Hans Christian Gerlach is professor of Modern History at the
University of Bern.
Gerlach is also Associate Editor of the ''
Journal of Genocide Research''
and author of multiple books dealing with the
Hunger Plan,
the Holocaust, and
genocide.
Writings
His books include ''Krieg, Ernährung, Volkermord: Forschungen zur Deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg'' (1998); ''Kalkulierte Morde: die Deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944'' (1999); ''Das letzte Kapitel'' (co-authored with and
Götz Aly in 2002); and ''Sur la conférence de Wannsee'' (2002).
Work and views
Gerlach's article "Extremely Violent Societies: An Alternative to the Concept of Genocide"
has been the subject of great debate among scholars of genocide and violence.
In the article, Gerlach challenges the model utilized in trying to understand genocide. Gerlach has previously stirred intense debate among Holocaust historians with his thesis surrounding 12 December 1941, as the date on which
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
made the decision to annihilate the Jews of Europe.
Gerlach continues to oppose the concept of genocide. His history of the Holocaust, '' The Extermination of the European Jews'', does not use the term, and in a 2023 interview with the
World Socialist Web Site he called genocide "an analytically worthless concept made for political purposes" and "an instrument of liberal imperialism".
Gerlach is also known for his critical attitude towards the
national-conservative resistance in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
. According to Gerlach, the resistance offered by officers such as
Claus von Stauffenberg and
Henning von Tresckow, who were responsible for the
assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944, was insincere, and Tresckow and many other resistance fighters were heavily implicated in
Nazi war crimes.
Gerlach's thesis was criticized by a number of scholars, among them
Peter Hoffmann from
McGill University and , from the
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a political party foundation associated with the
Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). In 2011, , a Harvard based historian, wrote that Gerlach's reading of the sources is highly skewed, and, at times, diametrically opposed to what they actually say. In one case, according to Orbach, Gerlach had falsely paraphrased the memoir of the resistance fighter Colonel
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, and in another case, quoted misleadingly from an
SS document. Hence, Orbach concludes that Gerlach's thesis on the German resistance is highly unreliable.
[Danny Orbach, "Criticism Reconsidered: The German Resistance to Hitler in Critical German Scholarship", Journal of Military History 75:2 (April 2011)]
Other historians agree with Gerlach's findings. For example, the research by
Johannes Hürter, a historian at the
Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, confirms the culpability of the staff of
Army Group Centre in war crimes and Nazi atrocities. In his work ''Auf dem Weg zur Militaeropposition: Tresckow, Gersdoff, der Vernichtungskrieg und der Judenmord'' ("Resistance in the Military: Tresckow, Gersdoff, the War of Extermination and the Murder of Jews"), Huerter analyzes documents on the relationship of Army Group Centre with the
Einsatzgruppe B in 1941. He concludes that Tresckow and his circle of conspirators within the Army Group Centre were well informed about the mass murder of Jews following
Operation Barbarossa and provided required cooperation. Their national-conservative ideology was aligned with the Nazi regime in its
anti-communism
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism, communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global ...
, accompanied by racial prejudice against
Slavs
The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and ...
and Jews. Only when it became apparent that the defeat was imminent, and that Germany would be held responsible for its genocidal policies, did so-called ethical considerations come into play, he finds.
References
Citations
Bibliography
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External links
Christian Gerlach in the German National Library catalogue (German)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerlach, Christian
21st-century Swiss historians
Swiss male writers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Historians of the Holocaust
Academic staff of the University of Bern