How should a historian incorporate the perspectives of Nazi Germany and German servicemen into a narrative?
Short answerPresent their perspectives critically and in context, but explain technical subjects such as destroyer design through the longer institutional choices and physical constraints that actually shaped them.
NotesA historian should identify a participant's perspective and test it against physical constraints, especially logistics, rather than suppressing objectionable views or accepting memoir claims. German destroyer design is offered as an example of a problem with roots before Nazism: designers repeatedly tried to make destroyers into miniature cruisers. Larger slow-firing guns imposed poor tradeoffs, whereas more standard destroyer guns could provide greater practical firepower through number and rate of fire.