Rating: 
Summary: Goldhagen's research and his arguments are uncomparable
Review: I am an ardent student of Nazi German history. For a class of mine I read Browning's book, a book that Goldhagen criticizes and draws issue with directly. I went into reading Goldhagen's book being skeptical but came away favoring his argument over that of Browning and other's. While his writing is not great (run-on sentences, too many commas, etc.) the substance of the book is exceptional. I think that anyone interested in the topic should read this seminal work. Make sure you read the explanations by Goldhagen at the end (such as the fact that he does not believe that Germans are anti-semities anymore). This concluding additional sections (including the forward to the German edition) do a good job in filling in some holes and giving depth and color to the thoughts in the head of the author. They also nicely deflect much of the initial criticism of his book.
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Summary: Everything wrong with academic writing
Review: My comments deal only with Goldhagen's skills as a writer, which are conspicuously absent. His book cries out for a good editor, who would have toned down the academic puffery, pretentious jargon in place of resonant language. He takes a topic of exceptional importance and kills it for readers outside the academy (and, contrary to what many may think, even those in the academy prefer lucid, compelling, non-redundant prose).Perhaps the person who told Goldhagen to publish his dissertation should have mentioned that rewriting would be involved.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, attention-mongering, racist nonsense
Review: Oh, Mr. Goldhagen is such a revolutionary, isn't he? All I have to say about this racist leftist treatise is that he may be angry that his Jewish collective unconscious is forever smattered with the holocaust, but to attack the German people is a travesty and the fact that this book is a bestseller reflects our society's penchant for anger and blame. I am the grandson of a wonderful woman who FLED the Nazi regime and came to America to start a family with a GI, and I'll be damned if I'm ever going to be ashamed to say that Germans are a great people. Hitler was a madman, of course, as were his lackeys...but let us not forget that it was a time of world-psychosis, as it were. The people of the world were hungry for a war and a scapegoat for the depression, which they saw in everybody else! I don't see books about the Japanese being a crazy people (because Asians are P.C. nowadays). Goldhagen, leave the German people alone and write about something a little more believable.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking book
Review: I am not the scholarly type and this is the first book that I have read concerning complicity of the ordinary German. I found the subject very revealing from my narrow viewpoint and Goldhagen's book documents a lot that I didn't realize happened. As a young man's project I find his work quite good, a bit tedious at times (e.g. unit designations) but apparently well researched. What I found to be a most chilling item is that a soldier could walk next to someone that he knew he would shortly kill and live with himself to do the same thing the next day. Monstrous! Like it's just a day's work, (shoot a few humans, drink a little schnaps, ho-hum).
Rating:
Summary: Difficult to read with nothing new in it
Review: As a holocaust survivor who was deported from Cologne, Germany, in 1938,I have read this literature extensively. Despite the media hype, there's not much new here. In addition, the use of certain mandatory dissertation terms (e.g., "cognitive modeling" is repeated throughout r/n "thinking about...") is tedious and ad nauseum at best, and unnecesary at worst. All in all an important book, poorly written. Also, where are the Gypsies (just given 2 lines by the author), who were as, or more poorly, treated than the Jews? Let's have numbers and paticulars about these victims of the willing executioners. This is not a book about Jews, or at least should not be; it's about the victims of the ZEITGEIST and zenophobia, or at least it should be.
Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Subject, but Poorly Presented
Review: I truly expected a lot of this book before purchasing it, but was disappointed with the book from both (1) a literary standoing and (2) a factual and reasoning standpoint. On the literary side, this book will put you to sleep since reading Goldhagen is like reading a very long and boring college psychology paper: it is not reader-friendly although there are certain portions that I admired that I thought stood out quite well. - As for Goldhagen's analysis of the feelings of the "ordinary" Germans, his analysis is weak and spotty because his hypothesis is weak or poorly stated or poorly chosen and his arguments appear "forced" to agree with this limited hypothesis. - I feel the subject is very important, but that the author disapointed me since he could have done a better job.
Rating: 
Summary: I felt willing to read this book again.
Review: Hitler's Willing Executioneers explained why the germans choose the route of genocide to the jews. I couldn't stop reading it until the end.
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Summary: Who is Responsible?
Review: Author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen presents a very intellectual discussion about the involvement of the common folk in the slaughtering of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. He does score some solid hits in his arguments, but he also leaves much unanswered and open to debate. I do not have any doubts that ordinary Germans were, by and large, supportive of the Nazi plan to solve the Jewish problem through extermination. I think that the German people had been conditioned for many, many years to believe that the Jewish people were subhuman and not worthy to live. Therefore, they had no problem accepting the plan to destroy the Jewish race. This widely held, widely accepted feeling of anti-semitism was the greatest contributing factor in the embracement of the German government's policy toward the Jews, by ordinary Germans, during this era. The next most important factor is psychological. Studies on prejudice have shown that humans enjoy feeling superior to others and delight in keeping "inferiors" in their place. Once the feelings of superiority subside, however, an individual will often feel guilty. I think the same thing happened in Nazi Germany. There was an atmosphere of superiority. Germans enjoyed harassing, hurting, even torturing Jews. Then, the Nazi regime came to an end. These same Germans, who once delighted in their actions against the Jewish people, probably looked back and wondered "What was I thinking? Why did I commit such terrible acts of violence against a defenseless group of people"? I do not think it is fair to just assume that the Germans, during this time in history, were inherently evil beings as the author tries to argue. Much of this book is monotonous and a little boring. I don't know how many times I read a statement that spoke of "the horrenhous treatment of Jews". I guess the author felt so strongly about his convictions that some things could not be repeated often enough.
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Summary: Accurate but far from well written!
Review: This book does not bring anything new to the table. Indeed the facts stated are all part of the sad history of the German fascist mentality. It is an interesting account for those not familiar with the German actions of the time. My objections are in the writing style, this is poorly written making it quite boring to go through 600 pages.
Rating:
Summary: A powerful and eye opening account
Review: I found Goldhagen's book really eye opening. Prior to reading it, I read for background The Anguish of the Jews: 23 Centuries of anti-seminitism. But nothing prepared me for this book. I was expecting a book on why the Holocaust happened, little did I realize how involved the German people were involved. Nor did I realize how little control the Nazi party and Government had on the people. I thought the book to be really interesting and well done.
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