Diplomatic history
However Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), the leading German historian of the 19th century, codified the modern form of diplomatic history.
In the early 20th centuries, work by prominent diplomatic historians such as Charles Webster, Harold Temperley, and Bernadotte Everly Schmitt focused on great European events, especially wars and peace conferences.
For the first half of the 20th century, most diplomatic history working within the narrow confines of the Primat der Aussenpolitik approach was very narrowly concerned with foreign-policy making elites with little reference to broader historical forces.
[1] Sir Winston Churchill's multi-volume The Second World War, especially the first volume The Gathering Storm (1948) set the framework and the interpretation for much later historiography.
The fact that a world war started over Poland in 1939 was due to diplomatic miscalculation by all the countries concerned, instead of being a case of German aggression.
Historians such as Christopher Thorne and Harry Hinsley abandoned the previous focus on individual leaders to discuss the broader societal influences such as public opinion and narrower ones like intelligence on diplomatic relations.
[7][8] A group of French historians centered around Pierre Renouvin (1893–1974) and his protégés Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and Maurice Baumont [fr] started a new type of international history in the 1950s that included taking into account what Renouvin called forces profondes (profound forces) such as the influence of domestic politics on French foreign policy.
[11] As a result of the rise of the Primat der Innenpolitik school, diplomatic historians increasing started to pay attention to domestic politics.
[11] In the 1970s, the conservative German historian Andreas Hillgruber, together with his close associate Klaus Hildebrand, was involved in a very acrimonious debate with the leftish German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler over the merits of the Primat der Aussenpolitik ("primacy of foreign politics") and Primat der Innenpolitik ("primacy of domestic politics") schools.
[16] However, Mason argued that the timing of such a war was determined by domestic political pressures, especially as relating to a failing economy, and had nothing to do with what Hitler wanted.
[18] Mason contended that when faced with the deep socio-economic crisis the Nazi leadership had decided to embark upon a ruthless “smash and grab” foreign policy of seizing territory in Eastern Europe which could be pitilessly plundered to support living standards in Germany.
[19] Mason's theory of a "Flight into war" being imposed on Hitler generated much controversy, and in the 1980s he conducted a series of debates with economic historian Richard Overy over this matter.
Overy maintained the decision to attack Poland was not caused by structural economic problems, but rather was the result of Hitler wanting a localized war at that particular time in history.
The Vietnam War led to the rise of a revisionist school in the United States, which led many American historians such as Gabriel Kolko and William Appleman Williams to reject traditional diplomatic history in favor of a Primat der Innenpolitik approach that saw a widespread examination of the influence of American domestic politics together with various social, economic and cultural forces on foreign-policy making.
[26] In the U.S. since 1980, the discipline of diplomatic history has become more relevant to and integrated with the mainstream of the historiographic profession, having been in the forefront of the internationalization of American historical studies.
