“The negative vitality of a historical phenomenon represents a great danger for the discipline of history. A permanent negative or positive image necessarily has the character of a myth, which is an actualized form of a legend. This is true because a myth like this can be made to found or support an ideology of state …”

—  Ernst Nolte

“Historical Legend and Revisionism?” 1980 lecture, reprinted in Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? New Jersey: Humanities Press, (1993), pp. 3-4.

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Ernst Nolte photo
Ernst Nolte 8
German historian and philosopher 1923–2016

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