Rating: 
Summary: A people's self-delusion
Review: Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" sometimes seems to answer the question of "Why the Holocaust?" with "Because Germans hated the Jews!" But beneath that seemingly facile response is his exposition of how pervasive and deep-rooted and "hallucinatory" (his word) was that hatred. Goldhagen's book is aimed at destroying the conception that Germany's psychosis toward the Jews as imposed from above (Hitler made us do it) or coerced (The Nazis would have killed us if we refused). Goldhagen provides numerous examples of Germans volunteering to kill; of being proud to by part of their country's special project; of torturing and humiliating when only killing was called for, of photographing their "heroism" (e.g., postcards of soldiers shooting women holding their children) for consumption back home.Goldhagen focuses on killers who had the opportunity to say 'no,' and to be transferred to other assignments, but who chose to pursue their homicidal duties. He demolishes the idea of Germans as bred to obedience by enumerating many examples where Germans challenged orders they did not like, even ignoring orders from the high levels of the Nazi party. By methodically stripping away the killers' post-war rationalizations, Goldhagen works his way to the actual cause of the slaughter: the German people's longstanding belief in eliminationist antisemitism. The plight of the Jews who found themselves in the clutches of the barbarous Nazi killing machine is pitiful. Those who did not make it out in the early 1930s found themselves hemmed in by a people whose political leaders, legal systems, church leaders, even ordinary workers and children steeped in an antisemitism that seems more like mass psychosis than the product of a brilliant and cultured people. The books does have weakness, notably its tendency to repeat itself. Some paragraphs come across as a writing exercise in "Find 10 different ways to express the same idea." Goldhagen even manages to be repetitious across chapters. A book half as long would have made the same points more effectively. Yet this weakness notwithstanding, "Hitler's Willing Executioners" is a revealing window into the mind of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It is chilling and disturbing and well worth the effort to brave the repetitions.
Rating: 
Summary: Deeply flawed study with some good points
Review: One hopes that at some future date, Goldhagen (or an editor who acutally knows his job) will return to this work and do some serious editing. Clearly Goldhagen simply took his doctoral thesis, and with precious little revision, transformed it into a book that is barely readable, due to its dense and repetitive language. The reader should be warned that the narrative does not flow freely in this book. For those readers who have the stomachs to wade through the book to its conclusions, they will find some useful material. In particular, Goldhagen has shown that more ordinary Germans were active participants in the Holocaust than has been previously believed, and in this he is to be commended. If he had left it at that (and had made his book somewhat more readable), most of the criticism this book has received never would have occurred. Unfortunately, Goldhagen attempts to extend his argument by stating that virtually all Germans were culturally hard-wired to participate in a Holocaust, once the right circumstances were in place. He maintains that German culture has essentially programmed Germans to be eleminationist anti-semites, either tacitly or actively, and furthermore, this is a cultural feature unique to the Germans. The flaws in this argument should be obvious to anyone. For one thing, Goldhagen assumes that the average German, if he or she did not actively oppose the Nazi regime, was therefore tacitly supporting it and by extension was anti-semitic, abetting the more active Holocaust participants. How does one prove that one is not an eliminationist anti-semite under the conditions Goldhagen has provided? It would be virtually impossible for any human on the planet to prove that he or she wasn't ready to participate in the Holocaust, except that Goldhagen has focused his sights on the Germans alone. This raises the most glaring flaw: obviously, a great deal of the killing was done by non-Germans, and the majority of the victims in the Holocaust were not Jewish! From Eastern Europe to France, Germany certainly had plenty of help in liquidating the millions of victims it did. How does Goldhagen reconcile this with his argument? Simply put, he doesn't. The sections of the book where he tries to rationalize these discrepancies are unravelling before he even finishes them. In fact, even his argument that Germany had a uniquely historical predisposition towards anti-semitism is difficult to accept. How does one explain that Jews in 19th century Germany were probably the most prosperous in Europe, if they are living in a region filled with people who are programmed to kill them under the right circumstances? How does one explain away the fact that anti-semitism in France was probably even more virulent at the turn of the century? For that matter, how does one explain away the pogroms in Russia which were clearly taking place long before Nazi ideology began to form? Goldhagen's argument that Jews were killed by Germans because, well, that's what Germans do, in its own perverse way lets the rest of us, the human race, off the hook. The implication is that the rest of us shouldn't worry about a holocaust in our back yard because we aren't Germans hard-wired to participate in a holocaust. This is very troubling, because obviously the human race at large is very much hard-wired to engage in genocidal activities just as the Germans did, given the right circumstances. The events of the past century should demonstrate that genocide is by no means a German specialty, although the Nazis practiced it with unequalled efficiency. Goldhagen seems to have focused his enmity towards the Germans to the point he is able to ignore the plentiful evidence of genocide all across the globe, and in so doing, he has cheapened the lives of the victims of genocide who happened not to be Jewish. Genocide isn't a Jewish problem, and it isn't a German problem, it is a human problem. I don't think Goldhagen has fully accepted that; otherwise his book would have written much differently.
Rating: 
Summary: Goldhagen's Point
Review: Some people seem to think that Daniel Goldhagen is arguing that all ordinary Germans were willing murderers. That's not what he's saying at all. What he's saying is that the vast majority of the willing murderers were ordinary Germans. There is a subtle, yet profound, difference between the two concepts. I think he also largely proves his point. Other than that, it's heavy, densely written, & because it was a doctoral thesis, quite repetitious. Once you get beyond those flaws, you'll find it is grimness to the nth degree. It is not an easy read, nor is it especially enjoyable. It is, however, important.
Rating:
Summary: Rich, but ultimately unsatisfying
Review: For all its detail and historical accuracy, Goldhagen's work still doesn't answer the ultimate "why?" OK, so the Germans of the 1930s were steeped in an anti-semitism so virulent that it enabled them to torture and kill millions upon millions of their Jewish neighbors. Still -- why? "Lord of the Flies" notwithstanding, sadism doesn't come naturally to most people. How did the government remove the instinctual and cultural proscriptions against such behavior on such a massive scale? More examination of the tipping point, where plain-old anti-semitism morphed into eliminationist anti-semitism, would have helped answer those questions for me. I'm still wondering what it was in the German psyche that enabled them to mete out such cruelty to their fellow human beings. Goldhagen's ultimately simple response -- "because they wanted to" -- doesn't satisfy.
Rating:
Summary: A great book, misunderstood by most
Review: What the author says is that a large amount of German perpetrators were ordinary German citizens, and that they were 'willing executioners' of Jewish people. He also says that the most likely explanation of this is to be found in the deeply rooted and widespread sentiment of anti-Semitism, typical especially of Germany during this historical period.
Goldhagen brings a massive amount of scholarly research in support of his thesis. Personally, I think he has a very good point, and that he demonstrates it very accurately.
He neither says that all Germans are or were sadistic murderers, nor does he excuse Holocaust perpetrators of other nationalities, about whom he encourages further research. Unfortunately, though, these are among the main misconceptions arising from superficial (or altogether omitted) reading of his book.
Goldhagen did not plan to write a piece of fictional entertainment. So, will all those who thought they would have fun reading this book, and those who take 'professional-history-comedians' like Finkelstein and Birn seriously, leave the room? Thank you.
Rating: 
Summary: INTERESTING AND BOMBASTIC, UNPROVEN CONCLUSIONS
Review: Goldhagen writes a very interesting and bombastic book, poking at many scars from WWII and the German's role in the holocaust. It is clear that the author did a thorough reseach on the occurences and the attitudes of Germans while the holocaust was taking place, and from that we can see that there was a significant latent anti-semitism waiting to come out. On the negative side, I thought the book left much to be desired from the perspective of psychology. After reading Cialdini's "Influence", it is clear to me that there were many issues involving social proof that pervaded German's attitudes and actions at the time. From the historical perspective, the author is right on with a well researched book; from the psych perspective, however, it is unclear that the author achieves what he set out to do: that Germans were not "under the influence" while committing their crimes.
Rating: 
Summary: What was he thinking??
Review: While the Holocaust is a deeply debated event that persists to bogle peoples minds as to how such an event could happen, this book offers nothing new, or concrete for that matter, in helping us understand these events. I do not believe that the author is trying to offer a sensible explanation for the academic and layman alike. I firmly believe that it is an effort to express politically saturated beliefs for the benefit of Zionism. Throughout the book, Goldhagen tries to make people believe that it is only German people that are capable of such mindless destruction and that the Holocaust was unique in its barbarity and scale. I personally dont hold these views. If one were to read the history of any imperial power, similar destruction on an equally horrifying scale is visible. The point here is Imperialism, which translates to irrational authority. Goldhagen frighteningly minimizes the importance and role of authority in society in helping maintain order...or institute chaos, which is what Hitler, along with others, exactly did. Too much of the blame is directed towards the German people. And what males matters worse, he minimizes the effects scientific advancement had on society, especially the military, which if controlled by an irrational authority can be unimmaginably destructive. To sum things up, this book does not deserve to be on the bestseller list. It was a hard read, not because it was academic, it was very badly written and really....just dont waste your money. Check out the works of Fromm, Manheim, and others, or buy a used copy. Definately not worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: tough read
Review: This is a really difficult read, not because of the material itself, but because of the way in which it is written. At least when reading textbook accounts of this period in history, you can glean information from the passage on your first run through the material. I found this to be extremely dry and circuitous prose that required reading, then re-reading in order to make any sense out of what he was trying to say.
Rating:
Summary: A Boring Waste of Time
Review: This is one of the worst books I have ever read. Goldhagen has taken what was probably a readable 50 page PhD thesis and turned it into 600 pages of rehash after rehash. For example, he must have used the phrase (for no particularly good reason) "macro, mezo, micro" four times in attempting to describe who knows what. I can't remember, because I kept falling asleep. Plus, I guess to show us how smart he is, Goldhagen insisted on using numerous less popular, obscure 'big' words in the text, which normally would have kept me running to a dictionary in a better written book. His research is spotty, simply relying on old testimony. Did he even interview any Holocast victomizers in person? The basic premise of his book is that an 'eliministic antisemitism' existed in Germany which caused just about every German to hate Jews to the point that they either killed the Jews personally, or allowed, and even encouraged, the genocide. OK, I just saved you 600 pages of plodding through his book. If you like reading the small print on warranties or legal documents, you will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: It's the style that bothers me
Review: I think the book came out about 7 years ago and I gave up my eleventh and last attempt to fumble through Goldhagen's long-winded prose about a week ago. Everybody tells me they know the book and what Goldhagen is saying, but I can't help thinking that they're lying? Who can read this book? I certainly can't. I suppose I will have to rely on what everybody else says about this book: That the Germans had always been strongly anti-semitic (true), that they had always wanted to kill the Jews (possible) and that that was the only thing that ever mattered to them (not really true). I find it very unfortunate that I have to rely on regular prejudices about this book, because seeing that so many people still talk about it, I feel that I ought to know the contents of it. God knows I've read badly written books in my life. But this one's a real killer. I give up. I'm not gonna give it another go. Many of Elie Wiesel's novels deliver a very accurate description of anti-semitism in the Third Reich. They may not be scientific, but what good is a scientific book if it's as impenetrable as Goldhagen's? I'm giving this book three stars, neither good nor bad. It's true that it is unreadable, but I suppose I cannot altogether write it off as absolute pap if I don't even know it.
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