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Changing Historical Perspectives on the Nazi Dictatorship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2009

Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen
Affiliation:
Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum, Germany. E-mail: hans.mommsen@t-online.de
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Abstract

This paper discusses the change of the leading paradigms in the field of contemporary history in the Federal Republic of Germany. While, during the early post-Second World War period, the study of the interwar period was dominated by the theory of totalitarian dictatorship and the discussion of the deficiencies of the Paris peace treaty system, thereby focusing on the charismatic leadership of Adolf Hitler, the post-war generation of German historians analysed the emerging political system of the Third Reich from a more systematic perspective, depicting behind the Hitlerian façade the antagonistic political structure that resulted in an accelerating cumulative radicalisation of the Nazi regime. This functionalist approach, however, has recently been attacked for indirectly exculpating the Nazi crimes by underlining the systemic factors leading to the accumulation of terror and violence and is about to be replaced by a rather moralist interpretation of Nazi politics, accentuating the function of the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ and the impact of Hitler’s charismatic leadership.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 73 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2009

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References

References and Notes

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