Within Germany, the minority of historians who condemn this orthodoxy tend to be isolated and reviled by their academic peers. They often find it hard to obtain university appointments.

Of course, there is a major difference between this mainstream German interpretation and the views of hard-core Holocaust deniers. Yet, the distinctions between hard-core denial of the existence of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and what Deborah Lipstadt (borrowing from Michael Burleigh and myself) calls "soft-core" denial are not always as definite as one might wish.

In my article in the April 2010 issue of Standpoint on the case of the millionaire Hamburg businessman Alfred Toepfer, I used the term "greywashing" to describe a technique of moderating and partially excusing German responsibility without resorting to outright denial. This derived from an artwork at the Hamburg headquarters of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in the form of a chess set with pieces on each side painted in grey. This, so the chief executive of the foundation excitedly told me, represented Toepfer's morality under the Nazis.

The heavy dependence of British and American universities on German sources of funding for the study of modern German history makes this moral relativism unduly influential.

The extensive campaign waged against my Standpoint article on Toepfer illustrates the character of current political warfare over the history of the Holocaust. Though he was a significant figure during and after the period of Nazi rule, Toepfer was not a person of the highest rank. That my study attracted such widespread attention and venom is significant.

My case was moderate. I asked for a South African-style truth and reconciliation process and for the Alfred Toepfer Foundation and the Toepfer family to acknowledge the full history of his misdeeds and offer an apology for them. On this basis, I felt it would be acceptable for Oxford University to continue its association with the Hanseatic Scholarships funded annually by the Toepfer Foundation.

At a meeting with the chair of the foundation, Toepfer's daughter-in-law, Birte Toepfer, held at her request during my research visit to Hamburg in November 2009, Birte showed considerable sympathy with this suggestion.

She wished me luck with my research into Toepfer and even with my representations against the foundation to Oxford University. But she warned that her husband's family considered her a "naughty girl" for her wish to come to terms with the past of the paterfamilias. She was not optimistic that her in-laws would accept the idea of an apology. She would do her best.