Ends and Beginnings

This is one of a number of papers which Tim was preparing, in the last year of his life, as an afterword for the English translation of his Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich. It offers an eloquent, simple, brilliant solution to the question of differing interpretations of German history a means of addressing the related questions of interpretation and theory, without engaging directly with theory which Tim thinks historians should not do. Theory, he argues, should be structured into the narrative rather than treated apart, but it is inescapably a part of it. The choice of ending carries with it an unspoken burden of interpretation and a ruling problematic. If totalitarianism is the phenomenon the historian is attempting to explain it will require one kind of narrative and one kind of chronology; if genocide, then a different one; if nationalism a third. We have reproduced Tim's interpolated notes to himself (on sources, argument and style) so as to convey the draft character of the piece and for the interest of seeing his thought process. They are printed in italic, between double slashes: I1 like this 11.