Hans Mommsen

'Hans Mommsen (1930-) is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, and a German historian who has written extensively, preferring articles and essays to books. He belongs to the Social Democratic Party and, from a left-wing perspective, has challenged the Hitler writing of the right-wing journalist and historian, Joachim Fest.

He has led the functionalist school of Hitler historiography. By the 1970s, there were two main schools of Hitler biography: the functionalists and the intentionalists. Functionalists saw Hitler as motivated by the exercise of power regardless of purpose, while the intentionalists focused on his specific vision.

According to Machter, Mommsen is the leader of the functionalists. He considered Hitler a "political counterfeiter" who succeeded because he was constantly overrated, extremely effective with propaganda but not in performance. Machter considers Ian Kershaw to be the leading current historian, attempting to unify the two schools.

Mommssen is among those who believes that while Hitler was clearly responsible for the Holocaust, he probably never issued an explicit, even oral, order for the Final Solution. He believes that an order that specific, for a matter that complex, would conflict with Hitler's anti-bureaucratic style. In contrast, he offers the Commissar Order as an example of something with sufficiently small scope for Hitler to make into a specific directive.