Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

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Summary: Excellent explaination of reality of german participation
Review: This book represents a comprehensive and well argued explaination of the role of German citizens in the Holocaust. Goldhagen tells a compelling story of how Germans from all parts of society participated in many facets of the Holocaust. His work is well documented and holds up very well under critical review. I wish he had editted his book more tightly - I found it wordy and dense - it could have 30% shorter without lose of any content or impact. A truly great book that should be on the "must read" list for every high school student.

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Summary: Frightening but long overdue look at the Holocaust.
Review: From the very start one can't help but be impressed by the breadth and ambition of Daniel Goldhagen's _Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust_. The premise is so strikingly simple that one does not at first appreciate its consequences. Goldhagen provides convincing empirical and anecdotal evidence that ordinary Germans of the Nazi era were not brainwashed automatons, but zealous, enthusiastic, willing executioners of the Jews. Goldhagen paints a picture of Germany as true as could be painted, where anti-semitism is as fundamental to Germans as democracy is to Americans. He paints a picture, supplemented by concrete evidence consisting of letters and testimony of the perpetrators and their witnesses, of a Germany ready, willing, and finally able to eliminate the Jews. Goldhagen's particular focus on polic battallions is as chilling as it is revealing. Goldhagen draws from the testimony of the participants to demonstrate how a group of men, an almost perfect cross-section of ordinary Germans, chose to kill Jews in ways more brutal and violent than I could have ever imagined. Goldhagen's documentary evidence that the perpetrators were free to recuse themselves from the killing but almost never chose to do so extinguishes the long held myth that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were simply following orders. This work is a monument to Holocaust literature. It is the first and only work I have ever encountered on the subject that explains and defines the prevailing cultural atmosphere that necessarily led to the Holocaust. This book is a necessary tool for any person attempting to understand the Holocaust.

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Summary: A much-hyped new book on the Holocaust goes too far
Review: Daniel Goldhagen has created a storm in the study of the Holocaust with his new book Hitler's Willing Executioners (based on his PhD research). The furore that the book unleashed was immediate and intense. In a symposium on the book held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Yehuda Bauer dismissed the book, the author and the fact that the research was deemed good enough for a PhD. The book has also raised scholarly eyebrows because the author makes the claim that his version of events is 'totally new'.
A.J.P. Taylor once said that in history, the most important duty of the historian is to ask the right questions. Daniel Goldhagen does this even though the academic world has descended upon him. Goldhagen asks how ordinary Germans become perpetrators in the Final Solution. The question, is obviously important, but unfortunately what Goldhagen gives us is a monocausal answer: 'antisemitism' or, as Goldhagen terms it 'eliminationist antisemitism'. His thesis is that 'eliminationist antisemitism' was a cultural norm in Germany by the late 19th century; that all the perpetrators shared this view of the Jews; and, furthermore, most Germans accepted this view of the Jews.
Yet, what I think is more disturbing than this argument is Goldhagen's claim that his thesis is totally new: 'the perpetrators, "ordinary Germans", were animated by antisemitism, but a particular type of antisemitism that led them to conclude that Jews ought to die... Simply put, the perpetrators, having consulted their own convictions and morality and having judged the mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say "no"' (p. 14).
One certainly does not have to dig that far into the literature to find the origins of some of his ideas. Paul Lawrence Rose's Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany From Kant to Wagner (Princeton, 1990), for example, pre-empts Goldhagen's ideas on eliminationist antisemitism. Rose, interestingly, in foreshadowing Goldhagen, calls German antisemitism 'destructionist', but shies away from Goldhagen's monocausal thesis. Likewise, the willing participation of the German population in the enforcement of racial policy has previously been discussed by Robert Gellately.
While Goldhagen certainly 'proves' that antisemitism was the main motivating factor for the killers of Jews, such 'proof' leaves the reader unsatisfied. If antisemitism is the motivating force, then how do we account for the other victims of the National Socialists such as Gypsies, Russian POWs, Jehovah's Witnesses and countless others? According to Goldhagen (p. 175), the Romani were treated 'most murderously'. This understatement aside, Goldhagen provides no account of the history of anti-Gypsy legal repression and violence in Germany despite the fact that the registration of Gypsies had been occurring in Germany since 1899 with an accompanying 'Law for the Combating of Gypsies, Travellers and the Workshy' introduced in Bavaria in 1926. Goldhagen does not say that Romani were persecuted on racial grounds similar to Jews and that many laws originally applied to the Jews were later extended to Gypsies. Again, how are we to explain the killing of 70,000 mentally ill people in Germany in the so-called 'euthanasia' (T4) campaign? Friedlander has stressed that if we want to find the origins of the Final Solution we have to look at this program as the precursor of the gas chambers.
A large section of Hitler's Willing Executioners discusses the role of the Order Police in the 'Final Solution'. The study of this little known group of killers was pioneered a few years ago by Christopher Browning. Some of Goldhagen's ideas on the police battalions have previously been aired and we find the extension of these ideas in the book. Goldhagen has gone beyond Browning's original findings by studying a number of police battalions and showing that Reserve Police Battalion 101 was by no means unusual when it was presented by its commanding officer with an offer not to kill. Indeed, research being conducted by the reviewer suggests that officers exercised a great deal of their own leeway in the carrying out of their orders (even if the order was explicit). As Goldhagen shows, there were a significant number of men who were offered the chance not to kill Jews but who then chose to do so. Far beyond a mere account of the many actions that the men of the Order Police perpetrated (some of whom had their wives present during the actions), Goldhagen has drawn a picture of the lives of the men during their auswärtiger Einsatz: men who 'went to night spots and bars, drank, sang, had sex, and talked. Like all people, they had opinions about the character of their lives and what they were doing' (p. 187). Previous research and my own study confirms this picture of men who enjoyed themselves knowing full well that they had and would commit further massacres in the name of the German people.
Yet this section is also problematic. Goldhagen has disregarded any testimony from postwar trials in which perpetrators expressed remorse for their actions or even attempted to save Jews. Thus Goldhagen has guaranteed that his explanations are skewed. How do we explain the role of collaborators from Eastern Europe-a force of some 300,000 men at their peak-who formed auxiliary police battalions that murdered Jews? Were they motivated by antisemitism? Unfortunately, Goldhagen has nothing to say on this score, but rather weakly asserts that 'non-Germans were not essential to the perpetration of the genocide...(and) what can be said about the Germans cannot be said about any other nationality or nationalities combined-namely no Germans, no Holocaust' (p.6), an extraordinary statement when one considers the fact that the 12th Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion itself killed around 40,000 Jews between July and November 1941. Furthermore, the question thus arises as to how we are to account for large-scale pogroms in areas like Lithuania which broke out before German troops arrived. There is something more than a particular form of German 'eliminationist antisemitism' at work here.
In many ways Hitler's Willing Executioners is a throwback to earlier interpretive models. It is almost a theory of collective guilt which is presented as a hybrid of the long outdated Sonderweg thesis. Goldhagen is right in arguing that we should not deny the importance of antisemitism to the Nazi program, but is it, as he presents it, the ultimate missing link in the German national character from the beginning of the 19th century until 1945? If it is, does it explain the Holocaust? I'm afraid that his 'antisemitism is the missing link' explanation resembles 'Piltdown Man' more than 'Lucy'.
Richard Tidyman is a War Crimes Archivist at the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney. He is currently writing his PhD on the role of a Lithuanian police battalion in the Holocaust.

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Summary: This is a devastating rebuke of historical views.
Review: Hitler's Willing Executioners by Dr. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is a devastating rebuke of historical views of the Holocaust. Dr. Goldhagen is at his best when discussing the German Police Battalions, who were average, non-indoctrinated Germans who gladly and happily went along with Hitler's eliminationist program. They not only "followed orders," but they were the thrust of the Final Solution and of the previous campaigns to rid Germany and the rest of Europe of "the plague of Jewry". Their minds twisted, the "police" in these battalions herded Jews into cattle cars, exterminate scores on their own in the most brutal ways. Dr. Goldhagen thoroughly shows the attitudes of these "police" men. These men were proud of their work, bringing their wives to watch their husbands murder Jews. These men were given ample opportunity to say "no" to killing without any negative consequences, did they do this when they were given the chance? A few did to give themselves a break from having to lead men, women and children to their deaths. Dr. Goldhagen bluntly describes, in detail the attitudes and behaviors of the Germans in many aspects of life. He does an extraordinary job of convincing the reader of his thesis. He shatters the conventional arguments of Germans as merely "following orders", or that they were not aware of the intentions of Hitler and his final plans. Dr. Goldhagen convinces the reader with clear evidence and just as clear arguments. The reader can not escape the power of logic. It is a must read for any history student, or anyone willing to open their minds to see the ugly truth of the human past.

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Summary: Yes.
Review: Goldhagen brings to light what many of us knew to be true. Anti-semitism was (and still is) part of the German culture. Anyone who disputes this is clearly an idiot. Many Germans went along with Hitler because they were brougt up thinking that Jews must be exterminated. Given the opportunity to actually go ahead and actually commit genocide many gladly volunteered to work the camps

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Summary: An important fresh look at the perpetrators of the Holocaust
Review: Without a doubt this was the hardest book I have ever read: a harrowing confrontation with the probability that a good number of my not too distant ancestors were willing participants in the crime of the century. Being German, and of a similar age to Dr. Goldhagen, I approach this central question of what kinds of Germans perpetrated the Holocaust with a slightly different perspective. As a result, I have to admit that I fought this book at every page, and tested every claim of criminality among ordinary Germans the author made, for the sound of truth. I came away in broad agreement with the conclusion that ordinary Germans of that time knew of, and partook in the Holocaust with frightening ease, and in many cases voluntarily.
This conclusion is supported by proof that Germans exercised choice in their actions in the Holocaust. For the German people as a whole (excluding for the moment the perpetrators) this requires proof that they knew about the Holocaust, and that they could have opposed it. What was valuable here was a clear refutation of the contention that the majority of Germans did not know, a refrain that is familiar even to Germans of my generation. That they knew is supported by an analysis of the density of Holocaust activity in the Reich, a numerical analysis of the participants and the simple listing of speeches and public documents that foreshadowed the Holocaust for years. That the German people could have opposed the Holocaust is less clear. It is suggested by analogy to the resistance that did occur to other public policy, such as the euthanasia program of handicapped people, that is seen by some as a test run for the assault on Jews. Although it was always clear that the German people did next to nothing to register objection to the treatment of Jews, Goldhagen goes further to show that in many cases they enthusiastically joined in. Nevertheless, it is difficult to equate the two extermination programs. Euthanasia of the "biologically unfit" was an important component of the biological vision of Nazism, but the crippled and handicapped were not seen as an international conspiracy threatening to engulf the German people - nobody was afraid of them. Neither can it be said that the Nazi regime punished people for objections to the euthanasia program, while "Judenbeguenstigung" was a crime. When discussing the perpetrators it is sufficient to show that they had a way of refusing participation in the Holocaust. Indeed, a most valuable contribution to the modern debate is that Goldhagen relentlessly establishes that many Germans participated in the Holocaust when they could have done otherwise - a surprisingly large number opted out with little personal consequences. Indeed, he is able to go further and demonstrate that in contrast to the few described by their Jewish victims as "good Germans", most perpetrators were cruel for cruelties sake. The many harrowing illustrations that the Germans were cruel, brutal and unrelenting in their treatments are necessary, but secondary in themselves. The same is true of the demonstration that the primary aim of many Germans involved in the Holocaust was the torturing and murdering of Jews, and that all other goals, such as economic ones, were secondary if they featured at all. All such actions could have been ordered from above. What is of great value is that Goldhagen shows on the one hand that there is often a lack of direct evidence that such orders were given, and on the other hand that these actions were taken voluntarily.
Where I come to disagree with the author, is in his thesis that the Holocaust is an almost exclusive product of Germany and ordinary Germans, and not dependent on the existence of a totalitarian regime of unprecedented barbarism. He claims that two historical circumstances, a Nazi government that legitimized and encouraged, and a world-war that provided access and cover, allowed the German people to express their preexisting eliminationist anti-semitism. Clearly, this stark departure from the view that a relatively small fanatic Nazi elite forced the Holocaust on the German people, and hid it from most of them anyway, is a useful light in which to examine the evidence afresh. However, the greatest strength of author is also a weakness of his approach to this aspect of the Holocaust. Clearly Goldhagen grew up in very intellectual part of a free society at a very different time, and to question assumptions is his daily work. Indeed the author's disallowing assumptions about the fanaticism of a few leading to the coercion of the many, is what leads to the new look at evidence that makes the book compelling. When that evidence is examined a picture emerges that is different from before: we indeed see ordinary Germans smiling at us from their photos of "Aktionen", we can picture them socializing with their wives and colleagues, all while perpetrating the Holocaust. Questioning old notions is what make this book so valuable, especially to people of a new generation. However, as a result, Goldhagen's book implicitly assumes that a questioning attitude was more prevalent in the Germany of the '30s and '40s than it almost definitely was. The voices that I hear of Germans that lived through that time, both from actual conversations and from reported ones my parents had with members of that generation, remind me that one didn't question, let alone act, in Nazi Germany, as one does in post-Watergate and post-Vietnam America. Therefore, the deeper mystery of what motivated the ordinary German, whether it was Nazi propaganda, coercion by a totalitarian state, peer-pressure, self-service, preexisting anti-semitism or a lethal mixture of these base motivations, remains unilluminated by this work. Perhaps is always will - who can see into a persons soul?

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Summary: Subtantially better than most Holocaust apologia.
Review: Our preoccupation with the human suffering of the Holocaust continues with D.J.Goldhagen's "expose" of the culpability of German (not Nazi) society. Indeed, the average German WAS aware of the drastic crimes against the Jews and others, but approved. Opportunities for objections (or civil disobedience) were seized with other decrees from Berlin, but none in response to the antisemetic actions of the state. Participation in the torture and slaughter of Jews was predominantly by non-Nazis who were employed in a completely voluntary status. The significance of this work is likely to rest upon the focus of the prevalent and extremely common active, enthusiatic, participation of the German people who had most often been presented as ignorant or disapproving of the actions of the Nazi party members. This notion of the general good in German society comforts us and was easy to sell when the Evil Empire of the USSR was a threat. More could be added with regard to the enthusiastic non-germanic antisemites who have also been "whitewashed" by wishful, humanitarian hisorians. Wordy and occasionally circular in its logic, the book is an important read for the year.

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Summary: A seriously flawed treatment of the Holocaust.
Review: Although Goldhagen certainly did plenty of research, his argument is certainly *not* a new one: it was, in fact, a central point in the German "historians' conflict" which, though still unresolved, raged in the mid-1980s. Furthermore, Goldhagen commits a social science cardinal sin: his argument is completely circular. He uses his dependent variable (the murderous acts of Holocaust participants) to prove his independent variable (eliminationist anti-semitism). Lastly, the first customer comment COMPLETELY misses the entire point Goldhagen is trying to make. His claim is that Germans were active and eager participants and were not passive by any definition of the word

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Summary: Hannah Arendt
Review: I think that the author suffers from a misunderstanding of the human condition. Yes, I think he was right to focus on the NAZI murders of the Jews over all the other groups. In the midst of the Soviet onslaught, the death's head SS and other groups were fanatically requsitioning trains to bring Jews to death camps for death before it was too late. I believe the author's error was in assuming that people are motivated. They they want to do, and will do good, or want to do, and will do evil. I believe his position comes out, on one hand from an understandable pregidice against the Germans, but on the other hand, an extreme desire to shield humanity, even America, from the horrible conclusions non ideological writers like Hannah Arendt. She claimed, and I think with good reason and evidence, that many Germans did not care about the fate of the Jews. As members of a society, they sided with the norm. I divide German 1940 society into 4 groups. Jew haters(Hitler/Himmler/street thugs). Opportunists(Hans Frank). Regular I don't cares(factory workers who watched their Jewish neabours get rounded up--with varing attitudes--but loved Hitler for fixing the economy, and apparently making Germany into a victorious superpower), and actively engaged heroic types(i.e. average people who took their ethics seriously)(about 18,000 Jews survived in Germany--this could only have occured as the result of non-Jewish Germans). For a specialists the book is recommended(but so is every book dealing with their specialty). I do not believe it deserves to be a best seller(although I agree with its stance against a PC attitude), but again, if you read it and believe it, you might feel better, that dark monstor in your heart may only exist in German hearts. Its a horrible and unfortunate truth, that many people look to common culture and values for truth, and often such things turn them into monstors(Jung extroverts).

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Summary: Warning! Please Read Critically
Review: Generalizations are a dangerous occupational hazard for historians. Unfortunately, Daniel Goldhagen's book is full of them. Goldhagen is not an historian. Regardless, this does not excuse poor scholarship. Had Mr. Goldhagen been trained in the historical profession for any length of time, he obviously would have been aware that themes of an historical and political nature do not fit nicely into compartmentalized categories of black and white; there are always noticeable shades of gray. Historians, social scientists and political scientists, could collectively and unanimously advise Mr. Goldhagen that in the realm of scholarly endeavors, not to mention the world in general, there are no absolutes. Having said that, Goldhagen's thesis, expressed here in plain language, that all Germans possessed a peculiar brand of anti-Semitism ("eliminationist anti-Semitism") to the extent that, given the chance, all Germans would willingly murder Jews, is almost comical in its implications. But this is no joke. In fairness, the author's intentions for writing this book are admirable, however, his methods and conclusions fall short. Goldhagen focuses his attention on the perpetrators of the Holocaust, "the men and women who in some intimate way (and the author's list is staggering) knowingly contributed to the slaughter of Jews." The author attempts to systematically reveal the motivations of the perpetrators and has established some models in which to study their actions, beliefs, rationalizations and justifications for those actions. Goldhagen categorizes the motivations of "ordinary Germans" into five types: (1) coercion, (2) blindly following orders, (3) psychological peer pressure, (4) fulfilling bureaucratic procedures with total disregard for the victims, and (5) ignorance to the real nature of their actions. Goldhagen then attempts to categorize the actions of the perpetrators by degrees of cruelty. Finally, the author asks what actions could the perpetrators have taken to avoid killings or acts of cruelty. For example, could the perpetrators have disobeyed orders or simply refused to partake in the acts of brutality? Goldhagen formulates this methodology then totally dismisses the legitimacy of this model and concludes: "the perpetrators (German society as a whole) ... having judged the mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say 'no'" They thus became, "willing executioners." Another weak contention Goldhagen makes involves labelling German anti-Semitism as particularly unique to that of other European nations during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Anti-Semitism surely existed in other European countries, yet Goldhagen makes no comparison between German anti-Semitism and that of other European states at all. Instead, he lumps all Germans into one basket. Another gross generalization involves Goldhagen's assertion that the members of Polizeibataillon 101 represented a fair cross-section of German society from a political standpoint anyway. As Goldhagen's critics have pointed out, the historian Christopher Browning had already conducted a study of this particular unit. Browning shows that many of the members of this unit belonged to non-German ethnic groups, particularly Czechs, were well known for their brutality towards Jews. In addition, Browning suggests that most of the members of this unit may have had psychological repercussions for their actions as was evident in the rampant alcoholism that permeated Police Battalion 101. Goldhagen waves over much of Browning's conclusions, however, and tends to select them to suit his own argument. These critiques are not meant to justify or minimize the actions of the perpetrators. The Holocaust was a horrible chapter in the history of human kind. Goldhagen's intentions were noble and this could have been a great scholarly contribution to Holocaust literature had it been written differently. This is a dangerous book. Dangerous, because it redirects hatred back at a specific nationality-Germans. Dangerous also, because of the possibility of a vast audience, not conditioned to read critically, may take Goldhagen's contentions at face value. Not many of us will ever know what it is like to have our whole family murdered at the hands of a fanatical regime. Many still remember, however, and it is this emotional chord that Goldhagen aims at that will not let the hatred toward a new, and, some may argue, an undeserving generation of Germans subside. Goldhagen's road to "reconsideration" may be paved with good intentions; however, there are many pot holes to be filled before the last chapter in this sad story is written.