Rating: 
Summary: An Eye-opening Thesis
Review: Author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen set about a daunting task in his book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". He sets out to debunk many previous writings on the perpetrators of the Holocaust that leave out, in his opinion, the entire climate of Germany prior to WWII. Germany was a vastly anitsemitic country that permitted the persecution of the Jews to occur because they believed the Jews to be 'subhuman' and 'unworthy of living'. Goldhagen argues that most writings on the perpetrators of the Holocaust don't examine the beliefs of the vast majority of the German people.
He undertakes various examinations of who exactly is to be held responsible for the attrocities that were committed against the Jewish nation. He examines how deep the roots of antisemitism were before Hitler's rise to power, that ordinary Germans were willing to accept Hitler's belief that the only way to be rid of the evil Jews was wholesale slaughter. Did ordinary Germans bat an eye at this malicious intent? Goldhagen argues that they didn't and provides vast evidence to support his theory that Germans were not coerced into their treatment of the Jews, but abused and killed them willingly. He examines various records that support his thesis as well and gives strong treatment to the role of police battalions, work camps and death marches. There is plenty of evidence that demonstrates that the men and women who carried out these crimes were ordinary Germans, not necessarily Nazi party members or even supporters of Hitler. They were memebers of a nation of people who had been brainwashed through generations of teaching that Jews were subhuman and the cause of their misery. They truly believed that their lives would be better without Jews, and they went to any means imaginable to make that a reality.
"Hitler's Willing Executioners" is a well-written look into the German culture that existed prior to and during WWII. Goldhagen argues that too many people were involved in the crimes that they could not have been ignorant of the day-to-day killings of Jews, nor could they have been coerced into committing crimes they were morally opposed to - the evidence isn't there to support these prior claims. Although well-written, Goldhagen tends to weigh his writing down in redundancy. The opening thesis and ending conclusion are repetitive and long-winded. "Hitler's Willing Executioners" is at its strongest when Goldhagen examines the records of the crimes against the Jews, and allows the facts to speak for themselves. Anyone who has studied or read about the Holocaust always asks the same question - "How could this have happened?". I believe that Goldhagen's thesis holds many of those answers.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but tragically flawed...
Review: This book is a great read, and is a wonderful contribution to the literature of the Holocaust. It has one tragic flaw, however, in that Goldhagen's conjectures are being taken as absoulte fact.
Certainly connections can be drawn between the masses in Germany and the rise of Nazism, but to claim that all masses were willing, even eager, to accept the antisemitism of National Socialism is a stretch. Certainly Nazism appealed to many ordinary Germans, but people must be able to distinguish between the party and it's horrendous effects.
This is an interesting book, and a good read for anyone serious in the study of history, but it is dangerous to automatically assume what Goldhagen proposes is true. There is a difference between willingly accepting the Natioanl Socialist Party and eagerly participating in mass genocide. Readers willing to critically annalyze Goldhagen's arguments will love this book. Others will simply come away with the wrong message and a completely unrealistic view of Germany at the start of the Second World War.
Rating: 
Summary: Was it a question of racism? Or was it multifactorial?
Review: Goldhagen's case is simple but not simplistic. Anti-Semitism was more developed and more publicly spread out in Germany than in other European states. The extermination of Jews under auspices of the Nazis was only viable because Germans had so embraced Anti-Semitism that they categorized Jews as non-human beings - the sum of all fears, the "Other". According to Goldhagen, the ground-trooper or foot man (and foot woman) of Shoah were not just Nazis in the concentration camps and Einsatzgruppen, but hundreds of thousands of run of the mill `ordinary Germans' - in a move similar to Christopher Browning - `Volk' in the police battalions, whom - problematic as this might be -- Goldhagen regards as a representative sample of the German nation. As an amateur - who was not aware, until I read the `Afterword' and the `Foreword to the German Edition' in Appendix 3 about all the buzz this book created [...] I find it unproblematic to appreciate why: Goldhagen's unyielding avowal that the extermination of the Jews could not have happened without the active cooperation, involvement and at least tacit support of a vast majority of `ordinary Germans'. Despite the vigorous denial of an accusation of `collective guilt' (Goldhagen 481), the accusation by Goldhagen harkens back to the days of Zola's J'accuse almost 100 years ago. The very extent, character and bureaucratic nature (reminiscent of Hannah Arendt's utterance of the `Banality of Evil' in `Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil' and Christopher Browning's writing in Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992) [both also available on Amazon.com]) of Shoah `on the ground' makes the claim of collaboration a very believable one. One thing does resonate with me - that despite the universal claim that Goldhagen makes from such a particularistic sample - he does `deconstruct' the common sense understanding/theory of a monocausal top down scenario. Goldhagen writes: `The conventional explanation cannot account for the findings of this study, for the evidence from the cases presented here. They belied by the actions of the perpetrators, glaringly and irrefutably. The notions that the perpetrators contributed to genocide because they were coerced, because they were unthinking, obedient executors of state orders, because of social psychological pressure, because of the prospects of personal advancement, or because they did not comprehend or feel responsible for what they were doing, owing to the putative fragmentation of tasks, can each be demonstrated in quick order to be untenable. These conventional explanations cannot account for the perpetrator's killing activities, which, it must be emphasized, are generally the only type of action that they directly address. The other perpetrator actions that have been specified and described here, especially the endemic cruelty, the conventional explanations all but ignore. Even the most cursory glance shows that they are inadequate for explaining these actions. The conventional explanations' enormous shortcomings, moreover, are not only empirical. They suffer from common conceptual and theoretical failings' (Goldhagen 379). Having referred to that massive quote, my sense is that Goldhagen's colossal and vexing documentation is indisputably significant and forever expands our knowledge and understanding of the unjustified sadistic violence meted out to and which eventually led to the extermination of the majority of European Jewry. The arguments laid out though raises serious doubts about the historiography of the book. Taking into account the disinclination to account for the contributions of other scholars - in what seems like a move to foist the freshness of his own thesis (which is no doubt relevant) - about the incalculable extent and nature of ordinary German anti-Semitism coming into 1993 - that there was the need to have the Nazis in place for this type of genocide to occur - sounds like an inherent contradiction. Of the belief that yes, there were at least three crucial elements that needed to be in place in order for this horror to have occurred the way it did: (1) The festering malignancy of anti-Semitism, (3) the economic conditions and (3) the war experience prior to 1933, and the role of Hitler and the Nazi party; the almost implied monocausal nature of the book lends itself to a shift in emphasis, a previously stated - to the `ordinary German.' Coming back to my original premise, as an amateur coming into this discourse, I still found the book extremely relevant in its topic as well as approach and would encourage everyone to purchase and read the book - lest we forget.
Miguel Llora
Rating:
Summary: First Rate
Review: Must concur with those who cite the book as important and worth talking about. It is also disturbing and sometimes takes a strong force of will to get through the material.
The language is scholarly but easy to read, and the tone is matter of fact. The book is very well focussed, and does much to prove the central thesis - that the German people as a whole were responsible for the Holocaust, and that the perpetrators were not villains or evil incarnate, but "ordinary Germans". Does much to explain how such a monumental crime could have occurred - the simple math, for example, showing how many concentration camps in the country was eye opening on its own and makes one think about how broad and enormous these crimes against humanity were.
However, Goldhagen is obviously not impartial and evidence may be presented only when it fits his thesis. Best read in conjunction with other works, though I don't know of one as masterful as this that would creditably present "the other side" of the story without being revisionist or sympathetic to the Nazis.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed, but Correct
Review: Goldhagen committed the cardinal sin in academia: he made money. This, to me, seems to be the primary rationale for the heavy-handed dismissal encountered so often when the subject of "Hitler's Willing Executioners" comes up. What Goldhagen does is present the fact that many people would rather avoid--that ordinary German condoned, supported and actively participated in the mass slaughter of European Jews. He unflinchingly presents a picture of pre-war Germany and the long line of anti-Semitic behavior present in Europe, especially Germany. There is no escaping blame under Goldhagen's view--any German who did not actively resist were as guilty as those who participated, and that, in essence, is what made the Shoah the tragedy on the grand scale that it was. Goldhagen's scathing view of Germany as well as his conviction often comes across as negative, especially to those who are more willing to forgive and forget, to consign the actions of the Nazis to a different time and place. However, what Goldhagen makes evident is the truism so often repeated in Holocaust Studies: All evil requires to flourish is that good men do nothing. So it was in Hitler's Germany, and so it is in "Hitler's Willing Executioners".
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing and Deeply Misunderstood Book
Review: I suspect that the many detractors of this book have not really read it, at least not all of it, based on their misinformed and ad hominem attacks on the author. Goldhagen's premise (thesis) is pretty logical and straightforward: the palpable and continuous history of Anti-Semitism generally in Europe and in Germany particular, created the conditions for the Holocaust. Germans generally had no regard for the Jews, a distorted "cognitive model" Goldhagen calls it, bolstered by centuries of Anti-Semitic apoplexy. It's difficult to swallow, perhaps, for modern readers, that human beings could detest other human beings, or at the least, have such little regard for their annhilation, but Goldhagen provides evidence, reams of it, all of it footnoted, and unlike Finkelstein, his chief critic, Goldhagen actually knows German and has pored through hitherto neglected documentation to bolster his premise. (It is an argument, remember folks, and you can always feel free to disagree with him after you've "read" the book...) He shows that ordinary Germans, despite what many scholars of the Holocaust have said, were not just people simply following orders, or who provided little or no hindrance to the killing of the Jews because they were "afraid" of the Nazis, but that they in fact actively resented and contributed willingly to their murders. How? Goldhagen gives a litany of examples -- focusing on the police battallions -- of how average and "ordinary" Germans assisted in the kinds of crimes that we liken to killers like Henry Lee Lucas. But unlike that psychopath, these were Germans (cops) who had families and children and who played sports and even went to the theater. How could they do such things? Some of the police battallions Goldhagen mentions even had the option not to perform killings, but they chose to do so, including the murdering of women and children. Why? They had been programmed to despise Jews; from the Reichstag to the church, Anti-Semitism was brayed at them constantly by German officials. Goldhagen does in fact mention other genocides, other mass murders, but shows how this particular genocide was a specific and programmatic one reducible to one simple fact: the hatred of Jews. Yes, he says perhaps not every German hated them, that some even acted on their own to help them, but this evidence is drastically overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary; for every Schindler there were millions of compliant killers. The book isn't perfect; it's too long, by at least a hundred pages, and as other reviewers have already commented, extremely repetitive, but Goldhagen obviously felt he really needed to hammer his points home. I will next read Christopher Browning's book on the same subject (and police battallion) and see how he reaches a different conclusion, but for anybody who really wants to know why and how the Holocaust could have happened, Goldhagen is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Read the title, please.
Review: Some of the previous reviewers of this book seem to be highly upset that the author didn't include an analysis of other nation's histories of race and politically based genocide. The purpose of the work, however, is reflected in the book's title. He is focusing on Germans and Germany. That is the subject of his study. It is well written, well researched, and informative...and is about what he says it is about. If one wishes to read in depth of, say, the USSR's persecution of the Jews, I would recommend finding a work written to that end. It is nonsensical to complain about an author writing to his or her intended subject in a focused manner.
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