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Eberhard Jäckel
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Eberhard Jäckel (born June 29, 1929) is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.
Career
Born in Wesermünde, Hanover, Jäckel studied history at Göttingen, Tübingen, Freiburg, Gainesville, and Paris after World War II. After serving as an assistant and docent at Kiel until 1966, he taught from 1967, following Golo Mann, as Professor for Modern History at the University of Stuttgart and remained loyal to this university.
Jäckel's PhD dissertation was turned into his first book, 1966's Frankreich in Hitlers Europa (France In Hitler's Europe), a study of German policy towards France from 1933 to 1945.
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Encyclopedia
Eberhard Jäckel (born June 29, 1929) is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.
Career
Born in Wesermünde, Hanover, Jäckel studied history at Göttingen, Tübingen, Freiburg, Gainesville, and Paris after World War II. After serving as an assistant and docent at Kiel until 1966, he taught from 1967, following Golo Mann, as Professor for Modern History at the University of Stuttgart and remained loyal to this university.
Jäckel's PhD dissertation was turned into his first book, 1966's Frankreich in Hitlers Europa (France In Hitler's Europe), a study of German policy towards France from 1933 to 1945. Jäckel first rose to fame through his 1969 book Hitler's Weltanschauung (Hitler's Worldview), which was an examination of Hitler's worldview and beliefs. Jäckel argued that far from being an opportunist with no beliefs as had been argued by Alan Bullock, Hitler held to a rigid set of fixed beliefs and he had consistently acted from his "race and space" philosophy throughout his career. In Jäckel's opinion, the core of Hitler's world-view was his belief in what Hitler saw as the merciless struggle for survival between the "Aryan race" and the "Jewish race" and in his belief that stronger "races" possessed large amounts of Lebensraum (living space).
Jäckel is one of the leading Intentionalists in regard to the Functionalism versus Intentionalism debate, arguing from the 1960s on that there was a long range plan on the part of Hitler to exterminate the Jewish people from about 1924 on, views that led to intense debates with Functionalist historians such as Hans Mommsen and Martin Broszat. Jäckel dismissed the argument made by Broszat in his 1977 essay "Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution" that local officials began the Holocaust on their own initiative under the grounds that a: "great deal of evidence that some [local officials] were shocked or even appalled when the Final Solution came into effect. To be sure, they did not disagree with it. But they agreed only reluctantly, referring again to an order given by Hitler. This is a strong indication that the idea did not originate with them"".
In a 1979 article, Jäckel considered the possibility that the order for the Holocaust may have been sent out as early as the summer of 1940, but feels it was more likely that a series of orders was given by Hitler starting in the spring of 1941 for Soviet Jews, followed by another order for Polish Jews in September 1941 and a final order for all European Jews in November 1941. Jäckel has argued that such speeches like Hitler's "Prophecy Speech" of January 30, 1939 were a sign of the "universalist-missionary touch" of Hitler's anti-Semitic Weltanschauung (world-view), which Jäckel argued were an essential part of Hitler's war programme. In Jäckel's opinion, the nature of Hitler's anti-Semitism was such that it "presupposes war, it demands the methods of warfare, and it is therefore not surprising that it should reach a bloody climax during the next war, which was a part of Hitler's program from the start". Jäckel has argued during 1941-42, "the extermination of the Jews became increasingly the most important aim of the war as such; as the fortunes of war turned against Germany, the destruction of the Jews became National Socialism's gift to the world". By 1945, Jäckel has claimed that for Hitler the Shoah had become so important that it "now appeared to him [Hitler] as his central historical mission".
Recently, Jäckel has modified his position. He now believes that most of the initiatives for the Holocaust came from Hitler, though it was more the result of a series of ad hoc decisions rather a masterplan on the part of Hitler. In contrast to the functionalists who have argued for the "weak dictator" thesis about Hitler's power, Jäckel has supported the "master of the Third Reich" thesis and has described Hitler's power as Alleinherrschaft (sole rule).
In the late 1970s, Jäckel was a leading critic of the British historian David Irving and his book Hitler’s War, which argued that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust. Jäckel in his turn wrote a series of newspaper articles later turned into the book David Irving's Hitler : a faulty history dissected attacking Irving and maintained that Hitler was very much aware of and approved of the Holocaust.
In the Historikerstreit (Historians' Dispute) of the 1986-88, Jäckel was a prominent critic of Ernst Nolte, whose theory of Nazi crimes as a reaction to Soviet crimes was denounced as ahistorical by Jäckel under the grounds that Hitler held the Soviet Union in contempt and therefore could not have possibly felt threatened by the Soviets as Nolte suggested. Against Nolte's claim that the Holocaust was not unique, but rather one of out many genocides, Jäckel rejected Nolte's view by writing: "the National Socialist killing of the Jews was unique in that never before had a state with the authority of its responsible leader decided and announced that a specific human group, including its aged, its women and its children and infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, and then carried thorugh this resolution using every possible means of state power" A major theme of Jäckel's writing has been what he sees as the uniqueness and singularity of the Holocaust, which Jäckel feels is like no other genocide. During the "Goldhagen Controversy" of 1996, Jäckel was a leading critic of Daniel Goldhagen, and wrote a very hostile book review in the Die Zeit newspaper that called Hitler's Willing Executioners "simply a bad book".
In 1990, Jäckel and Lea Rosh were awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis for their work, Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland. On March 23, 2006 in a feuilleton (opinion) piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jäckel wrote a book review that approved of Guenter Lewy's thesis in his book The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey about the Armenian Genocide that there were massacres, but no genocide of the Armenians. Jäckel's critics accused him of disregarding of the fact that Turkish troops were transgressing the border and exterminating Armenians outside the Ottoman Empire in 1918 (young-Turkish campaign in Caucasus killing 400'00 Armenians) and in 1920 (Kemalist troops killing 60,000 civilians).
Endnotes
Works
- Frankreich in Hitlers Europa : die deutsche Frankreichpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart : Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966.
- Hitlers Weltanschauung : Entwurf einer Herrschaft, Stuttgart : Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1969 translated into English as Hitler's World View : A Blueprint for Power by Herbert Arnold, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1972, 1981 ISBN 0674404254.
- Deutsche Parlaemntsdebatten, Frankfurt a. M. u. Hamburg; Fischer-Bücherei 1970.
- Die Funktion der Geschichte in unserer Zeit, Stuttgart : Klett, 1975 ISBN 3129021604.
- "Rückblick auf die sogenanngte Hitler-Welle" pages 695-710 from Geschiichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Volume 28, 1977.
- Hitler Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924 , Stuttgart : Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980 ISBN 3421019975.
- "Wie kam Hitler an die Macht?" pages 305-321 from Weimar Selbstpreisgabe einer Demokratie edited by Karl Dietrich Edmann and Hagen Schulze, Düsseldorf, 1980
- Co-edited with Jürgen Rohwer Kriegswende Dezember 1941 : Referate und Diskussionsbeiträge des internationalen historischen Symposiums in Stuttgart vom 17. bis 19. September 1981, Koblenz : Bernard & Graefe, 1984 ISBN 3763754334.
- Co-written with Jürgen Rohwer Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg : Entschlussbildung und Verwirklichung, Stuttgart : Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985 ISBN 3421062552.
- Hitler In History, Hanover, NH : Published for Brandeis University Press by University Press of New England, 1984 ISBN 0874513111.
- Hitlers Herrschaft. Vollzug einer Weltanschauung, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1986.
- Co-written with Lea Rosh Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland, Komet, 1990 ISBN-10 3933366445
- "Une querelle d'Allemands? La misérable pratique des sous-entendus" pages 95-98 from Documents, Volume 2, 1987.
- David Irving's Hitler : a faulty history dissected : two essays translation and comments by H. David Kirk ; with a foreword by Robert Fulford; Port Angeles, Wash. ; Brentwood Bay, B.C. : Ben-Simon Publications, 1993 ISBN 0914539086
- "L'arrivé d"Hitler au pouvoir: un Tschernobly de l'histoire" from Weimar ou de la Démocratie en Allemagne edited by Gilbert Krebs and Gérard Schneilin , Paris, 1994.
- Das Deutsche Jahrhundert Eine historische Bilanze, Stuttgart, 1996.
See also
External links
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