Hitler was no inexorable product of a German 'special path', no logical culmination of long-term trends in specifically German culture and ideology. Nor was he a mere 'accident' in the course of German history.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that Hitler's rise was neither a predetermined outcome of German culture nor an unexpected event, but rather a complex interplay of various factors.
Ian Kershaw argues that Adolf Hitler cannot be understood simply as a result of unique German cultural trends or as a random event in history. Instead, his rise to power was influenced by a multitude of factors, both social and political, indicating that historical events often arise from complex circumstances rather than straightforward narratives.
In practice
In a history lecture discussing the rise of totalitarian regimes.
David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.
The histories of the poor and the powerless are as important as those of their conquerors, their colonizers, their kings and queens.
The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence or veiled in fable; and the world perhaps has lost but little which it needs regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived: and happily there never was a case in which every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved.
History was not a matter of missing minutes on the tape. I did not stand helpless before it. I hewed to the texture of collected knowledge, took faith from the solid and availing stuff of our experience. Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood -- read the speeches of Mussolini -- at least we've known the thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation. (82)
My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silence and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated.
In many ways, the North won the Civil War militarily and then lost the peace. You know, a group of writers, included many Confederate generals, began a school of thought called the Lost Cause in which they began to romanticize the Confederacy.
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