Joachim Fest
Encyclopedia
Joachim Clemens Fest was a German
historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany
, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler
and books about Albert Speer
and the German Resistance
. He was a leading figure in the debate among German historians about the Nazi period.
, the son of Johannes Fest, a conservative Roman Catholic and strongly anti-Nazi schoolteacher who was dismissed from his position when the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1936, when Fest turned ten, his family refused to make him join the Hitler Youth
, a step which could have had serious consequences, although membership did not become compulsory until 1939. As it was, Fest was expelled from his school, and then went to a Catholic boarding school in Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden
: here he was able to avoid Hitler Youth service until he was 18.
The fact that his father, an "ordinary German," had understood the nature of the Nazi regime, and had resisted it, coloured Fest's view of his fellow Germans for the rest of his life. He never accepted that Germans had not known what Hitler was doing or that they could not have resisted the Nazi regime.
In December 1944, when he turned 18, Fest decided to enlist in the Wehrmacht
, mainly to avoid being conscripted into the Waffen SS. His father opposed even this concession, saying that "one does not volunteer for Hitler's criminal war." His military service in World War II
was brief and ended when he was made a prisoner of war in France
. After the war he studied law, history, sociology, German literature, and art history at Freiburg
, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin.
On graduating he started work for the American-run Berlin radio station RIAS
(Radio In the American Sector), where from 1954 to 1961 he was editor in charge of contemporary history. During this time he was asked to present radio portraits of the main historical personalities influencing Germany from Bismarck
to World War II, including such senior figures of the Nazi regime as Heinrich Himmler
and Joseph Goebbels
. These portraits were later published as his first book The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership. In 1961 Fest was appointed editor-in-chief of television for the North German broadcasting service Norddeutscher Rundfunk
(NDR), where he was also responsible for the political magazine Panorama. He resigned after a disagreement with left-wingers who eventually came to dominate the magazine.
in 1952 and the first by a German writer. It came at a time when the younger generation of Germans was confronting the legacy of the Nazi period, and was both very successful in commercial terms and immensely influential. It sparked controversy among German historians, because Fest, a political conservative, rejected the then-dominant left-wing view that the causes of Hitler's rise to power had been largely economic.
In 1977, Fest directed a documentary entitled Hitler, eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career). Fest's film which was intended to explain why ordinary people in Germany loved Hitler created some controversy with some critics such as the American historian Deborah Lipstadt
writing that by featuring extensive clips of Hitler from propaganda films while totally ignoring the Holocaust, Fest had engaged in a glorification of the Führer.
Fest served as the editorial aide for Albert Speer
, Hitler's court architect and later Minister for Munitions, when Speer was working on his autobiography, Inside the Third Reich
(1970). After Speer's death, amid controversy over the reliability of the memoirs, Fest wrote Speer: The Final Verdict (2002), in which he criticised Speer for his knowing complicity in the crimes of the Nazi regime, something he successfully concealed at the time of the Nuremberg Trials
. This echoed the verdict of Gitta Sereny
in her major work Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. (1995)
Fest's other major work of German history was Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler (1994), written to mark the 50th anniversary of the 20 July plot to kill Hitler. This work marked a partial reconsideration of his earlier harsh verdict on the German people. He acknowledged that many Germans had opposed the Nazi regime within the limits imposed on them by their circumstances. He maintained his view, however, that the majority of Germans had wilfully refused to accept the truth about Nazism until it was too late.
In 2002 he published Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich
, a work based on newly-available evidence following the opening of the Soviet archives, but which largely confirmed the account of Hitler's death given in Hugh Trevor-Roper's book The Last Days of Hitler (1947). Inside Hitler's Bunker, along with the memoirs of Hitler's personal secretary Traudl Junge
, formed the source material for the 2004 German film Der Untergang
(Downfall), the third postwar German feature film to depict Hitler directly.
, a leading German newspaper based in Frankfurt am Main and one of the most potent political and cultural institutions in the German-speaking world. From 1973 to 1993 he edited the culture section of the paper. His views were generally conservative, pessimistic and sceptical, and he was particularly critical of the left-wing views that dominated German intellectual life from the late 1960s until the collapse of communism in 1991. He took a leading role in the Historikerstreit
(historians' dispute) of 1986-89, in which he was identified with those rejecting what they saw as the Marxist
hegemony in German historiography in this period.
Fest in an essay entitled "Encumbered Remembrance: The Controversy about the Incomparability of National-Socialist Mass Crimes" first published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 29 August 1986 claimed that Ernst Nolte
's argument that Nazi crimes were not "singular" was correct. In response to the claim made by Jürgen Habermas
against Ernst Nolte
that there was no comparison between the Holocaust
and the Khmer Rouge
genocide because Cambodia
was a backward, Third World agrarian state and Germany
a modern, First World industrial state, Fest called Habermas a racist for suggesting that it was natural for Cambodians to engage in genocide while unnatural for Germans. Fest accused Habermas of "academic dyslexia" and "character assassination" in his attacks against Nolte. Fest argued against the "singularity" of the Holocaust under the grounds that:
following the overthrow of the Bavarian Soviet Republic
in 1919 "...gave Hitler's extermination complexes a real background" Finally, Fest wrote as part of his attack on the "singularity" of the Holocaust that:
called for Fest argued that:
In defence of Habermas, Fest was attacked by Hans Mommsen
and Eberhard Jäckel
. Jäckel charged that Fest was guilty of diverting attention away from the issues by attacking Habermas's motives in criticizing Nolte, and not with concerning himself with what Habermas had to say Jäckel maintained that the Holocaust was indeed a "singular" historical event and criticized Fest for claiming otherwise Mommsen accused Fest of subordinating history to his right-wing politics in his defence of Nolte Mommsen went to accuse Fest of simply ignoring the real issues such as the "psychological and institutional mechanisms" that explain why the German people accepted the Holocaust by accepting Nolte's claim of a "causal nexus" between Communism and fascism. Martin Broszat
wrote that Fest's attempts to "restylize" Nolte's arguments were in his opinion a failure. Charles S. Maier
wrote that Fest's claims that the Holocaust was considered worse than the Cambodian genocide because the former was "mechanized" was flawed. Maier wrote:
Shortly before his death, Fest became embroiled in a public dispute with the left-wing writer and Nobel Prize
winner Günter Grass
, who had admitted in his autobiography that he had joined the Waffen SS in the last months of World War II. Fest criticised Grass not so much for having joined, but for having concealed the fact for so many years while engaging in political criticism of others over their Nazi pasts. He said: "After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late. I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off."
Joachim Fest was married and had two sons and a daughter; all his children followed him into publishing or the media. He died at his home in Kronberg im Taunus
near Frankfurt am Main.
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and books about Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
and the German Resistance
German Resistance
The German resistance was the opposition by individuals and groups in Germany to Adolf Hitler or the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945. Some of these engaged in active plans to remove Adolf Hitler from power and overthrow his regime...
. He was a leading figure in the debate among German historians about the Nazi period.
Early career
Fest was born in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, the son of Johannes Fest, a conservative Roman Catholic and strongly anti-Nazi schoolteacher who was dismissed from his position when the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1936, when Fest turned ten, his family refused to make him join the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
, a step which could have had serious consequences, although membership did not become compulsory until 1939. As it was, Fest was expelled from his school, and then went to a Catholic boarding school in Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden
Baden
Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....
: here he was able to avoid Hitler Youth service until he was 18.
The fact that his father, an "ordinary German," had understood the nature of the Nazi regime, and had resisted it, coloured Fest's view of his fellow Germans for the rest of his life. He never accepted that Germans had not known what Hitler was doing or that they could not have resisted the Nazi regime.
In December 1944, when he turned 18, Fest decided to enlist in the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
, mainly to avoid being conscripted into the Waffen SS. His father opposed even this concession, saying that "one does not volunteer for Hitler's criminal war." His military service in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
was brief and ended when he was made a prisoner of war in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. After the war he studied law, history, sociology, German literature, and art history at Freiburg
University of Freiburg
The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...
, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin.
On graduating he started work for the American-run Berlin radio station RIAS
Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor
RIAS was a radio and television station in the American Sector of Berlin during the Cold War. It was founded by the US occupational authorities after World War II in 1946 to provide the German population in and around Berlin with news and political reporting and was initially only broadcast on...
(Radio In the American Sector), where from 1954 to 1961 he was editor in charge of contemporary history. During this time he was asked to present radio portraits of the main historical personalities influencing Germany from Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
to World War II, including such senior figures of the Nazi regime as Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
and Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
. These portraits were later published as his first book The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership. In 1961 Fest was appointed editor-in-chief of television for the North German broadcasting service Norddeutscher Rundfunk
Norddeutscher Rundfunk
Norddeutscher Rundfunk is a public radio and television broadcaster, based in Hamburg. In addition to the city-state of Hamburg, NDR transmits for the German states of Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein...
(NDR), where he was also responsible for the political magazine Panorama. He resigned after a disagreement with left-wingers who eventually came to dominate the magazine.
Historian of Nazi Germany
Fest then embarked on his most important work, his biography of Adolf Hitler, which was published in 1973: It was the first major Hitler biography since that of Alan BullockAlan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Early life and career:...
in 1952 and the first by a German writer. It came at a time when the younger generation of Germans was confronting the legacy of the Nazi period, and was both very successful in commercial terms and immensely influential. It sparked controversy among German historians, because Fest, a political conservative, rejected the then-dominant left-wing view that the causes of Hitler's rise to power had been largely economic.
- Fest explained Hitler’s success in terms of what he termed the “great fear” that overcame the German middle classes as a result of Bolshevism and First World War dislocation, but also more broadly in response to rapid modernisation, which led to a romantic longing for a lost past. This led to resentment of other groups — especially Jews — seen as agents of modernity. It also made many Germans susceptible to a figure such as Hitler who could articulate their mood. “He was never only their leader, he was always their voice . . . the people, as if electrified, recognised themselves in him."
In 1977, Fest directed a documentary entitled Hitler, eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career). Fest's film which was intended to explain why ordinary people in Germany loved Hitler created some controversy with some critics such as the American historian Deborah Lipstadt
Deborah Lipstadt
Deborah Esther Lipstadt, Ph.D. is an American historian and author of the book Denying the Holocaust and The Eichmann Trial. She is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University...
writing that by featuring extensive clips of Hitler from propaganda films while totally ignoring the Holocaust, Fest had engaged in a glorification of the Führer.
Fest served as the editorial aide for Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, Hitler's court architect and later Minister for Munitions, when Speer was working on his autobiography, Inside the Third Reich
Inside the Third Reich
Inside the Third Reich is a memoir written by Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Hitler's main architect before this period...
(1970). After Speer's death, amid controversy over the reliability of the memoirs, Fest wrote Speer: The Final Verdict (2002), in which he criticised Speer for his knowing complicity in the crimes of the Nazi regime, something he successfully concealed at the time of the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
. This echoed the verdict of Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny is an Austrian-born biographer, historian and investigative journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and child abuse. She is the stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises....
in her major work Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. (1995)
Fest's other major work of German history was Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler (1994), written to mark the 50th anniversary of the 20 July plot to kill Hitler. This work marked a partial reconsideration of his earlier harsh verdict on the German people. He acknowledged that many Germans had opposed the Nazi regime within the limits imposed on them by their circumstances. He maintained his view, however, that the majority of Germans had wilfully refused to accept the truth about Nazism until it was too late.
In 2002 he published Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich
Inside Hitler's Bunker
Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich is a book by historian Joachim Fest about the last days of the life of Adolf Hitler, in his Führerbunker in 1945....
, a work based on newly-available evidence following the opening of the Soviet archives, but which largely confirmed the account of Hitler's death given in Hugh Trevor-Roper's book The Last Days of Hitler (1947). Inside Hitler's Bunker, along with the memoirs of Hitler's personal secretary Traudl Junge
Traudl Junge
Traudl Junge was Adolf Hitler's youngest personal private secretary, from December 1942 to April 1945.-Early life:...
, formed the source material for the 2004 German film Der Untergang
Downfall (film)
Downfall is a 2004 German/Italian/Austrian epic war film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, depicting the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin bunker and Nazi Germany in 1945....
(Downfall), the third postwar German feature film to depict Hitler directly.
Journalist and critic
After the success of the Hitler biography Fest was invited to become co-editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...
, a leading German newspaper based in Frankfurt am Main and one of the most potent political and cultural institutions in the German-speaking world. From 1973 to 1993 he edited the culture section of the paper. His views were generally conservative, pessimistic and sceptical, and he was particularly critical of the left-wing views that dominated German intellectual life from the late 1960s until the collapse of communism in 1991. He took a leading role in the Historikerstreit
Historikerstreit
The Historikerstreit was an intellectual and political controversy in late 20th-century West Germany about the historical interpretation of the Holocaust. The German word Streit translates variously as "quarrel", "dispute", or "conflict"...
(historians' dispute) of 1986-89, in which he was identified with those rejecting what they saw as the Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
hegemony in German historiography in this period.
Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte is a German historian and philosopher. Nolte’s major interest is the comparative studies of Fascism and Communism. He is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught from 1973 to 1991. He was previously a Professor at the University of Marburg...
's argument that Nazi crimes were not "singular" was correct. In response to the claim made by Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
against Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte is a German historian and philosopher. Nolte’s major interest is the comparative studies of Fascism and Communism. He is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught from 1973 to 1991. He was previously a Professor at the University of Marburg...
that there was no comparison between the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
and the Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
genocide because Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
was a backward, Third World agrarian state and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
a modern, First World industrial state, Fest called Habermas a racist for suggesting that it was natural for Cambodians to engage in genocide while unnatural for Germans. Fest accused Habermas of "academic dyslexia" and "character assassination" in his attacks against Nolte. Fest argued against the "singularity" of the Holocaust under the grounds that:
"The gas chambers with which the executors of the annihilation of the Jews went to work without a doubt signal a particularly repulsive form of mass murder, and they have justifiably become a symbol for the technicized barbarism of the Hitler regime. But can it really be said that the mass liquidations by a bullet to the back of the neck, as was common practice during the years of the Red Terror, are qualitatively different? Isn't, despite all the differences, the comparable element stronger?...The thesis of the singularity of Nazi crimes is finally also placed in question by the consideration that Hitler himself frequently referred to the practices of his revolutionary opponents of the Left as lessons and models. But he did more than just copy them. Determined to be more radical than his most bitter enemy, he also outdid them"Moreover, Fest argued in his defence of Nolte that in the overheated atmosphere in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
following the overthrow of the Bavarian Soviet Republic
Bavarian Soviet Republic
The Bavarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Munich Soviet Republic was, as part of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the short-lived attempt to establish a socialist state in form of a council republic in the Free State of Bavaria. It sought independence from the also recently proclaimed...
in 1919 "...gave Hitler's extermination complexes a real background" Finally, Fest wrote as part of his attack on the "singularity" of the Holocaust that:
"There are questions upon questions, but no answer can be offered here. Rather, it is a matter of rousing doubt in the monumental simplicity and one-sidedness of the prevailing ideas about the particularity of the Nazi crimes that supposedly had no model and followed no example. All in all, this thesis stands on weak ground. And it is less surprising that,as Habermas incorrectly suggests in reference to Nolte, it is being questioned. It is far more astonishing that this has not seriously taken place until now. For that also means that the countless other victims, in particular, but not exclusively those of Communism, are no longer part of our memory. Arno Borst once declared in a different context that no group in today's society has been ruthlessly oppressed as the dead. That is especially true for the millions of dead of this century, from the Armenians all the way to the victims of the Gulag Archipelago or the Cambodians who were and still being murdered before all of our eyes-but who have still been dropped from the world's memory"In his "Postscript" of 21 April 1987, Fest wrote that in his view:
"In its substance, the dispute was initiated by Ernst Nolte's question whether Hitler's monstrous will to annihilate the Jews, judging from its origin, came from early Viennese impressions or, what is more likely, from later Munich experiences, that is, whether Hitler was an originator or simply being reactive. Despite all the consequences that arouse from his answer, Nolte's question was in fact a purely academic exercise. The conclusions would probably not have caused as much controversy if they had been accompanied by special circumstances"Fest accused Habermas and his allies of attempting to silence those whose views they disliked. Fest wrote that:
"Standing on the one side, to simplify, are those who want to preserve Hitler and National Socialism as a kind of antimyth that can be used for political intentions-the theory of a conspiracy on the part of the political right, to which Nolte, Stürmer, and Hillgruber are linked. This becomes evident in the defamatory statements and the expansion of the dispute to the historical museums. It is doubtless no coincidence that Habermas, Jäckel, Mommsen and others become involved in the recent election campaign in this way. Many statements in favor of the pluralistic character of scholarship and in favor of an ethos representing a republic of learned men reveal themselves as merely empty phrases to the person who has an overview of these things"Fest argued that Nolte was motivated by purely scholarly concerns, and was only attempting the "historicization" of National Socialism that Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat was a German historian specializing in modern German social history whose work has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians as indispensable for any serious study of the Third Reich. Broszat was born in Leipzig, Germany and studied history at the University of Leipzig and...
called for Fest argued that:
"Strictly speaking, Nolte did nothing but take up the suggestion by Broszat and others that National Socialism be historicized. It was clear to anyone with any sense for the topic-and Broszat's opening article made it evident that he too had recognized it-that this transition would be beset with difficulties. But that the most incensed objections would come from those who from the beginning were the spokesmen of historicization-this was no less surprising then the recognition that yesterday's enlighteners are today's intolerant mythologues, people who want to forbid questions from being posed"
In defence of Habermas, Fest was attacked by Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen is a left-wing German historian. He is the twin brother of the late Wolfgang Mommsen.-Biography:He was born in Marburg, the son of the historian Wilhelm Mommsen and great-grandson of the Roman historian Theodor Mommsen. He studied German, history and philosophy at the University of...
and Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel 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:...
. Jäckel charged that Fest was guilty of diverting attention away from the issues by attacking Habermas's motives in criticizing Nolte, and not with concerning himself with what Habermas had to say Jäckel maintained that the Holocaust was indeed a "singular" historical event and criticized Fest for claiming otherwise Mommsen accused Fest of subordinating history to his right-wing politics in his defence of Nolte Mommsen went to accuse Fest of simply ignoring the real issues such as the "psychological and institutional mechanisms" that explain why the German people accepted the Holocaust by accepting Nolte's claim of a "causal nexus" between Communism and fascism. Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat was a German historian specializing in modern German social history whose work has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians as indispensable for any serious study of the Third Reich. Broszat was born in Leipzig, Germany and studied history at the University of Leipzig and...
wrote that Fest's attempts to "restylize" Nolte's arguments were in his opinion a failure. Charles S. Maier
Charles S. Maier
Charles S. Maier is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University. He teaches European and international history at Harvard. Maier has also served as the director of the Center for European Studies at Harvard.Maier has written several books...
wrote that Fest's claims that the Holocaust was considered worse than the Cambodian genocide because the former was "mechanized" was flawed. Maier wrote:
"He [Fest] does not acknowledge that mechanization and bureaucratic arrangements horrify not because squeamish historians prefer pastoral mass murder in Cambodia, but because "mechanization" testifies to intent and pathological planning".The British historian Peter Pulzer complained about the pictures of the piles of skulls from the Camodian genocide that published alongside "Encumbered Remembrance" was intended to prove that Germans may had sinned, but only "in good company". During a debate in London in 1987 to consider the Historikerstreit, Fest and Jäckel again clashed over the question of the "singularity" of the Holocaust with Fest accusing Jäckel of presenting a "caricature" of his and Nolte's views.
Shortly before his death, Fest became embroiled in a public dispute with the left-wing writer and Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
winner Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
, who had admitted in his autobiography that he had joined the Waffen SS in the last months of World War II. Fest criticised Grass not so much for having joined, but for having concealed the fact for so many years while engaging in political criticism of others over their Nazi pasts. He said: "After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late. I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off."
Joachim Fest was married and had two sons and a daughter; all his children followed him into publishing or the media. He died at his home in Kronberg im Taunus
Kronberg im Taunus
Kronberg im Taunus is a town in the Hochtaunuskreis district, Hesse, Germany. Before 1866, it was in the Duchy of Nassau; in that year the whole Duchy was absorbed into Prussia. Kronberg lies at the foot of the Taunus, flanked in the north and southwest by forests...
near Frankfurt am Main.
Works available in German
- Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches: Porträt einer totalitären Herrschaft, R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1963, München.
- Ich nicht: Erinnerungen an eine Kindheit und Jugend, Rowohlt Verlag, 2006–09, Reinbek (ISBN 3-498-05305-1)
- Speer: Eine Biographie, Fischer TB Verlag, 2001, Frankfurt am Main (ISBN 3-596-15093-0)
- Hitler: Eine Biographie, Spiegel-Verlag, 2006–07, Hamburg (ISBN 978-3-87763-031-0)
- Nach dem Scheitern der Utopien: Gesammelte Essays zu Politik und Geschichte, Rowohlt Verlag, 2007–09, Reinbek (ISBN 978-3498021191)
- Flüchtige Größe. Gesammelte Essays über Literatur und Kunst, Rowohlt Verlag, 2008-08, Reinbek (ISBN 978-3498021238)
Works available in English
- Hitler (ISBN 0-15-602754-2)
- "Encumbered Remembrance: The Controversy about the Incomparability of National-Socialist Mass Crimes" pages 63–71 & "Postscript, April 21, 1987" pages 264-265 from Forever In The Shadow of Hitler? edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1993, (ISBN 0391037846).
- Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich (ISBN 0-374-13577-0)
- The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (ISBN 0-306-80915-X)
- Speer: The Final Verdict (ISBN 0-15-100556-7)
- Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance To Hitler, 1933–1945 is a 1994 book by historian Joachim Fest about the Germans, both civilian and military, who plotted to kill Adolf Hitler from 1933 onwards....
(ISBN 0-8050-5648-3)
External links
- Bisky, Jens. "Proud to be different", Sign and Sight, October 16, 2006 (a review of the Ich nicht).
- Childs, DavidDavid ChildsDavid M. Childs is the Consulting Design Partner at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He is best known for his redesign of the new One World Trade Center in New York....
. "Joachim Fest: Obituary" in The Independent, September 15, 2006. - "Joachim Fest: Obituary" in The Times, September 13, 2006.
- Matussek, Matthias. "The Proud Loner: In Memory of Joachim Fest" in the Spiegel Online International, September 12, 2006.
- "Renowned Hitler Biographer Joachim Fest Dies", Deutsche Welle, September 12, 2006.
- Thinking with Body and Soul: Interview with the historian Joachim Fest about Hannah ArendtHannah ArendtHannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
, by Volker Maria Neumann, February 2006.