Hallgarten, Georg Wolfgang Felix

Born Jan. 3, 1901; died May 22, 1975. German (Federal Republic of Germany) historian and sociologist.

After graduating from the University of Munich in 1925, Hallgarten devoted several years to studying the socioeconomic foundations of imperial German foreign policy. He uncovered the real goals of the leading industrialists, the landowners, and the military in conducting a policy of expansion, and he traced the implementation of this policy. His findings led him to dispute the assumption, traditional among bourgeois historiographers, that foreign policy takes precedence over domestic policy. Discounting the influence of the class struggle on imperialism, Hallgarten failed to go beyond economic materialism in his works.

When the fascist dictatorship was established in Germany, Hallgarten emigrated first to France and then, in 1937, to the USA. He served in the American Army during World War II. In his works published after the war he became one of a small group of bourgeois scholars who strove to disclose the close ties that linked German monopolies and militarists to Hitler’s party as it rose to power. Unfortunately, Hallgarten’s approach lacked consistency.