In particular, Kershaw subscribes to the view argued by Broszat and the German historian Hans Mommsen that Nazi Germany was a chaotic collection of rival bureaucracies in perpetual power struggles with each other.

In an article entitled " Neither Denial nor Forgetfulness Will Free Us " first published in the Frankfurter Rundschau on December 1, 1986, Mommsen argued that Historikerstreit was a result of the failures of modern society Mommsen argued that in the prosperous 1950s-60s, most Germans were happy to forget about their recent past, and looked forward to a brighter future Starting with the oil shock of the early 1970s and the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the late 1970s, Mommsen argued that the idea of a progressively better future was discredited, leading to a pessimistic public mood, and the a renewed interest in history This had occurred in tandem in a period when German historians had started to make a more critical examination of their recent past As a result at the precise mood when public demanded a past that could make them feel good about being Germans, German historians came under attack for not writing the sort of history the public wanted Mommsen argued that the work of those like Ernst Nolte was intended to provide the sort of history that would allow Germans feel good about being Germans by engaging in “… an explanatory strategy that … will be seen as a justification of National Socialist crimes by all those who are still under the influence of the extreme anti-Soviet propaganda of National Socialism " Mommsen charged that Ernst Nolte was attempting to egregiously whitewash the German past.

Mommsen has argued that Hitler did give the order for the Kommissarbefehl ( Commissar Order ) of 1941, that helped lead to the Holocaust, but was not part of the Holocaust proper.

Starting with his 1966 book, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich ( Civil Servants in the Third Reich ), Mommsen has argued for the massive involvement of various elements in German society in the Third Reich, as against the traditional view in Germany that Nazi crimes were the work of a few criminals entirely unrepresentative of German society.

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.

Jäckel charged that Fest was guilty of diverting attention away from the issues by attacking Habermas's motives in criticizing Nolte, and not with concerning himself with what Habermas had to say Jäckel maintained that the Holocaust was indeed a " singular " historical event and criticized Fest for claiming otherwise Mommsen accused Fest of subordinating history to his right-wing politics in his defence of Nolte Mommsen went on to accuse Fest of simply ignoring the real issues such as the " psychological and institutional mechanisms " that explain why the German people accepted the Holocaust by accepting Nolte's claim of a " causal nexus " between Communism and fascism.

In October 1986, Hans Mommsen wrote that Stürmer's assertion that he who controls the past also controls the future, his work as a co-editor with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper which had been publishing articles by Ernst Nolte and Joachim Fest denying the “ singularity ” of the Holocaust, and his work as an advisor to Chancellor Kohl should cause " concern " among historians.

Mommsen accused Ernst Nolte of attempting to " relativize " Nazi crimes within the broader framework of the 20th century.

Mommsen argued that by describing Lenin's Red Terror in Russia as an " Asiatic deed " threatening Germany that Nolte was claiming that all actions directed against Communism, no matter how morally repugnant were justified by necessity.

Mommsen argued that the Historikerstreit was caused because German rightists could no longer “ bracket out ” National Socialism and the Holocaust from German history, thus leading to attempts by Ernst Nolte to “ relativize ” Nazi crimes.

Mommsen argued that attempts by Nolte to “ relativize ” Nazi crimes had been going on for a long time, and had only now attracted attention with Jürgen Habermas's attack on Nolte.

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 ”.

Mommsen wrote about Nolte's claims of a " causal nexus " between the Gulag Archipelago and the Nazi death camps :" In light of these questions, which thinking people encountered repeatedly, it seems superficial and insincere to narrow the discussion to the question brought up by Ernst Nolte about the extent of the similarities between the National-Socialist mass murder and the Gulag Archipelago ”.

Mommsen wrote that Joachim Fest was trying to advance the agenda of the German right through his attacks on Habermas for his criticism of Nolte.

The chief magistrate of the Aedui in Caesar's time was called Vergobretus ( according to Mommsen, " judgment-worker "), who was elected annually, possessed powers of life and death, but was forbidden to go beyond the frontier.

Historians such as Theodore Mommsen and Bernard Bavant aruge that all Dalmatia was fully romanized and Latin speaking by the 4th century.

Merchants and artisans from many parts of the Roman world established themselves in coastal Libya and the province was greatly " Romanized ", according to Theodore Mommsen.

Already in the Mommsen text edition of 1882 it was suggested that the very long name of Jordanes ' father should be split into two parts: Alanovii Amuthis, both genitive forms.

It falls before the simple fact that the first part of the Liber Pontificalis was compiled long before these dissensions, most probably ( Duchesne ) by a Roman cleric in the reign of Pope Boniface II ( 530 – 532 ), or ( Waitz and Mommsen ) early in the 7th century.

There are, however, many historians such as Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen who dismiss this " intentionalist " approach, and argue that the concept was actually an " ideological metaphor " in the early days of Nazism.

His papers on epigraphy ( collected in Commentationes epigraphicae, i vols., 1850-54 ) brought him into conflict with Theodor Mommsen in connexion with the preparation of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a scheme for which, drawn up by Mommsen, was approved in 1847.

The German historian Hans Mommsen in a 1997 interview claimed that a major motive for the pogrom was the desire of the Gauleiters of the NSDAP to seize Jewish property and businesses.

Mommsen was quoted as saying: " The need for money by the party organization stemmed from the fact that Franz Xaver Schwarz, the party treasurer, kept the local and regional organizations of the party short of money.

T. Mommsen states that Sallust acted in Pompey's interests ( according to Mommsen, Pompey was prepearing to install his own dictatorship ).

However, Theodor Mommsen has shown that the Mathesis was composed in the year 336 and not in 354 as was formerly held, thus making it an earlier work than De errore profanarum religionum, and could have been written prior to Firmicus ' conversion to Christianity.

Mommsen thought he was rex sacrorum of Rome, view that is now not considered probable.

The apparently needless cruelty of Mummius in Corinth, by no means characteristic of him, is explained by Mommsen as due to the instructions of the senate, prompted by the mercantile party, which was eager to dispel a dangerous commercial rival.

After his death, the revised edition of the text was completed by JG Baiter and K Halm, and contained numerous emendations by Theodor Mommsen and JN Madvig.

Having taken part in 1849 with Otto Jahn and Theodor Mommsen in a political agitation for the maintenance of the imperial constitution, Haupt was deprived of his professorship by a decree of April 22, 1855.

It was founded in 1853 by Theodor Mommsen and is the first and major organization aiming at a comprehensive survey.

The leading figure of this committee was Theodor Mommsen ( who wrote several of the volumes covering Italy ).

It was given a critical edition by Theodor Mommsen in 1882.

Mommsen argues that the royal cavalry was drawn exclusively from the ranks of the Patricians ( patricii ), the aristocracy of early Rome, which was purely hereditary.

Mommsen wrote about Andreas Hillgruber's demands that historians identified with the “ justified ” German defence of the Eastern Front that :“ Andreas Hillgruber recently attempted to accord a relative historical justification to the Wehrmacht campaign in the East and the desperate resistance of the army in the East after the summer of 1944.

The historian Hans Mommsen concluded that the Nazi leadership

Particularly its early reports and serials in regards to the Reichstag fire authored by former SS officers Paul Carell ( who had also served as chief press spokesman for Nazi Germany's Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ) and Fritz Tobias have since about the year 2000 been considered influential in historiography due to the fact that since the 1960s the Spiegel reports written by these two authors had made accredited historian Hans Mommsen a lifelong champion for the guilt blame of Marinus van der Lubbe, the man the Nazis themselves had presented as perpetrator of the Reichstag fire in 1933.

The case of Goerdeler has been used by the historian Hans Mommsen to support his view of " resistance as a process ", with Goerdeler going from an ally of the regime to increasing disillusionment by Nazi economic policies in the mid-1930s, and finally becoming committed to the regime's overthrow by 1937.

Mommsen went on to comment that given Goerdeler's background in the fiercely anti-Semitic German National People's Party, what is surprising was not his anti-Jewish prejudices, but rather that he was able to make any sort of moral objection to Nazi anti-Semitism.

Though Kershaw does not deny the radical anti-Semitism of the Nazis, he favors Mommsen ’ s view of the Holocaust being caused by the “ culminative radicalization ” of the Third Reich caused by the endless bureaucratic power struggles and a turn towards increasingly radical anti-Semitism within the Nazi elite.

In 1998, several younger German historians criticized Mommsen for not denouncing the Nazi past of his mentors while a university student in the 1950s.

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

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.

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

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.

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 ".

In Mommsen's view, the evidence is simply lacking that Hitler or anyone else in the Nazi regime had any sort of masterplan, and instead Mommsen has contended that the Third Reich was simply a jumble of rival institutions feuding with one another.

Moreover, Mommsen has maintained that because the role of Hitler has been inflated by historians, the role of traditional German elites in supporting the Nazi " restoration of social order " has been accordingly overlooked.

Mommsen has argued that historians should not reduce the study of the Nazi period to " the Hitler phenomenon ", but must take a broader look at the factors in German society which allow the Holocaust to occur.

Together with his friend Martin Broszat, Mommsen developed the structuralist interpretation of the Third Reich, that saw the Nazi state as a chaotic collection of rival bureaucracies engaged in endless power struggles.

In regards to the debate about foreign policy, Mommsen has argued that German foreign policy did not follow a " programme " during the Nazi era, but was instead " expansion without object " as the foreign policy of the Reich driven by powerful internal forces sought expansion in all directions.

* Intentionalist historians such as Andreas Hillgruber, Eberhard Jäckel, Klaus Hildebrand and Karl Dietrich Bracher have criticized Mommsen for underestimating the importance of Hitler and Nazi ideology.

* Mommsen's friend Yehuda Bauer has criticized Mommsen for stressing too much the similarities in values between the traditional German state bureaucracy and the Nazi Party's bureaucracy, while paying insufficient attention to the differences.

Mommsen argued that all theories of totalitarianism were meant by the right for the “ bracketing out ” of Nazi Germany from German history, and to put down the left.

Mommsen argued that totalitarianism theories were meant to minimize, if not outright ignore the support of traditional German elites for the Nazi dictatorship and to allow everything that happened under the Third Reich to be blamed on Hitler.