Table Of ContentI H '
n itler s
S
h a d o w
ALSO BY RICHARD J. EVANS:
Death in Hamburg
Rethinking German History
Comrades and Sisters
The Feminists
The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894-1933
I H ’
n itler s
S
h a d o w
WEST GERMAN HISTORIANS
AND THE ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE
FROM THE NAZI PAST
RICHARD J. EVANS
flt
PANTHEON BOOKS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1989 by Richard J. Evans
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy
right Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon
Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simulta
neously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to A. P. Watt Ltd. for permis
sion to reprint five maps by Martin Gilbert that appeared in Total
War by Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint. Reprinted by permis
sion of A. P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Martin Gilbert.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Evans, Richard J.
In Hitler's shadow.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Germany—History—1933-1945—Historiography.
2. Historiography—Germany (West) I. Title.
DD256.5.E92 1989 943.086 88-43239
ISBN 0-394-57686-1
Book Design by Anne Scatto
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition
C
ontents
List of Maps vi
Preface vii
CHAPTER ONE
The Burden of Guilt 3
CHAPTER TWO
“Asiatic Deeds” 24
CHAPTER THREE
Bulwark against Bolshevism? 47
CHAPTER FOUR
Auschwitz and Elsewhere 66
CHAPTER FIVE
Reshaping Central Europe 92
CHAPTER SIX
Germany and the West 111
Notes 141
Further Reading 186
Index 191
L M
ist of aps
The Expansion of Germany 1936-1939 4
The German and Russian Invasions
of Poland 1939 25
German Rule in the East 1941-1944 48
Jewish Extermination 1941-1945 67
Flights and Expulsions 1939-1946 93
P
reface
Fifty years after the outbreak of World War II, is it
time to forgive the Germans? Now that most of those who
carried out the crimes of Nazism are dead, should the younger
West Germans who constitute the majority of the Federal Re
public’s population today learn to be proud of their country
rather than being ashamed of it? Have the memories of Ger
many’s twentieth-century misdeeds been distorted by the leg
acy of wartime propaganda? Has the moment arrived when we
should take a broader and more balanced view, and accept that
the evil of Nazism, terrible though it was, did not significantly
differ from other evils which have plagued our troubled time,
from the Gulag Archipelago to the killing fields of Cambodia?
Over the past few years, these questions have aroused an
impassioned debate both within West Germany and outside, as
a substantial number of West German historians have argued in
various ways that the answer to all of them should be “yes.” This
book is an attempt to lay out the fundamental issues in this
sometimes angry and convoluted discussion, and to reach as
balanced an assessment of them as possible. It is not a polemical
book. Polemics, though they can have a useful function in bring
ing a problem to public attention, tend to obscure the central
vin • PREFACE
issues in a controversy, and the aim of winning debating points
too easily leads to a lack of fairness and discrimination in the
weapons used. Nor is it an account of personalities, though a
certain amount of background detail has been provided on
some of the principal antagonists in the debate. The purpose of
this book is to discuss the issues in the light of what we know
about the historical events upon which they touch. To help the
reader unfamiliar with this controversy, it also attempts to give
an account of the political context in which the debate has
arisen, and to point to some of the implications for German and
European politics as the twentieth century draws to a close.
Writing a book such as this involves a measure of moral
judgment which is difficult for an author born, as I was, after the
Second World War, to apply. Like so many Europeans of my
generation, and unlike so many people in the generation of my
parents, I have lived a peaceful life that so far has been free of
the curse of war and destruction that was visited with such
terrible intensity upon Europe in the half century before my
birth. Nothing would be more arrogant or facile than for me to
lay down moral imperatives for people who faced decisions and
situations with which, thankfully, I have never been con
fronted. For me, as for the rest of my generation and its succes
sors, this is history rather than living memory or experience.
But one of the historian’s most important tools is historical
imagination, the ability to bridge the gap between past and
present, and to look at historical events in all their complexity
and with all their troubling lack of finality. In the debate which
is the subject of this book, the exercise of historical imagination
also, inevitably, becomes an exercise in moral judgment. With
all due consideration for the situation of those involved, there
fore, I have not felt able to avoid the issue of what was the
morally right thing to do in the circumstances of the Second
World War. I like to think that I would have done what was
morally right myself had I been faced with these circumstances.
But I can never be sure. This book, therefore, is not written in
a combative spirit. I have tried as far as possible to avoid expres
sions of outrage or anger, to eschew violent denunciations of the
views of those with whom I disagree, to summarize and quote
the historians concerned as fully and fairly as I can, and to steer
clear of speculations as to the personal motives of the leading
PREFACE • ix
figures in the debate. This has not always been easy. But if
historians cannot respect each other, there is little hope of their
being able to respect the past which is their chosen subject.
The opportunity to think about the issues involved in the
present controversy came in January 1987, when the editors of
the Journal of Modern History asked me to write a review
article on the debate. The article appeared as “The New Na
tionalism and the Old History: Perspectives on the West Ger
man Historikerstreit,” in volume 59 of the Journal of Modern
History (December 1987), pp. 761-97. I am grateful to the
editors for having asked me to write it, and for the care with
which they and their staff went through the editing and produc
tion process. Portions of that article appear in the present book,
and I am indebted to the University of Chicago Press for allow
ing me to reproduce them. I have not changed my mind on the
central issues since finishing the article in July 1987, but inevita
bly the vast outpouring of books and essays in the debate since
then has altered my perspectives on the problems under discus
sion, broadened my view on some, and sharpened my focus on
others. So when Professor Arno J. Mayer of Princeton Univer
sity suggested I turn the article into a book, I welcomed the
opportunity to think these questions through again. I would like
here to express my thanks to him, and to my editor at Pantheon
Books, André Schiffrin, for having encouraged me to undertake
the task. I am also grateful to the friends and colleagues in
Britain, the United States, and the Federal Republic of Ger
many who have kept me supplied with references and materi
als—in particular to Hans-Ulrich Wehler, whose bibliographical
updates have (I hope) enabled me to take account in this book
of everything that appeared in the debate up to the end of 1988.
A number of audiences listened patiently to my views on the
controversy as they developed, and provided valuable criti
cisms and suggestions: I am especially grateful in this connec
tion to the German History Society, the Association for the
Study of German Politics, the Max Weber Centre for Applied
German Studies at the University of Liverpool, the University
of Exeter, the Graduate Seminar in German History at the
University of East Anglia, the Mellon Seminar on Nationalism
at Princeton University, and the Graduate Seminar in Interna
tional History at the London School of Economics. A special
X • PREFACE
word of thanks goes to Marie Mactavish for typing the manu
script under cóñsiderable pressure of time. Richard Bessel, Ian
Kershaw, Arno Mayer, and Jeremy Noakes have put me greatly
in their debt by reading the typescript on very short notice and
suggesting numerous improvements. The sole responsibility for
the book’s contents is, of course, mine.
Richard J. Evans
Norwich, England
February 1989
