Klaus Hildebrand

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Klaus Hildebrand (1941-) is a German conservative historian whose area of expertise is 19th-20th German poltical and military history. Hildebrand was born in Bielefeld. In the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute) of the 1980s, Hildebrand sided with those who contended that the Holocaust, while a major tragedy of the 20th century was not a uniquely evil event, but just one out of many genocides of the 20th century. Furthermore, Hildebrand argued that the crimes of Joseph Stalin were just as evil as those of Adolf Hitler. In Germany, Hildebrand is well known for his disputes with the Mommsen brothers, Hans and Wolfgang over how best to understand Nazi Germany.

Hildebrand is an Intentionist on the origins of the Holocaust question, arguing that the personality and role of Adolf Hitler was a crucial driving force behind the Final Solution. In 1981, the British historian Timothy Mason in his essay 'Intention and explanation: A current controversy about the interpretation of National Socialism' from the book The "Fuehrer State" : Myth and reality coined the term Intentionist as part of an attack against Hildebrand and Karl Dietrich Bracher, both of whom Mason accused of focusing too much on Hitler as an explanation for the Holocaust.

Through Hildebrand is a leading advocate of the totalitarianism school and rejects any notion of generic fascism as intellectually inadequate, he does believe that the Third Reich was characterized by what he deems “authoritarian anarchy”. However, Hildebrand believes in contrast to the work of Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen that the “authoritarian anarchy” caused by numerous competing bureaucracies strengthened, not weakened Hitler’s power. Hildebrand has argued against the Sonderweg view of German history championed by the Mommsen brothers.

In the 1970s Hildebrand was deeply involved in a rancorous debate with Hans-Ulrich Wehler over the merits of traditional diplomatic history versus social history as way of explaining foreign policy. Together with Andreas Hillgruber, Hildebrand argued for the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik (Primacy of Foreign Policy) approach with the focus on empirically examining the foreign policy making elite. Wehler by contrast argued for the Primat der Innenpolitik (Primacy of Domestic Politics) approach which called for seeing foreign policy largely as a reflection of domestic politics and employing theoretically-based research into social history to examine domestic politics.

In regards to the Globalist-Continentalist debate between those argue that the Hitler's foreign policy at world conquest against those who argue that Nazi foreign policy aim only at the conquest of Europe, Hildebrand has consistently taken an Globalist position, arguing that the foreign policy of the Third Reich did indeed have world domination as it's goal. Together with Andreas Hillgruber and Gerhard Weinberg, Hildebrand is considered to be one of the leading Globalist scholars.

Since 1982, Hildebrand has worked at the University of Bonn as a professor in medieval and modern history, with a special interest in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hildebrand’s major work has been in diplomatic history and the development of the nation-state. He served as editor of the series concerning the publication of the documents of German foreign policy. As one of the historians who more or less supported Ernst Nolte in the Historikerstreit, many feel his reputation has been somewhat damaged in the public eye. At first, Hildebrand praised Nolte's 1986 article Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will ("The Past That Will Not Go Away") as "path-breaking", but as the controversy caused by the Historikerstreit increased, Hildebrand increasingly wrote less and less in support of Nolte and more in the favour of his mentor Andreas Hillgruber. In an 1987 article, Hildebrand argued that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian, expansionary states that were destined to come into conflict with each other. Hildebrand’s critics such as the British historian Richard J. Evans accused Hildebrand of seeking to obscure German responsibility for the attack on the Soviet Union.

[edit] Work

Vom Reich zum Weltreich: Hitler, NSDAP und koloniale Frage 1919-1945, Munich: Fink, 1969.
Bethmann Hollweg, der Kanzler ohne Eigenschaften? Urteile der Geschichtsschreibung, eine kritische Bibliographie, Düsseldorf, Droste 1970.
Deutsche Aussenpolitik 1933-1945; Kalkül oder Dogma?, Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer 1970, translated by Anthony Fothergill into English as The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, London: Batsford, 1973.
Das dritte Reich, München : Oldenbourg, 1979, translated into English by P.S. Falla as The Third Reich, London : G. Allen & Unwin, 1984.
Von Erhard zur grossen Koalition ,Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1984.
Deutsche Frage und europäisches Gleichgewicht : Festschrift für Andreas Hillgruber zum 60. Geburtstag, Köln : Böhlau Verlag, 1985 edited by Klaus Hildebrand.
German Foreign Policy from Bismarck to Adenauer : the Limits of Statecraft, London : Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Das vergangene Reich: Deutsche Aussenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler, 1871-1945, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1995.
No Intervention: Die Pax Britannica und Preussen 1865/66-1869/70 : eine Untersuchung zur englischen Weltpolitik im 19. Jahrhundert, Oldenbourg 1997.

[edit] References

Evans, Richard In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape the Nazi Past, New York, NY: Pantheon, 1989 ISBN 0-679-72348-X.
Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship : problems and perspectives of interpretation, London : Arnold ; New York : Copublished in the USA by Oxford University Press, 2000.
Marrus, Michael The Holocaust In History, Toronto : Lester & Orpen Dennys : Hanover : University Press of New England, 1987 ISBN 0-88619-155-6.
Piper, Ernst (editor) Forever In The Shadow of Hitler? : Original Documents Of The Historikerstreit, The Controversy Concerning The Singularity Of The Holocaust, translated by James Knowlton and Truett Cates, Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Humanities Press, 1993 ISBN 0-391-03784-6