The philosopher Helmut Fleischer, in an essay first published in the "Nürnberger Zeitung" newspaper on September 20, 1986, defended Nolte against Habermas on the grounds that Nolte was only seeking to place the Holocaust into a wider political context of the time. Fleischer accused Habermas of seeking to impose on Germans a left-wing moral understanding of the Nazi period and of creating a “moral” "Sondergericht" (Special Court). Fleischer argued that Nolte was only seeking the "historicization" of National Socialism that Martin Broszat had called for in a 1985 essay by trying to understand what caused National Socialism, with a special focus on the fear of communism.