War ended in May 1945. Very soon it became impossible not to be aware of the holocaust. By now in his late 70s, there is no sign of self-criticism in Cartellieri's diaries. He did not believe that the nation's university professors had been complicit in the rising National Socialist tide that had swept away democracy and imposed fascism in the 1930s and 1940s: "Most of the people knew absolutely nothing about the atrocities in the concentration camps". The historical interpretation which he now advocated identified Hitler not as a specifically German problem but as a European problem. Without the fall of the empire and the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler could never have taken power. Just as he always had, Cartellieri continued to believe that "empire" had provided Germany with the "best" form of government. On 22 September 1946 he wrote in his diary: "No person of understanding can possibly doubt that if the 'Sozzen' ("socialists"), with their republican psychosis, had not driven the emperor away, the NSDAP could never have come to power".