ABSTRACT

Within the history of German academic life, historians have been relatively late in coming to terms with their relationship to National Socialism. This is partly due to the fact that the documents and correspondence of the main protagonists of the period have only recently become available. The main reason however is that a new generation of historians has grown up who mistrust the image and the communis opinio which historians before them had presented. With few exceptions, the general impression they wished to give was that they had held themselves aloof from National Socialism, both personally and professionally. Furthermore, the younger generation feels less duty bound than the previous one to adopt a pious attitude to assessing the political nature of the works of historians during the Nazi period. In fact, they have increasingly established that these historians were in no way loyal to a conservative, monarchist, elite view of the world and strict academic principles, as had long been maintained. Quite the contrary; by propagating the glorification of State and Führer and by their committed opposition to Bolshevism they had paved the way for Nazi ideology, or even supported the Third Reich.[2] Going even further, a large group of them, above all those involved in Volks-und Kulturraumforschung (research into people and cultural regions) could be held responsible for actively supporting National Socialist expansionist politics. It was precisely the younger, more modern historians along with geographers and, to a certain extent, sociologists who had dedicated their efforts, either independently or at the request of the Nazis to taking stock of German "Volkstum" and the traditions of German culture beyond the borders of the German Reich, and who had drawn up

memorials concerning the dispersion of foreign Vôlker as well as the settlement of German, respectively "volksdeutscher", groups. The way in which their research had been exploited both militarily and politically, and the consequences of their work had made them to all extents and purposes, "pre-thinkers of annihilation" (Gôtz Aly).[3] Indeed, the general tone of most recent research work denotes a significant shift in the assessment of the political nature of the academic activities of historians in the Third Reich.