GERMAN EXPAT HISTORIANS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE NATIONAL-SOCIALISM IN 1940-1960s
The scientific migration from the Nazi Germany to the USA is the subject of close attention by experts who study development of historical science in the USA and, in particular, such a trend as History of Germany. In the USA before the second half of the XX century not much attention was paid to the history of European countries, and a few researches on the history of Great Britain and France are just some isolated examples. Expat historians had changed the situation. The article presents an analysis of political views of German historians who left for the USA after Nazis had come to power. German expat historians are divided into two groups: 1. emigrants of “the first wave” who earned their qualification in History in Germany and worked as instructors at German universities; and 2. emigrants of “the second wave” who were brought to the USA by their parents and obtained education in the host country. Along with the financial support the US government provided the German emigrants with an opportunity to continue their scientific and educational activities. The research activities by German expat historians embraced such a significant topic as the reasons of Nazis’ coming to power. The most important trends of their research are: sustainability of the historical pattern of Germany, the so called ‘extraordinary path’; the reasons for the Weimar Republic collapse; the role of the upper middle class and the army leadership as well as the intellectual elite of Germany in Hitler’s coming to power; the intellectual origin of Nazism; the ideas of ‘the conservative revolution’; the mass culture. Expat historians were the first ones who turned to the issues of ‘Holocaust’. The article reveals the influence of ‘the Cold War’ and the doctrine of totalitarianism on the study of Nazism. The article touches upon the problems of interaction between expat historians and their colleagues in the Federative Republic of Germany and the impact the former made on modernization of the historical science in the West Germany.