Eberhard Jäckel (1929)

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Eberhard Jäckel (born June 29, 1929) 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

Born in Wesermünde, Hanover, Jäckel studied history at Göttingen, Tübingen, Freiburg, Gainesville, and Paris after World War II. After serving as an assistant and doce n t at Kiel until 1966, he taught from 1967, following Golo Mann, as Professor for Modern History at the University of Stuttgart and remained loyal to this university.

Jäckel's PhD dissertation was turned into his first book, 1966's Frankreich in Hitlers Europa (France In Hitler's Europe), a study of German policy towards France from 1933 to 1945. Jäckel first rose to fame through his 1969 book Hitlers Weltanschauung (Hitler's Worldview), which was an examination of Hitler's worldview and beliefs. Jäckel argued that far from being an 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[3]. 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 Lebensraum (living space). In Jäckel's view, everything that Hitler did throughout his life stemmed from the beliefs he had adopted in the 1920s. Jäckel has argued that Hitler felt there were three factors that determined a people's "racial value", namely its awareness of itself, the type of leadership it had, and its ability to make war. According to Jäckel, for Germany these meant ultra-nationalism, the Führerprinzip (Führer principle), and militarism, and all three were the constants throughout Hitler's beliefs throughout his life. In Jäckel's opinion, Mein Kampf is a long rant against the three principles that Hitler saw as the antithesis of his three sacred principles, namenly internationalism, democracy and pacifism. Jäckel asserts that for Hitler "the originators and bearers of all three counterpositions are the Jews". In Jäckel's view, in the Zweites Buch of 1928, Hitler: "established for the first time a logical link between his foreign policy conception and his antisemitism. They were synthesized in his view of history. With this, Hitler's Weltanschauung had finally achieved the kind of consistency for which he had groped for a long time". In this way, Jäckel argues that Mein Kampf was not only a "blueprint" for power, but also for genocide[11]. In Jäckel's view: "He [Hitler] had to annihilate the Jews, thus restoring the meaning of history, and with the thus restored, nature-intended struggle for existence, he at the same time had to conquer new living space for the German people. Each of these tasks was inextricably linked to the other. Unless the Jews were annihilated there would very soon no longer be any struggle for living space, nor therefore any culture and consequently nations would die out; not just the German nation, but ulimately all nations. But if, on the other hand, the German people failed to conquer new living space, it would die out because of that and the Jews would triumph". Jäckel takes the view that Hitler's ideology developed in stages in the 1920s, and wrote "It is an important fact that the final completion [of Hitler's ideology], contrary to Hitler's own statements, in 1919 had only begun". In addition, Jäckel's book was noteworthy as the first account of Hitler's beliefs written in Germany by someone from the left (Jäckel joined the SPD in 1967). In regards to the foreign policy debates, Jäckel is a leading "continentalist", arguing that Nazi foreign policy aimed only at the conquest of Eastern Europe against the "globalists" who argue that Hitler wanted world conquest 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 Brosz e t. Jäckel dismissed the argument made by Broszat in his 1977 essay "Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution" that local officials began the Holocaust on their own initiative under the grounds that a: "great deal of evidence that some [local officials] were shocked or even appalled when the Final Solution came into effect. To be sure, they did not disagree with it. But they agreed only reluctantly, referring again to an order given by Hitler. This is a strong indication that the idea did not originate with them". In a 1979 article, Jäckel considered the possibility that the order for the Holocaust may have been sent out as early as the summer of 1940, but feels it was more likely that a series of orders was given by Hitler starting in the spring of 1941 for Soviet Jews, followed by another order for Polish Jews in September 1941 and a final order for all European Jews in November 1941. Jäckel has argued that such speeches like Hitler's "Prophecy Speech" of January 30, 1939 were a sign of the "universalist-missionary touch" of Hitler's antisemitic Weltanschauung (world-view), which Jäckel argued were an essential part of Hitler's war programme. In Jäckel's opinion, the nature of Hitler's antisemitism was such that it "presupposes war, it demands the methods of warfare, and it is therefore not surprising that it should reach a bloody climax during the next war, which was a part of Hitler's program from the start". Jäckel has argued during 1941-42, "the extermination of the Jews became increasingly the most important aim of the war as such; as the fortunes of war turned against Germany, the destruction of the Jews became National Socialism's gift to the world." By 1945, Jäckel has claimed that for Hitler the Shoah had become so important that it "now appeared to him [Hitler] as his central historical mission".

Recently, Jäckel has modified his position. He 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 1998, Jäckel argued that Hitler was able to begin the Holocaust in mid-1941 by playing Himmler against Heydrich.Jäckel argued that through Himmler was antisemitic, he was less enthusiastic about genocide then Heydrich, whereas the latter saw genocide as a way of obtaining Hitler's support for building a power base outside of Himmler's control. In Jäckel's view, antisemitism was a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the Holocaust under the grounds that people had been intensely antisemitic in Europe for centuries without genocide occurring. In contrast to the functionalists who have argued for the "weak dictator" thesis about Hitler's power, Jäckel has supported the "master of the Third Reich" thesis and has described Hitler's power as Alleinherrschaft (sole rule).

In the late 1970s, Jäckel 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. Jäckel attacked Irving for claiming that an entry in Heinrich Himmler's notebook saying "Jewish transport from Berlin, not to be liquidated" on November 30, 1941 proved that Hitler did not want to see the Holocaust happen. Jäckel maintained that the order referred only to that train, and argued that if Hitler had ordered the people on that train to be spared, it must stand to reason that he was aware of the Holocaust. Jäckel went to argue that because the "Final Solution" was secret, it is not surprising that Hitler's servants were ignorant of the Holocaust, and that anyhow, five of Hitler's servants interviewed by Irving later claimed that they believed that Hitler was aware of the Holocaust. Jäckel argued that on the basis of Hitler's statements in Mein Kampf the Führer was always committed to genocide of the Jews, and that because Hitler later attempted to execute the foreign policy he outlined in Mein Kampf, it is a reasonable assumption that Hitler was always committed to genocide. Jäckel used Hitler's tendency to involve himself in minutia to argue that it is simply inconceivable that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust. Jäckel used Hitler's "Prophecy Speech" of January 30, 1939, where Hitler declared: "I shall once again be your prophet: if international Jewry with its financial power in and outside of Europe should manage once more to draw the peoples of the world into world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the world, and thus the victory of Jewry, but rather the total destruction of the Jewish race in Europe"[31] as a sign of Hitler's intentions. Likewise, Jäckel used Himmler's Posen speeches of 1943 and certain other statements on his part in 1944 referring to an "order" from an unnamed higher authority as proof that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust. In the same way, Jäckel noted Hitler's order of March 13, 1941 that the Einsatzgruppen be reestablished for Operation Barbarossa as proof of the Führer's involvement in the Holocaust. Jäckel also argued that the entry in Joseph Goebbels's diary on March 27, 1942 mentioning the Führer's "Prophecy" was coming true was a sign that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust, and accused Irving of dishonesty in claiming that there was no sign in the Goebbels diary that Hitler knew of the Holocaust.undefinedFinally, Jäckel noted the frequent references to the "Prophecy Speech" in Hitler's wartime speeches as a sign that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust.

critics accused him of disregarding the fact that Turkish troops were crossing the border and exterminating Armenians outside the Ottoman Empire in 1918 (young-Turkish campaign in Caucasus killing 40,000 Armenians) and in 1920 (Kemalist troops killing 60,000 civilians).