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Essay on Third Reich
The academic literature on the history of the Third Reich is already almost beyond the scope even of specialists. The high quality of most of the research, and the fact that this period has become one of the most intensively studied themes in modern history altogether, is due to a considerable extent, though not solely, to non-academic motives, stimuli and conditions which have led historians to concentrate on the twelve years of Hitler’s rule, their antecedents and consequences.
Research in general has proceeded from investigation into personal or collective guilt for the ‘German catastrophe’, via the question of its historical causes, to a methodical appraisal of the Third Reich and its place in history. It has been especially assisted by the fact that from the beginning of the 1960s the German archives, at least those of them which were captured by the Western Allies, have been fully at the disposal of historians.
This has made it possible for recent German history to become a central theme of international historiography in the postwar period. (Hoffmann, Peter 2005) At the outset, it is true, distortions of the history and problems of the Nazi period were almost inevitable: prior to 1960 the source basis was too narrow, while investigators were too close to the events they described and were in some cases still personally affected by them. Some errors were also due to understandable moral revulsion, leading to a general condemnation of the twelve dark years. The inadequacy or one-sidedness of many judgments, requiring completion or correction, was and still is to some extent due to the fact that researchers have not had full access to the archives of other states which dominated, or at least affected, international relations in the 1930s and 1940s. The British and US records, it is true, have been published by degrees since the early 1960s......
