Adolf Hitler, published in 1976. What would not have led me to attempt this book had is astonishing about this list is that of these five there not occurred at the end of World War II an biographies (including Bullock and Gorlitz and event unique in history. This was the capture of Quint), only one of their authors (Bullock) is, or the most confidential archives of the German was at the time of writing, a professional government and all its branches. . . the National historian. Socialist Party and Heinrich Himmler’s secret police. Never before, I believe, has such a rich For a long time after World War II, the only treasure fallen into the hands of contemporary major biography written by and for Germans historians”23. was Görlitz’ and Quint’s Adolf Hitler: Eine Biographie. Görlitz and Quint, however, were Yet never, Shirer writes, had such a “rich simply two amateur historians who wrote under treasure” been so completely ignored by pseudonyms. Görlitz’ true name was Otto Julius professional historians. Had they researched the Frauendorf, while Quint’s was Richard Freiherr documents and written scholarly biographies v. Frankenberg. Both were Pomeranian explaining the times and events, Shirer would conservatives whose only qualification was that never have attempted to compete with them, and their hobby was military history. Frauendorf and rested content on his journalistic memoirs. But von Frankenberg jumped into a field vacated by where such a “rich treasure” was being the professionals to provide a young generation positively shunned by the professional of Germans coming of age after the war with the historians, Shirer explains, it felt right to the only postwar biography of the man who was journalist in him to walk where the angels of the responsible for the destruction they saw all historical profession feared to tread, and to tell around them. Frauendorf later went on to a the story as he saw it. successful career in journalism. One might ask: Where were all the academic historians who Shirer also recorded the arguments made by occupy prestigious chairs of history at professionals to discourage him from writing a universities? The answer is: they were sitting at biography of Hitler—arguments that surprised

162 © Historia Actual Online 2006 Ben Novak Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs Shirer as much as they would have surprised Shirer’s book was published in 1960 and was Theodor Monmsen. Shirer portrays the received by both the public and reviewers in the crustiness of professional historians by detailing United States like rain after a drought. It was a the rationalizations they employed to argue great success and was rapidly translated and against writing a biography of Hitler. He refers published with great fanfare to a European first to those professionals who advised him that public equally thirsty for historical this unique cache of documents and materials understanding. Shirer’s book also coincided should be not examined at all, but “left to a later with the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann, generation of writers”. “Most historians”, they which sparked an even greater interest in the argued to him, “waited fifty years, or a hundred, mystery of Hitler and the Nazi period. The or more, before attempting to write an account 1960’s became known as the beginning of the of a country, an empire, or an era”. “Hitler Welle” or “Hitler Wave”, a period of intense public fascination with Hitler, marked by “But”, Shirer asks in reply, “was this not a avalanche of sensational biographies by non- principally because it took that long for the historians, and popular books, articles, plays, pertinent documents to come to light and furnish television programs, films, and documentaries them with the authentic materials they needed?” on the Nazi period. In the case of Hitler, the materials were already present and were begging to be studied—but the Nonetheless, Shirer’s narrative, like Maser’s professional historians insisted that no attempt research, was not warmly received by academic should be made to weave them into a historical historians. Shirer’s view was that Hitler was just narrative. another world conqueror in the same vein as Caesar or Napoleon. While the professionals Next, Shirer felt that he had to defend himself disagreed with this assessment, they did not act against those professionals who insisted that to provide any new of better narrative. Rather, historians had to wait decades before writing in professional historians were content to offer order to gain “perspective”. To this objection he little but specialized studies of aspects of replies, “And though perspective was gained, Hitler’s career and the Nazi period. The only was not something lost because the authors two notable exceptions were Helmut Heiber’s necessarily lacked a personal acquaintance with Adolf Hitler: Eine Biographie (1960), which the life and atmosphere of the times and with the offered “insightful passages,” but little more historical figures about which they wrote?” But than the same “conventional”24 explanations of the professional historians were unconvinced Hitler that Trevor-Roper had criticized as and, like Trevor-Roper’s “antique heroes”, evasions; and Ernst Deuerlein’s Hitler: eine turned away. politische Biographie (1960), which, although still considered to be “the best short Hitler Finally, against all the professionals Shirer biography”25, was too short to weave together quotes one of the first and greatest historians, any new, comprehensive narrative into the facts. Thucydides, who prefaced his History of the Peloponnesian War, with this clinching By the end of the 1960s, therefore, the public justification for writing history fresh: “I lived was all but clamoring for a comprehensive, through the whole war”. Thucydides writes, scholarly biography by a professional historian. “being of an age to comprehend events and But they were not to get it. Instead, what they giving my full attention to them in order to got what was the most “definitive” biography of know the exact truth about them”. Hitler, Joachim Fest’s Hitler, published in 1973. But this also, like Shirer’s work thirteen years Modern historians, Shirer implies, were either before, was not written by an academic not “of an age to comprehend events”, or did not historian. Fest began his career as a radio and want to “know the exact truth about them.” television reporter who went on to became one of Germany’s leading journalists. At the time of In any event, Shirer argues, the Third Reich is a writing Hitler, he was a member of the editorial “unique case”, and he, for one, though not a board of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. professional historian, would not wait “fifty Fest’s biography was a huge success, and Fest years, or a hundred, or more”, to research and went on to become one of Germany’s leading write history about a time he had personally historians. But he broke into the “club” by doing lived through and experienced, especially when what the academics and practicing professionals “such incomparable sources” were available. had failed to do. Nor did Fest’s biography solve

© Historia Actual Online 2006 163 Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs Ben Novak the mystery of Hitler or meet Mommsen’s Hitler—Bullock’s, Görlitz and Quint’s, Shirer’s, criterion of a narrative. Instead, Fest evaded the Fest’s, and Toland’s—only one of which, Alan problem by simply placing Hitler outside of Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952), history (“History records no phenomenon like was written by a professional historian. After him”26), and declaring him to be an “unperson”, Bullock, professional and academic historians whose personality “scarcely arouses our merely confirmed Trevor-Roper’s charge: they interest”27. continued to evade the issue, leaving the field to amateurs. Two years later, surveying the attempts of historians to come to grips with this “unperson”, As a result, the field of Hitler studies became Fritz Stern, a German professor of literature, littered with dozens of sensational and sadly concluded that historians were simply amateurish, as well as hack-conventional baffled. biographies of Hitler. Psychologists were having a field day, with explanations of Hitler that “As we go down the list of the more important included everything from a goat biting his penis biographers…we find each more meticulous to theories of monorchism and an over- than his predecessor in the sifting of fact from protective mother32. But, in the absence of fiction, of documented evidence from inference historians doing their duty, the mystery only and interpretation…Yet there is a point at which intensified. it is apt to defeat its own purpose, which I take to be an understanding of history. A montage of At about this time, another amateur historian historical minutiae…does not necessarily lead to seized the opportunity to enter the field that better insight. More details often entail less professional historians left vacant, and began sense. . . The facts of the case—chief among rooting through the documents, sometimes them the metamorphosis of the Nobody from coming up with well-researched, and at other Vienna into the Leader of Greater Germany— times presenting poorly researched, amateurish, are so extraordinary that when they are ‘left to politicized, and highly controversial results. This tell their own story’ they hardly make any sense was David Irving, who, while not attempting a at all”28 (Emphasis added). new biography of Hitler, built a career on showing that many professional historians had Thus by 1975, thirty years after Hitler’s death, it not done their homework. was still the considered judgment of scholars that historians had failed to weave the facts into Word slowly began to percolate into the minds a coherent narrative. But not even Stern’s of professional historians that something was judgment provoked professional historians into amiss. By the 1980s, professional historians action. The next major biography, John Toland’s finally began to enter the field, not with Adolf Hitler (1976)29, not by a professional comprehensive biographies of Hitler, but with historian, either. “studies” of his personality and “footnotes” to his character33. But these only heightened the Toland was a budding playwright, short-story mystery. A consciousness began dawning author, and novelist who fell into writing history among professional historians that the problem at the age of forty-five by accident—or by with Hitler could no longer be swept under the “fate,” as he tells in his autobiography, rug. Thus there broke out in Germany in the {captured} by History: One Man’s Vision of Our mid-1980s one of the most remarkable debates Tumultuous Century (1997)30. Toland admits in the history of scholarship. This was the from the beginning that he had no story line with “Historikerstreit”—a prolonged and bitter which to tie together the facts of Hitler’s life debate among professional historians that flew into a narrative. “My book has no thesis,” he far beyond the normal orbit of academic journals writes; except that “Hitler was far more complex and landed in the popular media, inviting and contradictory than I had imagined”31. amateur historians as well as the general public Toland, therefore, merely piles fact upon fact to participate. but at least admits that, as Fritz Stern had said, they “hardly make any sense at all”. The gist of the debate, although not directly mentioned, was Trevor-Roper’s charge a third of By the end of the 1970s, therefore, more than a a century earlier that historians were “evading” third of a century after Hitler’s death, that there the problem of Hitler. This point was most were only five major scholarly biographies of clearly made by Martin Broszat in 1987, when

164 © Historia Actual Online 2006 Ben Novak Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs he charged that “the older generation of German to one “lump”, Hitler sits astride history like a historians… very often resorted to writing about supernatural, evil demon, defying rationality and a ‘demonic’ or ‘diabolical’ Hitler and the like as explanation; while the other “lump” argues that a consequence of their inability to offer Hitler was nothing but just one more, albeit historical explanations”34. “In contrast with horrible, event in human history that can and this”, Broszat insisted, “there has long been a should be subject to explanation just like all need for more rational explanation”. Broszat other events. opposed what he called history by “metaphor”, arguing that such an evasive approach to history However much the Historikerstreit stirred up the tended to “impede further questioning rather waters of academe, it nonetheless failed to than furnish answers”. produce any major, newly researched, and scholarly biography of Hitler. Thus in 1998, This, of course, was precisely what the when Ron Rosenbaum published his foray into Englishman, Trevor-Roper, had argued a third the world of Hitler Studies, Explaining Hitler: of a century earlier, in 1953. Nor was it an The Search for the Origins of His Evil, he could entirely new claim in German scholarship. A only report that: “The real search for Hitler—the decade before, Karl Dietrich Bracher had search for who he was, who he thought he was, accused historians of a falsification of history in and why he did what he did—has been an relation to Hitler that he called “Ghenghis expedition into a realm far more inaccessible Khanism”. With such an attitude, Bracher than the rain-forest jungles of Argentina”. argued, how “difficult” it is to “understand and Rosenbaum describes the state of Hitler studies explain the rise of a man from so narrow and as “a terra incognita where armies of scholars parochial an existence to a formidable figure on clash in evidentiary darkness”. The “evidentiary whom depended a development of such darkness” to which Rosenbaum refers is universally historical dimensions and precisely the failure of professional historians to consequences”35. The failure to properly document and preserve the sources and research and provide a coherent account of testimony discussed in the first part of this Hitler had provoked a “civil war” among article. Theodor Mommsen is turning over in his historians. grave.

The Historikerstreit went on for several years Thus we had to wait until 1998—fifty-three and produced some remarkable characterizations years after the death of Hitler, forty-five years of professional historians—or at least the after the first biography of Hitler by a dominant professional historians in Germany. professional historian, twenty-two years after Foremost among these critics was Joachim Fest the last major biography by a non-professional, who referred to the latter as “keepers of the seal” and twelve years after the beginning of the who had “become the ‘mandarins of myths.” Historikerstreit—for a second professional Because of their attitudes, he charged, “Hitler historian to venture a newly researched and National Socialism, despite years of study biography of Hitler. This was Ian Kershaw, and reflection, have remained more myth than whose first volume, Hitler: Hubris 1889-1936, history”36. was published in 1998, followed by the second volume, Hitler: Nemesis 1936-1945 in 1999. Essentially, the Historikerstreit boiled down the soup of Hitler studies into two insoluble lumps. Unfortunately, however, this work turned out to One “lump” claimed that Hitler, the Nazis, the be a major disappointment. While excellently Third Reich, and the Holocaust were unique in researched (with 362 pages of footnotes) and all history, and could not be compared to, or engagingly written, the author admits in the explained in terms of, any other previous human Introduction that he is without a clue as to how experience. This lump also argued that Hitler to answer the questions Trevor-Roper accused was so irrational and illogical that nothing that historians of “evading”. Kershaw, however, at he did could ever make sense or be explained. least acknowledges the problem: The other “lump” claimed that “the simplest rules that are in effect for every past have been “How do we explain how someone with so few suspended”37, and that while Hitler may have intellectual gifts and social attributes, someone been both mad and evil, nevertheless who he no more than an empty vessel outside his was and what he did could be reduced to history political life, unapproachable and impenetrable and made explainable to ordinary mortals. Thus, even for those in close company, incapable, it

© Historia Actual Online 2006 165 Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs Ben Novak seems of genuine friendship, without the field of Hitler Studies in order to document the background that bred high office, without even “scandal” (that’s my word not Rosebaum’s) any experience of government before becoming involved in the failure of historians to “explain Reich Chancellor, could nevertheless have such Hitler.” In Explaining Hitler: The Search for the an immense historical impact, could make the Origins of His Evil (1997), Rosenbaum charges entire world hold its breath?”38. that Hitler has simply “escaped explanation” (Rosenbaum’s emphasis). Rosenbaum writes Rather than attempting answer this question, eloquently of his amazement at what he found to however, Kershaw does exactly what Trevor- be the state of Hitler studies: Roper accused professional historians of doing: he immediately evades it, asserting that it is “Is it conceivable, more than half a century after “falsely posed”. Instead, Kershaw declares that Hitler’s death, after all that’s been written and Hitler (in a famous phrase borrowed from said, that we’re still wandering in this trackless Winston Churchill), is “a riddle wrapped in a wilderness, this garden of forking paths, with no mystery inside an enigma”39. Therefore, sight of our quarry? Or, rather, alas, with too Kershaw argues, there is no need to explain him. many quarries? The search for Hitler has To a professional historian, it seems, a mystery apprehended not one coherent, consensus image is not something to be solved, uncovered, of Hitler but rather many different Hitlers, revealed, or explained; it is simply another competing Hitlers, conflicting embodiments of datum, to be worked in with all the other facts, competing visions. Hitlers who might not and treated as though it, too, were a “fact”. recognize each other well enough to say “Heil” if they came face to face in Hell”42. Thus Kershaw’s biography proceeds to tell not the story of Hitler the man—which is what Among professional historians, Rosenbaum biography is supposed to be—but only the story describes what he calls three “levels of despair” of Hitler’s power: “the character of his power— induced by the failure to explain Hitler. The the power of the Führer”40 (Kershaw’s most extreme level he calls the “revolt against emphasis). In other words, Kershaw treats Hitler explanation itself”43. Some historians seriously as nothing more than the effects he caused, hold that any attempt to explain Hitler is insisting mysteriously that there was no one “immoral.” These historians insist that Hitler behind the effects. When Kershaw seeks to go must forever remain a mystery, and that history behind “the power of the Führer” to explain must never attempt to explain him. Any who this man was and how he did it, he finds explanation is considered, reports Rosenbaum, nothing—only what he calls a “void” or a “black “dangerous, forbidden, a transgression of near hole.” “There was no ‘private life’ for Hitler”41, biblical proportions”. Theodor Mommsen is he insists. Kershaw fails not only to provide a now doing cartwheels in his grave. coherent narrative, but insists that the most stupendous effects of the twentieth century were The second level of despair, which Rosenbaum all caused by “the little man who wasn’t there”. labels “moderate,” is based on the inability of historians to find any narrative into which Hitler What has been the result of the failure of fits or any new theory to explain him. It is the historians to weave a narrative of the facts of general consensus of historians that Hitler is Hitler’s life and career, a duty that Theodor simply not explainable by “the systems of Mommsen laid upon them as part of the essence explanation, historical and psychological, that of their profession? It is that Adolf Hitler we use to explain ordinary human behavior”44. continues to stand athwart the stream of history Thus it is considered “moderate” to as the most mysterious man who ever lived, acknowledge the bankruptcy of imagination of frustrating all efforts of the best and wisest the historical profession in its failure to find any academicians of the age to explain him or to fit narrative understandable to ordinary human the experience of the twentieth century into beings or any credible explanation of the most narrative history. stupendous events of the twentieth century.

Ron Rosenbaum was the first journalist to sense Shortly after the rise of Hitler, Hermann Göring a significant story in the failure of historians to boastfully predicted that “In later time the render a coherent account of Hitler. Rosenbaum historians will not know how to depict it. For the researched the literature and interviewed a first time in world history the historians will dozen of the most prominent scholars in the conclude: that did not happen by the normal

166 © Historia Actual Online 2006 Ben Novak Hitler Studies: A field of amateurs process”45. to carry out the responsibilities of their It seems to be the position of “moderate” profession. They have failed, at least according historians today that Göring was right. to the two minimal criteria established by Theodor Mommsen: 1) to investigate and Rosenbaum calls the third level of despair that preserve the evidence; and 2) to weave the facts he found among professional historians into a coherent narrative. “evidentiary despair”. This is the argument that, while it is not impossible to explain Hitler “in NOTES theory”, it has become impossible because the evidence has disappeared. In other words, 1 Craig, Gordon A., “Fate & the Fuehrer”. The New York Review of Books, 2 November 2000. historians excuse their profession for its 2 collective failure to explain Hitler by arguing Lukacs, John, The Hitler of History. New York, that, while the possibility may once have Alfred A. Knopf, 1997, 4. 3 Payne, Robert, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler. existed, it is no longer possible “because too New York, Praeger, 1973, xii. many crucial witnesses have died without giving 4 Jäckel, Eberhard, Hitler in History. Hannover, testimony”, because “too much evidence was University Press of New England, 1984, 1. not collected in time”, or because “too many 5 Schramm, Percy Ernst, Hitler: The Man and memories have faded”46. This brings us full Military Leader. Chicago, Quadrangle Books; 1971, circle: the third level of despair not only admits 123. the truth of the second charge against 6 Quoted in Rosenbaum, Ron, Explaining Hitler: The professional historians, the failure to weave the Search for the Origins of His Evil. New York, facts into a coherent narrative, but also proves Random House, 1998, xv and 68 (Hereinafter cited the first charge, the failure to investigate and as Rosenbaum). 7 Mommsen Theodor, “Rectoral Address delivered at preserve evidence. the University of Berlin in 1874”, in Fritz Stern, (ed.), The Varieties of History From Voltaire to the CONCLUSION Present. New York, Meridian Books, 1956, 192. 8 Wyden, Peter, The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Returning to the image with which this article Legacy of Adolf Hitler. New York, Arcade began, imagine that Osama bin Laden had been Publishing, 2001. killed during America’s invasion of Afghanistan 9 Freidländer, Saul, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay in the fall of 2001, and that the entire network of on Kitsch and Death. New York, Harper & Row, 1984, 107. Al Queida leaders were captured and put on 10 public trial, ending forever their terrorist threat Rosenbaum writes of the efforts of historians to find “in the facts of Hitler’s life before he came to to the world. Imagine further that all of the power some single, transformative moment, some records of Al Queida were captured and made dramatic trauma, or some life-changing encounter available to scholars, including thousands of with a Svengali-like figure -a moment of pages of writings by Osama bin Laden himself metamorphosis that made Hitler- Hitler”. as well as large numbers of books, memoirs, and Rosenbaum, Ron, Explaining…, op. cit., xiv. reminiscences by his childhood friends, 11 Jetzinger, Frantz, Hitlers Jugend: Phantasien, associates, and confederates. Is it possible that Lügen- und die Wahrheit (Vienna, 1996). English professional historians would for the next sixty translation by Lawrence Wilson, Hitler’s Youth. London, Hutchinson & Co., 1958. years fail to interview the people who knew him, 12 refuse to write scholarly biographies of the man, Kubizek, August, Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfruend (Graz und Göttingen, 1953). English edition: Young ignore the records, pronounce the entire event Hitler: The Story of Our Friendship (London, 1954); inexplicable, and leave the research of these American edition: The Young Hitler I Knew, events to amateurs? If they would, then Osama translated by E. V. Anderson (Cambridge, Riverside bin Laden would undoubtedly grow into a man Press, 1955). Subsequent citations are to the of mystery and fascination to the general public, American edition, which is hereinafter cited as just as Hitler has. The twenty-first century Kubizek). would be explained by historians like the 13 H. R. Trevor-Roper, Introduction to ibid., xii-xiii. 14 twentieth: one inexplicable catastrophe after Lukacs, John, The Hitler…, op. cit., 15 (Hereinafter cited as Lukacs). another—all caused by “unpersons”. 15 Der Frühgeschichte der NSDAP: Hitlers Weg bis 1924 (Frankfort, 1965); Hitlers Mein Kampf (1966); In summary, the responsibility for the fact that Adolf Hitler: Legende, Mythios, Wirklichkeit (1971); Hitler is still a mystery, and that public interest and Hitler: Briefe und Notizen (1973). in him is high and growing, is at least partly 16 Lukacs, John, The Hitler…, op. cit., 15. caused by the failure of professional historians

17 Toland, John, Adolf Hitler. Garden City, (ed.), Fascism: A Reader’s Guide: Analysis, Doubleday, 1976, ix. See also id., Captured by Interpretations, Bibliography. Berkeley, University history. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1997, 298, of California, 1976, 212. where Toland comments after he interviewed a man 36 Fest, Joachim, “Encumbered Remembrance: The in Urfahr who had known Hitler well, “As I left him Controversy about the Incomparability of National- [I] wondered why no one else had never tried to Socialist Mass Crimes”, in Forever in the Shadow of interview him”. Hitler?, translated by James Knowlton and Truett 18 Hamann, Brigitta, Hitlers Wien: Lehrjahres eines Cates (Atlantic Highlands, Humanities Press, 1993, Diktators. München, Piper Verlag, 1996. Translated 71). This article originally appeared in the by Thomas Thornton: Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 August, 1986. Apprenticeship. New York and London, Oxford 37 Nolte, Ernst, “The Past that Will Not Pass: A University Press, 1999. Speech that Could Be Written but Not Delivered”, in 19 This is precisely the claim of Yehuda Bauer.; see Forever…, op. cit., This article originally appeared Rosenbaum, Ron, Explaining…, op. cit., xv. in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 June, 1986. 20 Trevor-Roper, H. R., “The Mind of Adolf Hitler”, 38 Kershaw, Ian, Hitler: Hubris 1889-1936. New published as the Introduction to Hitler’s Secret York, W. W. Norton, 1998, xxiv. Conversations 1941-1944. New York, Farrar, Straus 39 Ibid., xxv. & Young, 1953, vii. Also published in England as the 40 Ibid., xxvi. introduction to Hitler’s Table Talk, vii. This as well 41 Ibid., xxv. as the following quotations are all from the same 42 Rosenbaum, Ron, Explaining…, op. cit., xii. page. 43 Ibid., xv and xvi. 21 While there have been more than a hundred 44 Ibid., 67, quoting H. R. Trevor-Roper. biographies of Hitler published, only a handful are 45 Quoted by Robert Cecil in The Myth of the Master regarded as major, researched biographies. See the Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology. New review of Hitler scholarship in Chapter I of Lukacs. York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972, 96; citing K. Hayer, 22 Shirer, William L., Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Wenn die Gotter den Tempel verlassen (Freiburg, Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941. New York, 1947), 105. Alfred A. Knopf, 1943. 46 Rosenbaum, Ron, Explaining…, op. cit., xv, 23 Id., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New quoting Yehuda Bauer. York, Simon & Shuster, 1960, ix of the Foreward; subsequent quotations in the text are found on the same page. 24 Lukacs, John, The Hitler…, op. cit., 13. 25 Ibid., 18. 26 Fest, Joachim, Hitler. Verlag Ullstein, 1973. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston and published in the United States (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, 3). All subsequent citations are to the American edition, which is hereinafter cited as Fest. 27 Ibid., 6. 28 Stern, Fritz, Hitler: The Führer and the People. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975, 12. 29 Toland, John, Adolf Hitler…, op. cit. 30 Id., Captured..., op. cit.. 31 Id., Adolf Hitler…, op. cit., x. 32 See, for example, Waite, Robert G. L., The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. New York, Basic Books, 1977; and Binion, Rudolf, Hitler among the Germans. New York, Elsevier, 1976. 33 For example, Sebastian Haffner’s, Anmerkungen zu Hitler. Munich, Kindler, 1978. 34 Broszat, Martin; Friedländer, Saul, “A Controversy about the Historicization of National Socialism”, in Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historian’s Debate. Boston, Beacon Press, 1990, 127. This article, which consists of correspondence between its authors, is reprinted from Yad Vashem Studies, 19 (1988), 1-47, and New German Critique, 44 (Spring/Summer 1988), 85-126. 35 Bracher, Karl Dietrich, “The Role of Hitler: Perspectives of Interpretation”, in Laqueur, Walter