Werner Maser (12 July 1922, Paradeningken – 5 April 2007) was a German historian, journalist and professor at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Maser was the first historian to claim that the Hitler Diaries were forgeries.[1]

He was born in Paradeningken (then part of East Prussia, and now within Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a farmer and horse breeder. During the Second World War he served in the German Army as an infantry officer. After Germany's defeat, Maser was interned by the Soviets in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After his release, he studied theology, philosophy and political science at Berlin, Munich and Erlangen. His doctoral thesis was titled The Organisation of the Führer Legend.[2] Maser was appointed professor of history at the University of Munich and he was also a guest professor at universities in America, Japan and Finland.[2] He discovered Hitler's medical records, which had been thought lost.[1]

During the late 1970s Maser claimed that Hitler had fathered a son (Jean-Marie Loret) with a French peasant dancer in 1918.[1][2]

He was a critic of the works of Alan Bullock and Sebastian Haffner.[2] In his 1994 work Der Wortbruch: Hitler, Stalin und der Zweite Weltkrieg ("The Broken Agreement: Hitler, Stalin and the Second World War"), Maser argued that the Soviets were preparing to invade Germany and that Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union pre-empted the planned Soviet invasion of Germany by two weeks.[1][2] He also wrote biographies of German Presidents Friedrich Ebert, Paul von Hindenburg and Helmut Kohl.[1][2]

Richard Breitman called Maser's biography of Adolf Hitler "the least reliable among the major biographies" and criticized Maser for giving credence to Hitler's alleged familiarity with many classics, preferring Robert G. L. Waite's depiction of Hitler as someone who "perused various sources for specific information to reinforce his own views".[3]

Works

  • Genossen beten nicht. Kirchenkampf des Kommunismus (Köln: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Politik, 1963).
  • Hitlers Mein Kampf: Entstehung, Aufbau, Stil, Anderungen, Quellen, Quellenwert, Kommentierte Auszuge (München: Bechtle-Verlag, 1966).
    • (English translation by Richard Barry), Hitler's Mein Kampf: An Analysis (London: Faber and Faber, 1970).
  • Adolf Hitler: Legende, Mythos, Wirklichkeit (München: Bechtle-Verlag, 1971).
    • (English translation by Peter and Betty Ross), Hitler: Legend, Myth & Reality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
  • Hitlers Briefe und Notizen. Sein Weltbild in Handschriftlichen Dokumenten (Düsseldorf and Vienna: Econ Verlag, 1973).
  • Nürnberg. Tribunal der Sieger, Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf-Wien (1977).
    • (English translation by Richard Barry), Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial (London: Allen Lane, 1979).
  • Der Wortbruch. Hitler, Stalin und der Zweite Weltkrieg (München: Günter Olzog Verlag, 1994).

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Werner Maser, a Leading Hitler Scholar, Dies at 84, The New York Times (11 April 2007).
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 The Times (12 April 2007), p. 60.
  3. ↑ Breitman, Richard (1990). "Hitler and Genghis Khan". Journal of Contemporary History. 25 (2/3): 338. doi:10.1177/002200949002500209. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 260736. S2CID 159541260 – via JSTOR.
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