Broszat argued against characterizing Nazi Germany as a totalitarian regime and criticized Karl Dietrich Bracher and Ernst Nolte for advancing such a notion.

In an article first published in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte journal in 1977, later translated into English as " Hitler and the Genesis of the ‘ Final Solution ’: An Assessment of David Irving ’ s Theses ", Broszat criticized David Irving's argument in his book Hitler's War that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust but did accept Irving's argument that there was no written order from Hitler for the " Final Solution to the Jewish Question ".

Broszat criticized Irving's claim that because of one telephone note written by Himmler stating " No liquidation " in regards to a train convoy of German Jews passing through Berlin to Riga ( whom the SS intended to have all shot upon arrival ) on 30 November 1941 that this proved that Hitler did not want to see the Holocaust happen.

During the Historikerstreit of 1986 – 1988, Broszat again strongly criticized Nolte's views and work.

Broszat saw his work as kritische Aufklärungsarbeit (" critical enlightenment work ") and criticized his colleagues for adopting what he perceived as an ahistorical, moralistic approach to history.

* Broszat, Martin " Hitler and the Genesis of the ‘ Final Solution ’: An Assessment of David Irving ’ s Theses "" pages 73-125 from Yad Vashem Studies, Volume 13, 1979 ; reprinted pages 390-429 in Aspects of the Third Reich edited by H. W.

Broszat argued that in writing Hitler's War, Irving was too concerned with the " antechamber aspects " of Hitler's headquarters and accused Irving of distorting facts in Hitler's favor.

Broszat complained that Irving was focused too much on military events at the expense of the broader political context of the war and that he had offered false interpretations such as accepting at face value the Nazi claim that the Action T4 " euthanasia " program began in September 1939 to make hospital spaces for wounded German soldiers, when it began in January 1939.

Broszat accused Irving of seeking to generate a highly misleading impression of a conference between Hitler and the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, in April 1943 by re-arranging the words to make Hitler appear less brutally anti-Semitic than the original notes showed.

Broszat maintained that the picture of World War II drawn by Irving was done in a such way to engage in moral equivalence between the actions of the Axis and Allied states, leading to Hitler's " fanatical, destructive will to annihilate " being downgraded to being "... no longer an exceptional phenomenon ".

The criticism by Broszat was considered to be especially damaging to Irving because Broszat had based his critique largely on the examination of the primary sources Irving had used for Hitler's War.

Many statements in favor of the pluralistic character of scholarship and in favor of an ethos representing a republic of learned men reveal themselves as merely empty phrases to the person who has an overview of these things " Fest argued that Nolte was motivated by purely scholarly concerns, and was only attempting the " historicization " of National Socialism that Martin Broszat called for Fest argued that :" Strictly speaking, Nolte did nothing but take up the suggestion by Broszat and others that National Socialism be historicized.

These historians point to the more clandestine mass murder of Jews ( principally in the East ) and, as stated by notable functionalist, Martin Broszat, because " no general all encompassing directive for the extermination had existed.

Since most of the early functionalist historians were West German, it was often enough for intentionalist historians, especially for those outside Germany, to note that men such as Broszat and Hans Mommsen had spent their adolescence in the Hitler Youth and then to say that their work was an apologia for National Socialism.

Regarding the debate in the late 1980s between Martin Broszat and Saul Friedländer over Broszat's call for the " historicization " of National Socialism, Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Friedländer that the Nazi period could not be treated as a " normal " period of history, but he felt that historians should approach the Nazi period as they would any other period of history.

Like Broszat, Kershaw sees the structures of the Nazi state as far more important than the personality of Hitler ( or any other individual for that matter ) as an explanation for the way Nazi Germany developed.

In another feuilleton, Hildebrand argued in defense of Nolte that the Holocaust was one of out a long sequence of genocides in the 20th century, and asserted that Nolte was only attempting the " historicization " of National Socialism that Martin Broszat had called for During the Historikerstreit, Hildebrand often used the press as way of attacking Jürgen Habermas over what Hildebrand regarded as Habermas ’ s unfair criticism of Nolte and Hillgruber.

Hildebrand is pleased that Nolte denies the singularity of the Nazi atrocities ” Hans Mommsen defended Habermas against Hildebrand by writing :“ Hildebrand ’ s partisan shots can be easily deflected ; that Habermas is accused of a “ loss of reality and Manichaeanism ”, and that his honesty is denied is witness to the self-consciousness of a self-nominated historian elite, which has set itself the task of tracing the outlines of the seeming badly needed image of history ” Writing of Hildebrand's support for Nolte, Mommsen declared that: “ Hildebrand ’ s polemic clearly suggests that he barely considered the consequences of making Nolte ’ s constructs the centrepiece of a modern German conservatism that is very anxious to relativize the National Socialist experience and to find the way back to a putative historically “ normal situation ” In another essay, Mommsen wrote that Hildebrand was gulity of hypocrisy because Hildebrand had until 1986 always claimed that generic fascism was invalid concept because of the " singularity " of the Holocaust Mommsen wrote that " Klaus Hildebrand explicitly took sides with Nolte's view when he gave his previously stubbornly claimed singularity of National Socialism ( failing to appreciate that was, as is well known, the standard criticism of the comparative fascism theory )" Martin Broszat observed that when Hildebrand organized a conference of right-wing German historians under the auspices of the Schleyer Foundation in West Berlin in September 1986, he did not invite Nolte, whom Broszat observed lived in Berlin.

The following historians from the Institute served as expert witnesses for the prosecution ; Helmut Krausnick, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Hans Buchheim, and Martin Broszat.

Martin Broszat ( August 14, 1926 – October 14, 1989 ) was a German historian specializing in modern German social history whose work has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians as indispensable for any serious study of the Third Reich.

Throughout his academic career, a recurring interest for Broszat, like many German historians of the " Hitler Youth generation ", was the question of why and how National Socialism occurred in Germany Broszat wrote his dissertation on anti-Semitism in Germany during the Second Reich.

For Broszat, the constants were anti-communism, anti-Semitism and the perceived need for Lebensraum.

Broszat commented that though there were many concentration camps in Germany, all of the German death camps for the genocide of the European Jews were in Poland.

Broszat wrote a letter to Wulf demanding that he retract his allegations against Hagen “ in the interest of the tidiness of the historical document ” The British historian Ian Kershaw wrote that the Broszat-Wulf letters did not present Broszat in the best light, especially that Broszat seemed to have abandonded his support for Dr. Hagen very reluctantly and to have accepted Wulf's version only half-heartedly.

At the 1963 – 1965 Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt, Broszat together with other experts from the Institute of Contemporary History such as Helmut Krausnick, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Hans Buchheim served as expert witnesses for the prosecution.

In 1983, Broszat together with the other experts from Institute for Contemporary History played a prominent role in debunking the Hitler Diaries.

Broszat rejected the view that Hitler was following a " divide and rule " strategy as argued by Bracher and instead argued that Hitler was unwilling and unable to provide for orderly government.

In a 1986 essay entitled " Where the Roads Part " in Die Zeit on October 3, 1986, Broszat called Nolte an obnoxious crank and attacked him for his " offensive " claims that the Holocaust had in someway been forced on the Nazi regime by fear of the Soviet Union As a socialist, Broszat argued against attempts to promote a " less extreme " view of the Nazi period.

In response, Kershaw wrote that through Broszat's letters to Wulf were a " mistake ", Berg's claims that Broszat was a Nazi apologist was " absurd ".

* Jacobesn, Hans-Adolf " The Kommisssarbefehl and Mass Executions of Soviet Russian Prisoners of War " pages 505-536 from Anatomy of the SS State, Walter and Company: New York, 1968, 1972 ISBN 0-586-08028-7 ; first publisehd as " Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener " pages 163 – 283 by Hans – Adolf Jacobsen in: Anatomie des SS – Staates, by Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, and H. Krausnick, Bd.

Some historians such as Christof Dipper and Martin Broszat have argued that Goerdeler agreed with the antisemitic policy of the regime until 1938, though afterwards he did resist the Holocaust and other forms of mass murder.

Kershaw has called Broszat an " inspirational mentor " who did much to shape his understanding of National Socialist Germany.

In support of Broszat, Kershaw wrote that an Alltagsgeschichte approach to German history, provided that it did not lose sight of Nazi crimes, had much to offer as a way of understanding how those crimes occurred.

The second element, that Hitler was a " weak dictator " is less influential on the grounds that although Hitler did not involve himself much in daily administration, this apparent neglect stemmed not from an inability to do so ( as Broszat suggested ) but a lack of interest in the quotidian.

Broszat argued that the Nazis wanted to have " revolution in society " but because they needed the co-operation of the traditional elites in business, the military and the civil service, they turned their energy and hatred on those groups such as Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill that the traditional elites did not care about.

Broszat questioned whether Hitler had given Himmler any order to save the lives of the people abroad the train, given that the phone call Himmler made from the Wolfsschanze to Heydrich in Prague took place at about 11: 30 A. M. and the records show that Hitler did not get up until about 2: 00 P. M on November 30, 1941.

Regarding Nolte's claim that Chaim Weizmann on behalf of world Jewry had declared war on Germany in 1939, Broszat wrote Weizmann's letter to Neville Chamberlain promising the support of the Jewish Agency in World War II was not a " declaration of war " nor did Weizmann have the legal power to declare war on anyone Broszat commented " These facts may be overlooked by a right-wing publicist with a dubious educational background but not by the college professor Ernst Nolte " Broszat accused Michael Stürmer of attempting to create an " ersatz religion " in German history that Broszat argued was more appropriate for the pre-modern era then 1986 Broszat wrote that " Here the roads part " and argued that no self-respecting historian could associate himself with the effort to " drive the shame out of the Germans ".

For Broszat, because historians did not treat the Nazi period the same way other periods were treated, this distance between the historian and his / her subject in regards to the Nazi era led to the Nazi period being treated as " island " of " abnormality ".

As part of this " normalization ", Broszat called for the end of the teleological approach that saw Auschwitz as the culmination of the Nazi regime and instead paid heed to the fact that for most Germans the Holocaust was of marginal concern during the Nazi era and that Auschwitz did not obtain its iconic status as the supreme symbol of evil and inhumanity until after 1945.

In a letter of September 28, 1987, Broszat conceded to Friedländer that the " historicization " concept was open to abuse but argued that the concept was needed as the Nazi period had to be subject to rational historical analysis and was needed to provide a sensible way of understanding the Nazi era In response, Friedländer wrote that he did not feel that there was a " blockade " severing the Nazi period from the rest of German history, used Hillgruber's essay in his 1986 book Zweierlei Untergang calling for historians to sympathize with German troops fighting on the Eastern Front in 1944 – 45 as an example of the abuse of " historicization " and described Broszat's condemnation on a " moralistic " history written that assigned a leading role to the " victims " of National Socialism as a very troubling In a letter of October 26, 1987, Broszat wrote he was concerned that because of the iconic status of Auschwitz too much history was being written backwards with historians starting with Auschwitz and treating everything in the Third Reich as a long countdown to genocide

Broszat saw the primary supporters of the Nazis being the middle classes, who turned to Nazism to alleviate their anxieties about impoverishment and " proletarianization " in the wake of hyperinflation in the early 1920s and the mass unemployment that began with the Great Depression at the end of the decade.

In his letter, Broszat claimed this was not an " admission " that there was no Holocaust but rather an attempt to " set the record straight " about the differences between concentration and death camps.

Broszat argued that this was not proof that Hitler had given an order to Himmler to stop the killings of Jews but rather that the comment " No liquidation " referred to that train and was likely to relate to concerns about questions American reporters were asking about the fate of German Jews being sent to Eastern Europe.

Broszat ' call for " historicization " was much influenced by his work in the field of Alltagsgeschichte and by his functionlist understanding of the Nazi period In response to Broszat ’ s call for the " historization " of National Socialism, the historian Rainer Zitelmann suggested that Broszat ’ s " historization " approach was a fruitful arguing that just as not everything was evil in the Soviet Union, not everything was evil about Nazi Germany and that the Nazi regime accomplished many successful social reforms

The American historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld wrote about Broszat's call for " historization " that :" In the 1980s, the German historian Martin Broszat famously argued that overtly moral analyses of the Third Reich suffered from their embrace of a " black-and-white " perspective that drew too rigid a dichotomy between perpetrators and victims, obscured the era's gray complexity, bracketed off the Third Reich from " normal " modes of historical analysis ( such as an empathetic perspective towards the historical actors themselves ) and prevented it from being integrated into the large sweep of German history ... At the same time, an overly moralistic view runs the risk of mythologizing history and transforming it into a collection of moral ethical lessons that, over time, can easily become stale and cease to resonate within society at large.

Berg's attack generated much controversy about the legacy of Broszat.

Jäckel is one of the leading intentionalists in regard to the functionalism versus intentionalism debate, arguing from the 1960s on that there was a long range plan on the part of Hitler to exterminate the Jewish people from about 1924 on, views that led to intense debates with functionalist historians such as Hans Mommsen and Martin Broszat.