[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Mommsen"]Hans Mommsen[/ame]

Hans Mommsen (born 5 November 1930) is a left-wing German historian.

He was born in Marburg, the son of the historian Wilhelm Mommsen and great-grandson of the Roman historian Theodor Mommsen. He studied German, history and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Tübingen and the University of Marburg. Mommsen served as professor at Tübingen (1960–1961), Heidelberg (1963–1968) and at the University of Bochum (since 1968). He married Margaretha Reindel in 1966. He has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany since 1960.

This guys credentials are well established as a historian and leftist. A "left-wing" historian who was there. Surely he will provide some evidence that Hitler initiated the "holocaust", or a least played a role in the "holocaust", or at the very least knew about the "holocaust".

Lets see.

Note that his THEORY on the "holocaust" was published in 1966, just 21 years after "the world learned the truth". At this time, the "holocaust" had not become fact much less law. It would be interesting to know if he gives a definition for the "holocaust" and if he mentioned the magic number 6,000,000 in his 1966 writings.

Mommsen is a leading expert on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He is a functionalist in regard to the origins of the Holocaust, seeing the Final Solution as a result of the "cumulative radicalization" of the German state as opposed to a long-term plan on the part of Adolf Hitler. In Mommsen's view, Hitler was an intense anti-semite but lacked a real idea of what he wanted to do with Jews. The picture Mommsen has consistently drawn of the Final Solution is of an aloof Hitler largely unwilling and incapable of active involvement in administration who presided over an incredibly disorganized regime. Mommsen has forcefully contended that the Holocaust cannot be explained as result of Hitler alone, but was instead a product of the fractured decision making process in Nazi Germany which caused the "cumulative radicalization" which led to the Holocaust. Furthermore, for Mommsen, Hitler played little or no real role in the development of the Holocaust, instead preferring to let his subordinates take the initiative. Instead, the "Final Solution" was caused primarily by the German bureaucracy who as the result of bureaucratic turf wars, started to compete with one another for the favor of a distant and lazy leader by engaging in ever more radical anti-semitic measures between 1933 and 1941.

So he provides no evidence that Hitler even knew about the "holocaust". He just produces so jew-like babble about "functionalist" and "cumulative radicalization" to explain how the "holocaust" happened by itself as result of "turf wars".

In Mommsen's view, Hitler's speeches encouraged his followers to carry out his "utopian" ranting about the Jews, but Hitler did not issue an order for the Holocaust and had little to do with its actual implementation. In Mommsen's view [color="Blue"](i.e. speculation), the fact that Hitler never referred explicitly to the "Final Solution" even in the privacy of his own circle was his way of avoiding personal responsibility for that which he had allowed to take place and had encouraged through his anti-semitic rhetoric. As such, Mommsen has denied that Hitler ever gave any sort of order for the Holocaust, written or unwritten [color="blue"](because there is no evidence). Mommsen has argued that Hitler did give the order for the Kommissarbefehl (Commissar Order) of 1941, that helped lead to the Holocaust, but was not part of the Holocaust proper. Mommsen wrote [color="blue"](speculated) that Hitler was the "ideological and political originator" of the Holocaust, a "utopian objective" that came to life "only in the uncertain light of the Dictator's fanatical propaganda utterances, eagerly seized upon as orders for action by men wishing to prove their diligence, the efficiency of their machinery and their political indispensability". Starting with his 1966 book, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich (Civil Servants in the Third Reich), Mommsen has argued for the massive involvement of various elements in German society in the Third Reich, as against the traditional view in Germany that Nazi crimes were the work of a few criminals entirely unrepresentative of German society.

Mommsen has argued against the "Master of the Third Reich"/intentionalist thesis by arguing that the Holocaust can not be explained as the result of Hitler's will and intentions.

But his was there and was 15 years old when the "truth was learned" about "holocaust". He lived the history he is writing about. Obviously he must have not known about the "holocaust" before the end of WW2.

The fact that Wiki never states something like "he was later proven wrong", "new evidence emerged", "he ignored this/that piece of evidence" etc. shows that nothing has basically changed since 1966. There is no evidence that Hitler knew of the "holocaust". And in 1966 is was perfectly acceptable for a leading scholar/historian to make such claims based on the fact their is no evidence.

So without any evidence with regards to Hitler's involvement, we are to believe that the during the middle of WW2 member of the "German bureaucracy" got involved in "bureaucratic turf wars" started commandeering materials, soldiers, Gestapo/SS members, the rail system, German companies (to develop gas van, gas, etc), fuel (to run the train and crematoriums) and killed 6,000,000 jew.

Maybe he is not claiming the "holocaust" did not happen, he just arguing the nobody was in charge and the "holocaust" just happened kind of organically.

An interesting question: Could he write his theory today without violating the "holocaust" belief laws.