Rating: 
Summary: How many Goldhagen's does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Review: Rather struck by the realization that Goldhagen's book had ranked 2nd place in TIME Magazine's Best Nonfiction of 1996 category, I promptly consulted a local library for a copy of the book, unwaivering in my confidence that the proclamation attributed to a popular news magazine that the professor's conclusions "seem indisputable" was remotely defensible. Barely had I begun to read, than my curiosity quickly dissolved into utter disbelief. A futile attempt to loacate multiple examples of the supposedly "indisputable" conclusions had soon dwindled into a feverish search for even one such statement, my perserverence sustained by a recurring sentiment, "It's in here, someplace!"
Alas, my intensive probing through 500-plus pages of utter nonsense ended in vain, my lust for a satisfying explanation for the recent appraisal left unfulfilled. Appalled and disgusted, I became hardpressed to restrain myself from subjecting this literary abomination to a hurried rendezvous with the notorious 451. For clearly, apart from "The Bell Curve", "The South Was Right", and "A Natural History of Rape", Goldhagen's manuscript qualifies as one of the few collaborations of ink, woodpulp, and binding that can be confidently deemed worthy of the fireplace.
For starters, the book's central thesis pertaining to a "German eliminationist anti-semitism" is easily countered by the fact that among the perpetrators of the atrocities include Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Slavs, Lithuanians, Dutch, Romanians, and Danish, or that broad category the victims themselves include gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, Russians, Slavs, or simply people who wore glasses.
Clearly, a comprehensive survey of Police Battalion activities reveals ordinary Lithuanians, Poles and Slavs who, like the members of Police Battalion 101, neglected many an oppourtunity to sit-out executions, thus proceeding to massacre Jews and other minorities on a strictly voluntary basis.
Naturally, the defenders of Goldhagen's thesis have attempted to "counter" this argument with the laughable insinuation that the perpetrators of said non-German nationalities had merely succumbed to some irresistible form of collective hypnosis on account of the uniformly antisemitic Germans, a "theory" that is every bit as pathetic as it is stupid.
Clearly, in order for the grounds of Goldhagen's insinuations to remain consistent, the ultimate definition of his thesis must therefore, by default, be extended to a "virulent elminationist German, Polish, Danish, Hungarian, Austrian, Lithuanian, Czech, Dutch, Latvian anti-semitic, anti-Soviet, Anti-Gypsy, anti-Slavic, homophobia." Evidently, Goldhagen either found this term a bit too wordy for his disertation, or more likely simply refused to stray so far outside the bounds of his own trademark brand of incredulous stupidity.
Furthermore, Goldhagen naturally neglects a further round of contradictions to his thesis. The fact that 6 years of antisemitic Nazi propaganda had failed to produce even one instance of non-Nazi German civilian orchestrated instance of mob violence before the war, a distinction lacking by both the American SOuth and Imperial Japan. The fact that terms of the German Nuremberg laws pailed by comparison to the anti-semitic restrictions imposed in Austria. The fact that Hitler's first measure of support had been confined to a meager 2.8 percent, remaining dormant until he had shifted the emphasis from anti-semitism toward the more popular positions of anti-Marxism and remedying German unemployment.
Since the publication of HWE, a long line of scholarly rebuttals has long since produced well-documented indications of misrepresentations of original works with Goldhagen's book, a secret closely guarded by the American news media. For instance, one segment of Goldhagen's manuscript reads, "Hitler announced several times that the war would end in the destruction of the Jews, the killing met with general understanding, if not approval", citing the writings of Max Domarius as his source. But contrary to his insinuations the original text reads, "Even during the war, with his war machine running at top capacity, Hitler confined his remarks on the massacre of the Jews to within the scope of his foreign policy, knowing all to well that such an openly propagated program of extermination was certain to meet with resistance from the majority of the German people and the bulk of his parry of followers." For further documentation of such elaborate misreprentations, in addition to general well-argued rebuttal to Goldhagen's book, "A Nation On Trial" by Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Birn represents an excellent consultation.
Heaping insult upon the injury, professor Goldhagen has obviously taken the pop-psychology advice of "maintaining touch with one's inner child" way too literally, as his writing style and general propensity for ranting his raves(and vice versa) have a tendancy to read more like the journal entries of a deranged toddler in the midst of a temper tantrum, rather than the work of a 36 year-old political science professor. In essence, this extreme contrast between age and maturity is rivaled only by those of his equally fanatical supporters, who, reeling under the dual handicap of a wanten inferiority complex and a collective reluctance to remedy the terminal positioning of their heads from where the sun don't shine, continue to blabber nonsensically about in support of their revered idol, regardless of the lack of evidence to substantiate their perspectives.
Contrary to what several reviewers have insinuated, the prevailing academic regard for Goldhagen and his thesis has remained uniformaly critical, the only exceptions amounting to an insignificant handful of so-called "historians" who have ditched their professional obligations in favor of public relations and politics. Indeed, there is nothing remotely insightful, thought-provoking, impartial, consistent, intelligent, or objective to be found between the covers of this book.
If anything, the only proof demonstrated by the widespread support for Goldhagen is how public attitude with regard to the Holocaust has deteriorrated from rambling immaturity into thinking patterns startlingly reminiscient of the most intellectually impaired breed of microbe.
In any case, a comparitive analysis of the personal characteristics of the respective individuals, Goldhagen and Hitler, presents only one significant difference; unlike Goldhagen, Hitler could paint.
Rating: 
Summary: Troubled work, but valuable
Review: Goldhagen's work has many problems but is still a valuable study. His thesis that the Holocaust was the result of a specific kind of German "elimanationist anti-Semitism" is not supported by the evidence. It is repetitive and hard to read (after all it is a dissertation). However, it is valuable because it has helped re-focus the debate on the perpetrators, examines the death marches, and has led to a reevaluation of many of the positions taken by other historians. The various responses of the the critics that have been published alone make this book important, though they are generally scathing.
Rating:
Summary: My two cents
Review: I'd like to affer a few more comments about this book.
1. Several reviewers below have complained that the book is ponderously, repetitiously written. I was struck by this, too, but I can explain it. It's because it was Goldhagen's PhD thesis. That's how theses are written. To convince the examining committee you deserve a PhD, you pound out the points of each chapter repetitively. Then you stand up at your public thesis defense and do the same thing. He should have pruned for publication.
2. Opinions about the culpability of the German people in the Holocaust run the gamut from "a small elite carried everything out in secret" to "they all hated Jews and participated willingly". Clearly, Goldhagen comes down towards the latter end of this continuum, and this has generated a lot of resistance here and in Germany. However, in the rejection of this strong interpretation, and in the reasonable desire not to blame the sons for the sins of the fathers, I think there is too much of tendency to go to the other extreme. Let's face it: the Nazi's plans were grandiose. They planned to mobilize history's strongest army, conquer the world, kill all Jews and most slavs, and colonize the entire east out beyond Moscow (an excellent source: "Wenn Hitler den Kreig gewonnen haette", by Ralph Giordano). This kind of plan cannot be carried out in secret by a small elite. It requires the participation of all segments of society, from workers to academics to financiers. And the Nazis got this participation, at least for the "public" part of their plans, namely world war and conquest. To imagine that the rest of their program was kept secret from, and did not have support from, a population that stood idle during public persecution of German Jews is not realistic.
There's a worse problem. There seems to be a great desire to concentrate all the guilt for the Holocaust into a small group of fanatical Nazis, and this is just historically unfair. This is certainly the gist of German excuses made just after the war, and it has not really gone away as an excuse. Remember, for example, Ronald Reagan's speech at Bitburg, where he more more less absolved the entire SS. You can also perceive this in the German press, which, in its renewed interest in the Holocaust, tends to use the pronoun "they" a lot more frequently than "we" (or, more fairly, "our parents"). Hitler's ascension to power in 1933 is routinely referred to in German sources as his "siezure of power" (Machtergreifung) when it is well known that he became chancellor through democratic processes, to the cheers of nearly all. Goldhagen's book has its exaggerations and flaws, and clearly one book cannot make the definitive judgement on this historical issue. But it makes an important statement against a widely-accepted and unfair view of history.
Rating:
Summary: Read Browning's Ordinary Men
Review: I will not explain the uselessness of this author's work, as it has been done numerous times before, but in short, Goldhagen has admited that he started his research from his viewpoint rather than arrive at his conclusion from the basis of his research. He claims that his book is the only explanation for the events that took place. His manipulation of the facts, which aren't obvious to the happless reader, could only prove that he is biased or has an agenda. His standards for judgement condratict his practices and the lack of inclusion of existing contrary evidence makes this book seem more than negligent. I would recommend anyone who has read Goldhagen's tirade to also read Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men. He studied the same group, "Police Batallion 101" and has provide many (but not claming to be exclusive) explanations. Goldhagen fails on every account as a scholar with this effort.
Rating:
Summary: The Goldhagen myth
Review: The greatest tragedy of Goldhagen's incongruous and untenable thesis was the almost immediate international acclaim he received for this work. Hailed as Time magazine's second best non-fiction book of 1996 and described by the New York Times as 'one of those rare new works that merit the appellation landmark' , Goldhagen obviously found the kudos for which he was searching. As a piece of historical analysis, however, this unscholarly tirade takes the reader on a journey of massive generalisations, overt contradictions, mischievous use of primary and secondary evidence and a thoroughly unsustainable and highly offensive discourse. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the so-called 'Goldhagen controversy' is the ease with which the author has disregarded the criticism of his work, much of which has raised significant and valid concerns over his historical practice and analysis.
Despite his argument's apparent flaws, the increased debate about the role of the German public in the actions of the Nazi regime has raised important historiographical questions, most notably the potential culpability of an entire nation in the crimes of their government. Historians have also been forced to rethink the traditionalist approach to Holocaust history, which argued that the Final Solution was perpetrated by a small group of ideological zealots under the direct influence of Hitler. However, to argue that all Germans should bare the onus for Nazi crimes is demonstrably misleading. The persecution and attempted destruction of the European Jews was not a result of a flawed German cognitive model but rather the crimes of a vicious regime which was determined to win one aspect of its ideological war of attrition. If the German people are to be attributed responsibility for the cold-blooded murder of six million Jews, this culpability should be restricted to the status of a passive collaboration rather than the ruthless pursuit of a depraved nationalistic aim to eradicate European Jewry.
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust exposes an uncontrollable German eliminationist anti-Semitism and an entire nationality whose cognitive model forced them to commit acts of severe brutality against the Jewish people. According to Goldhagen's logic, the Holocaust is explicable only as a result of this virulent German anti-Semitism. The most striking flaw of this assertion is his failure to recognise the involvement of non-Germans in the Final Solution, especially in the Nazi occupied eastern territories, as well as the potency of anti-semitism across the continent prior to World War Two. The author also systematically disregards the suffering of non-Jews in his abortive judgment that the other victims suffered a "qualitatively different" fate to that of the Jews. Also, his sweeping generalisations about the German public pays scant attention to the unisolated cases of resistance to Hitler's persecution.
Clearly, Goldhagen's thesis is a crude attempt to broaden the blame for the Holocaust by revising the traditional understanding of the perpetrators as Hitler's ideological zealots. This traditional discourse and Goldhagen's claims, however, are both too simplistic. With the exception of the active resistors and the cold-blooded psychopaths of Nazi Germany, it is a fair assessment to describe Germans as passive collaborators to the horrors of the Holocaust, as most did little to resist the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. Goldhagen's argument, however, remains unconvincing because his premise is not placed in the comparative framework necessary to formulate a compelling piece of historical research. This is, of course, all the more ironic given that the PhD thesis, upon which Goldhagen's book is based, was awarded the American Political Science Association's Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in the field of comparative politics. While the book may make good politics, it can be described as nothing more than historical fiction. As a piece of history, this selectively researched diatribe is as pernicious as the myths advocated by Irving. Essentially, Hitler's Willing Executioners manifestly disregards reams of evidence in order to represent a fundamental historical misconception. Unfortunately, it appears that one star is the lowest score that can be applied.
Rating:
Summary: Very informative, but a bit poorly written
Review: First off, my criticisms: Goldhagen has a nice command of the English Language, so that is not what I find lacking in this book. He instead tends to pound the same point into the ground 5 times before moving onto the next subject, often times offering no new information in between, just restating a point several different ways. This gets annoying, especially after reading an entire chapter and then seeing Goldhagen state everything again in the conclusion in maybe 1 page that you could of read and recieved just as reading those 30 other pages. I suppose that is kind of part of academic writting, but Goldhagen tends to do it more than others. At any rate, it does at least make very clear what he is trying to say, and only the first few chapters seem take that to an extreme. The only other thing is that I think he places slightly too much emphasis on the anti-seminism arguement and completely rejects the notion of cohersion (or duress) by the Nazies. I think that anti-seminism played a large role, but I doubt the holocaust would have been possible if the German government had remained completely democratic.Now, short of that, this book is increadible mainly in that (whether or not you agree with it) that this is only recently an arguement that has surfaced in the mainstream. As Goldhagen points out, given the anti-semetic history of Europe, one should first show WHERE anti-seminism died out and why, not assume that it did and that it played no role in the holocaust. Quite to the contrary, Goldhagen conclusivly shows evidence to support his thesis that anti-seminism was very active in Germany at the time, and had been there far into the past, which is not surprising simply given the fact that the Nazies were elected into power. How large a role you think this played in the holocaust is up for debate, but the question of anti-seminism is not. I saw one reviewer ask why Jews were so at home in Germany. Firstly, if you look at the statistics he gives on the locations of Jews, you will notice that the vast majority of Jews did not live in Germany, and but in other countries. They were but ONE percent of the German population! I would imagine Germany's anti-seminism (and other nations) countribute to the distrubution of Jews in different countries. Secondly, about half (according to Goldhagen) of the Jews were certinaly not at home in Germany, as they left when Anti-seminism reached the high levels it did in the 30's. The Jews were at home in Germany as long as anti-seminism was tolerable, meaning it was not "active" as Goldhagen would put it. People who knew Jews (as is common in racists) believed the Jews they liked to be the exception, not the rule, and that the "other" Jews were all bad. Those who remained are akin to those who remain even when a forest fire nears their homes. They are certainly not "at home" but it is their home never-the-less and they refuse to leave, and until Kristalnuacht it was not evident that things would ever lead to something as horific as the Holocaust. Now, even after it has happened, people refuse that it ever happened, and even those who do realize it happened can hardly believe something of this magnitude could occur. How can you expect those Jews to believe that they would ever lose their lives in a concentration camp? Another arguement I see is that some Germans are apparently convinced that this book is blaming them directly for the Holocaust, or even that they are in some way remotely responsible. If that is what you read out of the book then you are unduely sensitive and are in desperate need of a reality check. I am an American, and it is widely excepted that the genocide we practiced against the American Indians was just as "willing" as Goldhagen believes the German's to be. That doesn't mean I have a fear of being blamed for something that happened before my birth, and niether would I blame anyone else for something their ancestors did. Well this "review" is long enough as it is :) I think it is sad to see how many people completely reject this book, even in the face of the concrete evidence it presents. This book's research stood up to the academic critics of Germany, EVEN those very much against it. You can disagree with the conclusion and analysis, but not the evidence.
Rating: 
Summary: The Holocaust: Genocide is a Learned Response
Review: When the victorious Allied armies broke down the gates to the concentration camps in Germany and Poland in 1945, they and the world learned of the mass killing that had been common knowledge throughout Germany. The resulting Nuremburg trials tended to focus on the punishment of targeted Nazi leaders who were tried and punished. The prevailing idea then was that it was the German leaders, not the German people, who were on trial. That concept of individual guilt seemed a natural part of academic Holocaust literature until Daniel Jonah Goldhagen suggested that what to the western mind was the unthinkable: Goldhagen claimed that the responsibility for the Holocaust must be placed squarely on the collective shoulders of the German people. His book, HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS, is his doctoral dissertation from Harvard that suggests that it simply was not possible for the entire Nazi party working in isolation to galvanize the entire social, economic, political, and military fabric of a country to work together in such harmony unless there was massive up and down the line support from the entire spectrum of German people. This astounding assertion on the surface seems to contradict the millennia-long belief that western ethics demands individual, not collective guilt, even for mass genocide. Goldhagen's thesis has come under predictable attack by many sources, chief of which is the collective work of Finklestein and Birn, who in their response called HISTORY ON TRIAL, basically say that Goldhagen is wrong to blame a nation of people for the acts of one subset of that people. I have read both texts, and there is nothing that Finklestein and Birn say that makes me disbelieve Goldhagen. They are not scholars of the Holocaust; they do not read German so they were in no position to judge Goldhagen's sources; their book had numerous errors that detract from the validity and believability of their thesis that collective guilt is wrong. Goldhagen could have avoided and anticipated the attack on his thesis of collective guilt had he pointed out that the flagrant and widespread antisemitism that was a fixture of Germany from top to bottom was a culturally and learned response that did cause an entire group of Germans to take either a direct hand in the killing or an indirect hand by turning aside their collective heads as they went about their daily business. In the introduction to his book, Goldhagen quotes a German police officer who dared to risk retribution by refusing to obey an order that he felt violated his ethics. Goldhagen rightly saw this as an example of how thoroughly entrenched was the possibility that Germans could have excused themselves from engaging in direct genocide. However, he could have added that this poisoning of the human mind and soul was to last only for as long as that nation chose to make it last. The collective guilt of the Germans during the Nazi era was a thoroughly well-earned one, but that does not mean that this guilt is to be passed on to future generations. The bulk of the response of Finklestein's and Birn's book is that Goldhagen implies that even today Germany should feel the burden of guilt. It should not, nor does Goldhagen say or suggest that it should. The core thesis of HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS stands firm, suggesting that hatred, prejudice, and just plain stupidity can indeed infect a nation's people, and if it does so again, then millions more must die while others still shake their heads and argue over how it started.
Rating:
Summary: Teaching book
Review: I found this book at a discount rack at a grocery store. I believe I was meant to read it as it has changed me deep inside. I place it up there with Leo Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of heaven is within you". It made me think of what I would have done in the era. How strong would I have to be to go against the flow? Am I that strong now? It made me think and showed me a side of the holocaust that I had not understood before. For that I am grateful.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Gripping
Review: This book is not for the faint of heart. It takes a look at the German nation as a whole to determine if the Holocaust was really due to only a few people in control and everybody else just following orders. The book covers what happened to the Jews from the early 30's and the continual and progressive "lessening" of the Jews as members of the society and their being relegated to the status of basically rats. The book tells the story of what the camps were like, the towns and cities they were either in or close to, and the interaction the local populations had with the camps. The book makes a very convincing and well thought out case that in order to perform the Holocaust, it took the concerted effort of all organizations of the government to make the Jews less then normal people and to keep increasing the levels of violence against them. In the end, the average German followed along and participated in this process not because he / she were scared or just ultra obedient to the government or military, but because the organizations that set the common morals and laws in the society were telling the citizens that this was the correct and proper way of the world. This situation was not new in history, there are many examples of this process and outcome, and this was just the first that had TV coverage. To say that this is a moving book only scratches the service the powerful emotions that the reader will face going through the text. Although this was designed to be a un-bias report, there is no way to document this period and situation without your emotions coming through in the writing and these author's prove that point. The issue is a stark look at one of the worst examples of the inhumanity one people can inflict on another. If you are interested in learning about the holocaust this is a good way to start, because it will give you an up front, no spin view of the actual conditions
Rating:
Summary: trash dressedup as research
Review: every single serious holocaust or nazi germany scholar on all sides of the quetsion agree at the incredibly illogical and un-academic research and conclusions put into this book.i read several chapters and wondered whether the author had (a) ever taken a course in logic or critical thinking (b) had studied the history of Nazi Germany and took any notes at all (c) or had indeed studied to any extent european history. defining modern germany primarily by anti-semitism begets the question of why germany's jews were very comfortably german ? that the anti-semitic parties were for decades upon decade a fringe group ? why the famous SD reports on the german populace repeatedly warned the regime that the acts against the jews had to be kept hidden, etc\ etc\ etc. It is sad that someone would publish this book, it is exactly this type of politically correct scholarship that it is "dumbing" down this nation.
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