war on Germany in 1939, Broszat wrote that Weizmann's letter to Chamberlain promising the support of the Jewish Agency in World War II was not a "declaration of war", nor did Weizmann have the legal power to declare war on anyone. Broszat commented, "These facts may be overlooked by a right-wing publicist with a dubious educational background, but not by the university professor Ernst Nolte." Broszat observed that when Hildebrand organized a conference of right-wing German historians under the auspices of the Schleyer Foundation in West Berlin in September 1986, he did not invite Nolte, whom Broszat observed lived in Berlin. Broszat suggested that this was Hildebrand's way of trying to separate himself from Nolte, whose work Hildebrand had praised so strongly in a review the Historische Zeitschrift in April 1986. Broszat wrote that Stürmer was trying to create an "ersatz religion" that was more appropriate for the pre-modern era than 1986, charging that Stürmer seemed torn between his commitment to democracy, NATO and Atlanticism vs. his call for history to serve as a unifying force for society. Broszat wrote that "Here the roads part", and argued that no self-respecting historian could associate himself with the effort to "drive the shame out of the Germans". Broszat ended his essay with the remark that such "perversions" of German history must be resisted in order to ensure the German people a better future. "The New Auschwitz Lie" The journalist Rudolf Augstein, the publisher of the Der Spiegel news journal accused Nolte of creating the "New Auschwitz Lie" in an essay first published in the October 6, 1986 edition of Der Spiegel. Augstein questioned just why Nolte referred to the Holocaust as the "so-called annihilation of the Jews". Augstein agreed with Nolte that the Israelis were “blackmailing” the Germans over the Holocaust, but argued that given the magnitude of the Holocaust, the Germans had nothing to complain about. Augstein wrote in opposition to Nolte that:"Not for nothing did Nolte let us know that the annihilation of the kulaks, the peasant middle class, had taken place from 1927 to 1930, before Hitler seized power, and that the destruction of the Old Bolsheviks and countless other victims of Stalin's insanity had happened between 1934 and 1938, before the beginning of Hitler's war. But Stalin's insanity was, in contrast to Hitler's insanity, a realist's insanity. After all this drivel comes one thing worth discussing: whether Stalin