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Eberhard Jäckel




Jäckel first rose to fame through his 1969 book ''Hitler's Weltanschauung'', which was a examination of Hitler's worldview and beliefs. Jäckel argued that far from being a 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 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 . Recently, Jäckel has modified his position. Her 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 the '' Historikerstreit '' (Historians' Dispute) of the 1986 - 1988 , 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. In the late 1970s, Jackel 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.


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.

  • ''Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen : 1905-1924'', Stuttgart : Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980 ISBN 3421019975.

  • 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.

  • ''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



REFERENCES

  • Kershaw, Sir Ian ''The Nazi dictatorship : problems and perspectives of interpretation'' London : Arnold ; New York : Copublished in the USA by Oxford University Press, 2000.

  • Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of history'', New York : A. A. Knopf, 1997.

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