The Invention of "functionalism" Josef Wulf, Martin Brozat and the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich) in the 1960s

Based on a lecture given at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem on 21 November 2001. Contends that a structuralist explanation of the Nazi genocide of the Jews emerged in West German historiography already in the 1950s. At this stage, the essence of the controversy between intentionalists and functionalists was the question of responsibility: was it certain individuals who were to blame or was it the whole system, with the inevitable entanglement of some individuals? The latter explanation was consonant with the apologetic arguments of Nazi criminals who were brought to trial. Examines the controversy in 1963-66 between Josef Wulf and Martin Broszat of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. The controversy focused on whether Wilhelm Hagen, the wartime head of the Office of Public Health in Warsaw, should be regarded as a war criminal (bearing responsibility for the execution of Jewish doctors and Jews who left the ghetto "illegally") or as a victim of the system. Broszat and the entire Institute adopted the latter view.