of the reactionary German elite to distract the public from casting their votes for the Social Democrats and to make Germany the world's greatest power at the expense of France, Britain and Russia. The German elite that caused World War I was also responsible for the failure of the Weimar Republic, which opened the way for the Third Reich. This traditional German elite, in Fischer's analysis, was dominated by a racist, imperialist and capitalist ideology that was little different from the beliefs of the Nazis. For this reason, Fischer called Bethmann Hollweg the "Hitler of 1914." Fischer's claims set off the so-called "Fischer Controversy" of the early 1960s when German historians led by Gerhard Ritter attempted to rebut Fischer. The Australian historian John Moses noted in 1999 that the documentary evidence introduced by Fischer is extremely persuasive in arguing that Germany was responsible for World War I. In 1990, The Economist advised its readers to examine Fischer's "well documented" book to examine why people in Eastern Europe feared the prospect of German reunification. Fischer with his analytical model caused a revolution in German historiography. Fischer's Primat der Innenpolitik heuristic, with its examination of the "inputs" into German foreign policy by domestic pressure groups and their interaction with the imperialist ideas of the German elite, forced a re-evaluation of German foreign policy in the Imperial era. Fischer's discovery of Imperial German government documents advocating as a war aim the ethnic cleansing of Russian Poland and subsequent German colonization, to provide Germany with Lebensraum (living space) led many to argue that similar schemes pursued by the Nazis in World War II were not due solely to Adolf Hitler's ideas but rather reflected widely held German aspirations that long pre-dated Hitler. Many German historians in the 1960s such as Gerhard Ritter who liked to argue that Hitler was just a of history with no real connection to German history, were outraged by Fischer's publication of these documents and attacked his work as "anti-German". Criticisms Fischer's allegations caused a deep controversy throughout the academic world, particularly in West Germany. His arguments caused so much anger that his publisher's office in Hamburg was firebombed. His works inspired other historians, such as Gerhard Ritter, to write books and articles against his war-aims thesis. Many critics claim that Fischer placed Germany outside the proper historical context. They argue that Germany was not uniquely aggressive amongst European nations