of consistency for which he had groped for a long time. In that way, Jäckel argues that Mein Kampf was a "blueprint" not only for power but also for genocide. Jäckel considered He [Hitler] had to annihilate the Jews, thus restoring the meaning of history, and with the thus restored, nature-intended struggle for existence, he at the same time had to conquer new living space for the German people. Each of these tasks was inextricably linked to the other. Unless the Jews were annihilated there would very soon no longer be any struggle for living space, nor therefore any culture and consequently nations would die out; not just the German nation, but ultimately all nations. But if, on the other hand, the German people failed to conquer new living space, it would die out because of that and the Jews would triumph. Jäckel takes the view that Hitler's ideology developed in stages in the 1920s. Jäckel wrote: "It is an important fact that the final completion [of Hitler's ideology], contrary to Hitler's own statements, in 1919 had only begun". In addition, Jäckel's book was noteworthy as the first account of Hitler's beliefs written in Germany by someone from the left. (Jäckel joined the SPD in 1967.) In regard to the foreign policy debates, Jäckel is a leading "continentalist" and argues that Nazi foreign policy aimed only at the conquest of Eastern Europe, as opposed to the "globalists", who argue that Hitler wanted world conquest Genesis of the Final Solution Jäckel is one of the leading intentionalists in regard to the functionalism versus intentionalism debates. Since the 1960s, he has argued on that there was a long-range plan on the part of Hitler to exterminate the Jewish people from about 1924. Those views led to intense debates with functionalist historians such as Hans Mommsen and Martin Broszat. Jäckel dismissed the argument made by Broszat in his 1977 essay "Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution" that local officials began the Holocaust on their own initiative under the grounds that there was a great deal of evidence that some [local officials] were shocked or even appalled when the Final Solution came into effect. To be sure, they did not disagree with it. But they agreed only reluctantly, referring again to an order given by Hitler. This is a strong indication that the idea did not originate with them. In the late