[22] In several articles and books, most notably his 1983 book Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Kershaw argued that most Germans were at a minimum at least vaguely aware of the Holocaust, but did not much care about what their government was doing to the Jews. To me it is worthless, all the hype by the publisher notwithstanding". [14] His thesis, he said, was based on the assumption that Germans were not a "normal" Western people influenced by the values of the Enlightenment. American writer Daniel Goldhagen viewed the very same unit as "willing executioners," sharing Hitler's vision of genocidal anti-Semitism and finding their tasks unpleasant but necessary. "The book [Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust] sparked controversy in the press and academic circles. The better question, the one that Goldhagen skips over is, why did they do it? Browning argued that the men of Unit 101 agreed willingly to participate in massacres out of a basic obedience to authority and peer pressure, not blood-lust or primal hatred.[7]. [51] Browning also contended that the antisemitism of German conservative elites in the military and the bureaucracy long prior to 1933 meant that they made few objections, moral or otherwise to the Nazi/vlkisch antisemitism. Daniel Goldhagen's immensely successful and thoroughly deplorable Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust falls within this category. You might say Kristallnacht was like a litmus test for the Nazis to test the response of "ordinary" Germans to their Jewish policy. It will make you think, it will make you cringe, it will make you wonder - not only about history, but also about yourself, about what you'd have done, about you'd do if similar circumstances were to happen again. Hitlers Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. By Clive James. Much of Goldhagen's book is concerned with the actions of the same Reserve Battalion 101 of the Nazi German Ordnungspolizei and his narrative challenges numerous aspects of Browning's book. Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996) posits that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in German identity that had developed in the preceding centuries. [58] Clendinnen ended her essay by stating she found Browning's account of Battalion 101 to be the more believable. [30] Goldhagen argued for the specific antisemitic nature of Battalion 101's violence by noting that in 1942 the battalion was ordered to shoot 200 Gentile Poles, and instead shot 78 Polish Catholics while shooting 180 Polish Jews later that same day. He argues that the Germans were fundamentally different from other peoples, especially in regard to anti-Semitism. [2], Crawshaw further asserts that the book's critics were partly historians "weary" of Goldhagen's "methodological flaws", but also those who were reluctant to concede that ordinary Germans bore responsibility for the crimes of Nazi Germany. Essentially, this book has one central premise. ), This page was last edited on 15 March 2023, at 10:24. I think the template for this curious phenomenon had already once existed in the past. Indeed, fascist Spain was a haven for Jews during the Holocaust" he said. Millions of Germans who wished to acknowledge the (undeniable and well-documented) fact that ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust welcomed his work; his suggestion that Germans were predestined killers was accepted as part of the uncomfortable package. Reviewed by Carl Schulkin (Pembroke Hill School, Kansas City, Mo) Published on H-High-S (December, 1996) Goldhagen replied to his critics in an article Motives, Causes, and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics: What is striking among some of those who have criticized my book against whom so many people in Germany are openly reacting is that much of what they have written and said has either a tenuous relationship to the book's contents or is patently false. One year later, he joined the SS, even before he graduated from the gymnasium in 1934. [67] American historian Gordon A. Craig and Der Spiegel have argued that whatever the book's flaws, it should be welcomed because it will reinvigorate the debate on the Holocaust and stimulate new scholarship. Seriously, I blush when I recall that the author and I are of the same SPECIES. Goldhagen has written an outstanding book that to this reader explains not just the German question in which I am a descendent, but the overall question throughout history being, What the hell were they thinking!. I don't feel qualified to review this book about the horrors of the Holocaust..not because I haven't read much about that unbelievable event but because the author puts forward a very controversial approach to the "why" of the slaughter of the Jews that is at odds with most history. He uses material as an underpinning for his pre-conceived theory. Finally, Mommsen criticizes Goldhagen for errors in his understanding of the internal structure of the Third Reich. Get help and learn more about the design. In the interview, Mommsen distinguished three varieties of German antisemitism. [43] Detractors have contended that the book is "profoundly flawed"[44] or "bad history". The Best Books to Get Your Finances in Order, Books Based on Your Favorite Taylor Swift Era, Cook a Soul Food Holiday Meal With Rosie Mayes, Jan 28, 1997 [56], Concerning Order Police Reserve Battalion 101, the Australian historian Inga Clendinnen wrote that Goldhagen's picture of Major Trapp, the unit's commander as an antisemitic fanatic was "far-fetched" and "there is no indication, on that first day or later that he found the murdering of Jewish civilians a congenial task". All the drama of the 60s and 70s have shown us that rebellion and protest make absolutely no difference in the end, so where does that leave us? That its erroneous to believe the Nazis were capable of brainwashing an entire nation that wasn't already predisposed to embrace a hatred of Jews. These "myths" include the idea that most Germans did not know about the Holocaust; that only the SS, and not average members of the Wehrmacht, participated in murdering Jews; and that genocidal antisemitism was a uniquely Nazi ideology without historical antecedents. [94] From a different angle, the American political scientist Norman Finkelstein charged that the book was Zionist propaganda meant to promote the image of a Gentile world forever committed to the destruction of the Jews, thus justifying the existence of Israel, and as such, Goldhagen's book was more concerned with the politics of the Near East and excusing what Finkelstein claimed was Israel's poor human rights record rather than European history. For a historian, its a bit trickier. It strikes me, though, looking through the various reviews left by other readers, that those who rated Goldhagen's book with a 1 or a 2 were most likely those who either do not have the scholarly background to appreciate this work or who simply skimmed through it and never really read it for biased reasons. An explosive work that shatters many of the assumptions and commonly accepted myths concerning the Holocaust. [60] In a 1996 review in First Things, the American Catholic priest Father Richard John Neuhaus took issue with Goldhagen's claim that the Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany were genocidal towards the Jews, arguing that there was a difference between Christian and Nazi anti-Semitism. [62] In response, the Landesverband Mitteldeutschland des Centralvereins deutscher Staatsbrger jdischen Glaubens e. V (Middle German Regional Association of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) complained to Goerdeler about Haake's actions and asked him to enforce the existing antisemitic laws, which at least allowed some Jewish doctors to practice. Hoffmann contended that what happened was that on April 9, 1935, the Deputy Mayor of Leipzig, the National Socialist Rudolf Haake, banned all Jewish doctors from participating in public health insurance and advised all municipal employees not to consult Jewish doctors, going beyond the existing antisemitic laws then in place. Want to know what people are actually reading right now? [29] Goldhagen noted that the officers in charge of Battalion 101 led by Major Wilhem Trapp allowed the men to excuse themselves from killing if they found it too unpleasant, and Goldhagen used the fact that the vast majority of the men of Battalion 101 did not excuse themselves to argue that this proved the murderous antisemitic nature of German culture. In ''Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,'' he argued that not only Nazis were the perpetrators of the Holocaust. [31] Goldhagen wrote the men of Battalion 101 felt "joy and triumph" after torturing and murdering Jews. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. x + 622 pp. It still does. Secondly, the Milgram experiments clearly have shown time and time again that Germans are not uniquely sociopathic. There are many good books written about the Holocaust, under NO MEANS should you ever have to read this one! Krautz,F., The German Historians: Hitler's Willing Executioners and Daniel Goldhagen (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2003), p. 2 Summary In this essay, the author Analyzes the historiography of the 'ordinary germans' during the third reich years and the legacy of goldhagen controversy. The author does an admirable job in researching how "ordinary" Germans behaved during the war. About The Film With his first book, the #1 international bestseller Hitler's Willing Executioners (Vintage, 1997) Daniel Jonah Goldhagen - then a professor of political science at Harvard. [5] Yehuda Bauer was similarly condemnatory, questioning how an institute such as Harvard could award a doctorate for a work which so "slipped through the filter of critical scholarly assessment". 1614 Words 7 Pages 4 Works Cited Good Essays Read More This is where youll see your current point status and your earned rewards. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996 Pagination Complete Pagination: 622 pages Goldhagen argued that it "strains credibility" to imagine that "ordinary Danes or Italians" could have acted as he claimed ordinary Germans did during the Holocaust to prove that "eliminationist" anti-Semitism was uniquely German. Hitler's Willing Executioners Quotes Showing 1-2 of 2. [47] There is not much evidence of "obvious distaste and reluctance" to kill Poles to be seen in this episode. Of course, they also thought Slavs being put into workhouses and being their slaves was the right thing, too. The book also demonizes ethnic Germans in a similar way that Protocols of the Elder's of Zion demonized the Jews. It's not that some of Goldhagen's ideas are wrong. The vast majority stood by and laughed. [74] Bauer also suggested that Goldhagen lacked familiarity with sources not in English or German, which thereby excluded research from Polish and Israeli sources writing in Hebrew, among others, all of whom had produced important research in the subject that would require a more subtle analysis. Ruth Bettina Birn and Volker Riess recognised the need to examine the primary sources (the Police Battalion investigation records) Goldhagen had cited and determine if Goldhagen had applied the historical method in his research. The anti-Semitism would have remained a potential, in the sense of the killing form. [15], Goldhagen's book was meant to be an anthropological "thick description" in the manner of Clifford Geertz. This is a very in-depth look at the German culture before and during the war. 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