[6] Citing Luther, Ritter argued that the state had to hold power and that as part of the messy business of politics, it could be guided only by the Christian values of its leaders.

But I am confident that a time will come when everyone will be thoroughly fed up with the din of national phrase-making and will long for a pure drink instead of the inebriating potion administered by the Nazis.

In 1940, he stated that "the sword is always more ready to the hand of continental statesman who stands in the midst of the fray of European power interests, and must always be armed to counter an attack before it is too late".

[12] Ritter publicly referred to the Nazi Reich as the "peaceful center of Europe" that would form a "bulwark against Bolshevism", and he praised the German Anschluss (union) with Austria.

[26] After the Kristallnacht pogrom, Ritter wrote in a letter to his mother, "What we have experienced over the last two weeks all over the country is the most shameful and most dreadful thing that has happened for a long time".

[29] Ritter attacked that position by arguing that without universal notions of values of good and evil and judging all historical phenomenon by its own standards was to abandon all ideas of morality applicable to all times and places.

In a Denkschrift submitted to Goerdeler in January 1943, Ritter wrote, "Hundreds of thousands of human beings have been systematically murdered solely because of their Jewish ancestry".

[34] The historian Gregory Weeks commented that it is hard to tell how much of Machstaat und Utopie was material that was inserted to allow the book to be passed by the censors and how much was the expression of Ritter's own beliefs.

[36] The original intent behind this work was to offer a critique of the "total war" philosophy of General Ludendorff as a form of indirect protest against Nazi Germany.

[38] Two major themes of Ritter's writings after 1945 were attempts to prove that the Bismarckian tradition in German life had nothing to do with national socialism and that it was democracy of the masses, rather than aristocratic conservatism, that had caused the Nazi movement.

[42] Ritter argued that throughout the 19th century, there had been worrisome signs in Germany and the rest of Europe caused by the entry of masses into politics but that it was World War I that marked the decisive turning point.

That led Ritter to conclude that "the system of 'totalitarian' dictatorship as such is not a specifically German phenomenon" but that it was the natural result of when "the direct rule of the people derived from the 'revolt of the masses' is introduced".

[42] Ritter argued that the precursors of Hitler were "neither Frederick the Great, Bismarck nor Wilhelm II, but the demagogues and Caesars of modern history from Danton to Lenin to Mussolini".

He used his official position as the first postwar head of the German Historical Association to demand the return of the records and held the opinion that their absence was hurting his own research projects the most.

[48] Ritter wrote that those involved in the Rote Kapelle were not part of the "German Resistance, but stood in the service of the enemy abroad" and so fully deserved to be executed.

[48] Besides defending German nationalism, Ritter became active in the ecumenical movement after 1945 and urged conservative Catholics and Protestants to come together in the Christian Democratic Union.

Ritter pushed for the translation of his Goerdeler biography into English to counter the publication of John W. Wheeler-Bennett's book Nemesis of Power, which in his view vilified the German resistance.

[52] In a paper presented to the German Historical Convention in 1953, "The Problem of Militarism in Germany", Ritter argued traditional Prussian leaders such as Frederick the Great were Machtpolitiker (power politicians), not militarists, since in Ritter's view, Frederick was opposed to "the ruthless sacrifice of all life to the purposes of war" and instead was interested in creating "a lasting order of laws and peace, to further general welfare, and to moderate the conflict of interests".

[42] Ritter wrote that "the prewar Germany of my own youth, which has for an entire lifetime been illuminated in my memory by the radiant splendor of a sun that seemed to grow dark only after the outbreak of the war of 1914" was "in the evening of my life" darkened by "shadows that were much deeper than my generation-and certainly the generation of my academic teachers-was able to perceive at the time".

[6] Against Fischer's thesis, Ritter maintained that the Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had resisted the demands by General Ludendorff for wide-ranging annexations as a war aim.

[58] Ritter claimed that the significance that Fischer attached to the highly-bellicose advice about waging a "preventive war" in the Balkans offered in July 1914 to the Chief of Cabinet of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Count Alexander Hoyos, by the German journalist Viktor Naumann was unwarranted.

[61] Ritter felt that in retrospect, it was not necessary for Germany to maintain Austria-Hungary as a great power but claimed that at the time, most Germans regarded the Dual Monarchy as a "brother empire" and viewed the prospect of the Balkans being in the Russian sphere of influence as an unacceptable threat.

[63] Likewise, in reference to the order by Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Siegfried von Roedern, the State Secretary for Alsace-Lorraine, to end Francophobic remarks in the German-language press in Alsace, Ritter claimed that was proof of Germany's desire not to have a wider war in 1914.

[66] Ritter strongly disagreed with Fischer's interpretation of the meeting of Moltke, Bethmann Hollweg and General Erich von Falkenhayn (the Prussian war minister) on 30 July 1914.

Rather than a conscious decision to wage an aggressive war, as Fischer argued, Ritter's claim was that news of Russia's mobilisation led the German generals into persuading a reluctant Bethmann Hollweg to activate the Schlieffen Plan.

[69] In 1964, Ritter successfully lobbied the West German Foreign Ministry to cancel the travel funds that had been allocated for Fischer to visit the United States.

[71] Evans notes that after his death, Ritter was usually cast as the "villain of this affair, as Fischer's views, at least in their more moderate forms, gained widespread acceptance among a younger generation of historians".

[71] A history book on Imperial Germany by Hans-Ulrich Wehler was published in 1973 and held that as a result of Fischer's theories, "two opposing schools of thought" formed.

[74]Ferguson also criticised Fischer for seizing on the notion that right-wing officeholders in Germany used an aggressive foreign policy to gain domestic political advantage over the German left.

Such misuse of foreign policy, Ferguson noted, "was hardly the invention of the German Right", which in effect repeated the charge made by Mommsen (see above) that Fischer neglected the historical context.