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Summary: A historical compendium of hate crimes.
Review: This is not an easy book, nor is it a fun book, but it is an important book in the study of hate methodology and its implications for the future.Goldhagen is not saying that Germans were unique in their capacity for mob cruelty. What he is describing is the human capacity in our belief systems to judge others and to find them wanting, to see ourselves as better than others, and to, in the extreme, see the solution to the "problem" of those who interfere with our own comfort their ultimate elimination. Replace the word Jew in this theory with the words gay, welfare mother, black or Person with AIDS and more current ideologies of hate easily spring to mind, most uncomfortably, I hope. Germans were not unique when being fed daily news stories that blamed the Jews for every ill under the sun. Given the Christianization of Germany and the belief that salvation through Baptism and faith in Jesus Christ would save all sinners, the Satanic aspect of Jewery's refusal to follow suit while living among them could only point, in their minds, to the reason for every evil thing that befell their country. A belief that destroying the Jews would save Germany is easily understood when compared to the many racist belief systems that propell the Militia and other extremist cults in the USA and other countries. Most people would rather not understand what is right under their noses. Maybe that is why Goldhagen felt he needed so many words to make his points. I got it. I got it right away.
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Summary: SO WHY DON'T HISTORIANS LIKE THIS BOOK?
Review: A few reviewers here seem to be under some false impressions: 1)Before Goldhagen, all or most historians thought that only a tiny minority of Nazi fanatics knew of the Holocaust. 2)Goldhagen was the first to shatter this myth, in particular by researching the Police Batallions whose non-Nazi members carried out mass executions and other atrocities. 3)Historians are mad at Goldhagen because he has done all this brilliant, original research and thus shown his colleagues up as dolts who misrepresented the Holocaust. Sadly, all these beliefs are untrue. Actually,: 1)It has for a long time been accepted that many Germans outside the Nazi Party witnessed the slaughter of Jews, and that many -especislly in the Army, police and Civil Service- were crucial in carrying out the Holocaust.Many Germans profited from the goods, jobs etc left by dead Jews, in Germany and elsewhere.There were enough hints around-from Hitler's blatant pledge to finish the Jewish problem, to the rumours spreading of what was happening in the East- for any bright German to work out what was up. Historians knew all this and said so long before Goldhagen. 2)The work on the Police Batallions was done by Christopher Browning.His conclusions are very different from Goldhagen's. 3)So why are historians mad at Goldhagen?After all, he's right to say that many ordinary Germans joined in the Holocaust and that the rest did nothing to stop it. They're angry because he says there was only one reason for all of this: all or most Germans were 'eliminationist' towards the Jews.It's that simple? Of course anti-semitism played a role.But didn't greed for looted goods? Obedience to higher authority? The desire not to ask questions in wartime? Disbelief that such a thing could be happening? Fear of the Gestapo? Ah, but Goldhagen must have answered these questions.Sure- by ignoring the evidence or screwing up his logic.So he doesn't mention the captured documents showing that for the Nazis, keeping the bulk of the population in ignorance was a priority; or he says that the tiny minority of Germans who refused to kill Jews weren't punished, therefore fear couldn't have stopped Germans from helping Jews.....but we know that any Gentile, German or otherwise, who sheltetred Jews was executed or deported to a death camp. Only the Germans had these eliminationist feelings toward Jews? Then why did they receive invaluable help in killing Jews from Lithuanians, Poles, Balts, Estonians, Frenchmen, Belgians...in fact, if Germans didn't save Jews because they were all 'eliminationist', why did only Denamark, Bulgaria and Italy see really effective attempts to save the Jews? A tricky question for Goldhagen, so he doesn't ask it. The Holocaust was horrifying- so we need to understand why normal people could have done such awful things . There are some excellent books on the Holocaust-the best places to start are Christopher Browning's 'Ordinary Men', or Primo Levi's 'If this is a man.'
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Summary: Comment about Mr. Daniel Reaver¿s comment
Review: After reading this book nothing new added to my holocaust knowledge, I was only shocked with the public impact, the " public shock" happened mainly because presently a lot of people did not know how far the involvement of ordinary Germans were. As you see only by adding, let's say "basic background data" at the readers's knowledge the book is a success and filled the historical duty. The duty of history means the assignment to depict , analyze the history. The best example can be be the World War I that was extensively revised by the military, specially the Germans, and resulted in the second one much bigger and worst. Hitler said " In the future who will remember the Jewish holocaust? Today who remember the Armenian holocaust? I agree with your comments reported as "power is fun" and about human nature but a book can be read in different ways. I would like to recommend you another angle to read and understand history's books that is by detailing historical facts, informing what people do not know. It seems to me that you read this particular book as a TV novel and got tired of much killing. I have personally the "historical duty" to say NO END for you Mr. Reaver , let's study much more about wars and holocausts this is the best way to avoid others
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Summary: Genocide is more fun than a barrel of monkies. . .
Review: Let's face it: Power is fun! And absolute power over others is absolute fun! Ask any schoolyard bully. And OK, Mr. Goldhagen is now having a turn at it, albeit his way is far more innocuous than what Hitler and the Nazi's did to the Jews. Unfortunately the reader spends a lot of time wading through 600 pages only to discover what is already known about human nature, i.e. given the circumstances and appropriate provocation, almost anyone could "go off" on a fellow, on a group, on a race; there's something mysteriously murderous about human beings that defies ultimate explanation, let alone attribution to one particular nation--in Goldhagen's case: the Germans. Yes, the Jews got their share of it in this century but so did millions of others. END
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Summary: Arguments against Goldhagen's "theory" lack common sense
Review: Not having the luxury of checking all of the historical record specific to, say, the police batallions, I must note that even if the entire book is inaccurate, wouldn't the mere scope of the holocaust REQUIRE the complicity of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans? Strong consideration should be given to the reliance any operation of this magnitude would have on human "initiative" and volunteerism.
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Summary: A book about racists by a racist
Review: I was hoping the book would dig into man's seemly inate ability to put others down. Wether it be German/Jew, Serbs/Muslims, Hutu/Tutsi or even Protestant/Catholic in Ireland many people can be drawn into hate. I believe the reasons the Holocaust came to be is it was the first time in modern history that a powerful and racist government came to world power for a long period of time. Yet even though the author said there were some examples of germans who tried to feed the Jews on the death marches and that many of the central Europeans who provided much of the labor to run the camps were very cruel. His basic premis is that Germans are a racist people who fostered their racist ideas for more than 100 years. I agree that the Holocaust was not hidden from the Germans and only a few knew about but I find it hard to believe there is something genetic or cultural about Germany that caused the Holocaust. By the way I am not German.
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Summary: Important thesis that may be applied to similar studies
Review: I find Goldhagen's book to be solidly investigated, and containing an original thesis, namely that eliminationist anti-Semitism led ordinary Germans to murder millions of Jews. Goldhagen's thesis implies that the crimes committed by ordinary Germans were motivated by the idea that the Jews were a grave and permanent threat to Germany and that only their complete elimination would save Germany from collapse, and allow Germany to achieve greatness. The key word is "eliminationist," which implies that an anti-Semitism that only sought to restrict the rights of Jews would not have resulted in the Holocaust. This would seem to be the case when one examines the restrictions placed on Jews in other countries in the 1930's, such as in Poland, or compared to other actions similar to German eliminationist anti-Semitism, such as the numerous pogroms in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th century. Another aspect of Goldhagen's thesis stems from the fact that the genocide not only included the murder of millions of Jews, but also the torture and humiliation of them previous to their deaths. The mentality was that the Jews needed to be punished and not just killed. Goldhagen's thesis is important to the study of other cases of eliminationist violence similar to the Holocaust. Going beyond anti-Semitism, one finds that any eliminationist ideology tends to lead to crimes similar to those perpetrated by the Germans. Recent events in Rwanda and Bosnia would seem to prove Goldhagen's theory. I am a graduate student of Colombian History at the Universidad Nacional in Bogota. For my master's investigation, I plan to use Goldhagen's thesis to explain the actions that took place in Colombia during the period known as "La Violencia" of the 1940's and 1950's, in which members of the two traditional parties (the Liberals and Conservatives) sought to eliminate each other. The crimes committed were gruesomely similar to the Holocaust in that they included torture and rape and not just the murder of members of the opposing party. The parties had been the protagonists of numerous civil wars in the 19th century, and terror was routinely used by them to control the outcome of elections. However "La Violencia" took the struggle to a new dimension. I plan on investigating the development of an eliminationist ideology in the Colombian partisan press in the 1940's as a key element in explaining the exceptionally severe nature of the violence that occurred between 1946 and 1957. As Goldhagen's thesis has had important implications in my own research, I would welcome comments from other historians and social scientists who have found his thesis to be applicable (or not) in their work, especially if their work goes beyond the Holocaust.
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Summary: Nothing extraordinary about this book
Review: This book really doesn't deserve the hype that surrounds it. Goldhagen's central thesis -that a particularly vicious brand of anti-semitism existing in Germany at the time of the Nazi's rise to power made the German populace active participants in the Holocaust- never gets off the ground. His "eliminationist antisemitism" theory attributes a unique Hand-of-Satan quality to the holocaust that undermines the very basis of his title. His "ordinary" Germans seem to be uniformly psychopathic. Further, Goldhagen's explanation seems to ignore other victims of the holocaust: seven million Russian civilians, three million Poles , not to mention the gypsies, homosexuals and communists. Third, his theory does nothing to explain the motives of the other Eastern Europeans complicit in the killings- Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles. Granted, the author does score an occasional point here and there. Frankly, though, it really isnt worth the trouble wading through six hundred pages of blood, brains and bombast to look for them!
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Summary: Debunks the "we didn't know what was happening" myth
Review: This is a powerful book which soundly proves that ordinary Germans knew about the institutionalized murder of Jews and that many of them actively (and enthusiastically) participated in the slaughter. The current controversey over Goldhagen's thesis that the basis for the holocaust was a collective German desire to "eliminate" Jews is the only reason that I can think of that so many "scholars" reject this book. Even if I grant that his thesis is a little far-fetched (after all, Goldhagen practically dismisses the virulent anti-semitisim that raged in Eastern Europe long before the Germans arrived or discusses the joy in which Poles, Lithuians, Ukranians, and others assisted the Germans in the murders), the facts related regarding the actions of Battalion 101 and the murderous actions of the concentration camp guards who continued to torture and murder their Jewish victims on the infamous death march, more than supports his theory that ordinary Germans participated with enthusiasm in the barbaric murder of innocent men, women, and children. His research demonstrates that ordinary Germans could refuse to participate in murder and not be punished; that in spite of this, most Germans when presented with this option did not take it. He also shows how knowledge of what was going on in "the East" must have been known to most of the folks back home. If soldiers felt that it was okay to have their wives visit them and watch their "killings" and that sending photos of their crimes to their families was acceptable, it is obvious that most Germans were aware of genocide and implicitly accepted it. I recommend this book to anyone who is a Holocaust student or wants to read more than a litany of horrors as to what was done to the Jews. This book is an historical landmark in the vast literature of the holocaust and is a must read.
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Summary: A well-written book which states what people knew all along
Review: I finished reading "Hitler's Willing Executioners" about half a year ago. When one really thinks about what Goldhagen is saying, his basic conclusion is that the reason why the Germans murdered six million Jews during World War II was because they hated Jews. This seems to be the simplest and most logical explanation of the Holocaust; and yet, for the past fifty years the "party-line" has been that the Germans committed this atrocious act because they were forced into submission by only a tiny group of Nazis. In addition, the Germans who murdered Jews (and Gypsies) supposedly did not know that what they were doing was part of a genocidal plot. By presenting pictures, letters, and testimonies from both victims and victimizers, Goldhagen systematically shatters these myths and proves unequivocally that Nazi Germany was infected with the virus of anti-Semitism. Now that Germany has been reunited, it remains to be seen whether the nation has been cured of this disease, or whether the virus is simply temporarily dormant.
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