almost in the tone of an Old Testament prophet with which Habermas goes after this dissident historian". Responding to Hillgruber in his "Note" of 23 February 1987, Habermas argued that Hillgruber's approach to history "justifies" the use of the line "tried and true higher-ups of the Nazi Party" as a method of attack. Habermas went on to argue that: "And in any case, this ridiculous dispute about words and secondary virtues just confirms Hillgruber's lack of objectivity about this entire sphere. This a case of praising the fire department that set the fire". Habermas ended his article with the remark that Hillgruber was an extremely shoddy historian, claiming that Hillgruber's charge that he was a leading 60s radical who was behind "...the agitation unleashed by extreme leftists at West German universities and on the psychic terror aimed at individual non-Marxist colleagues" was simply not supported by the facts, and told Hillgruber to read one of his own books about his actions in the late 1960s before making such claims. In response to Habermas, Hillgruber in "Concluding Remarks" of 12 May 1987, wrote of "...the peculiar way this philosopher [Habermas] deals with texts", and accused Habermas of engaging in "...evasion, diversion, sophist hair-splitting and - once again - by misrepresenting my statements". Hillgruber went on to state that in his opinion: Habermas, and this is evident from a large number of reviews of his works by authors of varying political affiliations, tends to descend upon these texts, even if they are philosophical texts (even classics such as the works of Kant and Hegel are not excepted) in a way that is no different than what he did to my historical essay. He does this with more or less grotesque distortions of quotations, excerpts that twist meaning, and quotations transplanted out of their context in order to provide the kind of confusion that causes the reader to be blinded and dazzled. Hillgruber ended his "Concluding Remarks" by remarking that it was impossible to debate Habermas due to his slippery and dishonest nature, and he now ending his participation in the Historikerstreit to focus on his historical research. In a 1987 essay entitled "German Historians And The Trivialization Of Nazi Criminality", the Austrian-born Israeli historian Walter Grab blasted Hillgruber for what he saw as Hillgruber's sympathy for the Junkers and German officer class, whom Grab pointed out were willing accomplices in the Machtergreifung