Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

Rating:
Summary: First Rate
Review: Must concur with those who cite the book as important and worth talking about. It is also disturbing and sometimes takes a strong force of will to get through the material.

The language is scholarly but easy to read, and the tone is matter of fact. The book is very well focussed, and does much to prove the central thesis - that the German people as a whole were responsible for the Holocaust, and that the perpetrators were not villains or evil incarnate, but "ordinary Germans". Does much to explain how such a monumental crime could have occurred - the simple math, for example, showing how many concentration camps in the country was eye opening on its own and makes one think about how broad and enormous these crimes against humanity were.

However, Goldhagen is obviously not impartial and evidence may be presented only when it fits his thesis. Best read in conjunction with other works, though I don't know of one as masterful as this that would creditably present "the other side" of the story without being revisionist or sympathetic to the Nazis.

Rating:
Summary: Read the title, please.
Review: Some of the previous reviewers of this book seem to be highly upset that the author didn't include an analysis of other nation's histories of race and politically based genocide. The purpose of the work, however, is reflected in the book's title. He is focusing on Germans and Germany. That is the subject of his study. It is well written, well researched, and informative...and is about what he says it is about. If one wishes to read in depth of, say, the USSR's persecution of the Jews, I would recommend finding a work written to that end. It is nonsensical to complain about an author writing to his or her intended subject in a focused manner.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but tragically flawed...
Review: This book is a great read, and is a wonderful contribution to the literature of the Holocaust. It has one tragic flaw, however, in that Goldhagen's conjectures are being taken as absoulte fact.

Certainly connections can be drawn between the masses in Germany and the rise of Nazism, but to claim that all masses were willing, even eager, to accept the antisemitism of National Socialism is a stretch. Certainly Nazism appealed to many ordinary Germans, but people must be able to distinguish between the party and it's horrendous effects.

This is an interesting book, and a good read for anyone serious in the study of history, but it is dangerous to automatically assume what Goldhagen proposes is true. There is a difference between willingly accepting the Natioanl Socialist Party and eagerly participating in mass genocide. Readers willing to critically annalyze Goldhagen's arguments will love this book. Others will simply come away with the wrong message and a completely unrealistic view of Germany at the start of the Second World War.

Rating:
Summary: An important fresh look at the perpetrators of the Holocaust
Review: Without a doubt this was the hardest book I have ever read: a harrowing confrontation with the probability that a good number of my not too distant ancestors were willing participants in the crime of the century. Being German, and of a similar age to Dr. Goldhagen, I approach this central question of what kinds of Germans perpetrated the Holocaust with a slightly different perspective. As a result, I have to admit that I fought this book at every page, and tested every claim of criminality among ordinary Germans the author made, for the sound of truth. I came away in broad agreement with the conclusion that ordinary Germans of that time knew of, and partook in the Holocaust with frightening ease, and in many cases voluntarily.
This conclusion is supported by proof that Germans exercised choice in their actions in the Holocaust. For the German people as a whole (excluding for the moment the perpetrators) this requires proof that they knew about the Holocaust, and that they could have opposed it. What was valuable here was a clear refutation of the contention that the majority of Germans did not know, a refrain that is familiar even to Germans of my generation. That they knew is supported by an analysis of the density of Holocaust activity in the Reich, a numerical analysis of the participants and the simple listing of speeches and public documents that foreshadowed the Holocaust for years. That the German people could have opposed the Holocaust is less clear. It is suggested by analogy to the resistance that did occur to other public policy, such as the euthanasia program of handicapped people, that is seen by some as a test run for the assault on Jews. Although it was always clear that the German people did next to nothing to register objection to the treatment of Jews, Goldhagen goes further to show that in many cases they enthusiastically joined in. Nevertheless, it is difficult to equate the two extermination programs. Euthanasia of the "biologically unfit" was an important component of the biological vision of Nazism, but the crippled and handicapped were not seen as an international conspiracy threatening to engulf the German people - nobody was afraid of them. Neither can it be said that the Nazi regime punished people for objections to the euthanasia program, while "Judenbeguenstigung" was a crime.When discussing the perpetrators it is sufficient to show that they had a way of refusing participation in the Holocaust. Indeed, a most valuable contribution to the modern debate is that Goldhagen relentlessly establishes that many Germans participated in the Holocaust when they could have done otherwise - a surprisingly large number opted out with little personal consequences. Indeed, he is able to go further and demonstrate that in contrast to the few described by their Jewish victims as "good Germans", most perpetrators were cruel for cruelties sake. The many harrowing illustrations that the Germans were cruel, brutal and unrelenting in their treatments are necessary, but secondary in themselves. The same is true of the demonstration that the primary aim of many Germans involved in the Holocaust was the torturing and murdering of Jews, and that all other goals, such as economic ones, were secondary if they featured at all. All such actions could have been ordered from above. What is of great value is that Goldhagen shows on the one hand that there is often a lack of direct evidence that such orders were given, and on the other hand that these actions were taken voluntarily.
Where I come to disagree with the author, is in his thesis that the Holocaust is an almost exclusive product of Germany and ordinary Germans, and not dependent on the existence of a totalitarian regime of unprecedented barbarism. He claims that two historical circumstances, a Nazi government that legitimized and encouraged, and a world-war that provided access and cover, allowed the German people to express their preexisting eliminationist anti-semitism. Clearly, this stark departure from the view that a relatively small fanatic Nazi elite forced the Holocaust on the German people, and hid it from most of them anyway, is a useful light in which to examine the evidence afresh. However, the greatest strength of author is also a weakness of his approach to this aspect of the Holocaust. Clearly Goldhagen grew up in very intellectual part of a free society at a very different time, and to question assumptions is his daily work. Indeed the author's disallowing assumptions about the fanaticism of a few leading to the coercion of the many, is what leads to the new look at evidence that makes the book compelling. When that evidence is examined a picture emerges that is different from before: we indeed see ordinary Germans smiling at us from their photos of "Aktionen", we can picture them socializing with their wives and colleagues, all while perpetrating the Holocaust. Questioning old notions is what make this book so valuable, especially to people of a new generation. However, as a result, Goldhagen's book implicitly assumes that a questioning attitude was more prevalent in the Germany of the '30s and '40s than it almost definitely was. The voices that I hear of Germans that lived through that time, both from actual conversations and from reported ones my parents had with members of that generation, remind me that one didn't question, let alone act, in Nazi Germany, as one does in post-Watergate and post-Vietnam America. Therefore, the deeper mystery of what motivated the ordinary German, whether it was Nazi propaganda, coercion by a totalitarian state, peer-pressure, self-service, preexisting anti-semitism or a lethal mixture of these base motivations, remains unilluminated by this work. Perhaps is always will - who can see into a persons soul?