To see what your friends thought of this book, If you find the historical and philosophical background in the first part of the book too hard to get through, jump ahead to the chapters on the death. (Actually, there is some evidence that this document, which contains no signature, date, and so forth, may be a forgery of some sort. (See, for example, Isaiah 19:2-3: "And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians, and they shall fight every one against his brother ... And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof ..."). Most Germans considered Jews to be parasites and not even human. He argues that the Germans were fundamentally different from other peoples, especially in regard to anti-Semitism. Many joined the irregular (partisan) forces, which became a severe menace to thinly spread German military personnel. His case studies on the police battalions, the death marches, and annihilation by “work” have already changed our understanding of the Shoah and the terms of future research. 87, 105), SS guards at Auschwitz could be (and in some instances were) punished severely by the German authorities for mistreating inmates, especially for emotional satisfaction. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Everyone knows it’s hard to get published. They all actively hated Jews, Slavs, Roma, blacks, and others with extreme passion and happily participated in their murder. I’ve read a lot of books about WWII looking for the answer to one question – why did the German people ever allow the Nazis to attempt to exterminate Jews? It SHOULD be a "must read" for all people, especially those in school, but the author is dry and academic and the book could be cut by at least 1/3. “Hitler’s Willing Executioner’s is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the…literature on the Holocaust.”–New York Review of Books “The most important book ever published about the Holocaust…Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned…A model of moral and scholarly integrity.”–Philadelphia Inquirer If the German authorities intended to consign all Jews to death, as Goldhagen claims (p. 173), they moved with a remarkable lack of urgency. (See, for example, Robert Faurisson's article, "How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Höss," in Winter 1986-87 Journal.) The grave distortions and lack of balance of this book are perhaps due less to what Goldhagen writes than to what he does not include. The Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in the spring of 1943, for example, came some three and a half years after the outbreak of the war. Many apparently expected to take possession of German farms and businesses. Brownings book is much easier to read for the lay person of Holocaust studies. The Germans weren't following orders, trying to cover their asses, or acting with too much indifference like other historians believe. For Goldhagen the Holocaust, in which so many Germans participated, must be explained a… At most Goldhagen provides an explanation as to why people do the things they do regardless of their social or economic background. Firstly, the notion of unique German evil is utter BULLSHIT! Hitler's Willing Executioners. The book Hitler's Willing Executioners begins with Goldhagen's thesis. Of the nearly 1400 feature films produced during the Third Reich era, no more than four or five were anti-Jewish. Reviewed by Charles E. Weber. All the drama of the 60s and 70s have shown us that rebellion and protest make absolutely no difference in the end, so where does that leave us? I'd agree -- but then point out that the phrase "willing participants" is misleading and wrong. One need only recall such outstanding German-Jewish figures as the poet Heinrich Heine, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, shipping magnate Albert Ballin, the banking families of Rothschild and Warburg, political leaders Ferdinand Lassalle Walther Rathenau and Hugo Preuss, theater director Max Reinhardt, and physicist Albert Einstein. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published It's main thesis is that the vast majority of Germans during and before WWII had antisemetic beliefs that were of such power and scope, that they led many ordinary Germans to perpetrate and support the destruction of the Jewish people. Racial hatred is unfortunately a widespread virus that is always awaiting an opportunity to break out. $30.00 Not since "The War of the German Historians" (Historikerstreit) of the mid-1980s has the field of Holocaust studies been agitated by the kind of invective which currently surrounds the so-called "Goldhagen Controversy." Just as Jewish musicians who reject the music of Richard Wagner because he was anti-Jewish only cheat themselves, so also do Jews like Goldhagen who poison opportunities for good relations with Germans actually harm the interests of their own people. Goldhagen takes a very different view of Germans, Nazi or not, who actively helped in brutalizing and murdering Jews. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is a controversial American author and former associate professor of political science and social studies at Harvard University. But a lack of balance is hardly the greatest defect of this work. Another problem was the author's insistence that anti-Semitism throughout German history was the key reason that Germans wanted to kill Jews. Of course, they also thought Slavs being put into workhouses and being their slaves was the right thing, too. Under its influence the vast majority of Germans wanted to eliminate Jews from German society, and the perpetrators of the Holocaust did what they did because they thought it was "right and necessary." Anyone who is interested in human behavior, It always amazes me that people, who have constructed their own paradigms, and have worked vigorously at maintaining it, can ignore the mountain of evidence to the contrary. Contrary to the impression given by Goldhagen, Third Reich measures against Jews were remarkably mild during the first few years after Hitler came to power in January 1933. This unique evil comes from their deeply racist culture throughout their history and the uniquely sociopathic nature of ethnic Germans. Princeton University Press. He focuses a lot on the police battalions, often middle aged men who didn't belong to the Nazi party but who had no problem murdering Jews, even women, children and the infirm elderly. Goldhagen devotes considerable attention to the grim work of the Einsatzkommandos, special German security police detachments that operated behind the front lines in the occupied Soviet Union. Also, his focus on German crimes during the Holocaust blinds him to the genocide perpetrates in other European countries by other European nationals. (On the origin and nature of "Crystal Night," see Ingrid Weckert's study, Flashpoint, published by the IHR.) Goldhagen wants to make the question simply whether the Germans were willing participants or not, and he argues they were. Did I mention most of the racial theories including the creation of the fictional "Aryan" race and the concept of killing the Jew race were developed outside of Germany? Hitler's Willing Executioners: A Review. (These atrocities are documented in gruesome detail in a book issued by the German Foreign Office. I remember that the book was controversial when it came out in 1996, and when I finally read it, I can see why. You have things to do, children to feed, even work you get paid for. While Goldhagen's outrage is natural, (especially given that he is the son of Holocaust survivors) his scholarship is poor and his methodological work is sloppy at best. Not economic hardship, not the coercive means of a totalitarian state, not social psychological pressure, not invariable psychological propensities, but ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany, and had been for decades, induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenseless Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and without pity.”, National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1996). 622p. I have read Gordon Craig’s review of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners [NYR, April 4]. I probably would get irritated by his generalizations. In Hitler's Willing ExecutionersGoldhagen argued that Germans possessed a unique form of antisemitism, which he called "eliminationist antisemitism," a virulent ideology stretching back through centuries of German history. That may be true but it can't be denied that the Nazis were masters at instilling terror. First published in 1941, translations of this shocking work were widely distributed by Goebbels' agencies as a grim admonishment to the German people. The author does an admirable job in researching how "ordinary" Germans behaved during the war. The German leader certainly wanted no European-wide conflict, or even war with Britain, but his awareness of the vehement international Jewish effort to incite war against Germany may perhaps explain his 1939 Reichstag prediction. Well, there is a lot to say about this book, but I won't go in too deep-- I think you can find similar thoughts to mine on plenty of other reviews of this book. [Deep breath] This is a difficult book to review as the subject matter is so contentious and horrific. That its erroneous to believe the Nazis were capable of brainwash. . It is well established that Jews played a decisive and probably dominant role not only in the early Soviet Russian regime, but also in the genocidal Soviet administrations imposed in the Baltic nations in 1940-1941. There are problems with the book, for those who know a lot about the Holocaust. And they did it happily because it was for the good of their country. It seems not to have occurred to Goldhagen that if there had been anything like a policy to kill all Jews, the German authorities would not have diverted desperately needed guard personnel and overtaxed transportation facilities to such cumbersome evacuations, which Goldhagen refers to as "death marches.". If you find the historical and philosophical background in the first part of the book too hard to get through, jump ahead to the chapters on the death march. The thesis under question is nothing less than examining why Nazi and SS troops and officials carried out the Holocaust. Goldhagen steps into a niche not normally espoused. As late as 1941, more than a hundred Jewish institutions, agencies and organizations were listed in that year's edition of the Berlin telephone directory. Welcome back. This book is a massive oversimplification of history's worst genocide, and turns the Germans into 1 dimensional demons that stand around twirling their handle bar moustaches and laughing maniacally. Even if we were to assume, quite hypothetically, that 70,000 Germans could fall into such a category, that would still be only one in a thousand Germans -- hardly the basis for a sweeping moral condemnation of a whole nation. As anyone who has carefully read the text knows, this 15-page document contains no mention of any policy or program to exterminate the Jews, let alone anything about gas chambers or the like. Those of you who know me, know that I've never handed out a 1-star review before today. The number of Ukrainians who died from starvation in Stalin's imposed mass famine of 1932-33 is, alone, perhaps ten times the number of Jews who perished in Europe under German and Axis rule, 1942-45. A book that won't leave you. Probably its most pernicious feature is that it helps to destroy any prospect of good relations between Jews and Germans. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. These were published 1920-1922 and later republished in four volumes under the title The International Jew. Refresh and try again. Many media voices noted that, while the book la… At worse Goldhagen brings to light one possibility in explaining how one, if not the most learned and advanced country in the world could fall from grace in a matter of a few years of Financial, It always amazes me that people, who have constructed their own paradigms, and have worked vigorously at maintaining it, can ignore the mountain of evidence to the contrary. I recall, a few months after the end of the war in Europe, a fellow soldier boasting to me about how many Germans he had killed with the trucks he had driven. And German soldiers were exceptionally well disciplined and officered, as any number of non-German military historians have acknowledged. By Patrick Quinn quinn@interedge.com. Well, there is a lot to say about this book, but I won't go in too deep-- I think you can find similar thoughts to mine on plenty of other reviews of this book. "The imbalance of attention devoted to the gas chambers needs to be corrected," he writes (p. 523, n. 4). In 1941, Adolf Hitler's Germany began to kill the entire Jewish population under its physical control, some seven million men, women and children, and by 1944 had largely finished the job, having successfully murdered approximately six million people. However, this ideological goal blinds him to any other rational to the causes of the Holocaust. What some commentators termed "The Goldhagen Affair" began in late 1996, when Goldhagen visited Berlin to participate in debate on television and in lecture halls before capacity crowds, on a book tour. R arely has a book with scholarly pretensions evoked as much popular interest as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s study, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. They were not automatons blindly following orders, rather their particular brand of Jew hatred made them willing exterminators of people who had no power. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Not even the members of the conspiracy who plotted to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944 are spared by Goldhagen (pp. Essentially, Goldhagen argues that the Holocaust was not a result of silly things like "psychology" or "human nature." (On this topic, see Udo Walendy's article the Spring 1980 Journal.). In the opening pages of his book, in which he gives a sort of preliminary summary of its contents, Goldhagen writes (p. 4) of "the tens of thousands of ordinary Germans who... became genocidal killers." Were members of the American air force who delighted in reducing hundreds of thousands of women and children to cinders morally superior to members of the special German Einsatzkommando police units, to which Goldhagen devotes so much space? This is an evil book, as evil as the well-known incitement to hatred against Germans by Elie Wiesel, who praises this thick volume as "a tremendous contribution to the understanding and teaching of the Holocaust.". The thesis under question is nothing less than examining why Nazi and SS troops and officials carried out the Holocaust. They felt that if there were no more Jews in Germany, than there would be more of everything for them. Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Goldhagen explains part of the process by which Jews were made into “socially dead beings” in the 1930s, before policies of consistent violence and extermination came into force.His findings shed light on how the later and horrible events of the Holocaust became possible. It was not until the promulgation in September 1935 of the "Nuremberg Laws" that marriage between Jews and non-Jews was banned, a prohibition that, incidentally, paralleled the long-standing laws in numerous American states against marriages between Caucasians and Negroes. 107-114). [See "The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution and the Early Soviet Regime," Jan-Feb. 1994 Journal.] The author of the German fantasy book, Neverending Story, avoided fighting for the Wehrmacht only by diving out of a moving train headed to Russia and spending the rest of the war running from the gestapo. Now for the downside, Hitler’s Willing Executioners was Goldhagen’s doctoral dissertation I believe and frankly it reads like it. In this excerpt from . (See "President Roosevelt's Secret Campaign to Incite War in Europe," Summer 1983 Journal.). During service in the US Army, 1945-1946, he was trained in military intelligence at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and was then involved in "denazification" work in occupied Germany as a noncommissioned intelligence officer. I simply cannot understand why Gordon Craig, this knowledgeable man I so respect and admire, should openly and without any reservations … I learned that since the 1800s Germans had been blaming the Jewish people for the problems of their country and that this blame became even stronger after World War I. Goldhagen (Government and Social Studies/Harvard) offers irrefutable proof that will force us to reconsider our previous understanding of the Nazis' genocidal project. This is a very in-depth look at the German culture before and during the war. At worse Goldhagen brings to light one possibility in explaining how one, if not the most learned and advanced country in the world could fall from grace in a matter of a few years of Financial despair. (See, for example, Walter Sanning's The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, published by the IHR.). I didn't manage to finish this. It's been nearly ten years since I read this book but I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about Holocaust history. Review: Hitler’s Willing Executioners Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel J. Goldhagen Reviewed by Ng Kam Weng The Holocaust has become an symbol of absolute evil among Western historians. He ignores the abundant evidence brought out in recent decades -- such as the Leuchter Report and the aerial reconnaissance photographs taken of Auschwitz in 1944 -- that discredits the generally accepted Holocaust extermination story. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. He makes a valuable contribution by recognizing the history of anti-Semitism in Germany history prior to WWII and the Holocaust. It's been nearly ten years since I read this book but I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about Holocaust history. Unreliable sources and much speculation in this obviously vengeful and hateful book. Even at the outset of the conflict there were mass killings of thousands of civilian ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) by both civilian and military Poles, who were confident that Poland would quickly defeat Germany. It’s a bit easier for memoirists, who can rely on shabby childhoods and drug addictions. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. In "Hitler's Willing Executioners," Mr. Goldhagen, an assistant professor of government and social studies at Harvard University, shows in hair-raising detail how tens of thousands of Jews were shot in the neck by German policemen who apparently came from respectable social backgrounds, had no criminal records and had shown no fanatical loyalty to the Nazi movement. Seriously, I blush when I recall that the author and I are of the same SPECIES. Introduction On April 8th, 1996, the United States Holocaust Research Institute hosted an evening of dialogue to examine the issues raised by Daniel Goldhagen’s deliberately provocative book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, in which the author seeks to challenge the canons of Holocaust scholarship and to directly confront its acknowledged masters. Any suggestions? This small book is an important contribution to the literature of human bestiality unleashed by war. Much of Goldhagen's book is devoted to the thesis that Wehrmacht troops were generally so hostile to Jews that many took a personal delight in tormenting them. I try to be critical in my choice of books about the Holocaust, because there are so many to choose from. - Volume 91 Issue 1 In these vast territories, large numbers of Jews came under German occupation in 1941. by Vintage, Hitler's Willing Executioners. You might say Kristallnacht was like a litmus test for the Nazis to test the response of "ordinary" Germans to their Jewish policy. 31-41, 283-291, published by the IHR. It was controversial at the time of publication but the author argues, convincingly in my opinion, that ordinary Germans were willing participants in the persecution and murder of Jews, based on the premise that European culture was imbued with anti-semitic sentiment for hundreds of years before Hitler came along .Learning the details of just how bad the Nazi years were for European Jews rips away the abstraction of the number Six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. These are the folks who brought you the Holocaust in all its "glories." For a historian, it’s a bit trickier. Goldhagen's theory has created a firestorm when it came out, but he's extremely convincing and his view of Nazi Germany is as sad as it's terrifying. : The 'Final Solution' in History (p. 362). Anyone who seeks a balanced treatment of an emotion-laden chapter of modern history had better look elsewhere. It strikes me, though, looking through the various reviews left by other readers, that those who rated Goldhagen's book with a 1 or a 2 were most likely those who either do not have the scholarly background to appreciate this work or who simply skimmed through it and never really read it for biased reasons. German culture before and during the Third Reich era, no more Jews in Germany history prior to WWII the. Glories. found – Men, women and children is the micro-history: find yourself a historical footnote and... A widespread virus that is always awaiting an opportunity to break out workhouses and being their slaves was level! Handed out a 1-star review before today this preview of, published January 28th 1997 by Vintage, ’. Into this genocide happened where and when it did, even work you get paid.. For the war much speculation in this obviously vengeful and hateful book to cover their asses, or acting too! 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'Ve had it on my bookshelf for years waiting for the lay person of Holocaust studies ) forces, became!
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