656
than any other West German, Is–
raeli, British or American historian,
documented and analyzed the cen–
trality of Hitler's racist ideology and
its impact on his foreign policy in
his
Hitler's Strategie (Hitler's Strategy)
published in West Germany in
1965, and again in 1967 in
Deutschlands Rolle in der Vorgeschichte
der beiden Weltkriege,
published in
English translation in 1981 by Har–
vard University Press as
Germany
and the Two World Wars .
Both these
works were published at a time
when much of the West German
neo-Marxist literature of the period
was fiercely resisting addressing the
"superstructural" matters of anti–
Semitism and the Holocaust. In his
now standard major works , Hill–
gruber stressed that all military
decisions were subordinated to
Hitler's racist goals, a point he
reiterates in
Zweierlei Untergang:
"All
decisions about power politics and
military aims .. .were subordinated
to the realization of the 'biological
revolution' derived from his race
doctrine." Hillgruber further
stresses the mixture of racism and
opportunism that pervaded the Ger–
man government, civil service, mil–
itary, and transportation system
that allowed the extermination to
PARTISAN REVIEW
proceed, the acceptance by the
population of "at least darkly sus–
pected horrible deeds," and the
"most shocking" participation by
highly educated, presumably cul–
tured university graduates.
Hillgruber is one of the West
German historians whose works
have demonstrated how Hitler's ide–
ology and actions placed the de–
struction of European Jewry in the
center of Nazi foreign policy. In any
account of the recent disputes over
German history, fairness requires
recording Hillgruber's contributions
in this regard, especially in view of
the slighting of anti-Semitism and
the Holocaust in the Marxist and
neo-Marxist discussions of "fascism"
of the sixties and seventies in West
Germany. Thomas Nipperdey , one
of West Germany's finest modern
historians, rightly noted that the re–
cent dispute yet again demonstrated
the importance of the autonomy of
scholarship and the damage it suf–
fers when it seeks to place itself at
the service of politics, be it the cur–
rent call for national self-assertion
or, earlier, for anticapitalism of the
left.
Jeffrey Herf
Cambridge, Massachusetts
