Abstract: It is difficult now to imagine the outlook of the German historical profession after 1945. From the end of the Second World War until the early 1960s, most German scholars tended to argue that Hitler had come from nowhere to dupe the German people into supporting his regime [60: ch. 2; 112: pp. 17–23; 295]. Some historians, it is true, wanted to confront Germany's past. But conservatives in the profession, unwilling to address the Nazi catastrophe directly, advanced the notion of Hitler as an aberration, an unfortunate 'accident' of German history. This conviction in part explains why these historians laid the crimes of Nazism at the feet of an omnipotent state or ascribed Hitler's rise to power to a sudden twist of fate. As one account suggested: The Germans themselves were more surprised than anyone else by the rapid rise of the National-Socialist Party' [220: p. 381].KeywordsForeign PolicyGerman PeopleGerman HistoryBritish HistorianMass PoliticsThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 1996
Publication Date: 1996-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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