Page "Hans Mommsen" Paragraph 3

Mommsen is a leading expert on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

He is a functionalist in regard to the origins of the Holocaust, seeing the Final Solution as a result of the " cumulative radicalization " of the German state as opposed to a long-term plan on the part of Adolf Hitler.

In Mommsen's view, Hitler was an intense anti-semite but lacked a real idea of what he wanted to do with Jews.

The picture Mommsen has consistently drawn of the Final Solution is of an aloof Hitler largely unwilling and incapable of active involvement in administration who presided over an incredibly disorganized regime.

Mommsen has forcefully contended that the Holocaust cannot be explained as result of Hitler alone, but was instead a product of the fractured decision making process in Nazi Germany which caused the " cumulative radicalization " which led to the Holocaust.

Furthermore, for Mommsen, Hitler played little or no real role in the development of the Holocaust, instead preferring to let his subordinates take the initiative.

Instead, the " Final Solution " was caused primarily by the German bureaucracy who as the result of bureaucratic turf wars, started to compete with one another for the favor of a distant and lazy leader by engaging in ever more radical anti-semitic measures between 1933 and 1941.