Andreas Fritz Hillgruber (January 18, 1925-May 8, 1989) was an conservative West German historian. Hillgruber was born in Angerburg, Germany (modern Wegorzewo, Poland) near was then the East Prussian city of Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad, Russia). His father was a school teacher. Hillgruber served in the German Army in the years 1943-1945 and spent the years 1945-1948 as POW in France. After his release, Hillgruber studied at the University of Göttingen where he received an PhD in 1952. Hillgruber spent the decade 1954-1964 working as school teacher. In 1960, he married Karin Zieran who he had three children by. Hillgruber worked as a professor at the University of Marburg (1965-1968), University of Freiburg (1968-1972) and at the University of Cologne (1972-1989). He died in Cologne.

Hillgruber's area of expertise was German history between 1871-1945, especially the political and military aspects. Hillgruber argued for understanding this period as one of continuties. He started out in the early 1950s seeing World War Two as a conventional war, but by 1965 Hillgruber was arguing that the war was for Hitler an vicious, ideological war in which no mercy was to given to one's enemies. Hillgruber was a Intentionist on the origins of the Holocaust debate, arguing that Adolf Hitler was the driving force behind the Holocaust. This set Hillgruber against such Functionlist historians such as Hans Mommsen.

An self-proclaimed conservative and nationalist, Hillgruber did not deny that black deeds were committed in Germany's name and in no way can Hillgruber be considered an Holocaust denier, but he argued that Germany as a great power had the potential to do much good for Europe. For Hillgruber, the tragedy was that this potential was never fullfilled. In Hillgruber's view, the problem was not with German domination of Eastern and Central Europe, but the particular way in this domination was excised by the Nazis. For Hillgruber, Germany's defeat in 1945 was a catastrophe as ended the ethnic German presence in Eastern Europe and Germany as great power.

Hillgruber was best known for his role in the Historikerstreit where he argued the Holocaust was not an uniquely evil event. For Hillgruber, the crimes of Joseph Stalin were just as terrible as any of the crimes of Hitler. In his highly controversial 1986 essay "Der Zusammenbruch im Osten 1944/45" ("The Collapse in the East 1944/45) from his book Zweierlei Untegang (Two Kinds of Ruin) Hillgruber highlighted the sufferings of Germans in what was then eastern Germany who had to flee or were expelled or killed by the Red Army. Hillgruber documented the mass rapings of German women, widespread looting and massacres of German civilians by the Soviets. Hillgruber paid hommage to those who had to excavate the German population and to those soldiers who did their best to stem the Soviet advance. For Hillgruber, the end of the "German East" in which he had been born and grew up was just as tragic as the Holocaust and marked the end of what Hilgruber considered Eastern Europe's best chances for progress. The two kinds of ruin of the title were the Holocaust and the expulsion of the Reichdeutsch (Reich Germans; those Germans living in Germany) and Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans living outside of Germany). For Hillgruber, both events were equally tragic, and both he ultimaley blamed on the Nazis.

Criticism centered around the way in which Hillgruber had largely ignored that the reason why Soviet troops were in Germany in 1945, which was because Germany had attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and for the fact those the same troops were fighting to save German civilians from the Soviets were also fighting to allow the Nazis to continue the Holocaust.

Work

• Hitler, König Carol und Marschall Antonesu: die deutsch-rumänischen Beziehungen, 1938-1944, 1954.
• co-written with Hans-Günther Seraphim "Hitlers Entschluss zum Angrieff auf Russland (Eine Entgegnung)" pages 240-254 from Vieteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 2, 1954.
• Hitlers Strategie: Politik und Kriegsführung, 1940-1941, 1965.
• Deutschlands Rolle in der Vorgeschichte der beiden Weltkriege, 1967.
• Kontinuität und Diskontinuität in der deutschen Aussenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler, 1969.
• Bismarcks Aussenpolitik, 1972.
• "`Die Endösung' und das deutsche Ostimperium als Kernstück des rassenideologische Programms des Nationsozialismus" pages 133-153 from Vieteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 20, 1972.
• Deutsche Geschichte, 1945-1972: Die "Deutsche Frage" in der Weltpolitik, 1974.
• Deutsche Grossmacht-und Weltpolitik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, 1977.
• Otto von Bismarck: Gründer der europäischen Grossmacht Deutsches Reich, 1978.
• Europa in der Weltpolitik der Nachkriegszeit (1945-1963), 1979.
• Sowjetische Aussenpolitik im Zweten Weltkrieg, 1979.
• Die Gescheiterte Grossmacht: Eine Skizze des Deutschen Reiches, 1871-1945, 1980.
• Der Zweite Weltkriege, 1939-1945: Kriesziele und Strategie der grossen Mächte, 1982.
• Die Last der Nation: Fünf Beiträge über Deutschland und die Deutschen, 1984.
• Zweirelei Untergang: Die Zerschlagung des Deutschen Reiches und das Ende des europäischen Judentums, 1986.
• Die Zerstörung Europas: Beiträge zur Welkriegsepoche 1914 bis 1945, 1988.

Reference

• Düffer, Jost (editor) Deutschland in Europa: Kontinuität und Bruch: Gedenkschrif für Andreas Hillgruber(Germany in Europe: Continuity and Break:; Commemorative Volume for Andreas Hillgruber),, Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1990.
• "Historikerstreit": Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistschen Judenvernichtung, Munich: Piper, 1987.