The position taken by conservative intellectuals, led by Ernst Nolte, was that the Holocaust was not unique and therefore Germans should not bear any special burden of guilt for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question".[3][4] Nolte argued that there was no moral difference between the crimes of the Soviet Union and those of Nazi Germany, and that the Nazis acted as they did out of fear of what the Soviet Union might do to Germany.[5] Likewise, the conservative historian Andreas Hillgruber asserted that there was no moral difference between Allied policies towards Germany in 1944–1945 and the genocide waged against the Jews.[5] Others argued that the memory of the Nazi era could not be "normalized" and be a source of national pride.[6]