"At least according to my knowledge of how things stand and after the previous debate about the matter, I would regard it as problematic to find in a volume, which apart from this you have certainly compiled with care [...] an article of this author that will probably again be full of unsustainable comments [...] Please consider your intention again in this light, and I hope that our relationship, which has so far been cooperative, will be taken into account."

While Haar came under financial pressure to cut my chapter, Professor Christian Gerlach, the historian who informed me that he had been in conflict with the Toepfer Foundation's "Independent Academic Commission", received a financial proposal of another kind. When the chief executive of the foundation heard about Gerlach's criticisms of the lack of independence of its sponsored "independent" historians, he wrote to Gerlach:

"Should you consider it useful in your work at the University of Berne to enlarge upon certain aspects of your previous work, which you think have not been sufficiently attended to — be it in form of Diploma, MA, or PhD dissertations, be it as your own research — we will be happy to provide support for the realisation (of this work)."

The chief executive justified the offer on the ground that the foundation faced "the dilemma that the support by our foundation is often considered an attack on the independence of scholarship. At the same time, caution is often interpreted as a lack of initiative or even an attempt at concealing something. Unfortunately, my experience of the last five years has shown that, unless we here take the initiative, there is barely any independent scholarly interest in Toepfer."

The main public riposte to my Standpoint article was that the foundation itself had revealed the "overwhelming number" of facts about Toepfer's life which I claimed to have brought to light. Thus, my charge that the foundation and its official history, published by Hans Mommsen and others in 2000, had skirted over Toepfer's record were unfounded. This argument was at the core of a 42-page analysis sponsored by the foundation, posted on its website in April 2010,  and of a critique by Gina Thomas in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (April 7, 2010). The foundation expanded the same theme in a dossier of more than 300 pages and 57 annexes submitted to Oxford in June 2010. Professor Pogge von Strandmann, the retired Oxford historian who had been the foundation's main link with the university for decades, backed this interpretation in Oxford Magazine (June 2010). Richard Evans wrote a long attack on me in Times Higher Education (March 10, 2011).

On June 2, 2011, the German Historical Institute in London organised a panel, including Evans and the head of the Volkswagen Foundation, to discuss the ramifications of the Toepfer affair for German industrial foundations whose endowments derive from Holocaust-related activities.

Evans and I had never met until our friendly conversation after the meeting at the German Historical Institute during which it turned out that many of our underlying views are not as far apart as his article in THE suggests. This response is not intended to undermine his high reputation or to cast doubt on his moral stances. However, his THE article was well below his normal high standards.