Anton Joachimsthaler is a German historian. He is particularly noted for his research on the early life of the German dictator Adolf Hitler, in his book Korrektur einer Biografie and his last days in the book Hitler's Ende.
Life
Joachimsthaler was born in 1930 in Hohenelbe in the Sudetenland. He studied electrical engineering at the Oskar-von-Miller-Polytechnikum, a predecessor of the Munich University of Applied Sciences. Afterwards he worked in 1956 for the Deutsche Bundesbahn as a mechanical and electrical engineer in various places, his last position being as a senior service manager in the Munich-Freimann repair station. Since 1969 he has occupied himself with contemporary and railroad history. Since the 1970s, he has produced publications on the history of technology and general history, and has contributed to television broadcasts from ZDF Mainz, such as Hitler as a private man. His work Korrektur einer Biografie, in which he made many facts about Hitler's early years known to a broader public, was particularly well received, and his book Hitler's Ende, which was published in English as The Last Days of Hitler: Legend, Evidence and Truth, is often cited.
Contributions to research
Joachimsthaler is best known for his contributions to the study of the life of Adolf Hitler. With the Austrian historian Brigitte Hamann, he is the researcher who has delivered the most important contributions over the last decades to revision of Hitler's early years of life in Linz, Vienna and Munich. He helped to shatter the view, expressed by other historians, that the young Hitler was an established anti-semite in the period before the World War I, by highlighting convincing evidence that Hitler developed into a serious anti-semite only during or immediately after the war. This he ascertained from his research in the city archives of Hitler's hometown, Linz. Also, the fact that Stefanie Rabatsch, with whom Hitler, according to his boyhood friend August Kubizek, had developed a fanatical youthful love, had the maiden name of "Isak". The fact that Hitler had a romantic interest in a girl whom he believed due to her Jewish-sounding name to be Jewish, although in fact she was not, made a serious anti-Semitic attitude of the later dictator highly unlikely at that time. According to historian Ian Kershaw, Joachimsthaler's work The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, The Evidence, The Truth is a "meticulous study of the testimony and forensic evidence" as to Hitler's last days and death. In addition Kershaw wrote that Joachimsthaler's book in chapters 5–7 were "the most reliable and detailed examination" of the cremation of Hitler and Eva Braun. Joachimsthaler also produced important research into Hitler's desired broad-gauge railway, with a track width of 3000 millimeters, more than twice as wide as the European standard track of 1435 millimeters. His first study, published in 1981, is still the standard work.
Publications
As author:
In German
Entwicklungsgeschichte der elektrischen Lokomotiven in 100 Jahre elektrische Eisenbahn. Starnberg: Keller Verlag, 1980,, Page 22ff.
