The Fischer controversy, the war origins debate and France: a non-history Keiger, JFV http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022009412472715 Title The Fischer controversy, the war origins debate and France: a non-history Authors Keiger, JFV Type Article URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/23060/ Published Date 2013 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at:
[email protected]. The Fischer Controversy, the War Origins Debate and France: a non- history. The controversy that followed publication in 1961 of Fritz Fischer’s Griff nach der Weltmacht was not restricted to West Germany. Even if the Fischer debate abroad did not acquire the vehemence it took on domestically, intellectually the effect was powerful. This article will demonstrate that France was potentially a most propitious terrain for the Fischer controversy to spread. Yet for a variety of reasons, largely to do with the nature of history practised in France in the 1950s and 1960s, it had remarkably little impact. The reasons for there being little reaction to the Fischer controversy also explain the state of the war origins debate in France fifty years on and why the war’s causes have not been seriously investigated by French historians for several decades.