When I was in graduate school, my advisors told me a cautionary tale about a historian, David Abraham, who wrote - in their view - a brilliant book about the role of big business in Nazi Germany. 1/

A QUARREL OVER WEIMAR BOOK - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/23/arts/a-quarrel-over-weimar-book.html

The book, which I read at my professors suggestion, was beautifully written and argued that big business actively supported the Nazis. The argument went against the work of some other prominent historians, who felt that Abraham’s work directly challenged their reputations. 2/

Abraham was attacked and smeared; his archival research was criticized for poor translation and misquotes from documents. His citations and references were put under a microscope, although in reality he was mostly viewed as suspect because his arguments “seemed Marxist.” 3/

David Abraham, son of East European Jews who escaped Nazism, spent a decade as a historian, first as a PhD student at the University of Chicago. and then as an Assistant Professor at Princeton. But his academic career did not survive the engineered scandal over citations. 4/

Abraham left Princeton and attended Law School at U Penn. after clerking, he joined Law faculty at the U of Miami in 1991. His book had a 2nd revised edition in 1988 and can still be found on Amazon and in many university libraries. 5/

Abraham’s story was a cautionary tale: challenging academic elders has consequences. But his plight opened doors to another controversial book - Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Similarly attacked, Goldhagen prevailed with help of (among others) Stanley Hoffmann. End/