Ernst Klink
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Ernst Klink PhD |
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|---|---|
| Born | 1923 Nazi Germany |
| Occupation | Historian, author, editor |
| Academic work | |
| Era | 20th century |
| Institutions | Military History Research Office (MGFA) |
| Main interests | Modern European history, military history |
| Notable works | Books on the history of Nazi Germany, including Germany and the Second World War |
Ernst Klink is a German military historian who specialises in the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. He was a long-term employee at the Military History Research Office (MGFA).
Klink was a contributor to the seminal work Germany and the Second World War from the MGFA. During his career as a historian, Klink was a member of and worked with HIAG, a Waffen-SS lobby group established by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel.
Born in 1923, Ernst Klink grew up in Nazi Germany; his mother was Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, head of National Socialist Women's League. Klink was a member of the Waffen-SS during World War II; in early 1950s, he joined HIAG, a Waffen-SS veteran's association and lobby group, set up in West Germany in 1951 by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel.
Klink joined the Military History Research Office (MGFA) at Freiburg in 1958. In the same year, he became the spokesperson for the Tübingen branch of HIAG. Klink's tenure at MGFA was controversial, especially in recent assessments. According to Jens Westemeier in his biography of Jochen Peiper, Klink was "one of the most important lobbyists for the in-house historical falsification" by HIAG. He gave lectures at veterans' meetings, assisted with documentation and "cultivated the image of the clean Wehrmacht".
Klink worked with HIAG and its in-house historian Walter Harzer to screen materials donated to the German Federal Military Archive in Freiburg for any information that may have implicated units and personnel in questionable activity. In the 1960s and 70s, Klink maintained a friendship with Peiper; one of the last two letters that Peiper wrote before his death was to Klink. According to the researcher Danny Parker, Klink "pretended to be a politically neutral historian at the MGFA", but his bias, especially towards the Waffen-SS, was obvious from the personal papers of Klink that Parker had examined.
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