Fritz Fischer

Fritz Fischer (March 5, 1908- December 1, 1999) was a German historian best known for his analysis of the causes of World War I. Fischer was born in Ludwigstadt 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. 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 an POW camp in 1947, Fischer began serving as professor at the University of Hamburg, where he stayed until his retirement in 1978. 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.

Related Topics:
March 5 - 1908 - December 1 - 1999 - Causes of World War I - Bavaria - University of Berlin - University of Erlangen - Wehrmacht - World War II - 1947 - 1978 - Nazi Germany

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By 1961, Fischer, who had risen to the rank of professor emeritus at University of Hamburg, rocked the history profession with his first postwar book, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914-1918 (Loosely translated as Grasping at Power: Germany's Aims in the First World War), in which he argued that Germany, in a quest for world power, had deliberately instigated the first world war. For most Germans at this time, it was acceptable to believe that Germany caused World War Two, not World War One, which was still regarded as a war forced upon Germany. Fischer was the first German historian to publish documents showing that German chancellor Dr. Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had developed plans in 1914 to annex all of Belgium, much of France and most of Russia. Furthermore, Fischer suggested that there was continuity in German aims from 1900 to the Second World War, meaning that in fact Germany was very much responsible for both world wars. These ideas were expanded in Fischer's books Krieg der Illusionen (War of Illusions), Bündnis der Eliten (From Kaiserreich to Third Reich) and Hitler war kein Betriebsunfall (Hitler was no Industrial Accident).

Related Topics:
University of Hamburg - Germany - The first world war - World War One - Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg - Belgium - France - Russia - Second World War

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Fischer was the first German historian to champion the "Sonderweg" or "special path"' interpretation of German history, which holds that the way German culture and society developed from the Reformation on 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. Furthermore, for Fischer the same German elite that caused World War One also caused the failure of the Weimar Republic and ushered in the Third Reich. This traditional German elite, in Fischer's analysis, was dominated by an irrational racist, imperialist, and capitalist ideology that was no different from the beliefs of the Nazis. For this reason, Fischer called Bethmann-Hollweg the "Hitler of 1914".

Related Topics:
Sonderweg - Reformation - Third Reich - Social Democrats - France - Britain - Russia - World War One - Weimar Republic

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~