Rating: 
Summary: the problem of evil
Review: Daniel Goldhagen's analysis throughs light on one of the darkest periods of German history. But does this light reveal the truth without coloring it? Is it possible to arrive at a general conclusion about the psyche of a whole people? As one of the reviewers points out, the author himself admits at the end that during the last fifty years Germans have turned into exemplary democrats, liberal, humane, and tolerant. --An amazing mutation if Goldhagen's thesis is true.--Another reader indirectly blames Catholicism for the German atrocities since "25% of the SS" belonged to that Church. This opinion is as true as the statement that Hitler was a "corporal" which seems to be carried from one study of the period into another.--He was a private first class.-- My major objection to G.'s thesis is the fact that it remains abstract and lacks the dimension of experience one finds e.g. in Klemperer's diaries and Egon Kogon's seminal "Der SS-Staat" (1945). In a recent book I have tried to reflect on the attitudes of the "average" German during the Third Reich hoping that it may help to understand the Nazi era. But all studies and experiences, it seems, cannot solve the mystery of evil. Even the holy book of Judaism contains "evidence" of genocide if one reads the passages in question (e.g. Genesis 34) without theological or sociological exculpations as Simone Weil does.
Rating:
Summary: UNCONVINCING
Review: Whatever the merits of Goldhagen's scholarship, the first thing to make clear about this book is that his ponderous, repetitious writing style does not make its 600-plus pages an easy read. However, his basic argument can be summed up as follows:Because antisemitism was so integral to the psyche of ordinary Germans, Nazi policy unleashed their latent desire to exterminate the Jews, which they did with willingness and enthusiasm. Although most Germans would never have consciously considered acting in this way before the Nazis ascended to power, all the latter effectively had to do was provide the spark which then produced the fire. To back this up the author first of all provides us with evidence that antisemitism was deeply ingrained in German society. Next, he tries to demonstrate that the perpetrators of the Nazi holocaust were basically just typical Germans (ie they were a fairly representative sample of the whole German population). Furthermore, they willingly participated in atrocities against the Jews even though they could have avoided doing so. From these postulations he infers that, if placed in their shoes, the average German would have behaved in exactly the same way as they did. It's all seems so simple doesn't it?
Too simplistic by far in my view. Even if we accept Goldhagen's figures for the actual number of German perpetrators, they are still a small minority of the total population. His assertion that the rest would undoubtedly have behaved in a similar manner because they were equally imbued with antisemitism is dubious to say the least. And does this imply that members of other nationalities would not have acted the same way? Or that Germans never acted with equal cruelty against their non-Jewish victims?
I don't think it could logically be claimed that non-Germans who wore the Nazi uniform were less cruel to the Jews than Germans were. Presumably Goldhagen would contend that this is because they were also highly antisemitic. But there's no shortage of evidence of excessively sadistic behaviour towards their fellow-Jews by Jewish police in the ghettos and Jewish kapos in the camps. Were these people Germans disguised as Jews? And are there really no examples of Germans acting with deliberately excessive brutality towards non-Jews? In my experience they're quite easy to find. Try reading (for example) "Forgotten holocaust: the Poles under German occupation 1939-44" by Richard C Lukas or "Did the children cry?" by the same author.... How does German antisemitism explain Nazi genocides against disabled people, gypsies, homosexuals and of course, millions of Slavs, all of whom were being killed by the same Germans at the same time as the Jews? Isn't it just possible that antisemitism is only part of the story (just as Nazi policy towards the Jews was also just one part of a bigger picture)? And although Goldhagen asserts that the Nazi holocaust of the Jews is the most shocking event of the 20th century, are there really no other examples of equal degrees of cruelty (or public culpability) in any of the 20th century's other genocides, whose total victims number in the tens of millions? These are some of the questions which Goldhagen's ultimately worthless thesis leaves unanswered.
Rating: 
Summary: Did Goldhagen really try find out how it happend?
Review: Sadly enough he missed that chance. Even though he delivers a lot of shocking and without doubt true information, anyone familiar with German history will find his stereotype perspective really annoying. It even seems that he does not try to explore the whole thing, but has a preset opinion which he wants to proof by leaving out all facts which would not support his idea that all Germans were just evil by nature. If you want a realistic look at the Holocaust, read Michael Burleigh's "The Third Reich - A New History". After that you will see that Goldhagen's book is nothing but a collection of horrible facts which fail to explain anything because they are not discussed academically.
Rating:
Summary: Willing Believers
Review: That Mr. Goldhagen has won a host of adherents to his bizarre theories stands to make the 21st century far more gullible than the 20th. What Mr. Goldhagen proposes is, of course, nonsense, but what will be interesting to watch is whether Goldhagen's willing believers will agitate for the annihilation of Christianity and Islam (axis of evil?). Certainly, this proposition seems to be gaining acceleration. Mr. Goldhagen's latest piece of pornography in the once reputable "New Republic" seems to be the latest missile aimed in that direction. Oh yes, and Goldhagen is a professor at Harvard. Of course. Adieu to all that.
Rating: 
Summary: A slightly flawed portrait of darkness -
Review: The accounts of brutality and cruelty visited upon the Jews are well presented and well documented in Goldhagen's book. This book is not for the weak of heart or the squeamish and it often brought tears to my eyes to imagine the horror and terror experienced by the victims. That the Nazi war machine and its regime of terror helped perpetrate these acts is undeniable.
This book is definitely worth reading if you are a student of the Second World War or of the Nazi Period in German History. It captures the inhumane brutality that occurred as the Third Reich rose and fell. Unfortunately, the sociological arguments presented as conclusions are weak and don't reveal much into the nature of anti-Semitism that existed in or outside of Germany. This book presents the problem of anti-Semitism in the 1850-1945 period as almost a strictly German phenomena which it most certainly was not. Confounding factors, such as the effect of the Hitler's dictatorship and mass media, are practically ignored in this study and the end conclusion seems to be simply that the German people were poised on the brink of an anti-Semitic rage that Hitler simply let loose. Krystalnacht is presented as evidence and Goebbals' accounts of the event are accepted as factual (ignoring the many plainclothes SA that took part in creating the event). Anti-Semitism in other countries is also discounted as unimportant, which is an interesting observation. The conclusion that since the police battalions that were utilized to conduct mass-murder were made of people of ordinary background, then all people of ordinary background could have conducted the mass-murder is interesting, horrifying, but very hard to accept as factual. No discussion of the psychology of the individuals who were police at the time is included. Certainly, just because an individual was raised on a farm and then joined an institution that committed mass-murder doesn't prove that all farmers are guilty?
Again, this book is definitely worth reading. It paints a vivid picture of the darkest side of humanity - just make your own conclusions.
Rating: 
Summary: True and horrifying
Review: While the revisionists try as they might to refute this book, the truth of it stands out prominantly. It shows what can happen when anti-semitism is preached from the pulpit year after year. In fact, it shows what can happen when any one group is ostracized or shown to be less than by a willing clergy. Anti-gay sentiment has given us Matthew Shepard and anti-jewish sentiment gave us the Holocaust. It is a well known fact that both the Catholic and Protestant clergy was highly anti-jewish. I recomment this book highly. Not an easy read, but well documented.
Rating:
Summary: Explosive, Controversial, but True...
Review: It's amazing what people will tell themselves to avoid looking a the truth face to face. In his very well researched and written book, Daniel Goldhaven shows us what many people refuse to accept: the Holocaust was not perpetrated by hardcore Nazis and fanatical SS men but rather by ordinary Germans who believed themselves to be decent people. Never in the work does the author collectively condemns the German people as many reviewers have written, but instead he shows us through highly precise documentation that the virulent anti-semitism that created the Holocaust was present for hundreds of years in Germany before the Nazis gained power. Nazism did not grow out of a vacuum; it fed on the hate and prejudices of the millions of Germans who in one form or another all were partly responsible for the systematic slaughter of 6 million human beings. Too many Germans have used the SS and the Nazis as alibis for the massacre; this book shows that their excuses are not founded in truth. And the Jewish Holocaust WAS unique in world history: never had an entire people so systematically planned assembly-line killing in such a scale. Nothing can compare to it. The thing that really got to me in this book is the picture of Vera Wohlauf. When I first saw it I thought she was absolutely beautiful and then I learned that she was just as savage as her husband was. I was reminded of what Simon Wiesenthal said when he met some beautiful Concentration Camp guards: "For once, I would like monsters to actually look like monsters..." Please, read this book. It shows us that what we think are harmless prejudices are what can cause genocide.
Rating:
Summary: Failure
Review: Goldhagen's book fails mainly on account of its basically circular argument, which runs as follows. 1) Since the destruction of the Jews occurred in the name of the German people, it has to be the case that this people, in all its traditions, has been forever sharply antisemitic. 2) There is no other possibility to explain the catastrophe than that all German traditions always were bent on nothing but the destruction of the Jews. This circular argument closes the door on research of the real causes and obfuscates large sections of reality contradicting such a prejudice. It sinks into insignificance the entire cluster of causes, including the numerous misadventures that led to the Nazis seizing the power in 1933. It excludes from attention the harmless behavior of the majority of the population, the virtual absence of outbreaks of popular antisemitism even after the Jews had been outlawed by the dictatorial regime around 1936. (The Kristallnacht atrocities committed by plainclothes party soldiers precisely did not represent the "spontaneous wrath of the people" Goebbels' mendacious propaganda made them out to be; but compare the spontaneous lynchings of black citizens in the US South, which indicate what a really racist society is likely to do.) It sinks into oblivion the relatively fortunate situation of Jewish Germans before the Nazis (at least from 1871, when the German Empire was founded), as compared to their situation in other European or American countries. This circular argument does nothing but create a general mistrust against all Germans, who then are observed suspiciously by everybody, to spy for "their cultural traditions" surfacing again, since the allegation is that the German traditions are to be rejected altogether. Not only is this unjust, but, by attempting to lock the catastrophe in the German history, Goldhagen is also playing down the real threat to human nature. In reality, what the atrocities demonstrated, was not the expression of particular German traditions, but the breach of the varnish of civilization over man as beast in the perpetrators, and the breach of all cultural traditions. Not for nothing did the Nazi propaganda scream out against "Humanitätsduselei". They wanted that breach. Such breaches of culture can happen elsewhere, too, and have happened elsewhere. Goldhagen further fails on account of bad sociological method. Starting from singular cases like the well known crimes of the Hamburg police battalion, who perpetrated mass executions against Jews behind the Eastern front during the Second World War, he concludes that the entire German people (80 million) would have been prone to commit the same mass murder at any given moment. Such a farfetched conclusion would not be permissible, on account of the absolutely special situation these perpetrators were in, amidst the brutalization of an extremely brutal war, even if the total German population for whom the conclusion is supposed to hold were still completely present; even less permissible is such a farfetched conclusion for a historical situation where most of the Germans active and in positions of responsibility around 1943 are no longer alive, and the result can in no way be verified. On a third count, Goldhagen fails because of his unclear, nay, often, ludicrous, rhetoric. The way he uses his phrase "eliminationist antisemitism" e.g., it might be used for too large a number of things, starting with the expression of a mild discomfort with some Jews to the industrially organized genocide itself. Though no expression of racism is harmless, this is over-extending the term; at a more precise look, this key expression of Goldhagen's is virtually empty and explains nothing about German society. The question how the catastrophe could happen, what it implies about the Germans in particular and for mankind in general, is still open.
Rating:
Summary: His "causal" argument is nonsense
Review: I read this book most of the way through, was troubled by the author's approach but was getting some useful tid bits here and there. About page 419 in the paper back though, I ran into his explication of his causal reasoning, (a subject of study I am intimately and professionally familiar with) and it was complete jibberish, its as if a comedian were pretending to speak chinese by reciting a bunch of menu items from the corner noodle shop. Given this level lazy ignorance, I simply let the book drop, most of his previous, already less than convincing, arguments were cast in a much harsher light. This is too bad, some of the info seemed genuinely useful.
Rating:
Summary: Academic, but Interesting
Review: Being based on a doctoral paper, it is easy to understand why several passages, especially at the beginning, of this book are dry. I did find, however, that once Mr. Goldhagen warmed to his topic and adopted a more "narrative" approach, the book took on a great deal of interest. His ideas are controversial, but they certainly do get one's attention, quite a feat in and of itself, when one considers how much has already been published on the Holocaust. For anyone interested in this subject matter, I would highly recommend it, along with a little caffeine to get through the drier patches.
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