Fritz Fischer
Encyclopedia
Fritz Fischer was a German historian best known for his analysis of the causes of World War I
. Fischer has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing as the most important German historian of the 20th century.
in Bavaria
. His father was a railroad inspector. Educated at grammar schools in Ansbach and Eichstätt, Fischer attended the University of Berlin and the University of Erlangen, where he studied history, pedagogy, philosophy and theology. Fischer joined the Nazi Party in 1939, and left the Party in 1942. Fischer's major early influences were the standard Hegelian-Rankean idea typical of the pre-1945 German historical profession, and as such, Fischer's early writings bore a strong bent towards the right. This influence was reflected in Fischer's first books, biographies of Ludwig Nicolovius, a leading 19th century Prussian educational reformer and of Moritz August von Bethmann Hollweg
, the Prussian Minister of Education between 1858-1862.
In 1942, Fischer married Margarete Lauth-Volkmann, with whom he fathered two children. Fischer served in the Wehrmacht
in World War II
. After his release from a POW camp in 1947, Fischer became a professor at the University of Hamburg
, where he stayed until his retirement in 1978.
in which Adolf Hitler
was just a Betriebsunfall (an occupational accident, meaning 'a spanner in the works') of history were unacceptable. In 1949, at the first post-war German Historians' Congress in Munich
, Fischer strongly criticized the Lutheran tradition in German life, accusing the Lutheran church of glorifying the state at the expense of individual liberties and thus helping to bring about Nazi Germany
. Fischer complained that the Lutheran church had for too long glorified the state as a divinely sanctioned institution that could do no wrong, and thus paved the way for National Socialism. Fischer rejected the then popular argument in Germany that Nazi Germany had been the result of the Treaty of Versailles, and instead argued that the origins of Nazi Germany predated 1914, and were the result of long-standing ambitions of the German power elite.
In the 1950s, Fischer was the first historian who examined all of the Imperial German government archives in their entirety and as a result, as the American Klaus Epstein noted when Fischer published his findings in 1961, he instantly rendered obsolete every book previously published on the subject of responsibility for the First World War, and German aims in that war
.
By 1961, Fischer, who had risen to the rank of full professor at the University of Hamburg, rocked the history profession with his first postwar book, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918 (published in English as Germany's Aims in the First World War), in which he argued that Germany
had deliberately instigated the First World War
in an attempt to become a world power. In this book, which was primarily concerned with the role played in the formation of German foreign policy by domestic pressure groups, Fischer argued that various pressure groups within German society had ambitions for aggressive imperialist policy in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In Fischer's opinion, the "September Program" of September 1914 calling for the annexation of most of Europe and Africa was an attempt at compromise between the various demands of the lobbying groups within German society for wide-ranging territorial expansion. Fischer argued that the German government deliberately and consciously used the crisis occasioned by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the summer of 1914 to execute already preformulated plans for a war against France and Russia in order to create Mitteleuropa, a German-dominated Europe and Mittelafrika, a German-dominated Africa. Though Fischer argued that the German government did not want a war with Britain at that moment, they were fully prepared to run the risk in pursuit of Mitteleuropa and Mittelafrika.
The book was preceded by Fischer's groundbreaking 1959 article in the Historische Zeitschrift
in which he first published the arguments that he expanded upon in his 1961 book. In The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
, Philip Bobbitt
has written that after Fischer published it became, "impossible to maintain" that World War I had been some sort of "ghastly mistake" rather than a deliberate and intentional German policy.
For most Germans, it was acceptable to believe that Germany had caused World War Two, but not World War One, which was still widely regarded as a war forced upon Germany by its encircling enemies. Fischer was the first German historian to publish documents showing that the German chancellor Dr. Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had developed plans in 1914 to annex all of Belgium
, part of France
and part of European Russia
. Fischer suggested that there was continuity in German foreign policy from 1900 to the Second World War, implying that Germany was responsible for both world wars. These ideas were expanded in his later books Krieg der Illusionen (War of Illusions), Bündnis der Eliten (From Kaiserreich to Third Reich) and Hitler war kein Betriebsunfall (Hitler Was No Chance Accident). Though Fischer was an expert in the Imperial era, his work was important in the debate
about the foreign policy of the Third Reich.
In his 1969 book Krieg der Illusionen, Fischer offered a detailed study of German politics from 1911 to 1914, in which he offered a Primat der Innenpolitik (Primacy of Domestic Politics) analysis of German foreign policy. In Fischer's view, the Imperial German state saw itself under siege by rising demands for democracy at home and looked to distract democratic strivings through a policy of aggressive expansionism abroad.
Fischer was the first German historian to support the negative version of the "Sonderweg
" or "special path"' interpretation of German history, which holds that the way German culture and society developed from the Reformation
onwards (or from a later time, such as the establishment of the German Reich of 1871) inexorably culminated in the Third Reich. In Fischer's view, while 19th century German society moved forwards economically and industrially, it did not do so politically. For Fischer, German foreign policy before 1914 was largely motivated by the efforts of the reactionary German elite to distract the public from casting their votes for the Social Democrats
and to make Germany the world's greatest power at the expense of France
, Britain
, and Russia
. The German elite that caused World War One was also ultimately responsible for the failure of the Weimar Republic
which opened the way for the Third Reich. This traditional German elite, in Fischer's analysis, was dominated by a racist, imperialist and capitalist ideology that was little different from the beliefs of the Nazis. For this reason, Fischer called Bethmann-Hollweg the "Hitler of 1914." Fischer's claims set off the so-called "Fischer Controversy" of the early 1960s when German historians led by Gerhard Ritter
attempted to rebut Fischer, but, as the Australian historian John Moses noted in 1999, the documentary evidence introduced by Fischer is extremely persuasive in arguing that Germany was responsible for World War I. In 1990, The Economist
advised its readers to examine Fischer’s “well documented” book to examine why people in Eastern Europe feared the prospect of German unification.
Fischer with his analytical model caused a revolution in German historiography. Fischer's Primat der Innenpolitik heuristic, with its examination of the "inputs" into German foreign policy by domestic pressure groups and their interaction with the imperialist ideas of the German elite, forced a reevaluation of German foreign policy in the Imperial era. In addition, his discovery of Imperial German government documents advocating as a war aim the ethnic cleansing of Russian Poland and subsequent German colonization in order to provide Germany with Lebensraum
(living space) led many to argue that similar schemes pursued by the Nazis in World War II were not due solely to Adolf Hitler
's ideas but rather reflected the widely held German aspirations that long pre-dated Hitler. Many German historians in the 1960s such as Gerhard Ritter
who liked to argue that Hitler was just a 'Betriebsunfall' (an unfortunate accident) of history with no real connection to German history were outraged by Fischer's publication of these documents and attacked his work as "anti-German".
. His arguments sparked so much anger that his publisher's office in Hamburg
was firebombed. His works inspired other historians, such as Gerhard Ritter
, to write books and articles in direct response to his war-aims thesis. In 1964, Ritter successfully lobbied the West German Foreign Ministry to cancel the travel funds that had been allocated for Fischer to visit the United States; in Ritter's opinion, giving Fischer a chance to express his "anti-German" views would be a "national tragedy", and it was best that Fischer not be allowed to visit America.
Some critics contend that Fischer placed Germany outside the proper historical context. Germany was not uniquely aggressive amongst European nations of the early 20th century, a time when Social Darwinian
ideals of struggle were popular throughout European governing circles. Fischer's timetable has also been criticized as inaccurate. Hollweg's Septemberprogramm
outlining German war aims, was not produced until after the war had begun and was still going well for Germany. At the same time, other powers had been harboring similarly grandiose plans.
Causes of World War I
The causes of World War I, which began in central Europe in July 1914, included many intertwined factors, such as the conflicts and hostility of the four decades leading up to the war. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism played major roles in the conflict as well...
. Fischer has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing as the most important German historian of the 20th century.
Biography
Fischer was born in LudwigsstadtLudwigsstadt
Ludwigsstadt is a municipality in the district of Kronach, in the Upper Franconian region of Bavaria, Germany. It is situated at the state's northern border in the Franconian Forest mountain range, north of Kronach, and south of Saalfeld in Thuringia, the only Bavarian municipality north of the...
in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. His father was a railroad inspector. Educated at grammar schools in Ansbach and Eichstätt, Fischer attended the University of Berlin and the University of Erlangen, where he studied history, pedagogy, philosophy and theology. Fischer joined the Nazi Party in 1939, and left the Party in 1942. Fischer's major early influences were the standard Hegelian-Rankean idea typical of the pre-1945 German historical profession, and as such, Fischer's early writings bore a strong bent towards the right. This influence was reflected in Fischer's first books, biographies of Ludwig Nicolovius, a leading 19th century Prussian educational reformer and of Moritz August von Bethmann Hollweg
August von Bethmann-Hollweg
Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg was a German jurist and Prussian politician.- Life :...
, the Prussian Minister of Education between 1858-1862.
In 1942, Fischer married Margarete Lauth-Volkmann, with whom he fathered two children. Fischer served in the Wehrmacht
German Army
The German Army is the land component of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Following the disbanding of the Wehrmacht after World War II, it was re-established in 1955 as the Bundesheer, part of the newly formed West German Bundeswehr along with the Navy and the Air Force...
in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. After his release from a POW camp in 1947, Fischer became a professor at the University of Hamburg
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...
, where he stayed until his retirement in 1978.
Theorist and author
After World War II, Fischer re-evaluated his previous beliefs, and decided that the popular explanations of National Socialism offered by such historians as Friedrich MeineckeFriedrich Meinecke
Friedrich Meinecke was a liberal German historian, probably the most famous German historian of his generation. As a representative of an older tradition still writing after World War II, he was an important figure to the end of his life.-Life:Meinecke was born in Salzwedel in the Province of Saxony...
in which Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was just a Betriebsunfall (an occupational accident, meaning 'a spanner in the works') of history were unacceptable. In 1949, at the first post-war German Historians' Congress in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, Fischer strongly criticized the Lutheran tradition in German life, accusing the Lutheran church of glorifying the state at the expense of individual liberties and thus helping to bring about Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. Fischer complained that the Lutheran church had for too long glorified the state as a divinely sanctioned institution that could do no wrong, and thus paved the way for National Socialism. Fischer rejected the then popular argument in Germany that Nazi Germany had been the result of the Treaty of Versailles, and instead argued that the origins of Nazi Germany predated 1914, and were the result of long-standing ambitions of the German power elite.
In the 1950s, Fischer was the first historian who examined all of the Imperial German government archives in their entirety and as a result, as the American Klaus Epstein noted when Fischer published his findings in 1961, he instantly rendered obsolete every book previously published on the subject of responsibility for the First World War, and German aims in that war
Septemberprogramm
The Septemberprogramm was a plan drafted by the German leadership in the early weeks of the First World War. It detailed Germany's ambitious gains should it win the war, as it expected...
.
By 1961, Fischer, who had risen to the rank of full professor at the University of Hamburg, rocked the history profession with his first postwar book, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918 (published in English as Germany's Aims in the First World War), in which he argued that Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
had deliberately instigated the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in an attempt to become a world power. In this book, which was primarily concerned with the role played in the formation of German foreign policy by domestic pressure groups, Fischer argued that various pressure groups within German society had ambitions for aggressive imperialist policy in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In Fischer's opinion, the "September Program" of September 1914 calling for the annexation of most of Europe and Africa was an attempt at compromise between the various demands of the lobbying groups within German society for wide-ranging territorial expansion. Fischer argued that the German government deliberately and consciously used the crisis occasioned by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the summer of 1914 to execute already preformulated plans for a war against France and Russia in order to create Mitteleuropa, a German-dominated Europe and Mittelafrika, a German-dominated Africa. Though Fischer argued that the German government did not want a war with Britain at that moment, they were fully prepared to run the risk in pursuit of Mitteleuropa and Mittelafrika.
The book was preceded by Fischer's groundbreaking 1959 article in the Historische Zeitschrift
Historische Zeitschrift
Historische Zeitschrift, founded in 1859 by Heinrich von Sybel is considered to be the first and for a time the foremost historical journal. The creation of this journal inspired Gabriel Monod to found the French Revue historique in 1876. In 1886 the English Historical Review was founded and in...
in which he first published the arguments that he expanded upon in his 1961 book. In The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History is an historico-philosophical work by Philip Bobbitt. It was first published in 2002 by Alfred Knopf in the US and Penguin in the UK.-Theses:...
, Philip Bobbitt
Philip Bobbitt
Philip Chase Bobbitt is an American author, academic, and public servant who has lectured in the United Kingdom. He is best known for work on military strategy and constitutional law and theory, and as the author of Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution , The Shield of Achilles: War,...
has written that after Fischer published it became, "impossible to maintain" that World War I had been some sort of "ghastly mistake" rather than a deliberate and intentional German policy.
For most Germans, it was acceptable to believe that Germany had caused World War Two, but not World War One, which was still widely regarded as a war forced upon Germany by its encircling enemies. Fischer was the first German historian to publish documents showing that the German chancellor Dr. Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had developed plans in 1914 to annex all of Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, part of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and part of European Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Fischer suggested that there was continuity in German foreign policy from 1900 to the Second World War, implying that Germany was responsible for both world wars. These ideas were expanded in his later books Krieg der Illusionen (War of Illusions), Bündnis der Eliten (From Kaiserreich to Third Reich) and Hitler war kein Betriebsunfall (Hitler Was No Chance Accident). Though Fischer was an expert in the Imperial era, his work was important in the debate
Nazi Foreign Policy (debate)
This article refers to the historical argument over the Nazi Foreign Policy in terms of territorial expansion. The National Socialists governed Germany between 1933 and 1945...
about the foreign policy of the Third Reich.
In his 1969 book Krieg der Illusionen, Fischer offered a detailed study of German politics from 1911 to 1914, in which he offered a Primat der Innenpolitik (Primacy of Domestic Politics) analysis of German foreign policy. In Fischer's view, the Imperial German state saw itself under siege by rising demands for democracy at home and looked to distract democratic strivings through a policy of aggressive expansionism abroad.
Fischer was the first German historian to support the negative version of the "Sonderweg
Sonderweg
Sonderweg is a controversial theory in German historiography that considers the German-speaking lands, or the country Germany, to have followed a unique course from aristocracy into democracy, distinct from other European countries...
" or "special path"' interpretation of German history, which holds that the way German culture and society developed from the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
onwards (or from a later time, such as the establishment of the German Reich of 1871) inexorably culminated in the Third Reich. In Fischer's view, while 19th century German society moved forwards economically and industrially, it did not do so politically. For Fischer, German foreign policy before 1914 was largely motivated by the efforts of the reactionary German elite to distract the public from casting their votes for the Social Democrats
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
and to make Germany the world's greatest power at the expense of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Britain
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
, and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. The German elite that caused World War One was also ultimately responsible for the failure of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
which opened the way for the Third Reich. This traditional German elite, in Fischer's analysis, was dominated by a racist, imperialist and capitalist ideology that was little different from the beliefs of the Nazis. For this reason, Fischer called Bethmann-Hollweg the "Hitler of 1914." Fischer's claims set off the so-called "Fischer Controversy" of the early 1960s when German historians led by Gerhard Ritter
Gerhard Ritter
Gerhard Georg Bernhard Ritter was a conservative German historian.-Before the Third Reich:...
attempted to rebut Fischer, but, as the Australian historian John Moses noted in 1999, the documentary evidence introduced by Fischer is extremely persuasive in arguing that Germany was responsible for World War I. In 1990, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
advised its readers to examine Fischer’s “well documented” book to examine why people in Eastern Europe feared the prospect of German unification.
Fischer with his analytical model caused a revolution in German historiography. Fischer's Primat der Innenpolitik heuristic, with its examination of the "inputs" into German foreign policy by domestic pressure groups and their interaction with the imperialist ideas of the German elite, forced a reevaluation of German foreign policy in the Imperial era. In addition, his discovery of Imperial German government documents advocating as a war aim the ethnic cleansing of Russian Poland and subsequent German colonization in order to provide Germany with Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
(living space) led many to argue that similar schemes pursued by the Nazis in World War II were not due solely to Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's ideas but rather reflected the widely held German aspirations that long pre-dated Hitler. Many German historians in the 1960s such as Gerhard Ritter
Gerhard Ritter
Gerhard Georg Bernhard Ritter was a conservative German historian.-Before the Third Reich:...
who liked to argue that Hitler was just a 'Betriebsunfall' (an unfortunate accident) of history with no real connection to German history were outraged by Fischer's publication of these documents and attacked his work as "anti-German".
Criticisms
Fischer caused a deep controversy with his books, particularly in West GermanyWest Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. His arguments sparked so much anger that his publisher's office in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
was firebombed. His works inspired other historians, such as Gerhard Ritter
Gerhard Ritter
Gerhard Georg Bernhard Ritter was a conservative German historian.-Before the Third Reich:...
, to write books and articles in direct response to his war-aims thesis. In 1964, Ritter successfully lobbied the West German Foreign Ministry to cancel the travel funds that had been allocated for Fischer to visit the United States; in Ritter's opinion, giving Fischer a chance to express his "anti-German" views would be a "national tragedy", and it was best that Fischer not be allowed to visit America.
Some critics contend that Fischer placed Germany outside the proper historical context. Germany was not uniquely aggressive amongst European nations of the early 20th century, a time when Social Darwinian
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
ideals of struggle were popular throughout European governing circles. Fischer's timetable has also been criticized as inaccurate. Hollweg's Septemberprogramm
Septemberprogramm
The Septemberprogramm was a plan drafted by the German leadership in the early weeks of the First World War. It detailed Germany's ambitious gains should it win the war, as it expected...
outlining German war aims, was not produced until after the war had begun and was still going well for Germany. At the same time, other powers had been harboring similarly grandiose plans.
External links
- Volker BerghahnVolker BerghahnVolker Rolf Berghahn is a historian of German and modern European history at Columbia University. His research interests have included the fin de siècle period in Europe, the origins of World War I, and German-American relations. He received his M.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel...
, "Fritz Fischer, 1908–1999" in: AHA Perspectives (March 2000).