History is???

1. is the progression of humans 2. History is the past 3. History is a systematic study of the past 4. “History is an effort to reconstruct the past to discover what people thought and did and how their beliefs and actions continue to influence human life.” [McKay, Hill, and Buckler, History of World Societies, 3rd ed., 1992, p. 4]

As a systematic study, the students of history, i.e. , are finding out, or trying to find out,

A. What happened B. Why it happened C. What is the importance of the event(s) that happened a. Impact of the past on the present

HISTORY OF AND POLITICS OF AND POLITICS OF GUILT

a. Dealing with the history of the Third Reich was not an easy task in Germany. b. Both Germanys, East G and West G, renounced a. In West Germany Nazism was the reason for setting up a democratic step and turn the Germans in to citizens b. In East Germany it was the reason for setting up a socialist system c. In both Germanys the of the Third Reich was related to and influenced by politics

East Germany

a. Nazism was a form of b. Imperialism is the last stage of capitalism c. What comes next is d. Communism is the “real” democracy e. In real democracy Nazism is not possible

West Germany

THREE STAGES of accounting for the past, each reflecting major changes in politics and political consciousness

I. 1945-1960: Conservative; tended to repudiate but not take responsibility for Nazism; demonize Hitler and the top Nazi leadership; portray Germany as “seduced” by the Nazis; view Nazism as an accidental aberration in German history; pressures of the also shifted attention from the Nazi past; schools avoided the subject by ending courses with WWI. II. 1960s-1970s: Liberal-left; part of youth rebellion, younger scholars interested history of , which they saw as repressed by their parents; interested in roles of social and economic groups in Imperial and Weimar Germany that undermined democracy; new interest in ; emphasized Germany’s deviation for the Western democratic tradition, its sonderweg1; greater political acceptance of responsibility for Nazi crimes; III. 1980s: Neo-conservative revival: conservative politicians advocated casting off Germany’s “burden of guilt;” combat the true enemy: communism. Bitburg ceremony designed to bury the Nazi trauma and demonstrate a united front in the Cold War. President Reagan was to lay a wreath in a military ceremony that contained by the graves of Wehrmacht and Waffen SS soldiers; conservatives argued that Waffen SS draftees were as much victims as concentration camp inmates. Others felt this trivialized the role of the SS and denied the exceptionality of –this controversy anticipated the Historikerstreit.

THE HISTORIKERSTREIT

A. New conservative interpretations of Nazi Germany and Germany history appeared in the late 70s rejecting the liberal-left trends of the previous decades. a. Michael Stürmer (associated with the CDU) favoured a revival of national pride, a unified and positive national identity, and self-confidence i. denounced the liberal-left’s obsession with guilt. He wrote: “In a land without history, the future is controlled by those who determine the content of memory, coin the concepts and interpret the past.”

1 (“special path”), a theory in German historiography; it asserts that Germany has followed a unique course from aristocracy into democracy, distinct from other European countries. The path was to be a sort of “third way,” between the “vulgar” democracy of the West and the czarist autocracy of the East (Russia)

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b. Jürgen Habermas set off the Historikerstreit by calling attention to the new conservative revisionism i. he attacked Stürmer and other historians, especially , who asserted that Nazi atrocities were no worse than those of Stalin and that Stalin’s atrocities provoked the Nazis’; Nolte denied the uniqueness of Nazism and the Holocaust. B. Debate divided historians along political and historiographical lines: a. the Liberal-left accused conservatives of trying to “normalize” and “relativize” the Nazi past b. conservatives accused their opponents of dwelling on guilt and weakening Germany C. Those debates ended up being about national identity and the ethics of West German politics

Peter Baldwin “The Historikerstreit in Context"

 Reasons for the controversy o deals with the Nazi Regime and the Holocaust o involves "problems of historical methodology" o involves political questions--part of a Left-Right in German politics o debate cross-cuts these issues; hence its complexity  Historikerstreit began in summer 1986; Jürgen Habermas challenged theses advanced by Andreas Hillgruber and Ernst Nolte; similar positions from Michael Stürmer, , , and ; Habermas and his allies (Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Jurgen Kocka, Eberhard Jackel, , and ) also charged that these conservatives were trying to “normalize” Germany's past; create a new national identity; and re- establish the continuity of German history; in line with the political agenda of the CDU.  Hillgruber's Zweierlei Untergang contained two essays, one on the Holocaust, the other on the fate of the Wehrmacht on the Russian front and of the German civilian population in the east; the title suggested an equivalence between the two topics; further, Hillgruber treated the Holocaust in dispassionate terms, while he wrote with empathy of the German fate in the east; in the latter case, he called for imaginative sympathy for the soldier caught between the conflicting demands of patriotism and prolonging the war (and hence the Nazi regime's crimes); in the account of the Wehrmacht, Hillgruber may have blurred the lines between understanding motivation and justifying that motivation.  Nolte, given the passage of time since the end of the war, called for the Nazi regime to be undemonized and to be treated as one "normal" historical event amongst many; also the Holocaust could be "normalized" or "relativized" and set in the context of other twentieth- century atrocities; further, that the precedent for the Nazi atrocities were Soviet efforts to exterminate the "bourgeois" ; i.e. the Soviets murdered on the basis of class identity, while the Germans murdered on the basis of racial identity; further, that Hitler so feared Bolshevik terror (which he attributed to Jews) that he undertook the Holocaust as a preventive

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measure [Baldwin says there is no evidence for such a claim]; further, Hitler could view Jews as an enemy because declared in 1939 that Jews should fight alongside Britain.

Two sides in the Historikerstreit

1. 1. Conservatives/CDU: Nazi regime, admittedly repulsive, was not unique when viewed in the context of 20th century history; Nazi Germany should be assimilated into the continuity of German history; the Nazi period should not provide a barrier to the past, distorting national identity, and preventing West Germans from recognizing the positive aspects of Weimar Germany and the Second Reich; problem of historization (=problem of locating the Third Reich in German history; its place in time, with distant origins and present consequences); 2. 2. Liberal/Socialists/SDP: integration and relativization as part of the conservative agenda was to gloss over the particular horrors of the Nazi period; also it glorified the Second Reich, whose peculiarities and weaknesses were passed on to Weimar Germany, and they made it possible for the Nazis to come to power.

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