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

The German historian Hans Mommsen wrote that Goerdeler's anti-Semitism was typical of the German right, where Jews were widely considered to be part of an alien body living in Germany.

" It is high time for such a work ", Mommsen wrote to an associate in Roman studies, " it is more than ever necessary to present to a wider audience the results of our researches.

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 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.

Mommsen wrote that Hitler was the " ideological and political originator " of the Holocaust, a " utopian objective " that came to life " only in the uncertain light of the Dictator's fanatical propaganda utterances, eagerly seized upon as orders for action by men wishing to prove their diligence, the efficiency of their machinery and their political indispensability ".

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 ".

Mommsen wrote: " Hitler's role as a driving force, which with the same inner compulsion drove on to self-destruction, should not be underestimated.

Mommsen wrote: "... it is questionable, too, whether National Socialist foreign policy can be considered as an unchanging pursuit of established priorities.

In a Primat der Innenpolitik (" primacy of domestic politics ") argument, Mommsen wrote that the foreign policy of the Third Reich " was its form domestic policy projected outwards, which was able to conceal the increasing loss of reality only by maintaining political dynamism through incessant action.

The Swiss historian Walter Hofer accused Mommsen of " not seeing because he does not want to see " what Hofer saw as the obvious connection between what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf and his later actions.

The Israeli historian Omer Bartov wrote in 2003 about Mommsen ’ s functionalist understanding of the Third Reich that :" In this reading, ideology is recognized and then dismissed as irrelevant ; the suffering of the victims is readily acknowledged and then omitted as having nothing to tell us about the mechanics of genocide ; and individual perpetrators from Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heyrdrich to the lowliest SS man are shoved out of the historical picture as contemptible, but ultimately unimportant pawns in the larger scheme of a “ polycratic state ” whose predilection for “ cumulative radicalization ” was a function of its structure rather the product of intentional planning or self-proclaimed will ”

Mommsen wrote that the two museums in Berlin and Bonn proposed by the government of Helmut Kohl were meant to revival traditional German authoritarianism.

Mommsen wrote :“ The extensive repression of nationalistic resentment, which has led to a normalization of the relationship with the neighboring peoples and even has reduced xenophobia, is being described from the conservative side as a potential danger to political stability and as a putative “ loss of identity ”.

Mommsen wrote that Michael Stürmer's attempts to create a national consensus on a version of German history that all Germans could take pride in was a reflection that the German rightists could not stomach modern German history, and was now looking to create a version of the German past that German rightists could enjoy.

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.

Mommsen wrote in his opinion that Nolte's use of the Nazi era phrase " Asiatic hordes " to describe Red Army soldiers, and his use of the word " Asia " as a byword for all that is horrible and cruel in the world reflected anti-Asian racism.

Mommsen wrote :" In contrast to these irrefutable conditioning factors, Nolte ’ s derivation based on personalities and the history of ideas seems artificial, even for the explanation of Hitler ’ s anti-semitism … If one emphasizes the indisputably important connection in isolation, one should not then force a connection with Hitler's weltanschauung, which was in no ways original itself, in order to deprive from it the existence of Auschwitz.

In another essay entitled " Reappraisal and Repression The Third Reich In West German Historical Consciousness ", Mommsen wrote :" Nolte's superficial approach which associates things that do not belong together, substitutes analogies for casual arguments, and-thanks to his taste for exaggeration-produces a long outdated interpretation of the Third Reich as the result of a single factor.

Mommsen's friend, the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw wrote he thought that Mommsen had " destroyed " Goldhagen during their debates over Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners.

Hans Mommsen wrote that the " ground-laying works of Andreas Hillgruber ... suggested the view for the continuities of German policy from the late Wilhelminian period up to the capitulation ".

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.

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.

According to Mommsen, Solinus also used a chronicle ( possibly by Cornelius Bocchus ) and a Chorographia pliniana, an epitome of Pliny's work with additions made about the time of Hadrian.

During the " Goldhagen Controversy " of 1996, Kershaw took the view that his friend, Hans Mommsen, had " destroyed " Daniel Goldhagen's arguments about a culture of " eliminationist antisemitism " in Germany during their frequent debates on German TV.

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.

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.

Mommsen attacked Fest for in his view subordinating history to his right-wing politics in his defence of Nolte Mommsen accused Fest of simply ignoring the real issues about the Holocaust such as the " psychological and institutional mechanisms " that explain why the German people accepted the Shoah by accepting Nolte's claim of a " casual nexus " between Communism and fascism.

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.

Mommsen called Nolte's claim of a " causal nexus " between National Socialism and Communism "... not simply methodologically untenable, but also absurd in it premises and conclusions ".

Mommsen was later in a book review in 1988 to call Nolte's book, Der Europäische Bürgrkrieg a " regression back to the brew of racist-nationalistic ideology of the interwar period ".

Mommsen claims that besides the 80, 000 Roman soldiers, half as many of the auxiliaries and camp-followers perished.

Much more than a " gloomy coda to the ... 1st century " the Roman Empire prospered between 81 and 96, in a reign which Theodor Mommsen described as the sombre but intelligent despotism of Domitian.

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'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 the identification of Jews with Communism that characterized the thinking of the German right between the wars had already started well before the Russian Revolution.

Mommsen argued that the purpose of historians is not to provide a " usable ' version of the German past, but instead to engage in a never-ending dialogue between past and present to create the groundwork for a more positive German national identity.

Mommsen has drawn unfavorable comparisons between what he sees as conservative opposition and Social Democratic and Communist resistance to the Nazis.

The " diversities " of German anti-semitism Mommsen spoken of were defined by him in the same interview as: " One should differentiate between the cultural antisemitism symptomatic of the German conservatives — found especially in the German officer corps and the high civil administration — and mainly directed against the Eastern Jews on the one hand, and völkisch antisemitism on the other.

Both phenomena could, horribile dictu, even relativize the concept of the German Sonderweg between 1933 and 1945 " In response, Heinrich August Winkler argued that there was a Sonderweg before 1933, and that Germany as a country deeply influenced by the Enlightenment meant there was no point of comparison between Hitler on one hand, and Pol Pot and Stalin on the other In Germany, Hildebrand is well known for his disputes with the Mommsen brothers, Hans and Wolfgang over how best to understand Nazi Germany, especially evident at a conference held at the German Historical Institute in London in 1979 which resulted in numerous hostile exchanges.

While Theodore Mommsen believed the Suevi were foederati and Ernst Stein seconded the notion by believing they had made an agreement with the Roman usurper Magnus Maximus whereby they received the western half of Iberia, there is no primary evidence for any alliance between the Suevi and Rome.