Hans Rothfels (12 April 1891 – 22 June 1976) was a German nationalist conservative historian. He supported an idea of authoritarian German state, dominance of Germany over Europe and was hostile to Germany's eastern neighbours. After his applications for honorary Aryan status were rejected, due to his Jewish ancestry and increased persecution of Jewish people by Nazis, he was forced to emigrate to the United Kingdom and later to the United States during the Second World War, after which he became opposed to the Nazi regime. Rothfels returned to West Germany after 1945 where he continued to influence history teaching and became an influential figure among West German scholars. Biography Rothfels was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Kassel, Hesse-Nassau. In 1910, he converted to Lutheranism. He was studying history and philosophy at Heidelberg University when World War I broke out in 1914. As a student, Rothfels had been a leading pupil of Friedrich Meinecke. Rothfels served in the German Army as a reserve officer and was badly wounded near Soissons. He lost one of his legs and was in a hospital until 1917. He was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. (He did not receive an Iron Cross Second Class. The reference here is to a journal article which merely restates the assertion without any source. Note that the Intellectual Biography by Jan Ekel makes no reference to this, and this is a much more substantial piece of work. The German Wikipedia entry als makes no mention of this. Nor do any listings of Iron Cross recipients, I have previously sent Wikipedia these, so this is sloppy editing.) In 1918, Rothfels's dissertation on Carl von Clausewitz, "Carl von Clausewitz: Politik und Krieg", led to Heidelberg granting him a degree in history. In 1920, Rothfels's dissertation was published as a book. In 1922, he edited and published a collection of Clausewitz's private letters. In addition, Rothfels published several collections of Otto von Bismarck's letters, and was the first historian to be authorized by the Bismarck family to publish the Iron Chancellor's correspondence. Rothfels was noted for his claim that Bismarck was neither the "iron chancellor" of "banal legend" nor an "opportunist", but rather a profoundly religious man struggling to deal with a reality whose full complexity was only understandable to God. He defended Bismarck's Germanization policies against Poles claiming they were "defensive". Between 1924 and 1926, Rothfels taught at