Page "Ian Kershaw" Paragraph 14

In the Historikerstreit ( Historians ' Dispute ) of 1986 to 1989, Kershaw followed Broszat in criticizing the work and views of Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer, Joachim Fest and Klaus Hildebrand, all of whom Kershaw saw as German apologists attempting to white-wash the German past in various ways.

In the 1989 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw devoted an entire chapter towards rebutting the views of Nolte, Hillgruber, Fest, Hildebrand and Stürmer.

In regard to the debate between those who regard National Socialism as a type of totalitarianism ( and thus having more in common with the Soviet Union ) versus those who regard Nazism as a type of fascism ( and thus having more in common with Fascist Italy ), Kershaw, though feeling that the totalitarianism approach is not without value, has argued that in essence, Nazism should be viewed as a type of fascism, albeit fascism of a very radical type.

Writing of the Sonderweg debate, Kershaw finds the moderate Sonderweg approach of Jürgen Kocka the most satisfactory historical explanation for why the Third Reich occurred.

In the 2000 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw wrote he considered Gerhard Ritter's claim that one “ madman ” ( i. e. Hitler ) single-handedy caused World War II to that of a German apologist, and that he found the historical approach of Ritter ’ s arch-enemy Fritz Fischer to be a far better way of understanding German history.

Along the same lines, Kershaw criticized as German apologetics the 1946 statement by the German historian Friedrich Meinecke that National Socialism was just a particularly unfortunate Betriebsunfall ( industrial accident ) of history.

Kershaw was later in a 2003 essay to criticize both Ritter and Meinecke as German apologists who either through the Betriebsunfall theory and by blaming everything upon Hitler were seeking to white-wash the German past.

Writing of the work of the German historian Rainer Zitelmann, Kershaw has argued that Zitelmann has elevated what were merely secondary considerations in Hitler's remarks to the primary level, and that Zitelmann has not offered a clear definition of what he means by " modernization ".