![book](../../std/dings/pageturner.gif)
| On
pp. 23ff Professor
Eberhard
Jäckel*
admits that it was thanks to the
research of
David
Irving
that the real research into the
Holocaust began in
1977: |
*
For Jäckel's own Holocaust research,
including forged documents and
photographs, see
elsewhere
on
this Website.
EBERHARD
JÄCKEL ![>>](../../std/dings/arrowrt.GIF)
The
Holocaust WHERE WE ARE,
WHERE WE NEED TO GO [...]
Research on the
Holocaust began strikingly late
everywhere; even more astonishing, it
began internationally almost at the same
time. It seems that the first results of
serious research did not begin to appear
until 1953. In that year the first
comprehensive study by Gerald
Reitlinger was published in England.
In the same year the Knesset in Israel
passed the law establishing Yad Vashem as
a memorial and a research institute. And
in that year in Germany the
Vierteljahrshefte für
Zeitgeschichte were inaugurated with
the first volume containing Kurt
Gerstein's report on the mass
gassings. It was also in 1953 that
Hermann Graml's book on the
November 1938 pogrom saw publication for
the first time. There had not
been much scholarly historiography before
1953. Looking at Reitlinger's bibliography
one is surprised to see how short the list
is. [...] There
had been almost no historical work on the
Holocaust in the eight years that had
elapsed between 1945 and 1953, and of
course even the term Holocaust was not yet
applied to the event. [...] While in the
1960s and 1970s the stream of historical
publications grew steadily,
there
was still almost no scholarly debate on
the Holocaust.
[Raul] Hilberg certainly
had sparked a stormy controversy, which
was particularly vehement in Israel, but
his interpretation, derived from Franz
Neumann, was not discussed profoundly by
his fellow historians. [...] It
was not until 1977 that historians
finally began to discuss the origins
proper, not in terms of anti-Semitism
but in terms of decision making.
Strangely enough,
the
discussion was provoked by David Irving
who,
in his book Hitler's
War,
had denied that Hitler had ordered the
extermination of the Jews and
maintained that it had been carried out
by some of his subordinates behind his
back, without his knowledge, until
1943.
Even stranger,
Irving's book had been published first in
Germany in 1975, but the outrageous
passages had been suppressed by his German
publisher so that the shocking thesis
became known only when the English version
appeared in the United States in 1977.
This, in turn, provoked Martin
Broszat's famous article on 'Hitler
and the Genesis of the "Final Solution."'
While
refuting Irving's assertions, he admitted
that historical research had so far indeed
neglected the question of when, how, and
by whom the murder of the Jews had been
initiated. I shall not
reproduce in detail the arguments
exchanged in the course of the debate. I
shall, however, venture to make two more
general statements in this respect.
Broszat's article marked a turning point.
It opened the first scholarly debate on
the origins of the Holocaust, and it
incorporated no national undertones
whatsoever. On the contrary, the debate
was international from its very
outset. Provoked
by an English writer,
the debate was launched by a German
historian. [...] The opposing
parties in the debate about the origins of
the Holocaust have become known as the
"intentionalists" and the
"functionalists." The terms, which
initially did not refer to the origins of
the Holocaust but to the nature of the
Nazi regime in general, were coined by the
English historian Tim Mason at a
conference organized by the German
Historical Institute at Cumberland Lodge
outside London in 1979. Briefly
summarized, the intentionalist position
is--or was--that it had been Hitler's
premeditated intention to kill as many
Jews as possible ever since the 1920s and
that he implemented his plans when the
opportunity arose during the war. The
functionalists, on the other hand, were
unwilling to attribute such a decisive
influence to a single person. They argued
that the anti-Jewish measures taken by the
Nazis were steadily intensified until they
finally and almost automatically
culminated in the mass
killings. [...] |
![book](../../std/dings/pageturner.gif)
| On
pp. 30ff another Holocaust Museum
historian,
Michael
Marrus,
scoffs at Jäckel's admission
that it was thanks to the
careful, assiduous research of
David
Irving
-- banned, punished, fined,
imprisoned, persecuted, deported,
silenced -- that the real
research into the Holocaust had
begun in 1977: |
MICHAEL
R. MARRUS The
Holocaust WHERE
WE ARE, WHERE WE NEED TO GO--A
COMMENT [...] In studying the
Holocaust, historians have been
challenging theories for decades, far
longer than Eberhard Jäckel suggests
when he refers to Martin Broszat's famous
1977 attack on David Irving. For example,
a firestorm of criticism on the subject of
Jewish reactions to Nazi persecution
greeted Raul Hilberg's The Destruction
of the European Jews. The debate on
the Judenräte, focused by Hannah
Arendt's reporting for the New Yorker in
1961 and carried to a new level by Isaiah
Trunk's Judenrat in 1972, is
another important milestone.
[...] |