Nolte complained that excessive present-day interest in the Nazi period had the effect of drawing " attention away from the pressing questions of the present-for example , the question of " unborn life " or the presence of genocide yesterday in Vietnam and today in Afghanistan " . Nolte argued that the furor in 1985 over the visit of the American president Ronald Reagan to the Bitburg cemetery reflected in his view the unhealthy effects of an obsession with the memory of the Nazi era . Nolte suggested that , during West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer 's visit to the United States in 1953 , if he had failed to visit Arlington National Cemetery a storm of controversy would have ensued . Nolte argued that since some of the men buried at Arlington had in his view " participated in terror attacks on the German civilian population " , there was no moral difference between Reagan visiting the Bitburg cemetery , with its graves of Waffen SS dead , and Adenauer visiting Arlington with its graves of American airmen . Nolte complained that because of the " past that would not pass " , it was controversial for Reagan to visit Bitburg , but it was not controversial for Adenauer to visit Arlington . Nolte cited the Bitburg controversy as an example of the power exerted by historical memory of the Nazi past . Nolte concluded that there was excessive contemporary interest in the Holocaust because it served the concerns of those descended from the victims of Nazism , and placed them in a " permanent status of privilege " . Nolte argued that Germans had an unhealthy obsession with guilt for Nazi crimes , and called for an end to this " obsession " . Nolte 's opinion was that there was no moral difference between German self-guilt over the Holocaust , and Nazi claims of Jewish collective guilt for all the world 's problems . He called for an end to the maintaining of the memory of the Nazi past as fresh and current , and suggested a new way of viewing the Nazi past that would allow Germans to be free of the " past that will not pass " . In his '' feuilleton '' , Nolte offered a new way of understanding German history which sought to break free of the " past that will not pass " , by contending that Nazi crimes were only the consequence of a defensive reaction against Soviet crimes . In Nolte 's view , National Socialism had only arisen in response to the " class genocide " and " Asiatic barbarism " of the Bolsheviks . Nolte cited as example the early Nazi Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter , who during World War I had been the German consul in Erzerum , Turkey , where he was appalled by the genocide of the Armenians . In Nolte 's view , the fact that Scheubner-Richter later became a Nazi shows that something must have changed his values , and in Nolte 's opinion it was the Russian Revolution and such alleged Bolshevik practices as the " rat cage " torture ( said by Russian émigré authors to be a favorite torture by Chinese serving in the Cheka during the Russian Civil War ) that led to the change . Nolte used the example of the " rat cage " torture in George Orwell 's 1948 novel '' 1984 '' to argue that the knowledge of the " rat cage " torture was widespread throughout the world . Nolte wrote about the horrors perpetuated by the " Chinese Cheka " as showing the " Asiatic " nature of the Bolsheviks . Furthermore , Nolte argues that the " rat cage " torture was an ancient torture long practiced in China , which in his opinion further establishes the " Asiatic barbarism " of the Bolsheviks . Nolte cited a statement by Hitler after the Battle of Stalingrad that Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus would be soon sent to the “ rat cage ” in the Lubyanka as proof that Hitler had an especially vivid fear of the “ rat cage ” torture
genocide of the Armenians
Armenian Genocide
Historikerstreit