Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

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Summary: Read the Goldhagen book before speak and write about it.
Review: Read the Goldhagen book before speak and write about it.
Together to the last his masterpiece, "A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust", this is the best work of all the times about Holocaust History.
We, in Italy, have founded "The Memory Day" on 27 january: we read the all Goldhagen books. To not forget the real nature of european historical antisemitism.

Nicola Facciolini
Teramo
Italy

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Summary: What WAS "the Holocaust"?
Review: There is no denying the vast majority of Germans supported their rightfully elected government, headed by "Fuehrer" and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Most Germans supported him to the end of the Third Reich. However, all intelligent people must ask, "what WAS 'the Holocaust'?" Was "the Holocaust" whatever the countless, often contradictory "eyewitness accounts" claim it was? Was "the Holocaust" the physical extermination of the Jews? Was "the Holocaust" merely the expulsion of Jews and Jewish life from German-controlled Europe? Until these questions, and others related, are answered, there can be no discussion of "willing executioners." Oh, wait, it is ILLEGAL to discuss such things in Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, and many other countries, under threat of imprisonment. Goldhagen is a propagandist of the Holocaust Industry (see Dr. Finkelstein's book), and, ironically, one who paints an entire people with a bigoted brush. Isn't that what Jews claim Hitler did to them, leading to "the Holocaust"?

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Summary: The most intelligent book about Holocaust
Review: I have not words to write about this masterpiece Book about The Holocaust: it's the best I've read about it. I think, in these doom times in Europe too (France, in particular), this Book could be used as study text in all Low and High Schools of European Union too.

Nicola Facciolini
Journalist
Teramo Shire
Italy

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Summary: Where's The Proof????????
Review: The author proved beyond any doubt that many ordinary German's participated in the Holocaust but he failed to substantiate his racist indictment of all Germany.
The author assumes that because Germans refused orders in one instance that they could refuse orders in every instance. How could a modern historian possibily understand the fear that many Germans experienced while contemplating the risks of saying no??????
My parents are Holocaust survivors and I have absolutly no reason to defend Germany or Germans but this book is an insult to the intellect!

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Summary: Addition to my last review
Review: One last thing to add, one reviewer Mr Glueck, further down below
thinks that todays anti Israel sentiments are connected to the nazi ideology then I would suggest further research on that subject. Most modern day antisemitism is caused by former communist propanganda and 1968 like students revolutionary grabage, an ideology that mostly tried to "exterminate" the Jewish FAITH and deny a state to the Jews, the state of Israel, but did NOT try to kill Jews physically.

Also WHO IS MICHAEL MILKEN ??????

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Summary: One simple question...
Review: I am wondering how seriously we should take a book in which the author quotes himself, and even worse, his senior thesis? Goldhagen isn't even a historian, which is plain to anyone who has any training in the field. Yet he is teaching at Harvard as I write this review. Does anyone doubt the politics behind this decision? He obviously hasn't proven any scholarly merit for such a posting.

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Summary: Excellent Research, Flawed Thesis
Review: The Holocaust is one of the most horrendous acts of inhumanity ever recorded. In his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Daniel Goldhagen proposes an explanation of how this event not only could have taken place, but how it was perpetrated by ordinary people not brain-washed party goons who "were just following orders". The book has two primary goals. The first is to argue that the elimination of the German Jews was the product of "elimination anti-Semitism" which was uniquely German. The second is that due to this idea of elimination anti-Semitism, it was easy and natural for ordinary Germans to begin the wholesale slaughter of Jews because it had been programmed into them. Goldhagen goes to great lengths to back up his arguments. He provides us with some insight into the Holocaust heretofore not seen. His research is meticulous, his arguments are compelling; however, for his thesis to work, the history of European anti-Semitism must be either rewritten or ignored. Goldhagen's zeal to prove the German people totally responsible for the Holocaust seems to have colored his recollection of history.

Goldhagen spends the first part of his book repeatedly and redundantly explaining his thesis of elimination anti-Semitism. While he makes good points to the "why's" of the anti-Semitism, he seems to have a problem with his "where's". Goldhagen is so intent on this argument preceding his ordinary German argument that he creates an anti-Semitic Germany which stands alone in Europe in its depth of anti-Semitism. The history of Western Europe does not exactly agree with Goldhagen's analysis that Germany was the only place the Holocaust could have occurred because of its unique brand of elimination anti-Semitism.

Goldhagen goes to great lengths to explain the German brand of anti-Semitism and provides some good research and points that help us understand the thinking of Germany just prior and during World War II. This explanation does help to provide a sense of how a crime of this magnitude could be perpetrated. He further helps us to comprehend how the German Jews could be so easily led to the slaughter. The systematic process that Goldhagen details provide us with an appreciation of the thought patterns on both sides of the Holocaust.

Goldhagen moves from the thought processes that led Germany to the Holocaust to the German solution of "the Jewish Problem." In these chapters, Goldhagen provides details of the police battalions, work camps, and death marches that should be required reading for every human being. Whatever flaws Goldhagen may have in his theses and his arguments are minimal when compared to the vast amount of detail that he has provided about the suffering, humiliation, and carnage the Jews had to endure at the hands of the Germans. Goldhagen presents anecdotal evidence of the brutality of the Germans and the suffering of the Jews that has heretofore not been reported. The incidents Goldhagen reports are heart wrenching in their brutality and inhumanity. It is critical that this information is preserved for future generations. The evidence that Goldhagen provides for his argument that ordinary Germans were capable of genocide is compelling and convincing. There is little doubt that ordinary Germans committed horrible acts during the Holocaust. Goldhagen does an excellent job of showing us that the "Final Solution" was not carried out by brain-washed SS men "just following orders."

Goldhagen's book does an excellent job of explaining how ordinary Germans were capable of and did play a major role in the Holocaust. The problems are, as stated earlier, that he insists on making the Holocaust sound as if was only perpetrated on Jews by Germans. The reality was that many other Eastern Europeans held similar anti-Semitic ideas and participated enthusiastically in assisting the Germans in murdering the Jews. The second reality is that many other non-Jews were victims of the Holocaust. Goldhagen mentions them but is rather condescending in his treatment of their plight. Having pointed out these weaknesses, Goldhagen's book is still an excellent treatise on the Holocaust and a must-read for students of the Holocaust and/or anti-Semitism.

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Summary: This is the worst book ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I'm sorry, but this book was bogus! The book sounded like a college book! I didn't think that this book was really helpful on my study of the Holocaust in school. To me, this book sounded just like an opinion. He kept talking about how he thought that the German's were all anti-semestic and didn't know anything. Well, he's being prejudice to the German's right there in the book! Isn't prejudice what started the whole war? If so, why is he being prejudice to the Germans in his book?
Many people's reviews that I've seen have said that this book was really well written. Well, I agree with Jojo from Madison,OH. I think that the book was horrible, and that he didn't do a very good job. Overall, the book was boring!
I personally can't believe that someone would write a book soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boring. Jojo thought that the book was boring and horrible too. I just think that he could of done a better job.
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best, I would rate this book a 0.00000000000000001 because he did do a good job of describing what the German's did to the Jews, but only in a few chapters. He really could have expanded a little more on history and had plot to his story, and had a little less opinion.

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Summary: Horrible Book
Review: This book was horrible! I have never read anything so wrong in !my life! How can you write something like this!

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Summary: Marginally Relevant
Review: Goldhagen's thesis is crudely overstated. The book's unsober approach is relentless, yet valuable in the directness with which it engages the reader and the extent to which it stimulates vital questioning.