Introduction "Writings on the German problem by German émigrés in England and the United States have often been confusing rather than enlightening. Where it rules without restraint, resentment is not a fertile soil for sober and objective history, and long-term alienation from Germany easily leads to a distorted view of reality." This statement by the German historian Gerhard Ritter in 1949 illustrates how he--and many of his peers--thought about the work of their German émigré colleagues in the United States. Indeed, their suspicion extended beyond the émigrés, as Germans also tended to dismiss American-born historians of Germany as unable to produce "sober and objective" (in Ritter''s words) studies on the recent German past. This widespread belief found its way into book reviews as well as personal letters and indicated a defensive German attitude that proved difficult to overcome. Five decades later, Hans-Ulrich Wehler expressed a very different opinion, yet one that was similarly representative of German historians at the time:The transatlantic dialogue between American and German historians since the late 1940s is based on the fundamental experiences of the political generations that lived through the Nazi dictatorship, World War II, the postwar years and the founding of the Federal Republic. These common experiences led to close contacts; I am someone who has benefited immensely from them. The generations of Carl Schorske, Leonard Krieger, Hajo Holborn, Arno Mayer, Jim Sheehan, Henry Turner, Gerald Feldman, Charles Maier, and others, have influenced in a lasting way the political generation in Germany to which I belong.

Ritter''s and Wehler''s claims point to a fundamental transformation, which stands at the center of this book. The decades following World War II witnessed the establishment of a large and diverse German-American scholarly community of modern German history. Several factors fostered its development. First, as a result of both National Socialism and the Cold War, American interest in Germany grew remarkably, which caused a quantitative expansion of the discipline. In addition, a small but increasingly influential cohort of émigré historians researching and teaching in the United States, including Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Hans Rosenberg, Fritz Stern, and George L. Mosse, served as transatlantic intermediaries. Finally, the strong appeal of American academia to West German historians of different generations, but primarily to those born in the 1930s and 1940s, led many of them to form close ties with their American colleagues. As a result, a German-American community of historians developed that eclipsed other transnational counterparts with respect to the intensity of scholarly interactions.

*** At the first annual meeting of the Verband der Historiker Deutschlands (German Historians'' Association) after World War II, on September 12, 1949, Gerhard Ritter outlined the "present situation and future tasks of the German historical profession." Oscillating between assertiveness and defensiveness, Ritter conceded that German historians had previously focused too much on political history and the history of ideas and that a closer cooperation with the social sciences was the new order of the day. In addition, while "truly great statesmen" such as Frederick the Great and Otto von Bismarck now more than ever should serve the purpose of fostering German self-confidence, German historians at the same time had to eschew the blatant apologia characterizing much of post-World War I scholarship. In retrospect, it is obvious that the West German historical profession as a whole did not achieve many of these ambitious aims during the next two decades. Traditional political history still dominated, and the West German historians'' willingness to reexamine their interpretive and methodological assumptions remained limited. Nevertheless, the discipline of the 1950s registered a few new impulses--for example, from the institutional establishment of contemporary history ( Zeitgeschichte ), initially defined as the period 1917-1945 with a focus on National Socialism. Despite his own ideological proximity to National Socialism prior to his emigration to the United States, Hans Rothfels became a crucial figure in the development of Zeitgeschichte in West Germany after his return. The conservative politics of leading figures like Rothfels influenced the studies produced at places such as the newly founded Institut für Zeitgeschichte as well as at most West German universities.

Thus, while Rothfels, for example, insisted on the moral legitimacy of resistance to National Socialism--which many contemporary Germans still viewed as treason--in his publications of the late 1940s, he also emphasized the degree to which Germans had been victims rather than supporters of the regime. Another shift occurred with respect to the historical profession''s religious makeup. In a discipline that had historically been dominated by Protestants, Catholic scholars now attempted to promote a counter-narrative to the Protestant master narrative of modern German history. This narrative had comprised a Prussia-centric focus on the German Empire, at the expense of the southern and southwestern states. French and German efforts to strengthen pro-European and pro-Catholic forces within West German historiography led to the foundation of the Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz in 1950. While these developments somewhat broadened the topical scope of West German historiography and modified some interpretations, they did not contribute decisively to a methodological renewal of the profession. At the same time, Ludwig Dehio, the first postwar editor of the profession''s leading journal, Historische Zeitschrift , also embarked on a cautiously reformist course. Yet the resistance he encountered revealed the limited degree to which the West German historical profession was willing to reconsider its interpretive and methodological foundations in traditional political history.

All in all, Ernst Schulin''s assessment of a "politically and morally tamed historicism"--in the sense that historians were now supposed to show a greater degree of moral and political responsibility while remaining "neutral" vis-à-vis historical phenomena--that dominated West German historiography during the first two postwar decades is still accurate. With only a few exceptions, it was conservative historians who shaped the West German historical profession. Jerry Muller''s dictum regarding the postwar "deradicalization" of West German conservatism, from compromising with or even embracing National Socialism to accepting liberal democracy and a pluralistic society, aptly describes the transformation of some of the most influential historians. Beginning in the late 1950s, "deradicalized" conservatives such as Theodor Schieder, Karl Dietrich Erdmann, and Werner Conze became the West German discipline''s leading figures. All of them had supported the Nazi regime through their writings, and all of them managed to cover the brown spots in their biographies throughout their long and successful careers in the Federal Republic. For decades after 1945, these historians edited the profession''s main journals--Schieder at Historische Zeitschrift (1959-1984), Erdmann at Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (1950-1989)--or coordinated large-scale research, as did Werner Conze at the University of Heidelberg. Erdmann, Schieder, and Conze successively served as chairmen of the Verband der Historiker Deutschlands between 1962 and 1976. Conze and especially Schieder trained a large number of historians who later had distinguished careers themselves.

For his part, Conze was a cautious methodological modernizer; during the 1950s he began to develop his project of Strukturgeschichte (structural history), which signaled a methodological departure from much of the previous historiography. In some ways, then, historiographical developments of the 1950s resembled developments in West German society at large. Most historians of the Federal Republic now argue that in many areas of society, liberalization processes began slowly during the later 1950s rather than in the 1960s, or more specifically, in 1968. But they also acknowledge that during the 1960s these processes accelerated and took on a new quality. Similarly, it was not until the early 1970s that the West German historical profession significantly advanced toward the reorientation Ritter had set as a goal in 1949, the historiographical changes of the late 1940s and 1950s notwithstanding. The assessment of West German historians'' interpretive shift--from "apologia" to "revisionism"--largely depends on the observer''s own position. Less controversial is the view that the methodological changes Ritter had demanded soon after the war did not take place until the 1960s. It was another generation of historians, born between the late 1920s and early 1940s, that carried out this task.

Many of them maintained close relationships with American historians of modern Germany. Just as historians emphasize the role of the United States in the democratization process of the West German society, they also credit American scholars of German history for having made decisive contributions to the historiographical renewal, as Wehler emphasized with regard to the importance of the "transatlantic dialogue." Indeed, Hans-Ulrich Wehler''s career exemplifies the development and intensity of this transatlantic dialogue very well: Wehler first came to the United States as a Fulbright student in 1952, when he spent a year at Ohio University. Ten years later, after completing his PhD at the University of Cologne, he returned with funding from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to conduct research at Stanford University.