 For example, taking note of the shift of interest among professional historians toward social history in the 1960s, Alan Bullock agreed that in general deep long-term social forces are decisive in history.But not always, he argued, for there are times when the Great Man is decisive.In revolutionary circumstances, "It is possible for an individual to exert a powerful even a decisive influence on the way events develop and the policies that are followed...After the pendulum has swung between exaggerating and underestimating [individuals]...the longer perspective suggests that in both cases neither the historical circumstances nor the individual personality is sufficient explanation by itself without the other"

Those historians who took an intentionalist line, like Andreas Hillgruber, argued that everything that happened after the invasion of the USSR in 1941 was part of a masterplan he credited Hitler with developing in the 1920s.