Terrorists Attack Historian’s Automobile

Terrorists set German historian Ernst Nolte's automobile on fire during the night of 10 February. The car was parked at the Free University in West Berlin, where Nolte is a professor. An anonymous letter, signed with a five-pointed star, which was sent to a Berlin news agency, declared:

“We attack Nolte because he is one of those who personally represents the continuity of fascism and the West German Federal Republic.”

The letter also denounced Nolte as a co-founder of the “reactionary” anti-Communist “Academic Freedom League.”

The professor is a major figure in West Germany's so-called “historians' dispute” between mildly revisionist scholars such as Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Klaus Hildbrand and Michael Stüer, who called for a more dispassionate look at recent German history, and Marxist academics such as Jürgen Habermas, who oppose any “neutral” discussion of the National Socialist era.

Nolte is best known to English readers for his book, The Three Faces of Fascism. Nolte had been strongly criticized for his view that Germany's wartime policy against the Jews, which he regards as one of “widespread liquidation,” was no more unique than other mass killings in history.

Adapted from IHR Newsletter #59, July 1988 – Institute for Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659