Benz is known for his research at Technische Universität Berlin, estimating that between 5.29–6.2 million Jews were killed by the German Nazi regime during the Holocaust.

He concluded in 1999: The goal of annihilating all of the Jews of Europe, as it was proclaimed at the conference in the villa Am Grossen Wannsee in January 1942, was not reached.

(over 200,000) and the deported and murdered Jews from Albania and Norway, Denmark and Italy, from Luxembourg and Bulgaria.Benz claimed in early 2010 in connection with the Minaret controversy in Switzerland that "anti-Semites of the 19th Century and some detractors of the Islam of the 21st Century work with similar methods on their concept of the enemy" and warned against the global discrimination of Muslims, which he saw as a "declaration of war against tolerance and democracy".

[11][12] He was criticized by historian Julius H. Schoeps who claimed Benz's suggestions are "dubious – if not dangerous"[13] and by journalist Henryk M. Broder,[14] pointing out that 'Islamophobia' – unlike Antisemitism – has a real basis, e.g. terrorist acts, the way dissidents are treated in Islamic countries etc.

The educationist Micha Brumlik, however, has argued that as far as social-psychological aspect is concerned, Benz was right when comparing today's Islamophobia and anti-Semitism of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Being the director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Wolfgang Benz wrote a letter to the Bundestag president warning of the "danger of nationalizing memory" by building such monuments.