Hellmut Diwald, German Professor

by Mark Weber

One of Germany's best-known and most controversial historians, Hellmut Diwald, died on May 26, 1993. A skilled writer and an eloquent public speaker, he was not only one of his people's most widely read historians, he was unquestionably one of the most gifted and courageous. No ivory tower academic, he learned what it meant to come under fire for taking an unpopular stand.

He authored numerous acclaimed works of history, including important biographies of Martin Luther, Wallenstein, Heinrich the First and Wilhelm Dilthey. Probably his most important -- and certainly his most controversial -- work was Geschichte der Deutschen ("History of the Germans"), first issued in 1978 by the prestigious Propyläen publishing house. In the two pages of the book devoted to the "final solution," Professor Diwald pointed out that there were no extermination camps in Germany proper, that important claims about the camps have been revealed as lies, and that Jewish deaths in the German concentration camps were not the result of an extermination policy, but rather the consequence of chaotic and unavoidable wartime conditions. He described the postwar Holocaust campaign as one of distortion, deception and exaggeration -- one meant to morally degrade and totally disqualify the German people. Diwald concluded this section by pointing out that in spite of all the literature that has been written on this subject, the central questions about the fate of the Jews during the war are still not clear.

More