He was dismissed from Kiel on political and antisemitic grounds in 1933, and became lecturer at the 'University in Exile' and at City College, New York, 1933–34.
[2] Kantorowicz caused heated debate when details of his report for the parliamentary investigative committee on the question of Germany's guilt in triggering World War I became known.
Kantorowicz cited as an example the official German White Book of 3 August 1914, finding that about 75 percent of the documents that it presented had been falsified to support denial of Germany's involvement in the outbreak of the First World War.
[5] When Kantorowicz was proposed for election as a full professor at the University of Kiel shortly thereafter in 1927, Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann (DVP) raised his objections to this in a letter to the Minister of Culture Carl Heinrich Becker (SPD).
Stresemann saw Germany as innocent of the origins of the First World War and, after advice from the former diplomat and politician Johannes Kriege (DVP), wanted to prevent Kantorowicz's critical view of Germany's actions, which went as far as "masochism", from being reinforced by the award of a full professorship in Kiel.