Joachim Hoffmann

Dr. Joachim Hoffmann (December 1, 1930, Königsberg, East Prussia – February 8, 2002, Freiburg) was a German historian. From 1960 to 1995 he worked at the Military History Research Institute of the Bundeswehr, finally as scientific director. He has published a large number of books, among the better known is Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941–1945 (Stalin's War of Extermination, 1995), in which he with the new Russian sources available following the fall of the Soviet Union argued that Stalin planned a war of extermination against Germany, and that the German attack on the Soviet Union was a preemptive war.