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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2008
In March 1966, the German historian Fritz Fischer wrote to several American colleagues, announcing that he would soon send them a copy of his Assistent Helmut Böhme's dissertation Deutschlands Weg zur Großmacht and asking whether they would be willing to review it in one of the leading American journals. Böhme's study on socio-economic aspects of the German unification contained a strong ideological and methodological critique of the extant German historiography on the German Empire, which he—and Fischer—saw as dominated by old-fashioned diplomatic historians who revered the Iron Chancellor. Thus, Fischer apparently anticipated a negative reaction from the West German historical profession and attempted to rally American support.
1 On March 14, 1966, Fischer wrote letters to Klaus Epstein, Hans Gatzke, Otto Pflanze, and Fritz Stern; Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter BAK), NL Fischer, Box 9.
2 Böhme, Helmut, Deutschlands Weg zur Grossmacht. Studien zum Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Staat während der Reichsgründungszeit 1848–1881 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1966)Google Scholar.
3 Epstein, Klaus to Fischer, Fritz, March 17, 1966, BAK, NL Fischer, Box 9. Epstein's review appeared as “The Socioeconomic History of the German Empire,” The Review of Politics 29, no. 1 (1967): 100–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Hans W. Gatzke to Fritz Fischer, March 18, 1966, BAK, NL Fischer, Box 9. Gatzke added, “As a matter of fact, I am giving a talk on German historiography after both world wars to a group of historians in the South, and the ‘Fischer case’ will be an important part of it.”
5 Otto Pflanze, “Another Crisis among German Historians? Helmut Böhme's Deutschlands Weg zur Grossmacht,” Journal of Modern History 40, no. 1 (1968): 118–129; here 129.
6 See the letter by SUNY Buffalo's History Department Chair Robert A. Lively to Fritz Fischer, November 4, 1968, BAK, NL Fischer, Box 11, in which Lively asks for an evaluation of Böhme. Böhme remained in Germany, where he became a professor at the University of Darmstadt in 1969 and its president in 1971.
7 Gatzke, Hans W., “Review of Walther Hubatsch, Germany and the Central Powers in the World War, 1914–1918,” Journal of Modern History 36, no. 1 (1964): 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 See Iggers, Georg, “Introduction,” in The Social History of Politics: Critical Perspectives in West German Historical Writing Since 1945, ed. Iggers, Georg (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985), 1–45Google Scholar; Daum, Andreas, “German Historiography in Transatlantic Perspective: Interview with Hans-Ulrich Wehler,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. 26 (2001): 121fGoogle Scholar.; Kocka, Jürgen, Sozialgeschichte. Begriff—Entwicklung—Probleme (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 40Google Scholar.
9 Schulin, Ernst, “German and American Historiography in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in An Interrupted Past: German Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933, ed. Lehmann, Hartmut and Sheehan, James J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 31Google Scholar.
10 See Maier, Charles S., The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Craig, Gordon, “Review of Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 36 (1988): 772–773Google Scholar.
11 I use “liberal” in the broader American sense, encompassing both German terms liberal and linksliberal.
12 Hammen, Oscar J., “German Historians and the Advent of the National Socialist State,” Journal of Modern History 13, no. 2 (1941): 188CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Already in 1933, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences had made Meinecke a foreign honorary member; in 1935 he had become an honorary member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in 1936, Harvard University awarded Meinecke an honorary doctorate.
14 See Meinecke, Friedrich, “Irrwege in unserer Geschichte,” Der Monat 2 (1949): 3–6Google Scholar; and Schulze, Winfried, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), 58Google Scholar. The contacts between Meinecke and those of his students teaching in the United States are covered by Ritter, Gerhard A., ed., Friedrich Meinecke. Akademischer Lehrer und emigrierte Schüler: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 1910–1977 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006)Google Scholar.
15 Ritter, Gerhard, Geschichte als Bildungsmacht. Ein Beitrag zur historisch-politischen Neubesinnung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1946), 29Google Scholar.
16 Gilbert, Felix, “Review of Gerhard Ritter, Geschichte als Bildungsmacht. Ein Beitrag zur historisch-politischen Neubesinnung,” American Historical Review 54, no. 3 (1949): 788Google Scholar.
17 Kohn, Hans, German History: Some New German Views (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1954)Google Scholar.
18 Contributors included Karl Buchheim, Alfred von Martin, Hans Herzfeld, Ludwig Dehio, Ellinor von Puttkamer, Walther Hofer, Hajo Holborn, and Friedrich Meinecke.
19 Hans Kohn to Shepard Stone, June 26, 1952, Leo Baeck Institute, New York (hereafter LBI), Kohn papers, Box 3/11.
20 Ludwig Dehio to Hans Kohn, June 6, 1955, LBI, Kohn papers, Box 1/39.
21 Gollwitzer, Heinz, “Review of German History: Some New German Views,” Historische Zeitschrift 180 (1955): 332Google Scholar.
22 See the reviews of German History: Some New German Views, ed. Hans Kohn, by Malcolm, E. Carroll in American Historical Review 60, no. 1 (1954): 100–101Google Scholar, and by von Klemperer, Klemens in Journal of Modern History 27, no. 2 (1955): 199–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Klemperer, , Journal of Modern History 27, no. 2 (1955): 201Google Scholar.
24 For Ritter's postwar activities and attitudes in general, see Cornelissen, Christoph, Gerhard Ritter. Geschichtswissenschaft und Politik im 20. Jahrhundert (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2001), 396ffGoogle Scholar.; for Ritter's contacts with American scholars and publishers, see John L. Harvey, “Reformationsgeschichte Reformed? The Rebirth of Archiv of Reformationsgeschichte from Five Decades Past,” paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the Society of Reformation Research, Minneapolis, October 24–28, 2007.
25 Letter Gerhard Ritter to Fritz T. Epstein, October 8, 1948, BAK, NL Epstein, Box 82. In 1949, the publishing house Regnery, politically very much in tune with Ritter, signaled interest, but eventually decided not to publish Ritter's book since Hans Rothfels’ study on the German resistance had turned out to be an economic disappointment. See letter Ritter to Epstein, December 23, 1949, BAK, NL Epstein, Box 82.
26 See Cornelissen, Gerhard Ritter, 534–545; Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945, 229–234.
27 Dorpalen, Andreas, “Historiography as History: The Work of Gerhard Ritter,” Journal of Modern History 34, no. 1 (1962): 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Raymond Sontag vetoed Ritter's nomination in the AHA's selection committee. See the meeting report by the committee's chairman, Richard H. Shyrock to Guy Stanton Ford, May 28, 1952: “Dr. Ford notes that the question of possible German representation—presumably West German—will come up; and suggests Schnabel and Ritter in this connection. Dr. Carroll apparently thinks both of these worthy of discussion; Dr. Sontag supports Schnabel but not Ritter.” Library of Congress (hereafter LoC), American Historical Association (AHA) papers, Box 173, Secretary File.
29 Letter Felix Gilbert to Boyd Shafer, November 14, 1958, LoC, AHA papers, Box 489, Secretary File.
30 Committee chairman Paul H. Clyde reported to Boyd Shafer that in the second round of votes “one committee member preferred to abstain from voting in the case of Ritter.” Shafer replied, “I think you should recommend Ritter with the explanation that one member declined to vote.” Letters of October 13 and 16, 1959, LoC, AHA papers, Box 661, Secretary's and Executive Secretary's File.
31 Cornelissen, Gerhard Ritter, 457.
32 See Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, “Eine lebhafte Kampfsituation”: Ein Gespräch mit Manfred Hettling und Cornelius Torp (Munich: C. H. Beck 2006), 39Google Scholar; and interview with the author, July 2, 2007, Klaus Schwabe, e-mail to author, October 23, 2006.
33 Interview Volker R. Berghahn, April 19, 2006; interview Jürgen Kocka, March 20, 2007; Kocka, Jürgen, “Wir sind ein Fach, das nicht nur für sich selber schreibt und forscht, sondern zur Aufklärung und zum Selbstverständnis der eigenen Gesellschaft und Kultur beitragen sollte,” in Versäumte Fragen. Deutsche Historiker im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Hohls, Rüdiger and Jarausch, Konrad H. (Stuttgart and Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2000), 384Google Scholar.
34 See Fischer's report to the Governmental Affairs Institute, August 19, 1953, BAK, NL Fischer, Box 50.
35 See Fischer's report, as well as his article “Objektivität und Subjektivität. Ein Prinzipienstreit in der amerikanischen Geschichtsschreibung,” Aus Politik und Geschichte. Festschrift für Ludwig Bergsträsser zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Alfred Herrmann (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1954), 167–182.
36 Higham, John, “The Cult of the ‘American Consensus’: Homogenizing Our History,” Commentary 27, no. 2 (1959): 93–100Google Scholar; Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), chap. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 Williams, William A., The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland, OH: World Publishers, 1959)Google Scholar; Fischer, Fritz, “Deutsche Kriegsziele, Revolutionierung und Separatfrieden im Osten 1914 bis 1918,” Historische Zeitschrift 188 (1959): 249–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischer, , Griff nach der Weltmacht. Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschlands 1914–18 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1961)Google Scholar.
38 The comparison between the impact of the Fischer-Kontroverse and of William A. Williams and the “Wisconsin School” in the German and American contexts respectively was first developed by Berghahn, Volker R. and Maier, Charles S., “Modern Europe in American Historical Writing,” in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Molho, Anthony and Wood, Gordon S. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 399Google Scholar.
39 Gerhard Ritter to Hans Rothfels, May 21, 1953, stating that “die Amerikareise war in jeder Hinsicht ertragreich, ich denke auch erfolgreich und für mich herrlich. Ich bin tief beeindruckt zurückgekehrt.” BAK, NL Rothfels, Box 1.
40 Hubatsch, Walther, “Geschichte—Kein verstaubter Plunder. Historische Wissenschaft in den USA: Eindrücke eines deutschen Gastprofessors,” Die Welt, supplement “Geistige Welt,” July 2, 1960Google Scholar.
41 See the letter by Gray C. Boyce to Julian Boyd (Princeton, Chairman of Selection Committee), August 23, 1969. Boyce wrote that “Schramm and I have been friends ever since I first met him when he came to Princeton as a visitor in 1933. I know that after the war there was some question concerning his attitudes during the trying days following 1933. When I knew him in Goettingen in 1933/35 he was active in trying to get unfortunate Jewish scholars placed outside of Germany and was not looked upon with favor by a number of the confessed Nazis.” LoC, AHA papers, Box 737 (Committee Files).
42 Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945, 127. Robert P. Ericksen concluded in his study of the University of Göttingen's history department that “Schramm, without hesitation, served the National Socialist state during times of peace and war.” See Ericksen, “Kontinuitäten konservativer Geschichtsschreibung am Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte. Von der Weimarer Zeit über die nationalsozialistische Ära bis in die Bundesrepublik,” in Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus, ed. Heinrich Becker, Hans-Joachim Dahms, and Cornelia Wegler (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1998), 449. By contrast, Schramm's American student Donald S. Detwiler emphasized his teacher's distance from the Nazi regime. See his obituary, “Percy Ernst Schramm, 1894–1970,” Central European History 4 (1971): 90–93.
43 See the letters of the institute's director, Martin Göhring, to Charles Odegard (director of the ACLS), July 19, 1951, and to the AHA, October 8, 1951, LoC, AHA papers, Box 174.
44 See Chester V. Easum's review of Martin Göhring, ed., Europa. Erbe und Aufgabe, in Journal of Modern History 30, no. 1 (1958): 47–48.
45 See Erdmann, Karl Dietrich, Toward a Global Community of Historians: The International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences, 1898–2000 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), esp. 220–240Google Scholar.
46 See the letter by the AHA's executive secretary Boyd Shafer to Arthur P. Whitaker (Chairman, Comm. on Intl. Act.), April 1, 1960, stating “Hans Rothfels (President of the German Historical Association) was in the office this week to talk about the split between the West and East German historians and the attempt the eastern ones are making to get separate representation in ICHS. The question will be presented at Stockholm and hotly debated. We ought to have a determined policy. I'd favor trying to postpone a decision. We need to talk, though. What do you think?,” LoC, AHA papers, Box 668.
47 For the American historical profession, the historiographical record has been set straight by Fitzpatrick, Ellen, History's Memory: Writing America's Past, 1880–1980 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 See, for example, Novick, That Noble Dream, chap. 13 and 14; Kracht, Klaus Große, Die zankende Zunft. Historische Kontroversen in Deutschland nach 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 66–67Google Scholar.
49 Kenneth Barkin, “German Émigré Historians in America: The Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies,” in An Interrupted Past, ed. Lehmann and Sheehan, 153.
50 A good impression of the group provides the excellent collection of letters edited by Ritter, Friedrich Meinecke. Akademischer Lehrer und emigrierte Schüler.
51 Felix E. Hirsch to Theodor Schieder, September 11, 1960, BAK, NL Schieder, Box 241. See also Hirsch, Felix E., “Gustav Stresemann in Historical Perspective,” The Review of Politics 15, no. 3 (1953): 360–377CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gustav Stresemann. Patriot und Europäer (Göttingen: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1964); “Hermann Oncken and the End of an Era,” Journal of Modern History 18, no. 2 (1946): 148–159.
52 See Gerhard A. Ritter, “Einleitung,” in Friedrich Meinecke. Akademischer Lehrer und emigrierte Schüler, ed. Ritter, 61.
53 Barkin, “German Émigré Historians in America,” 153.
54 The original stated “nicht echte Historie sondern Konstruktion aus Emigrantenfantasie.” Gerhard Ritter to Theodor Schieder, [undated, ca. 1961], BAK, NL Schieder, Box 506.
55 George W. F. Hallgarten to Karl Dietrich Erdmann, August 28, 1973; and Erdmann's indignant reply to Hallgarten, September 5, 1973, BAK, NL Erdmann, Box 160. In this case Hallgarten, usually prone to exaggeration, was not far off: reflecting on his increasingly gloomy professional prospects in Nazi Germany, Rothfels remarked in a letter late in April 1933 to Siegfried A. Kaehler that “der doktrinäre Antisemitismus (den realen teile ich weiterhin) ist nun mal der äußerste Vorposten all der Züge, die als trüber Bodensatz in den unzweifelhaft ja ansonsten idealistischen Aufbruch sich mischen.” Ritter, ed., Friedrich Meinecke. Akademischer Lehrer und emigrierte Schüler, 149.
56 For the reception by the non-professional audience, see Rosenfeld, Gavriel, “The Reception of William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in the United States and West Germany, 1960–62,” Journal of Contemporary History 29, no. 1 (1994): 95–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 Epstein, Klaus, “Shirer's History of Nazi Germany,” The Review of Politics 23, no. 2 (1961): 232 and 245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 Shanahan, William O., “Review of William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” American Historical Review 68, no. 1 (1962): 126–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar, labeled the book “woefully inadequate” and identified “selectivity [as] characteristic of the author's method.” See also George Mosse's review in The Progressive (December 1960): 40–42.
59 Morton Keller (Chair, Brandeis University History Department) to Fritz Fischer, December 14, 1966, BAK, NL Fischer, Box 12; Robert V. Remini (Chair, University of Illinois History Department) to Fritz Fischer, July 31, 1968, BAK, NL Fischer, Box 13.
60 Hans-Ulrich Wehler to Theodor Schieder, December 10, 1962, and September 22, 1963, BAK, NL Schieder, Box 354, where he voices his concerns about the American domestic situation; and Wehler, Eine lebhafte Kampfsituation, 42–43, where he reflects upon the German political situation.
61 Bracher, Karl Dietrich, Sauer, Wolfgang, and Schulz, Gerhard, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung. Studien zur Errichtung des totalitären Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland 1933/34 (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1960)Google Scholar.
62 See Hans Rothfels to Gerhard Masur, January 15, 1961, and Masur to Rothfels, February 12, 1961, in Ritter, ed., Friedrich Meinecke. Akademischer Lehrer und emigrierte Schüler, 214–217.
63 Theodor Schieder to Dekan H. Moser (University of Bonn), February 5, 1964, BAK, NL Schieder, Box 115. As early as 1963, Schieder had recommended Epstein for a position at the University of Frankfurt. See the letter from Theodor Schieder to Dietrich Geyer (History Department, University of Frankfurt), January 30, 1963, BAK, NL Schieder, Box 115.
64 See the letters from Friedrich Dieckmann to Karl Dietrich Erdmann, October 21, 1964, and Karl Dietrich Erdmann to Friedrich Dieckmann, November 1, 1964, BAK, NL Erdmann, Box 21.
65 Gerhard Ritter to Karl Dietrich Erdmann, October 14, 1964, BAK, NL Ritter, Box 270.
66 Gerhard Ritter to Hajo Holborn, October 13, 1960, BAK, NL Ritter, Box 350.
67 Gerhard Ritter to Klaus Epstein, May 25, 1965, BAK, NL Ritter, Box 354.
68 Epstein, Klaus, “Three Studies of German Socialism,” World Politics 11, no. 4 (1959): 650–651CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69 Recently, Smith, Helmut Walser has reiterated this observation in his “The Vanishing Point of German History: An Essay on Perspective,” History & Memory 17, no. 1/2 (2005): 269–295CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
70 Berg, Nicolas, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003)Google Scholar.
71 See Hilberg's, Raul memoirs The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1996)Google Scholar.
72 Gimbel, John, “The Origins of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte: Scholarship, Politics, and the American Occupation, 1945–1949,” American Historical Review 70, no. 3 (1965): 731CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
73 Koehl, Robert, “Zeitgeschichte and the New German Conservatism,” Journal of Contemporary European Affairs 20, no. 2 (1960): 131–157Google Scholar; quotes on 131 and 157.
74 Barkin, “German Émigré Historians in America,” 149–169.
75 Krieger, Leonard, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), ixGoogle Scholar.
76 Ibid., 468.
77 Several years earlier, Holborn, Hajo had published “Der deutsche Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung,” Historische Zeitschrift 174 (1952): 359–384CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 Sheehan, James J., “Review of Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition,” American Political Science Review 70 (1976): 1280Google Scholar. This was a review of the (unrevised) 1973 reissue by University of Chicago Press.
79 See Nipperdey, Thomas, “Review of Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition,” Historische Zeitschrift 197 (1963): 415Google Scholar.
80 Ibid., 415.
81 See Stern, Fritz, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961)Google Scholar.
82 Ibid., xv. Article 48 of the Weimar constitution granted the Reichspräsident far-reaching political power. Some historians argued that this constitutional element had weakened the Weimar Republic from the outset.
83 Ibid., 267.
84 Ibid., 292–294.
85 Ibid., xxiii.
86 Ibid., 276.
87 See Mosse, George L., The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964)Google Scholar.
88 Ibid., 8.
89 Ibid., 1.
90 Ibid., 4.
91 Ibid., 152.
92 Ibid., 8.
93 Epstein, Klaus, “Review of Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology,” American Historical Review 67, no. 3 (1962): 713CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
94 von Klemperer, Klemens, “Review of George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich,” American Historical Review 71, no. 2 (1966): 609CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
95 Ibid., 609. The significance of Mosse's Crisis emphasizes Saul Friedländer, “Mosse's Influence on the Historiography of the Holocaust,” in What History Tells: George L. Mosse and the Culture of Modern Europe, ed. Stanley G. Payne et al. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 135.
96 See Barkin, “German Émigré Historians in America,” 159.
97 Stern, Fritz, Kulturpessimismus als politische Gefahr. Eine Analyse nationaler Ideologie in Deutschland (Bern and Stuttgart: Scherz Verlag, 1963)Google Scholar.
98 See the studies on the German soviets 1918/19, which were published at the same time: Kolb, Eberhard, Die Arbeiterräte in der deutschen Innenpolitik, 1918–1919 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962)Google Scholar; and von Oertzen, Peter, Betriebsräte in der Novemberrevolution. Eine politikwissenschaftliche Untersuchung über Ideengehalt und Struktur betrieblicher und wirtschaftlicher Arbeiterräte in der deutschen Revolution 1918/19 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1963)Google Scholar.
99 In the 1950s and early 1960s, Karl Dietrich Bracher and Werner Conze clashed about the role of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning. Compare Bracher's seminal Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie (Villingen: Ring-Verlag, 1955) and Conze's articles “Die Krise des Parteienstaates in Deutschland 1929/30,” Historische Zeitschrift 178 (1954): 47–83; and “Brünings Politik unter dem Druck der großen Krise,” Historische Zeitschrift 199 (1964): 529–550.
100 See Broszat, Martin, Der Staat Hitlers. Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1969)Google Scholar; and Mommsen, Hans, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
101 See Schöttler, Peter, “Von der rheinischen Landesgeschichte zur nazistischen Volksgeschichte oder die ‘unhörbare Stimme des Blutes,’ ” in Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Schulze, Winfried and Oexle, Otto G. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), 89–113Google Scholar; Götz Aly, “Theodor Schieder, Werner Conze oder die Vorstufen der physischen Vernichtung,” in ibid., 163–182; Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker, 563ff.
102 Maier, Charles S., “Comment,” in Paths of Continuity: Central European Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s, ed. Lehmann, Hartmut and van Horn Melton, James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 395Google Scholar.
103 Aschheim, Steven, “The Tensions of Historical Wissenschaft: The Émigré Historians and the Making of German Cultural History,” in Aschheim, Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Legacy Abroad (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 52Google Scholar.
104 See Nolte, Paul, “Die Historiker der Bundesrepublik. Rückblick auf eine ‘lange Generation,’ ” Merkur 53 (1999): 413–432Google Scholar; for Wehler's statements on intellectual history, see his “Geschichtswissenschaft heute,” first in Jürgen Habermas, Stichworte zur geistigen Situation der Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979) and later in Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Historische Sozialwissenschaft und Geschichtsschreibung. Studien zu Aufgaben und Traditionen deutscher Geschichtswissenschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 13–41Google Scholar. For the debate about “structure” vs. “agency”/“intention” in a different context, see also Frei, Norbert, ed., Martin Broszat, der “Staat Hitlers,” und die Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007)Google Scholar.
105 Holliday, Frederic B. M., “Review of Kurt Stenekewitz, Gegen Bajonett und Dividende,” Journal of Modern History 35, no. 1 (1963): 204–205Google Scholar. See also Maehl, William H., “Review of Gustav Seeber, Zwischen Bebel und Bismarck. Zur Geschichte des Linksliberalismus in Deutschland 1871–1893,” American Historical Review 73, no. 4 (1968): 1182CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The standard account is Dorpalen, Andreas, German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.
106 Some American historians were well aware of Hölzle's past. See the letter from Fritz T. Epstein to Günther Franz, November 1, 1975, emphasizing “dass Herr Hölzle die rassistische Politik des Dritten Reiches gebilligt und literarisch unterstützt hat. Die Einstellung von Herrn Hölzle ist den führenden amerikanischen Deutschlandhistorikern… . wohlbekannt.” BAK, NL Hölzle, Box 26.
107 Karl Dietrich Erdmann to Theodor Schieder, December 27, 1961, BAK, NL Schieder, Box 235.
108 Theodor Schieder to Gerhard Ritter, November 9, 1964, BAK, NL Schieder, Box 243.
109 Schmitt, Bernadotte, The Coming of War, 2 vols. (New York: C. Scribner's, 1930)Google Scholar.
110 Imanuel Geiss to Bernadotte Schmitt, January 23, 1963, and March 6, 1963, LoC, Bernadotte E. Schmitt papers, Box 7.
111 Große Kracht, Die zankende Zunft, provides the most recent survey of the Fischer-Kontroverse's German dimension, 47–68; for the American dimension, see Stelzel, Philipp, “Fritz Fischer and the American Historical Profession: Tracing the Transatlantic Dimension of the Fischer-Kontroverse,” Storia della Storiografia 44 (2003): 67–84Google Scholar.
112 Fischer, , Griff nach der Weltmacht, (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1961), 93Google Scholar.
113 Stern, Fritz, German Historians and the War: Fischer and his Critics, in Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972), 156Google Scholar.
114 John L. Snell to Hans Marmann, February 18, 1964, BAK, NL Fischer, Box 92.
115 See Cornelissen, Gerhard Ritter, 609. Particularly striking was Ritter's reply to Snell, February 24, 1964, in which he told Snell that the cancellation was only due to bureaucratic reasons. Harvard Archives, William L. Langer papers, personal correspondence, Box 20. Of course, Ritter knew better, since he himself had urged the German Foreign Minister Schröder “to do something about the tour” because he did not think “it to be in the Federal Republic's national interest” to let Fischer present his views abroad. See Ritter, Gerhard to Schröder, Gerhard, January 17, 1964, in Gerhard Ritter. Ein politischer Historiker in seinen Briefen, ed. Schwabe, Klaus and Reichardt, Rolf (Boppard: Boldt, 1984), 587Google Scholar.
116 Gerald D. Feldman described the reception of Fischer in Berkeley: “When Fischer visited Berkeley, he was of course feted, and everyone felt he had made a great breakthrough, which he had.” See Gerald D. Feldman, e-mail to the author, March 3, 2003.
117 See Jarausch, Konrad H., “Der nationale Tabubruch. Wissenschaft, Öffentlichkeit, und Politik in der Fischer-Kontroverse,” in Zeitgeschichte als Streitgeschichte. Grosse Kontroversen seit 1945, ed. Sabrow, Martin, Jessen, Ralph, and Kracht, Klaus Große (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003), 20Google Scholar.
118 See the account of Henry A. Turner: “To the astonishment of his listeners, he [Fischer] delivered a defense of the actions of Bethmann Hollweg and the Reichsleitung in 1914. When my senior colleague Hajo Holborn pointed out the discrepancy between his talk and his book as we walked to dinner following the talk, FF [Fritz Fischer] replied that when in a foreign country one had to say somewhat different things than one would say at home.” Henry A. Turner, e-mail to the author, March 3, 2003. See Hans Mommsen's account “Daraus erklärt sich, dass es niemals zuvor eine derartige Vorherrschaft alter Männer gegeben hat wie in der Zeit von 1945 bis in die 60er Jahre,” in Versäumte Fragen, ed. Hohls and Jarausch, 180.
119 Hans Rosenberg to Hans Herzfeld, May 24, 1964, BAK, NL Herzfeld, Box 12.
120 Schmitt, The Coming of War; Gatzke, Hans W., Germany's Drive to the West: A Study of Germany's Western War Aims during the First World War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1950)Google Scholar.
121 See Meyer's, Henry Cord review in American Historical Review 76, no. 3 (1971): 792Google Scholar; and Feldman's, Gerald D. review in Journal of Modern History 43, no. 2 (1971): 335CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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140 Kocka, Sozialgeschichte, chap. 1, and passim. See also the contributions of Kocka, “Max Webers Bedeutung für die Geschichtswissenschaft,” and Wehler, “Max Webers Klassentheorie und die neuere Sozialgeschichte,” in Max Weber, der Historiker, ed. Jürgen Kocka (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 13–27, and 193–202.
141 See Feldman, Gerald D., “Der deutsche organisierte Kapitalismus während der Kriegs- und Inflationsjahre,” in Organisierter Kapitalismus. Voraussetzungen und Anfänge, ed. Winkler, Heinrich August (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 150–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the contributions by Wehler, “Der Aufstieg des organisierten Kapitalismus und Interventionsstaates in Deutschland,” 36–57; Kocka, “Organisierter Kapitalismus oder Staatsmonopolistischer Kapitalismus? Begriffliche Vorbemerkungen,” 19–35; and Winkler, “Einleitende Bemerkungen zu Hilferdings Theorie des organisierten Kapitalismus,” 9–18, in the same volume.
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148 For a critique of Hillgruber's and Hildebrand's methodological and political conservatism, see Wehler, “Geschichtswissenschaft heute,” in Stichworte zur geistigen Situation der Zeit, ed. Habermas, and later in Wehler, Historische Sozialwissenschaft und Geschichtsschreibung, 26 and 36f.; Wehler, , “Moderne Politikgeschichte oder ‘Grosse Politik der Kabinette,’ ” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1 (1975): 344–369Google Scholar; Wehler, , “Kritik und kritische Antikritik,” Historische Zeitschrift 225 (1977): 347–384CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kocka, Sozialgeschichte, 68; editorial statement, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1 (1975): 5–7. More generally, non-German scholarship often served as a yardstick against which Wehler measured the supposedly old-fashioned German diplomatic and political histories—and found them wanting. See, for example, Wehler, “Vorwort zur zweiten Auflage,” in Wehler, Krisenherde des Kaiserreichs 1871–1918. Studien zur deutschen Sozial- und Verfassungsgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2nd ed., 1979), 12, where he emphasizes the “denkbar schmale Angebot an wahrhaft modernen politikhistorischen Arbeiten. … Lohnen sie, stammen sie oft aus den Vereinigten Staaten oder neuerdings aus England. Hierzulande müssen die Vertreter der ‘modernen Politikgeschichte’ noch einen erheblichen Nachholbedarf befriedigen.”
149 See Kocka, Sozialgeschichte, 191, footnote 5; and Wehler, “Moderne Politikgeschichte oder ‘Grosse Politik der Kabinette,’ ” 358–359, and “Kritik und kritische Antikritik,” 367.
150 Otto Pflanze was not alone in questioning the far-reaching claims of Historische Sozialwissenschaft. In 1971, John L. Snell wrote to Theodor Schieder, “Thank you for your offprint of your essay in the Heimpel Festschrift. I find it a perceptive statement of the differences between History and the social sciences and a timely reminder of the limits to which History can or should be made into a social science.” John L. Snell to Theodor Schieder, December 31, 1971, BAK, NL Schieder, Box 175.
151 Iggers, “Introduction,” in The Social History of Politics, ed. Iggers; Retallack, “Social History with a Vengeance?”; Roger Fletcher, “Recent Developments in West German Historiography”; Moeller, “The Kaiserreich Recast.”
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