 The "Historikerstreit" pitted right-wing against left-wing intellectuals.The positions taken by the right-wing intellectuals were largely based on the totalitarianism approach which takes a comparative approach to totalitarian states, while left-wing intellectuals argued that fascism was uniquely evil, referred to as the "Sonderweg" approach, and could not be equated with the crimes of Soviet communism.The former were accused by their critics of downplaying Nazi crimes, while the latter were accused by their critics of downplaying Soviet crimes.