Joachim Fest - Journalist and Critic

Journalist and Critic

After the success of the Hitler biography Fest was invited to become co-editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper based in Frankfurt am Main and one of the institutions in the German-speaking world. From 1973 to 1993 he edited the culture section of the paper. His views were generally conservative, pessimistic and sceptical, and he was particularly critical of the left-wing views that dominated German intellectual life from the late 1960s until the collapse of communism in 1991. He took a leading role in the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute) of 1986-89, in which he was identified with those rejecting what they saw as the Marxist hegemony in German historiography in this period.

Fest in an essay entitled "Encumbered Remembrance: The Controversy about the Incomparability of National-Socialist Mass Crimes" first published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 29 August 1986 claimed that Ernst Nolte's argument that Nazi crimes were not "singular" was correct. In response to the claim made by Jürgen Habermas against Ernst Nolte that there was no comparison between the Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge genocide because Cambodia was a backward, Third World agrarian state and Germany a modern, First World industrial state, Fest called Habermas a racist for suggesting that it was natural for Cambodians to engage in genocide while unnatural for Germans. Fest accused Habermas of "academic dyslexia" and "character assassination" in his attacks against Nolte. Fest argued against the "singularity" of the Holocaust under the grounds that:

"The gas chambers with which the executors of the annihilation of the Jews went to work without a doubt signal a particularly repulsive form of mass murder, and they have justifiably become a symbol for the technicized barbarism of the Hitler regime. But can it really be said that the mass liquidations by a bullet to the back of the neck, as was common practice during the years of the Red Terror, are qualitatively different? Isn't, despite all the differences, the comparable element stronger?...The thesis of the singularity of Nazi crimes is finally also placed in question by the consideration that Hitler himself frequently referred to the practices of his revolutionary opponents of the Left as lessons and models. But he did more than just copy them. Determined to be more radical than his most bitter enemy, he also outdid them"

Moreover, Fest argued in his defence of Nolte that the overheated atmosphere in Munich following the overthrow of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 "...gave Hitler's extermination complexes a real background" Finally, Fest wrote as part of his attack on the "singularity" of the Holocaust that:

"There are questions upon questions, but no answer can be offered here. Rather, it is a matter of rousing doubt in the monumental simplicity and one-sidedness of the prevailing ideas about the particularity of the Nazi crimes that supposedly had no model and followed no example. All in all, this thesis stands on weak ground. And it is less surprising that, as Habermas incorrectly suggests in reference to Nolte, it is being questioned. It is far more astonishing that this has not seriously taken place until now. For that also means that the countless other victims, in particular, but not exclusively those of Communism, are no longer part of our memory. Arno Borst once declared in a different context that no group in today's society has been so ruthlessly oppressed as the dead. That is especially true for the millions of dead of this century, from the Armenians all the way to the victims of the Gulag Archipelago or the Cambodians who were and still are being murdered before all of our eyes-but who have still been dropped from the world's memory"

In his "Postscript" of 21 April 1987, Fest wrote that in his view:

"In its substance, the dispute was initiated by Ernst Nolte's question whether Hitler's monstrous will to annihilate the Jews, judging from its origin, came from early Viennese impressions or, what is more likely, from later Munich experiences, that is, whether Hitler was an originator or simply being reactive. Despite all the consequences that arouse from his answer, Nolte's question was in fact a purely academic exercise. The conclusions would probably not have caused as much controversy if they had been accompanied by special circumstances"

Fest accused Habermas and his allies of attempting to silence those whose views they disliked. Fest wrote that:

"Standing on the one side, to simplify, are those who want to preserve Hitler and National Socialism as a kind of anti-myth that can be used for political intentions - the theory of a conspiracy on the part of the political right, to which Nolte, Stürmer, and Hillgruber are linked. This becomes evident in the defamatory statements and the expansion of the dispute to the historical museums. It is doubtless no coincidence that Habermas, Jäckel, Mommsen and others become involved in the recent election campaign in this way. Many statements in favor of the pluralistic character of scholarship and in favor of an ethos representing a republic of learned men reveal themselves as merely empty phrases to the person who has an overview of these things"

Fest argued that Nolte was motivated by purely scholarly concerns, and was only attempting the "historicization" of National Socialism that Martin Broszat called for Fest argued that:

"Strictly speaking, Nolte did nothing but take up the suggestion by Broszat and others that National Socialism be historicized. It was clear to anyone with any sense for the topic - and Broszat's opening article made it evident that he too had recognized it - that this transition would be beset with difficulties. But that the most incensed objections would come from those who from the beginning were the spokesmen of historicization - this was no less surprising then the recognition that yesterday's enlighteners are today's intolerant mythologues, people who want to forbid questions from being posed"

In defence of Habermas, Fest was attacked by Hans Mommsen and Eberhard Jäckel. Jäckel charged that Fest was guilty of diverting attention away from the issues by attacking Habermas's motives in criticizing Nolte, and not with concerning himself with what Habermas had to say Jäckel maintained that the Holocaust was indeed a "singular" historical event and criticized Fest for claiming otherwise Mommsen accused Fest of subordinating history to his right-wing politics in his defence of Nolte Mommsen went on to accuse Fest of simply ignoring the real issues such as the "psychological and institutional mechanisms" that explain why the German people accepted the Holocaust by accepting Nolte's claim of a "causal nexus" between Communism and fascism. Martin Broszat wrote that Fest's attempts to "restylize" Nolte's arguments were in his opinion a failure. Charles S. Maier wrote that Fest's claims that the Holocaust was considered worse than the Cambodian genocide because the former was "mechanized" was flawed. Maier wrote:

"He does not acknowledge that mechanization and bureaucratic arrangements horrify not because squeamish historians prefer pastoral mass murder in Cambodia, but because "mechanization" testifies to intent and pathological planning".

The British historian Peter Pulzer complained about the pictures of the piles of skulls from the Camodian genocide that, published alongside "Encumbered Remembrance", was intended to prove that Germans may have sinned, but only "in good company". During a debate in London in 1987 to consider the Historikerstreit, Fest and Jäckel again clashed over the question of the "singularity" of the Holocaust with Fest accusing Jäckel of presenting a "caricature" of his and Nolte's views.

Shortly before his death, Fest became embroiled in a public dispute with the left-wing writer and Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass, who had admitted in his autobiography that he had joined the Waffen SS in the last months of World War II. Fest criticised Grass not so much for having joined, but for having concealed the fact for so many years while engaging in political criticism of others over their Nazi pasts. He said: "After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late. I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off."

Joachim Fest was married and had two sons and a daughter; all his children followed him into publishing or the media. He died at his home in Kronberg im Taunus near Frankfurt am Main in 2006, the same year that his autobiography Not Me: Memoirs of a German Childhood was published. Fest took the main title from an incident in childhood when, at the age of ten, he and his brother were summoned to their father's study after he had been dismissed from his post as a school headmaster. Fest's father asked his sons to write down and remember a maxim taken from the Gospel of Matthew: Etiam si omnes - ego non (Even if all others do - not me).