If I just know enough, if I just master the unmasterable, I can turn things around.
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Part II, "Nature's Unmasterable Elements" analyzes Hoefnagel's seminal work Four Elements, a compendium of the known animal world where reptiles and mammals belong to earth, fish and shellfish to water, birds and amphibians to air and, oddly, humans and insects to fire.
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Bull-riding, a reinless activity, provides a submerged metaphor for the central relationship, for its huge and ultimately unmasterable force.
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20, no. 4, 914-16. “A Bibliography of Jewish-Christian Relations,” Judaica Book News (Fall 1989). Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity,” Shofar: Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, Spring 1989, Purdue University Jewish Studies pp.101-4.
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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.Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988 pages 84–85, 87 & 100–101 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.Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988 pages 84–85 & 87 & 100–101 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.
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Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past, Cambridge: Harvard > University Press, 1988 page 140. The Canadian historian Holger Herwig wrote in 1982 that Hillgruber was a follower of Leopold von Ranke's Primat der Aussenpolitik concept.Herwig, Holger H., "Andreas Hillgruber: Historian of 'Großmachtpolitik' 1871-1945," pp. 186–198 from Central European History Volume, XV 1982 page 196 Herwig wrote that for Hillgruber history was made by small political and military elites who were not prisoners of forces beyond their control, and that instead made history through their choices and decisions.
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Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988 page 101 As an advocate of history as a social science, Bracher took a strong dislike to Nolte's philosophical theories of generic fascism.Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988 page 87 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".Dawidowicz, Lucy S. Review of The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and Effects of National Socialism pages 91–93 from Commentary, Volume 52, Issue # 2, August 1971 page 91. In 1989, the British historian Richard J. Evans called The German Dictatorship a "valuable" bookEvans, Richard In Hitler’s Shadow, Pantheon: New York, 1989 page 186. Bracher 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”.Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship : Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London : Arnold ; New York page 73.
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Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship : Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London : Arnold ; New York page 15. Through Bracher felt that some of the resulting work was of value, too much of the resulting publications were in his opinion executed with "crude weapons" in which "the ideological struggle was carried out on the back and in the name of scholarship" with a corrosive effect on academic standards. Bracher wrote the student protests of the late 1960s had "politicized and often...objectionably distorted" the work of historians.Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past, Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 1988 page 90.
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152- (2,111,000)Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity, Harvard University (1988); , pp. 75- (2,000,000)Douglas Botting, The Aftermath: Europe (World War II), Time-Life Books (1983); , pp. 21, 81- (2,000,000)H.W. Schoenberg, Germans from the East: A Study of their migration, resettlement and subsequent group history, since 1945, Springer, London, Ltd. (1970); , pp. 33- (2,225,000)Hermann Kinder, Werner Hilgemann & Ernest A. Menze, Anchor Atlas of World History, vol. 2: 1978– (3,000,000)Encyclopædia Britannica: 1992– (2,384,000)Kurt Glaser & Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979) – (2,111,000)Sir John Keegan, The Second World War, 1989 - (3.1 million including 1.0 million during wartime flight)Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, The Expulsion of German Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, European University Institute, Florence.
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Hillgruber wrote: "If the historian gazes on the winter catastrophe of 1944-45, only one position is possible...he must identify himself with the concrete fate of the German population in the East and with the desperate and sacrificial exertions of the German Army of the East and the German Baltic navy, which sought to defend the population from the orgy of revenge of the Red Army, the mass rapine, the arbitrary killing, and the compulsory deportations."Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988 page 21. Besides for his call for historians to "identify" with the Wehrmacht, Hillgruber condemned the putsch of 20 July 1944 as irresponsible and wrong and praised those Wehrmacht officers who stayed loyal to Hitler as making the correct moral choice.Lukacs The Hitler of History, 1997, p. 236.
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The German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte, starting in the 1980s, advanced a set of theories, which though not denying the Holocaust appeared to flirt with an Italian Holocaust denier, Carlo Mattogno, as a serious historian.Evans, Richard J. In Hitler's Shadow New York: Pantheon Books, 1989 page 83. In a letter to the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized the work of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on the ground that the Holocaust did occur, but went on to argue that Faurisson's work was motivated by what Nolte claimed were the admirable motives of sympathy towards the Palestinians and opposition to Israel.Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988 page 190. In his 1987 book Der europäische Bürgerkrieg (The European Civil War), Nolte claimed that the intentions of Holocaust deniers are "often honourable", and that some of their claims are "not obviously without foundation".Lipstadt, Deborah Denying the Holocaust, New York: Free Press, 1993 page 214 Nolte himself, though he has never denied the occurrence of the Holocaust, has claimed that the Wannsee Conference of 1942 never happened, and that the minutes of the conference were post-war forgeries done by "biased" Jewish historians designed to discredit Germany.
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