German Studies Association

Functionalists vs. Intentionalists: The Debate Twenty Years on or Whatever Happened to Functionalism and Intentionalism? Author(s): Richard Bessel Reviewed work(s): Source: German Studies Review, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 15-20 Published by: German Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1432899 . Accessed: 08/05/2012 19:16
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The vs.Intentionalists: Debate Functionalists TwentyYearsOn or WhateverHappenedto and Functionalism Intentionalism?

RichardBessel Universityof York

The Cumberland Lodge Conferenceof May 1979 was clearly a milestone in the of the "ThirdReich."' As we know, the theme of the conference, historiography "The National Socialist Regime and GermanSociety," provided a platformfor sharpdisagreementaboutthe place of Hitler in the decision-makingprocesses of whichTimMasonmemorably describedasbetween theNazi regime- disagreement and the Nazi state, thus defining the "functionalists" "intentionalists" examining termsof a debatewhich occupied a centralplace in textbooksfor years thereafter. The question of whetherone should regardthe actions of the "NationalSocialist Regime"as the unfoldingof the ideology andexpressedintentionsof its leadership or (and of Hitlerin particular), whetherone insteadshouldfocus on the dynamics of decision-makingprocesses and the institutionalpressuresinherentin the Nazi system of government,seemed to dominatediscussion of the Nazi stateduringthe 1980s. Since thattime, however, the battlelines have become ratherblurred.Already in the first edition of his reasonedandjudicious assessmentof the historiography, are publishedin 1985, IanKershawconcludedthat"'Intention'and'structure' both essential elements of an explanationof the ThirdReich, andneed synthesis rather thanto be set in opposition to each other."2 would seem that in the intervening It Kershaw's soberjudgmenthas been accepted, as serious historiansof Nazi years Germany, and not least the historians who since 1979 have done pathbreaking researchon the murderof Europe's Jews, have come to doubt the importanceof neitherthe ordersgiven by theNazi leadershipnorthe institutional contextin which these orders were given and carriedout. The battle cry sounded at Cumberland Lodge now seems past history; in the twenty-threeyears since the Cumberland of Lodge conferenceandthe twentyyearssince thepublication Der "Fiihrerstaat": und Realitit, the historical landscapehas alteredconsiderably.We now Mythos know vastly more than we did two decades ago abouthow the National Socialist

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regime functioned,how the Nazi policies of genocide were carriedout, how the "ThirdReich"administered exploited wartimeoccupied Europe,particularly and the killing fields of EasternEurope,how racialismpermeatedalmostall aspectsof Nazi politicsandthefunctioningof theNazi state,how theNazi warsof annihilation werefought,and aboutboththe degreeto which local initiativeswere instrumental in shapingthe campaignsof mass murderon the groundand the responsibilityof Adolf Hitlerfor the decisions which led to war and genocide. The resultis a much betterinformed,muchmoredetailedandmorenuancedpictureof the Nazi regime, and most serious historians of the Nazi regime now are to some extent both and "intentionalists" "functionalists" insofaras thosetermsstill canbe used atall. Thus it might appearthat the controversywhich eruptedat the Cumberland Lodge conference was less earthshakingthan assumed at the time and shortly debatenow seems versus"functionalist" Interestin the "intentionalist" afterwards. to lie, if it lies anywhere, in that graveyardof historiographicalconcerns, the English A-level syllabus. One almost might believe that peace had broken out would amonghistoriansof Nazi Germany somethingwhichon pastperformance seem highly implausible, and which is belied by the renewed and often bitter controversiesof more recent years. These more recent controversies,I want to issues raisedat Cumberland Lodge. suggest, are not unrelatedto the fundamental and its The shift in the assessment of "functionalism"and "intentionalism" have been due to a removal from the front line of historiographical controversy number of interrelated developments which unfolded since we gathered in Cumberland Lodge in 1979. One such is the opening up of new archivalsources, in easternEuropein the wake of the collapse of the formerSoviet bloc, particularly which among other things has allowed us to see how decisions were carriedout which led to the deathsof millions of people in Galicia, Ukraine,Lithuania,White Russia. Anotheris the demise of Marxismas a dominanthistoricalparadigm.The appeal of structuralexplanations revolving around the relationship between capitalismand fascism and of class and class conflict has faded, not least because beforetheprincipal challengefacinganyserioushistorian inadequate theyappeared theThirdReich, namelyhow to explainthe greatestcrimescommittedby human of beings in modernhistory. In recentyears the focus of the writingon Nazi Germanyhas shiftedprecisely to these crimes. We now work in an intellectualenvironmentvery differentfrom that in which it could be asserted that: "For some time, for many decades, the materialistconception of history-the first-bornintellectual child of Marx and I Engels- has been growingin self-confidence."3 quoteherethe opening sentence of EdwardThompson'sessay on "ThePovertyof Theory"-which was published in 1978, shortlybeforetheCumberland Lodge conference- not simplyto illustrate how much intellectualassumptionsand fashions have changed since that time. I quoteit also because Thompson'sfierce polemic had been prominentamongTim Mason's readingwhile he was writinghis essay on "Intentionand Explanation,"

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which begins the collection on the "Fiihrerstaat." Certainlymuchof the inspiration what he labeled "intentionalism"derived from a behind Mason's attack on (Marxist)perspective,which posits anunderlyinglogic to historicalprocesses and thatto engage in a "literalreading"of sources aboutpeople's intentionstherefore Historicaldevelopments,includingthe horrors is to miss the point fundamentally. unleashed by National Socialism, were to be explained by uncovering their underlying logics. To concentrateon the stated intentions of the main political actorsis, from this perspective,to offer no explanationat all. Fromthe otherside of the battlelines of the 1970s came the chargethatto focus on some assumed underlyinglogic, embedded in processes of decision-making and/orallegedlyrevealedthrougha materialist conceptionof history,was to ignore individual human responsibility-and, in the case of the monstrous crimes of Nazism, in effect to be guilty of a derelictionof one' s moralduty.Backin 1976 Karl Dietrich Bracher(who also attendedthe 1979 conference at Cumberland Lodge) and took aim atthe "Marxists" the "realists" failingto focus on questionsof guilt for and responsibility and thus inviting "a new underestimationand minimizing of National Socialism" (eine neuerliche Unterschdtzungund Bagatellisierung des Nationalsozialismus): While the one groupwarmsover the Marxisttheses of the bourgeois-liberal and reactionarycharacterof "Fascism"on the whole, the other-misjudging the political and moralprioritiesof thattime-speaks of the almost normalbut in no way well-plannedpower politics in the ThirdReich andexpects virtuallya new epoch in researchon National Socialism to follow from the avoidanceof the question of historical guilt. However, this so reduces the ideological and totalitarian dimensions of National Socialism thatthe barbarity 1933-45 as of moralproblemdisappears.It could seem almost as if the way has been cleared for a new wave of trivializationor even apologetics.4 This moralcharge,it seems to me, lay at the core of the disputeswhich were aired at Cumberland Lodge, and points to the issue which is a matterof controversyno less sharptodaythanit was a quarter a centuryago. Ithasresurfaced some form of in or other in every major dispute among historiansof Nazi Germanyfor the past twenty years, and is as pressing today as it was in 1976, when Bracher first of publishedthe accusationquoted above. It was presentin the "Historikerstreit" the mid-1980s, when it was a weapon used most effectively by figures on the left against the concern expressed by Ernst Nolte about a "pastthat would not pass who warnedin 1987 against"lettingthe away"(andechoed by Franz-JosefStrauB, vision of a great Germanpast be blocked by the sight-screensof those accursed twelve years between 1933 and 1945" and urged that it was time for Germanyto "emergefrom the shadow of the ThirdReich").sIt lay behind the extraordinary attackby Aro Mayer on Detlev Peukertat the 1988 Philadelphiaconference on

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the "Re-Evaluating ThirdReich."6 Moral outrage and self-righteousness motivated Daniel Goldhagen and his supporters,not least when ranged against most of the respectedmembersof the historicalprofession in Germanyand elsewhere who had been hostile to Hitler's Willing Executioners. As Robert Leicht, Chefredakteurof Die Zeit, wrote of Hitler's WillingExecutionersin his newspaperin September1996: "Thisis in the a firstinstancenota historicalbutrather moralbook- not a report ajudgment."7 but And it has surfacedagainin the pastcouple of years,perhapsmost stridentlyin the work of Michael Burleigh, work which is characterized more than a whiff of by moralsuperiorityand aboutwhich more below. Perhaps because we became fixated on the terms "functionalist" and we accusation "intentionalists," tendedsomewhatto lose sight of the fundamental and dereliction of the moral duty of the historian which lay of "trivialization" behind the Cumberland Lodge dispute. It was perhapstoo easy to assume that at stakewasjust how to assess the decision-making processin Nazi Germany,andthat the entrenchedpositions were relatively easily correlatedto political positionsthe "intentionalists" regardedas tending towards the conservative right and the "functionalists" identifiedmorewiththeleft. Thusperhapswe lost sightof whatthe debate was really about, and continues to be about: morality, and the moral obligationsof historians.In this regardthingsmay not have changedall thatmuch in the past quarter a century.Much of the recent work on Nazi Germany,some of of it quite impressive, is also aboutmorality. As alreadynoted, this is most strikinglythe case in the "New History"of the "ThirdReich,"recentlypublishedwith such hype, by Michael Burleigh.Many of tossed aroundduringthe late 1970s could be read the chargesandcounter-charges on Burleigh'swork.Forexample,one easily could as a contemporary commentary imagine Bracher'scomments being marshaledin supportof Burleigh, while the could be read changes leveled in 1979 by Tim Mason againstthe "intentionalists" of Burleigh's approach.(Also, it should be noted, Burleighhas been as a critique sharplycriticalof the approachonce championedby Mason, e.g., when he wrote: "TheThirdReich was intendedto be a racialratherthan a class society. This fact baseduponmodernization, in itself makesexistingtheories,whether totalitarianism, of or global theoriesof Fascism,poorheuristicdevices for a greaterunderstanding what was a singularregime withoutprecedentor parallel.")8 To suggesthow littlethebattlelines mayhavechangedsince 1979,1quotefrom the first of Tim Mason's methodologicalcriticismsof the "functionalist" position as he saw it in his Cumberland Lodge contribution: attackon theincorporation functionalist of theintentionalist typesof explanation of into our understanding National Socialism proposes, implicitly but clearly, a retreatby the historicalprofessionto the methodsand stance of Burckhardt. [...] Burckhardtsaw the historian's task as to investigate, to classify and to

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order,to hate, to love andto warn-but not, except uponthe smallestof scales, to explain. This approachhad almost no explanatorypower at all. The attempt at explanationin any and all of the various different traditionsof rationalist historiographyseems to have been put to one side in intentionalistwriting on National Socialism.9 Explanation, in the sense used here, included the use of (Marxist) theoretical perspectiveswhich were widely employed twenty-oddyears ago but which have ratherfallen out of fashion since. Nevertheless, Mason's critique is not at all irrelevantto today's concerns, and it does not require a tremendousamount of imaginationto see how this critiquemightbe directedat Burleigh's"New History" of the ThirdReich. Thatbook is, in Burleigh's own words, about"whathappened when sectionsof the Germanelites andmasses of ordinary people chose to abdicate theirindividualcriticalfacilities in favorof politics basedon faith,hope,hatredand sentimentalcollective self-regardfor their own race and nation."10 is a story of It (abdicated) moral responsibility, of a successful "assault on decency" and the "moral breakdown transformation anadvancedindustrial and of society."Burleigh dismisses the old debates about the alleged "modernization" brought about by Nazism or abouttherelativeimportance intentionsandstructures determining of in Nazi policies with a disdainfulair.His approachis the antithesisof thatposited by RichardBreitman,who a few years ago in a generalessay on the "final solution" asserted(perhapsmorein hope thanas an observation):"Historians preferto avoid moralor theologicaljudgmentsand to find useful analyticalconcepts."11 Instead, Burleigh's work suggests that the ultimate responsibility of the historian is precisely to take a moral stance, as a warning to the reader.His story is about is, criminalityandmorality;his approach indeed,"toinvestigate,to classify andto order,to hate, to love and to warn." Whenexaminingthe recenthistoriography the ThirdReich, it is revealingto of note the almost complete divergence between the subjects discussed in detail at Cumberland Lodge (as opposed to the general,overarchingdebates about"Hitler in the National Socialist Power Structure")and the subjects to which Burleigh devotes close attentionin his "New History."The more detailed papersgiven at Cumberland Lodge concernedvariousgovernmentandPartyinstitutions(thecivil service, local and regional government, the Reichsndhrstand,the SA, etc.), questionsof Nazi economic policy, andinterest-group politics. These themes lent themselvesmoreto a "functionalist" attheCumberland analysis Lodge conference, anddo notreallyfigurein Burleigh'shistory.Conversely,thepoliticsof reproduction andeugenics,Nazi policy againstthe Jews, the all-pervasive,appliedracismof the regime, the barbarousconduct of the war, the apocalypticvision of the Nazisthese are themes which lie at the center of Burleigh's synthesis (and much other recent research)but were conspicuous by their absence at Cumberland Lodge in 1979. The fact thatsuch themeswere not discussed at Cumberland Lodge, andthat

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heated debates about the nature of the Nazi regime could have taken place without much if any reference to them, shows the distance we have traveled in the past couple of decades. Now the monstrous crimes of the Nazi regime are explicitly at the center of our concerns. However, despite this important shift in emphasis, the underlying point at issue has remained the same: the moral stance of the historian and the need to explain. In this sense, the debates of Cumberland Lodge are no less relevant to present-day approaches to the history of Nazi Germany than they were to the concerns and preoccupations which so agitated us twenty years ago. paperwas originally presentedat the Twenty-fifth AnniversarySymposium of the GermanHistorical InstituteLondon, 16 November 2001. 2 Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London:EdwardArnold, 1985), 81. 3 E.P. Thompson."ThePovertyof Theory:or An Orrery Errors," E.P. Thompson,The of in Poverty of Theoryand OtherEssays (London:Merlin Press, 1978), 193. 4 "Wahrend einen die marxistischen und die Thesen vom burgerlich-liberalen reaktionaren Charakter "Faschismus" des insgesamterneuern,sprechendie anderenin Verkennungder damaligen politisch-moralischen Prioritatenvon fast normal anmutender,keineswegs im von der planvollerMachtpolitik DrittenReichunderwarten derAusblendung historischen Damit aber Schuldfragegeradezueine neue Epoche der Nationalsozialismus-Forschung. die ideologische und totalitare Dimensionen des Nationalsozialismus so schrumpft zusammen, dass die Barbarei von 1933-45 als moralisches Problem verschwindet. Es konnte fast scheinen, als bahne sich eine neue Welle der Verharmlosung oder gar und Apologetikan."KarlDietrichBracher,"Tradition Revolutionim Nationalsozialismus," in: ManfredFunke,ed., Hitler, Deutschlandunddie Machte.MaterialienzurAufienpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1978 [orig. pub. 1976]), 17-18. 5 See RichardJ. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow. West GermanHistorians and the Attemptto the Nazi Past (New York: PantheonBooks, 1989), 19. Escape from 6 Most of the contributionsto the Philadelphia conference were published as Thomas ChildersandJaneCaplan,eds.,Reevaluatingthe ThirdReich(New York:Holmes & Meier, xiii-xiv. 1993). The attackon Peukertis alluded to in CharlesMaier's "Foreword," 7 "Dies ist in erster Linie nicht ein historisches, sondern ein moralisches Buch-kein Gutachten,sondernein Urteil,"Die Zeit, 6 Sept. 1996. Quotedin WernerBergmann,"Im in in: falschenSystem:Die Goldhagen-Debatte WissenschaftundOffentlichkeit," Johannes Der und Heil andRainerErb,eds., Geschichtswissenschaft Offentlichkeit. StreitumDaniel am J. Goldhagen (Frankfurt Main: Fischer TaschenbuchVerlag, 1998), 135. 8 Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann,The Racial State. Germany1933-1945 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991), 306-7. 9 Tim Mason, "IntentionandExplanation:A Current Controversyaboutthe Interpretation of National Socialism," in: Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker, eds., Der und "Fiihrerstaat."Mythosund Realitat. Studienzur Struktur Politik des DrittenReiches (Stuttgart:Klett-Cotta, 1981), 29. 10 Michael Burleigh, The ThirdReich. A New History (New York:Hill & Wang, 2000), 1. 1 Richard Breitman, "The "Final Solution," in: Gordon Martel, ed., Modern Germany Reconsidered, 1870-1945 (London:Routledge, 1992), 198. 1 This