Joachim Clemens Fest (December 8, 1926–September 11, 2006), German historian, journalist, critic and editor, is best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance. He was a leading figure in debate among German historians about the Nazi period. is the 342nd day of the year (343rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 254th day of the year (255th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Hitler redirects here. ... For the son of Albert Speer, also an architect, see Albert Speer (the younger). ... Bust of Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Memorial to the German Resistance, Berlin) The German Resistance refers to those individuals and groups in Nazi Germany who opposed the regime of Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1945. ...

Early career

Fest was born in Berlin, the son of Johannes Fest, a conservative Roman Catholic and strongly anti-Nazi schoolteacher who was dismissed from his position when the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1936, when Fest turned ten, his family refused to make him join the Hitler Youth, a step which could have had serious consequences, although membership did not become compulsory until 1939. As it was Fest was expelled from his school, and then went to a Catholic boarding school in Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden: here he was able to avoid Hitler Youth service until he was 18. This article is about the capital of Germany. ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         For the SS division with the nickname Hitlerjugend see; 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend The Hitler Youth (German:   , abbreviated HJ) was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. ... This article is about Freiburg in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. ... Baden is a historical state in the southwest of Germany, on the right bank of the Rhine. ...

The fact that his father, an "ordinary German," had understood the nature of the Nazi regime, and had resisted it, colored Fest's view of his fellow Germans for the rest of his life. He never accepted that Germans had not known what Hitler was doing or that they could not have resisted the Nazi regime.

In December 1944, when he turned 18, Fest decided to join the German Army, mainly to avoid being conscripted into the Waffen SS. His father opposed even this concession, saying that "one does not volunteer for Hitler's criminal war." His military service in World War II was brief and ended when he was made a prisoner of war in France. After the war he studied law, history, sociology, German literature, and art history at Freiburg, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. The German Army (German: [1], [IPA: heɐ]  ) is the land component of the Bundeswehr (Federal Defence Forces) of the Federal Republic of Germany. ... Recruitment poster of the Waffen-SS. (Enlistment at the age of 17) The Waffen-SS (German for Armed SS, literally Weapons SS) was the combat arm of the Schutzstaffel or SS. It was founded in Germany in 1939 after the SS was split into two units [1] but the title... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Frankfurt am Main [ˈfraŋkfʊrt] is the largest city in the German state of Hessen and the fifth largest city of Germany. ...

On graduating he started work for the American-run Berlin radio station RIAS (Radio In the American Sector), where from 1954 to 1961 he was editor in charge of contemporary history. During this time he was asked to present radio portraits of the main historical personalities influencing Germany from Bismarck to World War II, including such senior figures of the Nazi regime as Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels. These portraits were later published as his first book The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership. In 1961 Fest was appointed editor-in-chief of television for the North German broadcasting service Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), where he was also responsible for the political magazine Panorama. He resigned after a disagreement with left-wingers who eventually came to dominate the magazine. Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (Radio in the American Sector), or RIAS was a radio station in the American Sector of Berlin during the Cold War. ... Bismarck redirects here. ... Himmler redirects here. ... Joseph Goebbels Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was Adolf Hitlers Propaganda Minister (see Propagandaministerium) in Nazi Germany. ... Current logo of Norddeutscher Rundfunk. ...

Historian of Nazi Germany

Fest then embarked on his most important work, his biography of Adolf Hitler, which was published in 1973: It was the first major Hitler biography since that of Alan Bullock in 1952 and the first by a German writer. It came at a time when the younger generation of Germans was confronting the legacy of the Nazi period, and was both very successful in commercial terms and immensely influential. It sparked controversy among German historians, because Fest, a political conservative, rejected the then-dominant left-wing view that the causes of Hitler's rise to power had been largely economic. Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock (December 13, 1914 - February 2, 2004), was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works. ...

Fest explained Hitler’s success in terms of what he termed the “great fear” that overcame the German middle classes as a result of Bolshevism and First World War dislocation, but also more broadly in response to rapid modernisation, which led to a romantic longing for a lost past. This led to resentment of other groups — especially Jews — seen as agents of modernity. It also made many Germans susceptible to a figure such as Hitler who could articulate their mood. “He was never only their leader, he was always their voice . . . the people, as if electrified, recognised themselves in him."^[1]

Fest served as the editorial aide for Albert Speer, Hitler's court architect and later Minister for Munitions, when Speer was working on his autobiography, Inside the Third Reich (1970). After Speer's death, amid controversy over the reliability of the memoirs, Fest wrote Speer: The Final Verdict (2002), in which he criticised Speer for his knowing complicity in the crimes of the Nazi regime, something he successfully concealed at the time of the Nuremberg Trials. This echoed the verdict of Gitta Sereny in her major work Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. (1995) For the son of Albert Speer, also an architect, see Albert Speer (the younger). ... Inside the Third Reich is a memoir written by Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945. ... For the 1947 Soviet film about the trials, see Nuremberg Trials (film). ... Gitta Sereny (born March 13, 1921) is a Hungarian-born British biographer, historian and journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and abused children. ...

Fest's other major work of German history was Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler (1994), written to mark the 50th anniversary of the July 20 plot to kill Hitler. This work marked a partial reconsideration of his earlier harsh verdict on the German people. He acknowledged that many Germans had opposed the Nazi regime within the limits imposed on them by their circumstances. He maintained his view, however, that the majority of Germans had wilfully refused to accept the truth about Nazism until it was too late. Claus von Stauffenberg The July 20 Plot was an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany, on July 20, 1944. ...

In 2002 he published Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, a work based on newly-available evidence following the opening of the Soviet archives, but which largely confirmed the account of Hitler's death given in Hugh Trevor-Roper's book The Last Days of Hitler (1947). Inside Hitler's Bunker, along with the memoirs of Hitler's personal secretary Traudl Junge, formed the source material for the 2004 German film Der Untergang (Downfall), the third postwar German feature film to depict Hitler directly.^[2] Inside Hitlers Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich (ISBN 0-374-13577-0) is a book by historian Joachim Fest about the last days of the life of Adolf Hitler, in his Führerbunker in 1945. ... Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (January 15, 1914 – January 26, 2003) was a notable historian of Early Modern Britain and Nazi Germany. ... Traudl Junge just after World War II. Traudl Junge (born Gertraud Humps; 16 March 1920 – 10 February 2002) was Adolf Hitlers youngest personal private secretary, from December 1942 to April 1945. ... Der Untergang (2004; international English title Downfall) is a German film depicting the final days of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1945. ...

Journalist and critic

After the success of the Hitler biography Fest was invited to become co-editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading German newspaper based in Frankurt and one of the most potent political and cultural 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 "historians' dispute", in which he was identified with those rejecting what they saw as the Marxist hegemony in German historiography in this period. Publishing house in Frankfurt am Main The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) is an influential high-quality national German newspaper, founded in 1949. ... The Historikerstreit (historians quarrel[1]) was an intellectual and political controversy in West Germany about the way the Holocaust should be interpreted in history. ... Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

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."^[3] The Nobel Prize (Swedish: ) was established in Alfred Nobels will in 1895, and it was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901. ... Günter Wilhelm Grass (born October 16, 1927) is a Nobel Prize-winning German author and playwright. ...

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. Kronberg im Taunus is a town in the Hochtaunuskreis district, Hesse, Germany. ...

Works available in German

• Ich nicht: Erinnerungen an eine Kindheit und Jugend (ISBN 3-498-05305-1)
• Speer: Eine Biographie, Fischer TB Verlag, 2001, Frankfurt am Main (ISBN 3-596-15093-0)

Works available in English

• Hitler (ISBN 0-15-602754-2)
• Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich (ISBN 0-374-13577-0)
• The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (ISBN 0-306-80915-X)
• Speer: The Final Verdict (ISBN 0-15-100556-7)
• Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of German Resistance (ISBN 0-8050-5648-3)

See also

• List of Adolf Hitler books

This List of Adolf Hitler Books is an annotated bibliography using APA style citations of the many books related to Adolf Hitler. ...

References

For other uses, see Guardian. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 225th day of the year (226th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 225th day of the year (226th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Bisky, Jens. "Proud to be different", Sign and Sight, October 16, 2006 (a review of the Ich nicht).
• Childs, David. "Joachim Fest: Obituary" in The Independent, September 15, 2006.
• "Joachim Fest: Obituary" in The Times, September 13, 2006.
• Matussek, Matthias. "The Proud Loner: In Memory of Joachim Fest" in the Spiegel Online International, September 12, 2006.
• "Renowned Hitler Biographer Joachim Fest Dies", Deutsche Welle, September 12, 2006.
• Thinking with Body and Soul: Interview with the historian Joachim Fest about Hannah Arendt, by Volker Maria Neumann, February 2006.