Martin Broszat (14 August 1926 – 14 October 1989) was a German historian specializing in modern German social history. As director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History) in Munich from 1972 until his death, he became known as one of the world's most eminent scholars of Nazi Germany.
Broszat joined the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in 1955 after obtaining his PhD from the University of Cologne. His work at the Institute included serving as an expert witness for the prosecution at the 1963–1965 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, and helping to debunk the forged Hitler Diaries in 1983.Harris, Robert (1986). Selling Hitler. New York: Pantheon Books, 348–349. He also held an honorary professorship at the University of Konstanz."List of Contributors", in Elizabeth Harvey, Johannes Hürter (eds.) (2018). German Yearsbook of Contemporary History. Hitler—New Research. Institute for Contemporary History, De Gruyter.
According to Ian Kershaw, Broszat made important contributions in four areas. From the late 1950s, he worked on the history of Eastern Europe, especially Poland, and on Nazi concentration camps. This led to his exploration of the structure of the Nazi German state, which resulted in his book Der Staat Hitlers (1969), published in English as The Hitler State (1981). In the 1970s he became interested in Alltagsgeschichte and examined everyday life under the Nazis, developing the concept of "Resistenz" (immunity) and co-editing a six-volume work about Bavaria under National Socialism, Bayern in der NS-Zeit (1977–1983).Kershaw 1990, 311. In 1985, he began the debate about the historicization of Nazi Germany, arguing that it should be studied like any other period of history, without moralizing and with recognition of its complexity.Kershaw 1990, 311, 314.Broszat, Martin and Friedländer, Saul (1988). "A Controversy about the Historicization of National Socialism". New German Critique, 44, Special Issue on the Historikerstreit, 85–12.
Early life Military service and studies Born in Leipzig, Germany (the Weimar Republic), to a Protestant family, the second son of a postmaster, Broszat attended the Königin-Carola Gymnasium from 1937 and completed his Abitur there in 1944."Martin Broszat". munzinger.de. Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, when Broszat was six, and World War II (1939–1945) had started when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, and France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, as they had warned they would. After leaving school, Broszat enlisted and completed basic military training with the Wehrmacht (Stammkompanie des Panzergrenadier-Ersatzbataillons 108, Dresden), followed by officer training, then service at the front.
After the war, Broszat studied history at the University of Leipzig in the Soviet occupation zone, later East Germany, from 1946. He graduated in 1949, then undertook graduate studies at the University of Cologne. He obtained his PhD in 1952, supervised by Theodor Schieder,Berg, Nicolas (2003). The Invention of "Functionalism": Joseph Wulf, Martin Broszat, and the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich) in the 1960s. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 15. for a thesis on German antisemitism, Die antisemitische Bewegung im Wilhelminischen Deutschland ("The antisemitism movement in Germany during the Wilhelmine period")."Die antisemitische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Deutschland". Trove, National Library of Australia.
Party membership As a teenager, Broszat joined the Hitler Youth in Großdeuben (now part of Böhlen), at a time when membership was mandatory for "Aryans". In 1944 a membership card for the Nazi Party was issued for him. Broszat acknowledged having joined the Hitler Youth, but that a Nazi Party card existed in his name was first made public after his death. It is not known whether he applied to join the party, or whether the card was issued to him automatically as a Hitler Youth member who had come of age; at that point, members were admitted from age 17.; also see . His card (number 9994096) is one of ten million held by the German Bundesarchiv. When he applied to study at the University of Leipzig in 1946, he answered no to the question on the form: "Were you a member of the NSDAP?" By then, Leipzig had fallen under the control of the Soviet Union and had been annexed to East Germany. The historian Norbert Frei writes that making a false statement would have been risky, and concludes that Broszat probably did not know that a membership card had been issued in his name.
Early career Institut für Zeitgeschichte After university, Broszat worked with Theodor Schieder on the eight-volume Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa (1954–1957), and in 1955 he joined the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich.Kershaw, Ian (1990). "Martin Broszat (1926–89)". German History, 8(3), 310 (310–316). The Institute had been founded to study the Nazi era; the head of its advisory board at the time was Hans Rothfels, who also edited its journal, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte.Eckel, Jan (July 2007). "Hans Rothfels: An Intellectual Biography in the Age of Extremes". Journal of Contemporary History, 42(3), 428 (421–446).
Initially Broszat's work focused on German Ostpolitik (policy in the east), and antisemitism and fascism in south-eastern and eastern Europe. During this period he wrote two books about German involvement in Poland, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik (1961), which examined the German occupation of Poland, and Zweihundert Jahre deutscher Polenpolitik (1963).Kershaw 1990, 311. The work won him accolades in Poland as one of the first German historians to offer an honest account of German–Polish relations."Martin Broszat", in Deborah Andrews (ed.) (1990). The Annual Obituary 1989. Chicago: St. James Press, 602–603.
A recurring interest for Broszat was why and how National Socialism had taken hold in Germany. "Broszat's driving incentive was to help an understanding of how Germany could sink into barbarity," Kershaw wrote. "That he himself had succumbed to the elan of the Nazi Movement was central to his motivation to elucidate for later generations how it could have happened." In his book Der Nationalsozialismus (1960), published in English as German National Socialism 1919–1945 (1966), Broszat examined Nazi ideology, which he regarded as incoherent. For Broszat, the constants were anti-communism, antisemitism and a perceived need for Lebensraum. In his view, these were a cloak for the essence of National Socialism: an intense desire to realize the "rebirth" of "the German nation", and irrational hatred of those considered Volksfeinde (enemies of the German people) and Volksfremde (those foreign to the German "race"). Broszat saw the primary supporters of the Nazis as the middle classes, who turned to Nazism to alleviate their anxieties about impoverishment and "proletarianization" in the wake of hyperinflation in the early 1920s and the mass unemployment that began with the Great Depression.Lorenz, Chris (2019) . "Broszat, Martin 1926–1989", in Kelly Boyd (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. Volume 1. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 143–144.
Letter about Dachau (1962) In 1962 Broszat wrote a letter to the Die Zeit newspaper to "hammer home, once more, the persistently ignored or denied difference between concentration and extermination camps". The Germans had built concentration camps in Germany, but their six extermination camps—built for the purpose of gassing Jews—were in occupied Poland. (The death toll in the concentration camps was high nevertheless, from starvation, disease, beatings, and forced labour.) Holocaust deniers such as Paul Rassinier, Harry Elmer Barnes and David Hoggan made much of the fact in the 1960s that there had been no functioning gas chamber at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. Broszat noted in the letter that a gas chamber was built there shortly before the end of the war to convert Dachau into a death camp, but it was never used. He argued that the confusion in the public's mind between concentration and death camps, and the tendency erroneously to describe Dachau as a death camp, was aiding the deniers.Lipstadt, Deborah (1994) . Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Plume, 78.
Broszat–Wulf letters (1963) When the German-Jewish historian Joseph Wulf accused a prominent German doctor, Wilhelm Hagen, a senior official in the West German Ministry of Health, of having helped to liquidate Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, Broszat and other experts from the Institut für Zeitgeschichte tried to silence him during an exchange of letters in 1963. Hagen, who had worked during the war in the health department of the General Government area of German-occupied Poland, insisted he had done everything in his power to save the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto and asked the Institut für Zeitgeschichte to support his version of events. Broszat wrote a letter to Wulf demanding that he retract his allegations against Hagen "in the interest of the tidiness of the historical document".Berg, Nicholas (2009). "A Forgotten Outsider Among Holocaust Scholars", in Banker, David and Michman, Dan (eds.). Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications and Berghahn Books, 187–189. Ian Kershaw wrote that the correspondence between Broszat and Wulf did not present Broszat in the best light. Broszat accepted Wulf's version of events only after Wulf produced a war-time memo written by Hagen urging that sick Jews "wandering around" be shot down.
Auschwitz trials; Anatomie des SS-Staates (1965)
At the 1963–1965 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, in which 20 of those involved with Auschwitz were prosecuted, Broszat and two other researchers from the Institut für Zeitgeschichte—Helmut Krausnick and Hans Buchheim—served as expert witnesses for the prosecution. Their 300-page report, "Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager", became the basis of their two-volume book (with Hans-Adolf Jacobsen), Anatomie des SS-Staates (1965), published in English as Anatomy of the SS State (1968). It was the first comprehensive study of Auschwitz and the SS.Kershaw 1990, 311; Wittman, Rebecca (2012) . Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 3, 79.
Functionalism Der Staat Hitlers (1969)
In Der Staat Hitlers (The Hitler State) Broszat argued against characterizing Nazi Germany as a totalitarian regime and criticized Karl Dietrich Bracher and Ernst Nolte for advancing such a notion. With Hans Mommsen, Broszat developed a "structuralist" or "functionalist" interpretation of Nazi Germany, arguing in his 1969 book Der Staat Hitlers (The Hitler State) that the government had consisted of a welter of competing institutions and power struggles, and that this internal rivalry, not Adolf Hitler, had been the driving force behind the regime. In Broszat's view, Hitler had been a "weak dictator" (to use Mommsen's phrase) and the government of Nazi Germany a polycracy (rule by many), not a monocracy (rule by one). It was the chaos of the government that led to the collapse of the state and what Kershaw called the "accelerating progression into barbarism".Kershaw 1990, 312. Broszat wrote:
That the Nazi state was a jumble of competing bureaucracies has been widely accepted by historians. The second element, that Hitler was a "weak dictator", is less accepted. The argument is that, although Hitler did not involve himself much in daily administration, this stemmed not from an inability to do so (as Broszat suggested), but from a lack of interest in the quotidian.
"Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution'" (1977)