Language:
English
Year of publication:
1988
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
19 (1988) 151-186
Keywords:
Broszat, Martin
;
Mommsen, Hans
;
Nolte, Ernst,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
;
Holocaust denial
Abstract:
A paper presented at the "Remembering for the Future" conference, Oxford, July 1988. In the 1960s-70s, German historians stressed the singularity of the Holocaust in German and universal history and the central role of antisemitism in Nazi ideology. In the 1980s, the desire to create a new national-historical consciousness in Germany has given rise to different forms of revisionism. Examines the changing views of Ernst Nolte, Martin Broszat, and Hans Mommsen. Nolte’s relativization, comparing the Holocaust with other mass murders, tends toward a nihilistic approach to history and has also allowed some legitimacy to Holocaust denial theories. Broszat’s historicization views National Socialism as an answer to necessary structural changes and modernization in German society. The racial aspect of these changes and the mass murder of the Jews seem to be regarded as irrelevant. Mommsen, following Hannah Arendt, stresses the totalitarian structure of the Reich which, with its impersonal bureaucratic machine, makes German perpetrators and Jewish leaders equally victims and guilty. Mentions the work of non-relativizing historians, who have deepened the understanding of the role of antisemitism in Nazi ideology and politics, the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and its world-historical significance.
Note:
In English and Hebrew.
,
Record created automatically from multi-article record # 000031763
,
Appeared also in his collected articles "German Jews in the Era of the "Final Solution"; Essays on Jewish and Universal History" (2020) 267-293.
URL:
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