Another controversial statement by Nolte in '' Der europäische Bürgerkrieg '' was his comment that the '' Kristallnacht '' pogrom was not that bad as pogroms in Imperial Russia killed far more Jews than those killed in '' Kristallnacht '' , and that anymore more people were in being killed in the Soviet Union during the Great Terror at the same time than were killed in the '' Kristallnacht '' . Likewise , Nolte argued that Nazi anti-Semitic laws had hardly affected Jewish participation in the German economy . In this respect , Nolte favourably cited the remarks by Sir Horace Rumbold , the British Ambassador to Germany 1928-33 who claimed that the “ ostentatious kind of lifestyle of Jewish bankers and monied people inevitably aroused envy , as unemployment spread generally ” and who spoke of “ the sins of the Russian and Galician Jews ” who came to Germany after 1918 . The British historian Richard J. Evans accused Nolte of engaging in “ comparative trivialization ” with his statements about '' Kristallnacht '' and through admitting that Nolte was correct about the higher death toll in Russian pogroms and the Great Terror argued that was irrelevant to the horrors of '' Kristallnacht '' . Evans went on to write that Nolte appeared to be ignorant of the effects of various anti-Semitic laws in 1930s Germany which forbid Jews from engaging in professions like the law , medicine , the civil service while the “ Aryanization ” campaign saw mass expropriations of Jewish businesses . A further controversial claim in was Nolte 's statement violence in the defence of the social order is always preferable to violence aiming at the destruction of the social order . Thus , Nolte argued that the notorious lenience of judges in the Weimar Republic towards perpetrators of violence from the right while imposing stiff sentences on perpetrators of violence from the left was justified . In this way , Nolte maintained that the very harsh sentences given to the leaders of the '' Rote Ocktober '' ( Red October ) '' putsch '' attempt in Hamburg of October 1923 were justified while the light sentences that Hitler and the other Nazi leaders received for the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 were also completely warranted because Nolte claimed that the Nazis were only attempting to overthrow the Weimar Republic in order to save the social order . Nolte claimed that the German Communists were seeking the " social destruction of the bourgeoisie " in the interests of the Soviet Union , which " physically exterminated these classes " while the Nazis sought only the destruction of the " Versailles system "
Great Terror
Great Purge
Historikerstreit