David Hoggan - Early Life

Early Life

Hoggan was born in Portland, Oregon, and received his education at Reed College and Harvard University. At Harvard, Hoggan was awarded a PhD in 1948 for a dissertation on relations between Germany and Poland in the years 1938–1939. His adviser described his dissertation as "no more than a solid, conscientious piece of work, critical of Polish and British policies, but not beyond what the evidence would tolerate". The American historian Peter Baldwin noted that Hoggan's dissertation, The Breakdown of German-Polish Relations in 1939: The Conflict Between the German New Order and the Polish Idea of Central Eastern Europe, was easily the most reasonable and sane of all Hoggan's writings. During his time at Harvard, Hoggan befriended Harry Elmer Barnes, whose thinking would have much influence on Hoggan. Subsequently, Hoggan had a series of teaching positions at the University of Munich, San Francisco State College, the University of California at Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Carthage College. When teaching at Munich between 1949 and 1952, Hoggan became fluent in German and married a German woman. Reflecting his pro-German tendencies, in a 1960 review of a book by an Austrian writer Hans Uebersberger, Hoggan claimed that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a result of a conspiracy involving the governments of Serbia and Russia, and that as such, Austria-Hungary and its ally Germany were the victims of a Russo-Serbian provocation designed to cause a world war.