As a historian, Zitelmann is best known for his argument that Nazi Germany followed a conscious strategy of modernization. In his doctoral thesis, Zitelmann strove to show that the modernising efforts of the Third Reich, which had been diagnosed by scholars like Ralf Dahrendorf, David Schoenbaum and Henry Ashby Turner, were intended as such. Unlike Dahrendorf, Schoenbaum and Turner, who argued that the modernisation of German society during the Nazi period was an unintentional side effect or merely a necessary adjunct towards achieving profoundly antimodern goals, Zitelmann argued that modernization of German society was intended and a central goal of the Nazis. A review published in the Berlin daily "Der Tagesspiegel" dated July 14, 1988, suggests that "the most important finding of [Zitelmann's] work" is that "Hitler saw himself uncompromisingly as a revolutionary. Dahrendorf and Schoenbaum’s hypothesis, according to which National Socialism had a revolutionising and modernising effect in the social area without actually having intended it, needs to be revised".