that Hitler regarded as his main enemies Nolte's opponents have expressed intense disagreement with his evidence for a Jewish "war" on Germany. They argue that Weizmann's letter to Chamberlain was written in his capacity as head of the World Zionist Organization, not on behalf of the entire Jewish people of the world, and that Nolte's views are based on the spurious idea that all Jews comprised a distinct "nationality" who take their marching orders from Jewish organizations. Lipstadt criticized Nolte's thesis on the grounds that first, Weizmann had no army in 1939 to wage “war” against Germany with, and that Nolte had totally ignored the previous six years of Nazi persecution of the Jews, making it sound like as if Weizmann had struck a low blow against Germany for no apparent reason in 1939. Furthermore, it has been contended that there is no evidence that Hitler ever heard of Weizmann's letter to Chamberlain, and that it was natural for Weizmann, a British Jew, to declare his support for his country against a fiercely anti-Semitic regime. As for Kaufman's book, the Nazis were certainly aware of it; during the war, Germany Must Perish! was translated into German and widely promoted as an example of what Jews thought about Germans. But most historians contended that the radical views of one American Jew can in no way be taken as typical of what all European Jews were thinking, and to put the call for the forced sterilization of Germans that was never carried out as Allied policy in the same league as the Holocaust shows a profound moral insensitivity. Moreover, it has been shown that there is no indication that Kaufman's book ever played any role in the decision-making process that led to the Holocaust. Finally, it has been contended that Nolte's comparison of the Holocaust with the internment of Japanese Americans is false, because the Jews of Europe were sent to death camps rather than internment camps, and the U.S. government did not attempt to exterminate the Japanese Americans in the internment camps. Later views The British historian Norman Davies argued in 2006 that revelations made after the Revolutions of 1989 resulting in the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe after 1989–91 about Soviet crimes had discredited the left-wing position taken in the 1980s during the Historikerstreit debate. See also Catechism debate History wars New Historians Secondary antisemitism Vergangenheitsbewältigung Victim theory References