In his essay "Hitler und die Genesis der 'Endlösung': Aus Anlaß der Thesen von David Irving" (1977), Broszat criticized the English author David Irving's argument in the latter's "Hitler's War" (1977) that Hitler had wanted to expel the Jews and make Europe "judenfrei" ("free of Jews") but had not known about the Holocaust until autumn 1943. The genocide of the Jews, Irving wrote, had been ordered by Heinrich Himmler and other senior Nazis. Broszat's essay was first published in the "Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte" journal in 1977 and later in English as "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses".