Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

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Summary: I believe Goldhagen is wrong, dead wrong...
Review: The more I know much about Nazi Germany (and take my word for it, I hate the Nazis), the less I accept "the Goldhagen thesis." Further, the more I know, the more I believe that anti-Soviet Eastern Europeans played a larger role in the Holocaust than has been publicized.

I'm not saying that the Nazis didn't engineer the death of 5.2 to 5.8 million people. However, Goldhagen's assertion that Germans bear common guilt for this tragedy is likely inaccurate. Consider these facts (which can be verified at the US Holocaust Museum web site):

Even Jews in Poland and Hungary didn't know about the death camps until, perhaps, 1943-44. Because they didn't know, they didn't resist the closing of the ghettos. The Warsaw ghetto uprising (April 1943)was a direct result of Jews first learning about the existence of the death camps.

The murders were accomplished secretly under the ruse of resettlement. The Germans hid their true plans from citizens and inhabitants of the ghettos by claiming that Jews were being resettled in the East. They went so far as to charge Jews for a one-way train fare and often, just prior to their murder, had the unknowing victims send reassuring postcards back to the ghettos. Thats why millions of Jews went unwittingly to their deaths with little or no resistance.

While there were over 100 "concentration camps" in Germany and occupied Eastern Europe, six of them were "death camps" (Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, as well as killing sections of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek-Lublin concentration camps) where mass exterminations were carried out, usually in gas chambers.

All six death camps were located in rural areas of Poland, far away from the German population. The closest one was over 300 miles from Berlin.

For 10 years of Nazi rule, being sent to a concentration camp didn't necessarily mean death. Many German Jews went to concentration camps and then were released if they promised to emigrate.

The vast majority of executed Jews were not Germans. Most German Jews emigrated before the Holocaust began. Most of the victims of the Holocaust were Jewish Poles, Ukranian, and Russians who had faught against the Nazi invasions. To most Germans, they were not just Jews, they were the enemy.

Membership in the SS was over 50% non-German. Ukranians, French, Belges, Hungarians---all volunteered to be members of the "Elite Echelon". The Einsatzgruppen relied heavily on local partisans (particularly in Eastern Europe) to locate Jews and carry out the massacres for them. German members of the SS were often saved for combat duties against the Allies. The killing squads were most frequently made up of non-Germans.

I think that most Germans had heard rumors of the death camps and the mass executions, but I doubt that average Germans knew about it. If they had known, I think they would have protested against it (like they protested against euthenasia of the mental hospitals and the round-up of Jewish spouses of Christians, both of which they were able to stop in Germany). I think that the belief that most Germans approved of the Holocaust, or that the Nazis had such complete control over public opinion that no one dared protest, are simplistic and frankly, incorrect.

Goldhagen's book is thoroughly researched but omits most of these facts. His thesis is flawed.

Rating:
Summary: Does not convince
Review: First of all I got the impression that Goldhagen had made his conclusion before he ever started researching this book. Then he tells us that anti-semitism is the reason for the holocaust... (?) ...was there ever any doubt?!. Although he makes good the point that ordinary Germans participated willingly in the Holocaust, his blanket condemnation of Germans falls way short for the resons that other reviewers have pointed out. For all the hoopla the book has caused, it ends up unconvincing. Unfortunately for humanity, cruelty and barbarism are not an exclusive trait of Germans.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Feelings
Review: This book has one strong point and two weak points.

The strong point is its abundance in historical evidence about the Holocaust. I rarely come across a book that produced such a great number of facts and figures of the Holocaust. In that respect, I found this book highly informative.

On the other hand, however, the style it's written in makes it difficult for a non-historian like me to read the book from cover to cover. Seeing this is not exactly an uplifting topic to write about, I would have liked a more lucidly written analysis. As it is, long sections of the book are depressing AND dull. There are numerous reading refrences in the appendix of the book which should have been written down in footnotes and/or worked into the bulk of the text.

The other weakness is the fact that the author's main point -numerous Germans, who weren't Nazis, willingly supported the Nazis in their mass murder of Jews - is not exactly new - or logical, at that. What Goldhagen does is simply translating what is the mainstream chit-chat, about Germany and the Holocaust in Britain and America, into an academic language. Let's face it: don't most people in Britain believe that the Germans are all Nazis deep inside? And don't the Americans think the same way? Was it really necessary to convince us, the English-speaking world, of something that we were already convinced of?

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Summary: Review for Hitler's Willing Executioners
Review: Who is to blame for the holocaust and how did it happen? Countless books have offered theories on both questions, but the most infamous of them all is Daniel Goldhagen's entitled "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary German and the Holocaust". Goldhagen answers these question simply and forcefully: the German people are to blame, and it happened because they wanted it to happen. Much like the earlier answers to the questions that surround the Holocaust, Goldhagen's answer is too easy. The earlier, more popularly believed, answers include the theory that the Germans, in their weakened post-WWI economic depression, were hypnotized by Hitler's magnetism and were brainwashed into blaming the Jews for all their problems, the theory that the actual Holocaust was committed by a few SS soldiers in concentration camps and was kept from the knowledge of the average German, and that the Germans are especially susceptible to the bureaucratic coercion of following orders, focused blame away from the German people and explained how it happened by claiming that it was deception or a product of brainwashing. Goldhagen destroys many of these earlier theories, especially the limited nature of the Holocaust committed only by the SS in concentration camps, but does not completely dispel all of them. The bulk of the book, and I believe the more impressive parts, are dedicated to proving that much of the Holocaust was committed by common policemen with guns, without the use of hands-off gas chambers as believed before, and without much coercion. This is shocking and I believe that this successfully destroys the exclusively SS and coercion theories. Where Goldhagen's full thesis falls short is in his more general German character argument. Goldhagen claims that the Germans have been historically anti-Semitic and gradually, as Jewishness began to be viewed more as a race than a religion, Eliminationist. He attempts to prove his claim by offering up anti-Semitic literature throughout German history. This literature proves that the German have always been, even when they were not writing about it, anti-Semitic. Their level of anti-Semitism did not ebb and flow, but was only more intense and less intense and more latent and more patent. But this is obviously a nonfalsifiable claim. If he claims that they are anti-Semitic but latent, how could he know? How could anyone disprove him? It is also interesting that the anti-Semitism which for hundreds of years has been a defining feature of Germaness could suddenly disappear as he claims in 1945. How do we know it is not latent? The book offers a great deal of evidence that destroys the myths that the Holocaust was conducted by a few German SS soldiers. However, it does not prove as far as Goldhagen would like, that every German knew about and supported the Holocaust. The true answers to the question of who is to blame and how did it happen are, unfortunately like most everything else, somewhere in between. This being said, this book is required reading for any student of the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed book, but nevertheless important
Review: It is easy to see why Goldhagen¡¯s book generated so much controversy, both in academic circles and in the popular media. Goldhagen is anything but subtle in getting across his main thesis, which seems to be that the Nazi rise to power unleashed an already-existing ¡°eliminationist anti-Semitism¡± that was unique to Germans and their culture. After introducing his thesis, he spends the first part of the book giving an historical background of German anti-Semitism. He then focuses on particular (and often overlooked) aspects of the Holocaust to support his argument. For example, one part examines German police battalions in depth, focusing on how the participants were generally not Nazis, but ordinary Germans who zealously participated in murdering Jews.

Yet, despite his efforts, there seems to be something missing in the end. While he seems to argue that the Holocaust was something that could have only arisen in Germany, many historical facts (which he seems to conveniently overlook) contradict this. For one thing, it is generally well-documented that while Jews had been fairly integrated into German society by the 1930¡¯s, Jews in many Eastern European countries suffered terrible discrimination and were largely relegated to ghettoes. Moreover, while emphasizing the activity of ordinary Germans, Goldhagen overlooks the fact that many of the people who ultimately killed Jews during the Holocaust were not Germans, but passionate anti-Semites from much of Eastern Europe.

Nevertheless, despite obvious shortcomings, the book is worth reading for any serious student of the Holocaust. While his thesis was ultimately unproven in the end, I still felt that I had learned a great deal from reading the book. Having taken a couple of college courses that dealt with the subject of the Holocaust, I had often been left with the impression that most Germans were just pawns in a nation dominated by a small number of overpowering Nazis. Yet, after reading Goldhagen¡¯s accounts of how so many Germans voluntarily and enthusiastically took part in murderous organizations like the police battalions, I was reminded that there is a great risk in de-emphasizing the guilt of ordinary Germans.

Rating:
Summary: Misinformed
Review: Goldhagen's agenda is on his sleeve. And his thesis doesn't hold up.

The gist of the story here is simple. Germany had been for generations building up to the holocaust and few, if any, Germans are innocent of the eventual outcome.

Even when we agree that thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of Germans not a part of the SS were involved in persecuting and executing their Jewish neighbors, that still does not equal the more than 60 million Germans living in Germany at the time. He entirely disregards the strong state control that fascist Germany might have played on both conscious and subconscious ways people negotiate living in a world of illusion and fear. And "willing executioners" sounds like the whole of the German popluation enthusiastically joined in the Nazi terror. That's what we should believe, but it's not historically proven nor fair to the German people.

Most importantly, the book reads blatantly like an attempt to cloak personal prejudices in what's supposed to be an objective historical study. It doesn't work for me. This is a book that will resonate with you based on your predisposition to the subject. As a tool that might persuade the informed to change their mind, it is quite fragile.

Rating:
Summary: Read between Goldhagen's lines and a pretty good book emerge
Review: This book was definitely written with an agenda. I made myself read it through, but continued to stumble over the author's ill disguised attacks on the German people. If you're a fan of the idea of 'Collective Guilt,' you'll love it. If you're impartial/undecided it'll offer both rewards and some head-shaking. If you believe the rise of National Socialism, Nazi style, was a product of the Prussian military legacy, economic collapse and an unjust treaty - with little to do with some malignant nature of German society - then save your money.

Rating:
Summary: Devastating indictment of mans deliberate inhumanity to man
Review: Everyone who isn't aware of what the Holocaust was about should read this book.

This is not a great book, no book that aprpoaches such a subject could ever possibly hope to be a great work. What this book does achieve though is the heightening of awareness of what actually happened during the worst period of Jewish history and the darkest, foulest and most evil years of Europe.

What the book clearly shows is that unimaginable crimes against humanity are not committed in isolation by bands of unknown, anonymous automatons, but by real people, with their own children, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunties, uncles and friends. What it should also make us aware of is that no one should let down their guard when it comes to thinking that they are 100 percent above this type of shameful, selfish and thoughtless mass collaboration.

regards,

[e-mail]

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Summary: Erudite Thesis Of German Complicity In The Holocaust!
Review: In one of the most controversial and sensational books published in the last decade, Harvard professor Daniel Goldhagen forwards a provocative thesis regarding the culpability of the German people at large for the execution of the Holocaust. In a massively documented, carefully argued, and enormously researched effort that was in fact culled from his doctoral dissertation on the same subject, the author weaves together a stunning indictment of millions of Germans who, through their active participation and willing consent, helped in the achievement of the Nazis' so-called "Final Solution". However, while this is truly a fascinating and often spellbinding argument, in the end Goldhagen fails to sustain the argument with enough evidence to prove the German people were active, willing, and even enthusiastic executioners of its Jewish citizens.

This is neither to deny the power of Goldhagen's narrative nor to deny that this is a work of great historical importance, being quite as authoritatively written and documented as it is, and based on the evidence he provides. Nor is it to deny that "Hitler's Willing Executioners" is a titanic work that has fundamentally changed the reading public's perception of both the Holocaust itself and of the German people during the reign of the Nazi regime. However, while there is no denying this or the fact that Goldhagen reaches conclusions that are quite uncompromising and very well substantiated, I believe that ultimately he failed to provide adequate actual evidence that the German people, as racist and as predisposed as they might be toward scapegoating, vilifying, and victimizing the Jews among them, actually were actively aware and consciously and deliberately and voluntarily involved in the systematic murder of the Jewish population in the Holocaust.

One of the primary problems that is evident in this work is the fact that most of the European Jews exterminated were in fact not German. So too, the vast majority of the extermination camps were located in other countries, especially in Poland. Moreover, it does not appear that the movement toward the systematic campaign of murder of either the German Jews or their European brethren was as organized or as well thought-through as Goldhagen maintains. Other scholars, many of them Jewish themselves (as is Goldhagen) argue that the Holocaust appears to have evolved from a number of factors, including the lack of coherent and cohesive control over the Nazi bureaucracy, especially in conquered territories. What transpired seems as much the consequence of exigent circumstance (lack of food, potable water, and lack of space to house refugees) as it was the deliberate decision to systematic murder the Jews. This isn't to suggest that the Nazis were intending to spare either the German Jews or the indigenous Jewish population in the conquered areas, but rather that they originally intended to starve and work them to death, in concert with teir general plans to so use all the so-called "sub-humans" that they considered the subjugated populations of the Eastern Front to be. As secretive as the Nazis were, much of what happened did in fact appear to occur without a great deal of publicity or public knowledge. To my mind, Goldhagen never successfully counters this fact with evidence showing the German people at large knew what was going on, or that they participated in its execution.

While I consider this a monumental work of tremendous importance, I do not believe Goldhagen has proven his thesis that the German people at large were active and willing participants in the Holocaust here. What he has accomplished, however, is to provide a well-documented roadmap to further meaningful research regarding this issue. My own suspicion is that we will find that the German people...did in fact succumb to a disturbing degree to the rampant racism prevalent in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, they were also guilty of moral indifference, a striking self-interested disinterest in what was happening around them to non-Aryan Germans, and a craven cowardice that resulted in an "every creep for himself" attitude that turned a deaf ear to all the horrors transpiring around them. They may not have been the willing executioners Goldhagen claims them to be, but they certainly were un-indicted co-conspirators in the horrific deliberate campaign to disenfranchise and victimize the Jews. I recommend this book to anyone who is a serious student of the Holocaust, and to the general public as an immensely educational book.

Rating:
Summary: Uncomortable, disturbing, but that doesn't mean he's wrong!!
Review: What is it about Daniel Goldhagen's book that stirs up such controversy? Could it be that Goldhagen is wrong in his central thesis, or did he get the facts wrong, or is he biased, or does he choose his evidence selectively to prove his point, or did he ignore important other explanations in an obsessive focus on all things German? Or, perhaps, could it be that the controversy stirred up by Goldhagen's book is NOT that he is wrong at all, but that he basically is RIGHT, and that this is deeply disturbing to many people. Because if Goldhagen is right, that means that ORDINARY people (specifically, the Germans in Goldhagen's case, although the way I read Goldhagen, "Hitler's Willing Executioners" really could have been any "ordinary" people, like you and me for instance, and not NECESSARILY Germans) are almost inherently evil (or at least naturally inclined towards hatred and violence towards another race, religion, ethnic group, etc.), and need essentially no encouragement whatsoever (so much for the "few evil leaders" theory, Stanley Milgram's "obedience experiment," the "banality of evil," etc.) to commit the most despicable, heinous acts against people who never did anything to them, and who pose no tangible (as opposed to psychological) threat to them. That's a disturbing view of human nature - people not only killing, but killing spontaneously, for fun, and even with pride (posing for pictures with the victims, for instance). All because they have projected all their own inadequacies, self-loathing, frustrations, etc. onto another people. This is all very disturbing, yes, and hard to accept (much easier to accept that the Holocaust was the result of a few evil leaders and a coerced or slavishly obedient population), but just because he's hit a raw nerve doesn't mean that Goldhagen's incorrect! So, the important questions here are: 1) does Goldhagen get his facts right; 2) does Goldhagen draw the correct conclusions from his evidence; and 3) how does Goldagen's thesis compare/contrast with other attempts in the literature at explaining the Holocaust?

As far as the first question is concerned, while it is certainly possible (if not probable) that Goldhagen has gotten some details wrong, it seems impossible that the vast majority of his facts, which after all come from all kinds of documents (the Nazis were nothing if not meticulous) as well the killers' own words, pictures (often of proud killers and degraded victims), diaries, etc., could possibly be erroneous. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that most of Goldhagen's facts are correct (if somewhat selective) and proceed to the analytical conclusions.

The second question (does Goldhagen draw the correct conclusions from his evidence) is probably the crux of the controversy here. Personally, I believe that he does for the most part. Can anyone really deny that Germans were infused with anti-Semitism, combined with other grievances stemming from World War I, and a shaky sense of national identity, and that Germany was a potentially powerful country which COULD, if it chose to, carry out a Holocaust (unlike, say, Poland or Lithuania, which were anti-semitic but not powerful)? In a way, my reaction to Goldhagen's book if it weren't for all the controversy, would be "duh"! You mean "ordinary" people can be really nasty to others? Especially when they are given all the encouragement in the world, and told that another group (Jews in this case, but it could be Blacks, Indians, Gays, or any other group). Hmmm, didn't we all learn that in, like, 3rd grade?!? I guess the main question is: was "eliminationist anti-semitism" only a NECESSARY condition of the Holocaust, or was it also a SUFFICIENT condition. I guess in that area, and this is a weakness (although not a deadly one) of "Hitler's Willing Executioners" Goldhagen could have been somewhat more definitive.

I guess the major questions I would have liked Goldhagen to address even more (but maybe that's for another book): 1) if anti-Semitism was widespread not only in Germany (it was arguably even worse in places like Lithuania, Latvia, and Croatia), then why did GERMANY per se (as opposed to these other countries) perpetuate the Holocaust? Why, for instance, didn't the Poles kill all their Jews, especially since they had a lot more of them than Germany did and arguably just as much, if not more, anti-semitism! Is there something inherent or unique to Germany that caused Nazism to arise there, or could this have happened just about anywhere?; 2) Although 100,000 or more "ordinary Germans" participated in the Holocaust, that's still a small fraction of the German population. How aware were the vast majority of Germans as to what was happening, and how intimidated did they feel about taking any action against the Nazis?; 3) Why didn't the rest of the world do more to save the Jews? Was the rest of the world almost as bad as the Nazis?; and 4) How does the Holocaust differ qualitatively from other atrocities in recent centuries, like the European destruction of Native Americans, the mass enslavement (and killing) of Africans, the Turkish mass killing of Armenians, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge mass killings of their own people, and in very recent years the situations in Bosnia and Rwanda? Are we talking about differences in ideology, history, or something else?

As far as the third question is concerned, Goldhagen's book, while not TOTALLY original (of course, what is?), is basically very different than most explanations of the Holocaust. Perhaps this is in part because Goldhagen's book was written primarily AFTER the end of the Cold War, when it was no longer so important (and convenient) to gloss over German atrocities so as to enlist Germany on our side against the "evil empire?" Perhaps also it is just the inadequacy of saying that "people are prone to obey authority" or that there is a "totalitarian temptation,' or somehow that people who believe something (like killing innocent people) is wrong can be brought to kill. Especially given that we live in a world which has seen the Soviet empire (and other dictatorships) fall apart, and generally a widespread movement towards "liberal democracy" and the "end of history" as Frances Fukayama would say, how can we still believe that people will not rise up against something they deeply oppose (assuming they really oppose it)? In the case of Nazi Germany, despite evidence of opposition to many other policies by Germans, there is miniscule evidence of significant opposition to arguably its worst policy of all -- eliminationist anti-Semitism. Perhaps Goldhagen's different new approach also is a natural evolution of Holocaust analysis. First, scholars tended to focus on the top leaders. Then, they turned their focus to the victims. It was only then that they finally could get around to focusing on the rank-and-file perpetrators of the Holocaust.

No doubt, Goldhagen's conclusions are just plain uncomfortable for people to deal with. A few evil leaders and a basically coerced population acting under duress (the prevailing view for most of the post-Holocasut period) is bad enough, but that literally hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in a "civilized" country in the middle of Europe could just practically overnight become a bunch of sadistic, homicidal, VOLUNTARY, even enthusiastic murderers is deeply disturbing. Also, the concept that rationality and the "thin veneer of civilization" can so easily be overcome by irrationality and appeals to a sort of neo-pagan definition of nation ("blood and soil", the German "volk") is also frightening. Finally, the idea that Christianity, which theoretically should have been violently opposed to Nazism, AT BEST was a neutral party, but certainly did not stop the Nazis, cannot be comforting to any thinking Christian. In sum, it is extremely disturbing to think that a combination of science, modern technology, philosophy ("survival of the fittest", racial Darwinism, the "Superman", etc.), Christianity's age-old Jew hatred, the power of the nation-state, a revival of neo-pagan mythology, anti-intellectualism, Germany's difficult search for a unifying identity, and basically just nasty, sadistic human beings infused with all this, combined to kill millions of people in the middle of Europe in the middle of the 20th century.

The bottom line question is this, over a half century after the holocaust took place: HOW could the Holocaust have happened? If Daniel Goldhagen is correct, the answer lies not in a few evil leaders, or a bunch of zombie-like authority followers, but in ORDINARY people (albeit infused through and through with a virulent strain of anti-semitism).

Does Goldhagen answer all the questions of the Holocaust? Of course not. That would be well-nigh impossible, and Goldhagen explicitly says he isn't trying to do that. But his focus on the ordinary perpetrators is extremely interesting, and unsettling. All in all, Goldhagen provides some highly credible, if disturbing, answers.