Page "Hans Mommsen" Paragraph 5

Mommsen is best known for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a " weak dictator " who rather than acting decisively, reacted to various social pressures.

Mommsen is opposed to the notion of Nazi Germany as a totalitarian state.

In Mommsen's view, Hitler was :" unwilling to take decisions, frequently uncertain, exclusively concerned with upholding his prestige and personal authority, influenced in the strongest fashion by his current entourage, in some aspects a weak dictator ".

Mommsen was the first to call Hitler a " weak dictator " when he wrote in a 1966 essay that Hitler was " in all questions which needed the adoption of a fundamental and definitive position, a weak dictator ".

In his view, the Nazis were far too disorganized ever to be a totalitarian dictatorship.

In Mommsen's view, the fact that the majority of the German people supported or were indifferent to Nazism is what enabled the Nazis to stay in power.

Mommsen has argued that the differences between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the National Socialist German Workers Party are such as to render any concept of totalitarianism moot.

Mommsen noted that in the Soviet Union, the Soviet state was firmly subordinated to the CPSU, whereas in Nazi Germany the NSDAP functioned as a rival power structure to the German state.

Writing in highly aggressive language, Mommsen has from the mid-1960s argued for the " weak dictator " thesis.

In a debate with Klaus Hildebrand in 1976, Mommsen argued against " personalistic " theories of the Third Reich as explaining little and providing an attempt to retroactively provide Hitler with a sense of vision that he did not possess.

Mommsen argued that Hitler did not have a set of rational political beliefs to operate from, and instead held a very few strongly held, but vague ideas that were not capable of providing a basis for rational thinking.

Mommsen argued against Hildebrand that Hitler operated largely as an opportunistic showman concerned only with the best way of promoting his image in the here and now with no regard for the future.

As such, Hitler's statements in his speeches were mere propaganda instead of being " firm statements of intent ".

Mommsen has argued that both domestic and foreign policy in the Third Reich were merely a long series of incoherent drift as the Nazi regime reacted in an ad hoc fashion to crisis after crisis, leading to the " cumulative radicalization ".