The Third Reich in German History Textbooks since 1945

Abstract

Scholarly research on the Third Reich has benefited from the fact that the regime's archives became open and available to historians almost from the moment of its collapse. Since 1946, nearly all the major crimes of the regime have been documented in outline, beginning with the Nuremberg war crimes trials which included important supplementary criminal proceedings.1 These trials presented massive documentary evidence for the nazi extermination of the Jews and for the regime's war of aggression and extermination in eastern Europe.2 In addition, the participation of German companies in the nazi system was described in detail by the reports of the Office of the Military Government of the US (OMGUS) in postwar western Germany.3 The system of concentration camps as the real nucleus of the nazi state had already been analysed by Eugen Kogon; but his report was thought to be unsuitable reading for young Germans up until 1960.4 On the other hand, case studies and regional monographs remained few up until the 1970s, or even later.5 The relative absence of detailed scholarly research gave the authors of textbooks a free hand in many respects. Nevertheless, at least six principal crimes of the nazis could have been mentioned in any textbook written after 1946: