With his 1986 essay in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" newspaper entitled "Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will" ("The past that will not pass away"), Ernst Nolte caused an uproar in historical circles.

His controversial thesis that Hitler and the Nazis were Germany's logical reaction to the "existential threat" represented by the Russian Revolution launched a wave of indignation and led to furious debate among historians.

"Did the 'Gulag Archipelago' not exist before Auschwitz?" Nolte wrote in the essay. "Was Bolshevik 'class murder' not the logical and factual predecessor to the Nazi 'racial murder'? ... Did Auschwitz not, perhaps, originate in a past that would not pass away?"

Nolte was also known for published works including "Three Faces of Fascism," "Germany and the Cold War" and "The European Civil War 1917-1945: Nazism and Bolshevism."

Born in the university city of Witten, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Nolte did his doctorate on Karl Marx and was a professor at the Free University of Berlin.

cmk/kbm (dpa, AFP)