Meinecke’s account was a repeated reference to a negative Jewish influence on the course of German history, even though he also strongly condemned anti-Semitism.101
What, then, was the turning point in German history? For Ritter, it was the aftermath of World War I, even though he stated that already the conflict itself had caused an “exaggerated national consciousness” as a mass phenomenon in Germany.102 But only in the 1920s, when the masses (Massenmenschentum, a key term in Ritter’s vocabulary) rose, as they did throughout Europe at that time, could a demagogue like Adolf Hitler achieve power. Meinecke, in contrast, was more willing to reevaluate previously celebrated events such as the unification of Germany in 1871 and to concede that the Pan-German League in the late Empire and the Vaterlandspartei during World War I could be seen as forerunners of National Socialism.103 And while Meinecke emphasized coincidence as an important factor for the eventual success of the Nazis, he did not hesitate to assign blame to particular political actors, namely, to Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg and to the chairman of the German National People’s Party, Alfred Hugenberg.104 A final difference between Ritter and Meinecke was the tone of their writings: the latter wrote a more contemplative prose, while Ritter’s style can be termed more combative—possibly just a result of their tempers, but likely also a reflection of their respective attitudes. Nevertheless, for an evaluation of Ritter, one also needs to consider his later magnum opus Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, which constituted a serious attempt to grapple with the intricacies of militarism in German history.105
Even broader in its scope was Ludwig Dehio’s Gleichgewicht oder Hegemonie, which attempted to make sense of five hundred years of European history. Dehio argued that since the fifteenth century, six different leaders had sought to eliminate the European state system: Charles V, Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon I, and finally Wilhelm II and Hitler had pursued hegemony in Europe—endeavors only ended by the defeat of Nazi Germany and the emergence of the bipolar Cold War world.106 While Dehio’s study remained within the confines of diplomatic history, it was comparatively revisionist in interpretive respects. After all, his argument that the development of German militarism had led to two successive bids for European hegemony was very much at odds with the position of historians such as Ritter. This became apparent again when Ritter published the first volumes of Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, which Dehio reviewed very critically.107
Gerhard Ritter’s and Hans Rothfels’ studies of the German resistance during World War II served a slightly different purpose. Of course, both Ritter and Rothfels wanted to convince the world—or at least their foreign colleagues—that there had indeed existed an “other,” better Germany. Rothfels wrote specifically for an American audience (where the book was published first). But at the same time they also addressed their fellow Germans, many of whom considered the participants in the plot of July 20, 1944, let alone more leftist resistance fighters, traitors.108 The two analyses were quite different in scope: Rothfels’ The German Opposition to Hitler (1948), emerging out of a lecture at the University of Chicago in 1947, was a shorter essay, less based on archival and other unpublished sources than Ritter’s more voluminous Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung, published in 1954.109
The goals of the books also differed. Rothfels wrote his study “for the sake of historical justice,” since in his opinion “the German opposition to Hitler was not only much broader than has been conceded so far, but also more extensive than could have been expected under conditions of terror.”110 Ritter, who had known Goerdeler and had been asked by his family and relatives of other participants in the plot of July 20, 1944 to write its history, focused more on the resisters’ values and ideas, since he believed in their usefulness for a future Germany as well as a future Europe: “The spirit of these men, the moral and political opinions which drove them into opposition, must be kept alive among us, too, if our own work of reconstruction is to prosper.”111
Rothfels’ essay, significantly shorter than Ritter’s book, was nevertheless the more comprehensive of the two. While Rothfels placed the resisters involved in the plot of July 20, 1944, at the center of his study, he also included student circles such as Weisse Rose and Communist-leaning groups such as Arvid Harnack’s Rote Kapelle. In light of his political convictions and Rote Kapelle’s contacts with the Soviet Union during World War II, Rothfels’ recognition of their “background of convictions and the awareness of a European mission” is remarkable.112 But it might also have reflected his desire to depict a resistance stemming from all sectors of German society, since he even argued that one should include intellectuals and artists who opted for the so-called inner emigration (that is, they kept a low profile and disengaged themselves from the regime). Ultimately, Rothfels attempted to counter interpretations that many Germans at the time perceived as accusations of collective guilt (Kollektivschuld).113 He thus rejected notions of an inherent German submissiveness to authoritarian regimes and denied that anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany “met with more or less general approval or connivance.”114
Ritter largely agreed with Rothfels’ evaluation of the Resistance and praised it in a review.115 But he was less able than Rothfels to keep his own politics in check. When Ritter evaluated the Goerdeler circle’s plans for postwar Germany, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between his own and Goerdeler’s positions, since Ritter identified so strongly with his protagonist’s ideas.116 Much less sympathetic, by contrast, was his analysis of the Socialist and Communist resistance. On the Rote Kapelle Ritter remarked: “With the German resistance they had nothing at all to do. They were simply in the service of the enemy.” Thus, after the Gestapo discovered the conspiracy, he concluded, “the trial could have no other end than a mass execution.”117 Apart from such statements, which probably reveal more about the author than about his subject, a remarkable feature of the study was the fact that Ritter not only portrayed the conservative resistance as the only legitimate one, but also saw Goerdeler’s plans for a post-Hitler Germany as viable for the Federal Republic.118
A common feature of many of these early postwar studies was the implicit or explicit argument against a linear continuity in German history, culminating in the Nazi dictatorship. In addition, an important target was the notion of the Kollektivschuld of the German people. But who had made this claim? Apart from a few books published as war propaganda and A. J. P. Taylor’s diatribe, The Course of German History, one would be hardpressed to identify such voices among professional historians. Norbert Frei has therefore argued that the accusation of collective guilt often served as a straw man, allowing for rebuttals that were not necessarily more nuanced than the position they attempted to reject.119
Among the unquestionable innovations of the immediate postwar period was the establishment of contemporary history (Zeitgeschichte) as a particular field of historical inquiry. Defined by Hans Rothfels as the “period of contemporaries” (Epoche der Mitlebenden), Zeitgeschichte comprised at the time essentially the period 1917–1945. Because of the resistance of the historical profession, it was initially pursued more outside than within the universities’ history departments, above all at the Munich-based Institut für Zeitgeschichte. In his comparative study on the West German and Japanese historical professions between 1945 and 1960, Sebastian Conrad has suggested potentially problematic consequences. While the universities taught general German history and the history of the twentieth century without a particular focus on the Nazi years, National Socialism became “quarantined” at new research institutions. Consequently, one could view it as a phenomenon sui generis rather than within the context of German history. If lecture courses or seminars in history (the situation in political science was slightly different) tackled National Socialism, or if professors directed dissertations on that period, the focus remained generally limited to either the Resistance or World War II.120
The focus on the Fischer controversy as the catalyst of West German “revisionist historiography” has at times led to a neglect of the 1950s. This decade saw fewer innovations than the 1960s or the 1970s, yet some historians indeed explored new questions—for example, the role of Chancellor Brüning during the demise of the Weimar Republic.121 While Werner Conze insisted that the failure of Brüning’s policies