National Socialism 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 Meinecke in which
Adolf Hitler was just a (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.
Fischer thesis In the 1950s, Fischer examined the extant Imperial German government archives relating to the First World War. (This had previously been done by
Karl Kautsky, Professor
Walther Schucking and Count
Max Montgelas, whose findings were published at
Charlottenburg in November 1919 in a collection known as the "Kautsky documents". This large book was published in English in 1924 as
Outbreak of the World War. A further book by Count Montgelas,
The Case for the Central Powers, was published in London the following year.) In 1961, Fischer, who by then 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 Kriegszielpolitik 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 a world war 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 in German society had ambitions for aggressive imperialist policy in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In Fischer's opinion, the
Septemberprogramm (September Program) of September 1914 calling for the annexation of parts of Europe and Africa was an attempt at compromise between the demands of the lobbying groups in German society for wide-ranging territorial expansion. Fischer argued that the German government used the
July Crisis caused by the
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the summer of 1914 to act on plans for a war against the
Franco-Russian Alliance (Dual Entente) to create , a German-dominated Europe, and , a German-dominated Africa. Though Fischer argued that the German government did not want a war with the
British Empire, they were ready to run the risk in pursuit of annexation and hegemony. The American historian Klaus Epstein opined, in his review of Fischer's book published in October 1962, that Fischer instantly rendered obsolete every book published on the subject of responsibility for the
First World War and German war aims. Fischer's position on German responsibility for the world war has become known as the "Fischer thesis". 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 wrote that Fischer's publication made it "impossible to maintain" that the First World War had been a "ghastly mistake" rather than the consequence of German policy. For most Germans, it was acceptable to believe that Germany had caused the
Second World War, but not the Great War, 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 made plans in September 1914 (after the war began) to annex all of Belgium, part of
France and part of
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 Accident). Though Fischer was an expert on the Imperial era, his work was important in the
debate on the foreign policy of the
Third Reich. In his 1969 book
War of Illusions (
Krieg der Illusionen), Fischer offered a detailed study of German politics from 1911 to 1914 in which he offered an analysis of German foreign policy based on the
Primat der Innenpolitik (primacy of domestic politics). In Fischer's view, the Imperial German state saw itself besieged by rising demands for democracy at home and sought to weaken them through a policy of aggression abroad. Fischer was the first German historian to support the negative version of the ("special path") interpretation of German history, which holds that the way German society developed from the
Reformation (or from a later time, such as the establishment of the German Reich in 1871) inexorably culminated in the Third Reich. In Fischer's view, while 19th-century German society moved forward 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 I was also 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. Fischer called Bethmann Hollweg the "Hitler of 1914". Fischer's arguments set off what is called the "Fischer Controversy" of the early 1960s when German historians led by
Gerhard Ritter attempted to rebut Fischer. The Australian historian John Moses noted in 1999 that 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 reunification. Fischer and his analytical model caused a
revolution in German historiography. His
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 re-evaluation of German foreign policy in the Imperial era. Fischer's discovery of Imperial German government documents advocating the ethnic cleansing of
Russian Poland and subsequent German colonization 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 widely held German aspirations that had existed long before Hitler. Many German historians in the 1960s such as
Gerhard Ritter, who liked to argue that Hitler was just a 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 ==