Karl Dietrich Bracher - Historical Views

Historical Views

Bracher is mainly concerned with the problems of preserving and developing democracy. Bracher has been consistent in all of works in arguing for the value of human rights, plurarism and constitutional values, together with urging that Germans align themselves with the democratic values of the West. He sees democracy as a frail institution and has argued that only a concerned citizenry can guarantee it. This theme began with Bracher's first book in 1948, Verfall und Fortschritt im Denken der frühen römischen Kaiserzeit which concerned the downfall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Augustus. His 1955 book Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik (The Disintegration of the Weimar Republic) is his best known book, in which he ascribed the collapse of German democracy not to the Sonderweg ("special path" of German historical development) or other impersonal forces but to human action that followed conscious choice. In that book, Bracher rejected not only the Sonderweg thesis, but also the Marxist theory of National Socialism as the result of a capitalist "conspiracy", the theory that the Treaty of Versailles caused the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the view that the Nazi dicatorship was simply the work of "fate". Bracher's methodology in Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik involving a mixture of political science and history was considered to be highly innovative and controversial in the 1950s.

In Bracher's opinion, through it was human choices that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the National Socialist period, the roots of National Socialism can be traced back towards the völkisch ideology of 19th century Germany and Austria-Hungary, which found their fullest expression in the personality of Adolf Hitler. Likewise, Bracher has complained that too many Germans were willing during the Weimar-Nazi time periods to subscribe to a "readiness for acclamatory agreement and pseudo-military obedience to a strong authoritarian state". Through Bracher is opposed to the Sonderweg interpretation of German history, he does believe in a special German mentality (Sonderbewusstsein). Bracher wrote that:

"The German "Sonderweg" should be limited to the era of the Third Reich, but the strength of the particular German mentality that had arisen already with its opposition to the French Revolution and grew stronger after 1870 and 1918 must be emphasized. Out of its exaggerated perspectives (and, I would add, rhetoric) it become a power in politics, out a myth reality. The road from democracy to dictatorship was not a particular German case, but the radical nature of the National Socialist dictatorship corresponded to the power of the German ideology that in 1933–1945 became a political and totalitarian reality"

Another well-known book associated with Bracher was the 1960 monograph co-written with Wolfgang Sauer and Gerhard Schulz Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (The National Socialist Seizure of Power), which described in considerable detail the Gleichschaltung of German life in 1933–1934. In a review of Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, the American historian Walter Laqueur praised Bracher, Sauer and Schulz for their refusal to engage in apologetics, and willingness to ask tough questions about the conduct of Germans under the Nazi regime. In the same review, Laqueur expressed regret that books like William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich were best-sellers, while a book like Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, which Laqueur regarded as infinitely better work of scholarship then Shirer's book was unlikely ever to be translated into English, let alone become a bestseller.

Bracher advocates the view that Nazi Germany was a totalitarian regime, through Bracher maintained that the "totalitarian typology" as developed by Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski was too rigid, and that totalitarian models needed to be based upon careful empirical research. In Bracher's view, Friedrich's and Brzezinski's work failed to take into account the "revolutionary dynamic", which Bracher argued was the "core principle" of totalitarism. For Bracher, the essence of totalitarism was the total claim to control and remake all aspects of society together with an all-embracing ideology, the value on authoritarian leadership, and the pretence of the common identity of state and society, which distinguished the totatitarian "closed" understanding of politics from the "open" democratic understanding. In Bracher's view, "politics is the struggle for the power of the state", and in his opinion, the traditional methods of the historian have to be supplemented by the methods of political science to properly understand political history. Speaking of historical work in his own area of speciality, namely the Weimar-Nazi periods, Bracher stated:

"It was not with Himmler, Bormann, and Heydrich, also not with the National Socialist Party, but with Hitler that the German people identified itself enthusiastically. In this there exists an essential problem, especially for German historians...To identify the sources of this fateful mistake of the past and to research it without minimizing it remains a task of German historical scholarship. Ignoring it means the loss of its commitment to truth."

Bracher has been highly critical of the Marxist view of the Third Reich, which sees the Nazi leadership as puppets of Big Business. In Bracher's opinion, the exact opposite was the case with a "primacy of politics" being exercised with business subordinate to the Nazi regime rather than a "primacy of economics" as maintained by Marxist historians. Bracher has argued that Nazi actions were dictated by Nazi ideological theory, that business interests were just as much subordinate to the dictatorship as any other section of society, and that since Nazi actions were often irrational from a purely economic point of view, a "primacy of politics" prevailed.

Against the functionlist view of the Third Reich mostly associated with left-wing historians, Bracher was to write that it was an attempt to:

"turn against the "old-liberal" totalitarianism theory and talk about a relativizing interpretation, which emphasizes the "improvisational" politics of power and domination of National Socialism. Leftish interpretations would like to leave behind the questions of guilt and responsibiilty in favor of a more modern, realistic analysis. But in doing this they slide into the danger of a newer underestimation and trivialization of National Socialism itself. Their analysis also brings with it, in another way, the vague leftist talk about fascism and reaction"

In the 1960s, Bracher was a leading critic of the theory of generic fascism presented by Ernst Nolte. Bracher criticized the entire notion of generic fascism as intellectually invalid and argued that it was individual choice on the part of Germans as opposed to Nolte's philosophical view of the "metapolitical" that produced National Socialism. Bracher's magnum opus, his 1969 book Die deutsche Diktatur (The German Dictatorship) was partly written to rebut Nolte's theory of generic fascism, and instead presented a picture of the National Socialist dictatorship as a totalitarian regime created and sustained by human actions. In Die deutsche Diktatur, Bracher rejected theories of generic fascism, and instead used totalitarianism theory and the methods of the social sciences to explain Nazi Germany. As an advocate of history as a social science, Bracher took a strong dislike to Nolte's philosophical theories of generic fascism. In a 1971 review, the American historian Lucy Dawidowicz called The German Dictatorship "...a work of unparalleled distinction, combing the most scrupulous objectivity with a passionate commitment to the democratic ethos". In 1989, the British historian Richard J. Evans called The German Dictatorship a "valuable" book

Bracher has often criticized the functionist-structuralist interpretation of the Third Reich championed by such scholars such as Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen, and decried their view of Hitler as a “weak dictator”. In Bracher’s view, Hitler was the “Master of the Third Reich”. However, though Bracher argues that the Führer was the driving force behind the Third Reich, he was one of the first historians to argue that Nazi Germany was less well organized then the Nazis liked to pretend. In a 1956 essay, Bracher noted "the antagonism between rival agencies was resolved solely in the omniptent key position of the Führer", which was the result of "...the complex coexistence and opposition of the power groups and from conflicting personal ties". Unlike the functionists, Bracher saw this disorganization as part of a conscious “divide and rule” strategy on the part of Hitler, and argued at no point was Hitler ever driven by pressure from below or had his power limited in any way. One area where Bracher is in agreement with the functionists concerns the highly ad hoc nature of decision-making in the Third Reich. Bracher commented that the Nazi regime "remained in a state of permanent improvisation".

In an essay published in 1976 entitled "The Role of Hitler: Perspectives of Interpretation", Bracher argued that Hitler was too often underrated in his own time, and that those historians who rejected the totalitarian paradigm in favor of the fascist paradigm were in danger of making the same mistake. In Bracher's opinion, Hitler was a "world-historical" figure who served as the embodiment of the most radical type of German nationalism and a revolutionary of the most destructive kind, and that such was the force of Hitler's personality that it is correct to speak of National Socialism as "Hitlerism". In his essay, Bracher maintained that Hitler himself was in many ways something of an "unperson" devoid of any real interest for the biographer, but argued that these pedestrian qualities of Hitler led to him being underestimated first by rivals and allies in the Weimar Republic, and then on the international stage in the 1930s. At the same time, Bracher warned of the apologetic tendencies of the “demonizaton" of Hitler which he accused historians like Gerhard Ritter of engaging in, which Bracher maintained allowed too many Germans to place the blame for Nazi crimes solely on the "demon" Hitler. Through Bracher criticized the Great man theory of history as an inadequate historical explanation, Bracher argued that social historians who claim that social developments were more important then the role of individuals were mistaken.

In Bracher’s view, Hitler’s rise was not inevitable, and the primary responsibility for the Chancellorship being given to Hitler on January 30, 1933 rested with the Kamarilla of President Paul von Hindenburg. However, Bracher argued that once Hitler had obtained power, he used his authority to carry out a comprehensive revolution that politically destroyed both Hitler’s opponents such as the SPD and his allies such as the DNVP who sought to “tame” the Nazi movement. Bracher argued that because Hitler was so central to the Nazi movement that it led to the fate of National Socialism being so intertwined with Hitler's fate that it is right to speak of National Socialism as Hitlerism, and hence justifying Hitler's place in history as a person who by their actions decisively brought about events that otherwise would not have happened. In addition, Bracher maintained that the importance of Hitler derived from his being the most effective exponent of an extremely radical type of racist German nationalism, which allowed for ideas that otherwise would be ignored by historians coming to a terrible fruition.

Through Bracher argued that the work of Ralf Dahrendorf, David Schoenbaum, and Henry Ashby Turner about National Socialism in pursuit of anti-modern goals leading to an unintentional modernization of German society had merit, Bracher felt the question of modernization was too removed from the essence of National Socialism, which Bracher argued were the total revolutionary remodeling of the world along savagely racist and Social Darwinist lines. In Bracher's opinion, the revolution Hitler sought to unleash was besides being one of racism gone mad, was also a moral revolution. Bracher argued that the Nazi revolution sought to destroy traditional values that society had valued such as friendship, kindness, and so forth, and replace them with values such as cruelty, brutality, and destruction. Bracher argued that because Anti-Semitism was so crucial to Hitler's weltanschauung (worldview) and its consequences in the form of genocide for the Jews of Europe were such that this disapproves any notion of generic fascism because Bracher believes that theories of fascism cannot account for the Shoah. Bracher argued that generic fascism theorists were guilty of indiscriminately lumping in too many disparate phenomena for the concept of fascism to be of any intellectual use, and of using the term fascist as a catch-all insult for anyone the left disliked. With respect to the genesis of The Holocaust, he is a confirmed Intentionalist. It is his position that the entire project of the genocide of European Jewry resulted from Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic hatred. Bracher argued that the "one basic principle to which Hitler subscribed deeply, blindly and ruthlessly" was anti-Semitism. Bracher noted that the Shoah was so important to Hitler that during World War II, resources that might from a purely military point of view be better devoted to the war were instead turned towards genocide. In 1981, the British Marxist historian Timothy Mason in his essay 'Intention and explanation: A Current controversy about the interpretation of National Socialism' from the book The "Fuehrer State" : Myth and reality coined the term "Intentionist" as part of an attack against Bracher and Klaus Hildebrand, both of whom Mason accused of focusing too much on Hitler as an explanation for the Holocaust.