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 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 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.

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.

* Mommsen, Hans " German Society And The Resistance Against Hitler, 1933-1945 " pages 255-276 from The Third Reich The Essential Readings edited by Christian Leitz, London: Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-20700-7.

* Mommsen, Hans Alternatives to Hitler German Resistance Under the Third Reich, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-691-11693-8.

However functionalist historians such as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, and Ian Kershaw argue that the document shows no such plans, and instead contend that the Hossbach Memorandum was an improvised ad hoc response by Hitler to the growing crisis in the German economy in the late 1930s.

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.

At the same time, Kershaw sees considerable merit in the work of such historians as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, Martin Broszat and Wolfgang Schieder, who argue that Hitler had no “ programme ” in foreign policy, and instead contend that his foreign policy was simply a kneejerk reaction to domestic pressures in the economy and his need to maintain his popularity.

The picture Mommsen has consistently drawn of the Final Solution is of an aloof Hitler largely unwilling and incapable of active involvement in administration who presided over an incredibly disorganized regime.

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.

Furthermore, for Mommsen, Hitler played little or no real role in the development of the Holocaust, instead preferring to let his subordinates take the initiative.

As such, Mommsen has denied that Hitler ever gave any sort of order for the Holocaust, written or unwritten.

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.

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

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.

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.

Mommsen has pointed out that on the economic and Church questions, Hitler was not the leading radical, and that for historians it is too easy " to emphasize as the final cause of the criminal climax and terroristic hubris of National Socialist policy the determining influence of Hitler ".

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.

* 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.