 Despite his editing of his essay, he refused to allow it to be published in an anthology about the "Historikerstreit" out of the concern it might damage his reputation as a historian.Stürmer's critic, the British historian Richard J. Evans stated that the remarks he quoted Stürmer as making at the 1986 Römerberg Colloquia came from a tape-recorded record at the Colloquia, and not from the edited version provided by Stürmer

Jürgen Habermas began his article “A Kind of Settlement of Damages” in the "Die Zeit" newspaper on July 11, 1986 with an attack on Stürmer.He took Stürmer to task for his statement that history served the purpose of integrating the individual into the wider community, and as such history had the need to provide a “higher meaning” to create the proper national consciousness in the individual, who otherwise would lack this national consciousness.