Ritter, Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber and Ludwig Dehio. Wehler advocates the concept of social imperialism, which he defined as "the diversions outwards of internal tensions and forces of change in order to preserve the social and political status quo", and as a "defensive ideology" to counter the "disruptive effects of industrialization on the social and economic structure of Germany". Wehler thought that the German government had used social imperialism as a device to allow it to distract public attention from domestic problems to the benefit of preserving the existing social and political order. Wehler argued that the dominant elites used social imperialism as the glue to hold together a fractured society and to maintain popular support for the social status quo. He further argued that German colonial policy in the 1880s provides the first example of social imperialism in action, followed by the "Tirpitz Plan" to expand the German Navy from 1897 onwards. That point of view sees groups such as the Colonial Society and the Navy League as government instruments to mobilise public support. Wehler saw the demands for annexing most of Europe and Africa in World War I as the pinnacle of social imperialism. In the 1970s, Wehler became involved in a somewhat-discordant and acrimonious debate with Hildebrand and Hillgruber over the merits of both approaches to diplomatic history. Hillgruber and Hildebrand argued for the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik approach with empirical research on the foreign-policy making elite, but Wehler argued for the Primat der Innenpolitik approach, treating diplomatic history as a sub-branch of social history with the focus on theoretical research. The two major intellectual influences Wehler cites are Karl Marx and Max Weber Philosophy of history Wehler often criticised traditional German historiography with its emphasis on political events, the role of the individual in history and history as an art as unacceptably conservative and incapable of properly explaining the past. Wehler saw history as a social science and contends that social developments are frequently more important than politics. In his view, history is a "critical social science" that must examine both the "temporal structures" of a society and encourage a "freer critical awareness of society". Wehler advocated an approach he calls Historische Sozialwissenschaft (historical social science), which integrates elements of history, sociology, economics and anthropology to study in a holistic fashion long-term social changes in a society In Wehler's view, Germany between 1871 and 1945 was