Zitelmann provoked a mixed reaction with his anthology "Die Schatten der Vergangenheit" (The Shadows of the Past), which he edited with Eckhard Jesse and Uwe Backes. Its editors sought to respond to Martin Broszat's 1985 call to historicise National Socialism. As the editors emphasize in their introduction, their goal was the "objectification of the discussion of National Socialist times... The intention is not to 'downpla' anything: only an emphatically sober historiography, free of moralising bias, can create the foundation for assessing the historical and political-moral dimensions of the mass crimes committed by National Socialism". Zitelmann thinks that the historisation of National Socialism suggested by Martin Broszat was a way to resolve the problem of neither engaging in apologetics about the era or nor utterly condemning it. Zitelmann sees his work as a way of allowing those living in the present to understand the Nazi period without seeking to total condemnation or apologia.