hitler's willing executioners summaryhitler's willing executioners summary

Resistance in Nazi Germany edited by John J. Michalczyk, New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2004 p. 113. Goldhagen himself mentions that a large proportion of the Jewish upper classes in Germany converted to Christianity in the nineteenth century. These are the average German citizens of the early 20th century. [19] The British historian Sir Ian Kershaw, a leading expert in the social history of the Third Reich, wrote, "The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference,"[20][21] that is, that the progress leading up to Auschwitz was motivated by a vicious form of antisemitism on the part of the Nazi elite, but that it took place in a context where the majority of German public opinion was indifferent to what was happening. Until deciding to devote himself full-time to writing, he taught political science and social studies for many years at Harvard University. [23] Other historians, such as the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka, the Israeli historian David Bankier, and the American historian Aron Rodrigue, while differing from Kershaw over many details about German public opinion, arguing that the term "passive complicity" is a better description than "indifference", have largely agreed with Kershaw that there was a chasm of opinion about the Jews between the Nazi "true believers" and the wider German public, whose views towards Jews seemed to have expressed more of a dislike than a hatred. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in German political culture which had developed in the preceding centuries. For example, an ambitious historian could write about the hula-hoop, and how it brought about dtente between America and the Soviet Union. The truth is, there was a predisposition to treat Jews like parasites throughout Europe at that time. It SHOULD be a "must read" for all people, especially those in school, but the author is dry and academic and the book could be cut by at least 1/3. Free delivery for many products. This unique evil comes from their deeply racist culture throughout their history and the uniquely sociopathic nature of ethnic Germans. Their task was complicated by the way that "Goldhagen's book [had] neither a bibliography nor a listing of archival sources". That may be true but it can't be denied that the Nazis were masters at instilling terror. Sign up for news about books, authors, and more from Penguin Random House, Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network. Her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality. Drawing evidence from a wide array of sources, but especially from Police Battalions primarily made up from German males raised before the Nazi seizure of power, he demonstrates how gratuitously cruel and vicious ordinary people were towards what amounted to only a tiny minority of their population and how, even when SS head Himmler ordered the cessation of such mistreatment, many maintained the same levels of violence when the war was obviously lost and nothing objectively might be gained--nothing except, from their psychotic viewpoint, a further ridding of pestiferous vermin. [47] The principal theme of. [6], In 1992, the American historian Christopher Browning published a book titled Ordinary Men about the Reserve Police Battalion 101, which had been used in 1942 to massacre and round up Jews for deportation to the Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland. Whatever the variations, I think Austrian and German anti-Semitism can be seen of a piece, where there was a central model of Jews and a view that they needed to be eliminated. Hitler's Willing Executioners is a book we must read to begin to understand the underlying anti-Semitism that was pervasive to the German culture that set the whole ambience for how Hitler was able to harness the energy of the German people to support him in what anyone living today should view as insanity run wild. Essentially, this book has one central premise. The details are grim but it is worth reading. Rosenbaum, Ron Explaining Hitler, New York: HarperCollins, 1998 page 346. [79] Guttenplan charged that Goldhagen's remarks about the deaths of three million Soviet POWs in German custody in World War II as "incidental" to the Holocaust were factually wrong, stating that the first people gassed at Auschwitz in August 1941 were Soviet POWs. Goldhagen's book tour became, in the opinion of some in the German media, "a triumphant march", as "the open-mindedness that Goldhagen encountered in the land of the perpetrators" was "gratifying" and something of which Germans ought to be proud, even in the context of a book which sought, according to some critics, to "erase the distinction between Germans and Nazis". [46] In 1997, the German historian Hans Mommsen gave an interview in which he said that Goldhagen had a poor understanding of the diversities of German antisemitism, that he construed "a unilinear continuity of German anti-semitism from the medieval period onwards" with Hitler as its end result, whereas, said Mommsen, it is obvious that Hitler's antisemitic propaganda had no significant impact on the election campaigns between September 1930 and November 1932 and on his coming to power, a crucial phenomenon ignored by Goldhagen. [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. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. [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. [45] Some historians have criticized or simply dismissed the text, citing among other deficiencies Goldhagen's "neglect of decades of research in favour of his own preconceptions", which he proceeds to articulate in an "intemperate, emotional, and accusatory tone". Traditional explorations tended to accept at face value the usual defenses offered by the Germans: Either they did not . At most Goldhagen provides an explanation as to why people do the things they do regardless of their social or economic background. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. x + 622 pp. [1], Goldhagen's book stoked controversy and debate in Germany and the United States. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in German political culture which had developed in the preceding centuries. [2] In Germany, the leftist general public's insistence on further penitence prevailed, according to most observers. None of these is true.[75]. "War of Annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944" sets out to destroy the myth of an Army that fought honorably, while behind the front lines, specialized terror units went about the. Indeed, fascist Spain was a haven for Jews during the Holocaust" he said. "[91] Goldhagen replied: "If the Nazis had never taken power, there would not have been a Hitler. Finally, we learn that Germans overwhelmingly supported these measures because the Nazis didn't punish opposition like the Soviets did! Visszafogottabban vettek ht rszt a npirtsban? The laudatio, awarded for the first time since 1990, was given by Jrgen Habermas and Jan Philipp Reemtsma. Hitlers Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. I learned that since the 1800s Germans had been blaming the Jewish people for the problems of their country and that this blame became even stronger after World War I. By Clive James. 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. April 14, 1996. I didn't manage to finish this. Under its influence, the vast majority of Germans wanted to eliminate Jews from German society, and the perpetrators of the Holocaust did what they did because they thought it was "right and necessary." Little is new in the overall description, but the details and the way he analyzes the attitude of the murderers is powerful and convincing". 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!. So, yes the author makes some important points in helping us to understand the incomprehensible but he does tend to make the same point over and over again and with increasing vehemence, like a man bringing his fist down continually on his desk. In 1936, he joined the police force in Breslau and became a member of the Nazi Party in 1937. [81], When the English edition of Hitler's Willing Executioners was published in March 1996, numerous German reviews ensued. $17.95 (paper), ISBN 978--679-77268-2; $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978--679-44695-8. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews . Some of his critics have agreed with him that his thesis is "not intrinsically racist or otherwise illegitimate", including Ruth Bettina Birn and Norman Finkelstein (A Nation on Trial). It can do nothing of the sort. "[91] Rosenbaum asked Goldhagen about Richard Levy's 1975 book The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany which traced the decline of the vlkisch parties in the early 20th century until they were all but wiped out in the 1912 Reichstag election. He argues that the Germans were fundamentally different from other peoples, especially in regard to anti-Semitism. Quite a radical departure from the "I was only obeying orders" school of thought. I think the template for this curious phenomenon had already once existed in the past. [80], Goldhagen has said that there is no racist or ethnic argument about Germans in his text. Hitler was a dictator that ordered the execution of millions of Jews and other people, during his reign of Nazi Germany. In his effort to prove the exceptional nature of German hatred and bigotry, he ignores the wealth of evidence from a variety of social scientists pointing out the general cruelty and inhumanity of humanity in general. I don't think that Goldhagen even allows for this. As a teenager Hitler served in WWI and years later was thrown in jail, where he wrote his book Mien Kampf. Goldhagen doesn't separate the religious anti-Semitism of Martin Luther with the racial anti-Semitism of the 1800s and later the Nazis. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews . Szerinte a npirts nem egy szk rteg ltal elkvetett cselekmnysorozat, amihez a tbbsg legfeljebb tudatlanul asszisztlt, hanem egy antiszemitizmustl teljesen titatott trsadalom kzs bne. An Essay on the Reception of, "The dispute between Goldhagen and Finkelstein", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioners&oldid=1144747678, Wikipedia articles needing factual verification from June 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Clendinnean, Inga "The Men in the Green Tunics" pages 114-132 from, Birn, Ruth Bettina, and Riess, Volker, "Revising The Holocaust", in. Another problem was the author's insistence that anti-Semitism throughout German history was the key reason that Germans wanted to kill Jews. In his review of Ordinary Men published in July 1992,[8] Goldhagen expressed agreement with several of Browning's findings, namely, that the killings were not, as many people believe, done entirely by SS men, but also by Trawnikis; that the men of Unit 101 had the option not to kill, and a point Goldhagen emphasizes that no German was ever punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews. Some historians have characterized its reception as an extension of the Historikerstreit, the German historiographical debate of the 1980s that sought to explain Nazi history. When Rosenbaum asked Goldhagen about scholarly literature that contends that Austrian anti-Semitism was far more virulent and violent than German anti-Semitism, and if the fact that Hitler was an Austrian had any effect on his thesis, Goldhagen replied: There were regional variations in anti-Semitism even within Germany. "The conclusion of this book is that antisemitism moved many thousands of "ordinary" Germans and would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positionedto slaughter Jews. The accuracy of his work was, in this context, of secondary importance. It's difficult to think of more than a few European countries where the general population harboured a decent humane view of the Jews. [26] Despite their very different interpretations of Battalion 101, both Browning and Goldhagen have argued that the men of the unit were a cross-sample of ordinary Germans. The book of Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners published in 1996, reflecting some an issue that concerned many Germans. Would the German Royal family have kept marrying with people they considered subhuman? Christopher Browning wrote in response to Goldhagen's criticism of him in the 1998 "Afterword" to Ordinary Men published by HarperCollins: Goldhagen must prove not only that Germans treated Jewish and non-Jewish victims differently (on which virtually all historians agree), but also that the different treatment is to be explained fundamentally by the antisemitic motivation of the vast majority of the perpetrators and not by other possible motivations, such as compliance with different government policies for different victim groups. My rating is a split verdict: the author has an interesting yet poorly written argument; neither element should be decisive in convincing potential readers to take up the book or ignore it. One tactic is the micro-history: find yourself a historical footnote, and then elevate it to the turning point of mankind. The Germans DID make a lot of Polack jokes, but that was typically as far as it went. De brutalitsa nem ncl, hanem eszkz, amivel Goldhagen sajt lltsait bizonytja ezzel, a npirts gyakorlatnak brzolsval, s a gyilkosok kzelkpeivel teremti meg azt a kognitv keretet, ami szerinte az egsz holokauszt kulcsa. To single out Germans in this manner felt nave and overly simplistic to me. [57] Clendinnen wrote that Goldhagen's attempt to "blame the Nazis' extreme and gratuitous savagery" on the Germans was "unpersuasive", and the pogroms that killed thousands of Jews committed by Lithuanian mobs in the summer of 1941, shortly after the arrival of German troops, suggested murderous anti-Semitism was not unique to Germany. Goldhagen (Government and Social Studies/Harvard) offers irrefutable proof that will force us to reconsider our previous understanding of the Nazis' genocidal project. Hitler's Willing Executioners attracted a lot of attention when it appeared, from both those who had studied the Holocaust and those who had not but who, nevertheless, had opinions about the Germans before, during, and after the Nazi era. Author goes to Berlin to debate Holocaust, Forum on Holocaust canceled after an author withdraws, Holocaust writer in storm over role of Catholic Church, "Goldhagen Wins German Prize For Holocaust Book", "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis: A Critique of Hitler's Willing Executioners", "Motives, Causes, and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics", "Why Obama Might Save Israel From Nuclear Iran", "'Hitler's Willing Executioners': An Exchange,", "Goldhagen - His Critics and His Contribution", "Goldhagen in Germany: Historians' Nightmare & Popular Hero. The book argues that many more German citizens were involved . [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". Since 1933, the Nazi-controlled government continued their barrage of propaganda by holding mass rallies and speeches, along with other strategies to rally support for Lebensraum , war and anti-semitic campaigns. [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. Hitler's Willing Executioners is an extraordinary and original contribution to the mountain of literature on the Holocaust. Holocaust summary . NAZI GERMANY, HITLER AND THE HOLOCAUST HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS: ORDINARY GERMANS AND THE HOLOCAUST Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, New York: Alfred A Knopf, London: Littde Brown, 1996, London: Abacus, 1997, pp 634 NAZI GERMANY & THE JEWS: VOL 1: THE YEARS OF PERSECUTION 1933-39 Saul Friedlnder, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997, pp 436 There are many good books written about the Holocaust, under NO MEANS should you ever have to read this one! This is the problem. It's not that some of Goldhagen's ideas are wrong. I was replying to my friend Mark when I remembered this embarrassment. Professor Daniel Jonah Goldhagen talked spoke about his new book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Abacus 1997 at the best online prices at eBay! [91] Rosenbaum asked "So you would agree with Himmelfarb's argument? [26], Using Geertz's anthropological methods, Goldhagen argued by studying the men of Battalion 101 one could engage in a "thick description" of the German "eliminationist antisemitic" culture. Want to know what people are actually reading right now? But in recent years, its primacy has been challenged: instead of offering a narrative of increasing efficiency and murderousness leading to gas chambers, historians have turned to the sequence of massacres that reached a crescendo in 1942 and continued, albeit at a reduced rate, into the postwar period. Totally wrong. The better question, the one that Goldhagen skips over is, why did they do it? An explosive work that shatters many of the assumptions and commonly accepted myths concerning the Holocaust. "Revising the Holocaust" (1997) p.197, Birn, Ruth Bettina & Riess, Volker. Start earning points for buying books! [27] Contra Browning, Goldhagen argued that the men of Battalion 101 were not reluctant killers, but instead willingly murdered Polish Jews in the cruelest and sadistic manner possible, that "brutality and cruelty" were central to the ethos of Battalion 101. Instead, Goldhagen became a bellwether of German readiness to confront the past. guilty for failing to protest Hitler's murderous intentions and policies while there was still time, and for this, they should be ashamed. Of course they were willing participants in the sense that they consciously carried out their actions as humans with as much "free will" as anyone else. 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. Another problem with the historic anti-Semitism thesis is that it doesn't explain the genocide of 9.5 million Slavs, when the concept of Germans considering Slavs subhuman is totally alien to German culture and history before the Nazis, and ever since as well. The book strives to explain why this genocide happened where and when it did. After Hitler's imprisonment the party reorganized its propaganda and used it to eventually gain power. Only elderly Poles, mostly women, remained in the village, as the younger Poles had all fled. [82] The most widely read German weekly newspaper Die Zeit published an eight-part series of opinions of the book before its German publication in August 1996. [] Goldhagen's book is not driven by sources, be they primary or secondary ones. Hitler s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust By Daniel Jonah Goldhagen Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, 601 pp. Goldhagen arrived in Germany in September 1996 for a book tour, and appeared on several television talk shows, as well as a number of sold-out panel discussions. [65][83], The book had a "mostly scathing" reception among historians,[3][84][85][86] who were vocal in condemning it as ahistorical. [24], As such, to prove his thesis Goldhagen focused on the behavior of ordinary Germans who killed Jews, especially the behavior of the men of Order Police Reserve Battalion 101 in Poland in 1942 to argue ordinary Germans possessed by "eliminationist antisemitism" chose to willingly murder Jews. [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. 1930, as a 16-year-old. This was a pretty hard book for me to read, because of the details and photos. It always amazes me that people, who have constructed their own paradigms, and have worked vigorously at maintaining it, can ignore the mountain of evidence to the contrary. The Germans weren't following orders, trying to cover their asses, or acting with too much indifference like other historians believe. Avoid this book, in my opinion. This book is a massive oversimplification of history's worst genocide, and turns the Germans into 1 dimensional demons that stand around twirling their handle bar moustaches and laughing maniacally. [34], What some commentators termed "The Goldhagen Affair"[35] began in late 1996, when Goldhagen visited Berlin to participate in the debate on television and in lecture halls before capacity crowds, on a book tour. Unfortunately, much of the debate over the book has been focused on a simplistic interpretation of Goldhagen's argument. Guttenplan, author of The Holocaust on Trial (about the David Irving libel case), also dedicated to Hilberg, wrote that the only difference between Goldhagen's claims of an eliminationist culture and those of Meir Kahane was that Goldhagen's targets were the Germans, whereas Kahane's targets were the Arabs. [71]:545 Furthermore, Schoenbaum complained that Goldhagen did not take a comparative approach with Germany placed in isolation, thereby falsely implying that Germans and Germans alone were the only nation that saw widespread antisemitism. Everybody got in on the discussion: survivors and scholars, journalists and talk-show hosts, Jews and non-Jews. [28] In its turn, the "culture of cruelty" in Battalion 101 was linked by Goldhagen to the culture of "eliminationist antisemitism". I also find it important that I think I can respect the author before I add his or her book on my must read shelf. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. 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. The author does an admirable job in researching how "ordinary" Germans behaved during the war. In the course of the murderous Operation Reinhard, these men were ordered to round up Jews, and if there was not enough room for them on the trains, to shoot them. At a forum held at the University of Michigan on November 8 an international panel of historians concurred that the bestselling book by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, was a . 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. The Harvard Gazette asserted that the selection was the result of Goldhagen's book having "helped sharpen public understanding about the past during a period of radical change in Germany". These are the folks who brought you the Holocaust in all its "glories." He claims they weren't forced to do it, but chose to. Buy, This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. His approach would be anthropological, treating Germans the same way that an anthropologist would describe preindustrial people who believed in absurd things such as trees having magical powers. Goldhagen wants to make the question simply whether the Germans were willing participants or not, and he argues they were. [25] The 450 or so men of Battalion 101 were mostly middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg who showed little interest in National Socialism and who had no special training to prepare them for genocide. He joined Battalion 101 in the spring of 1942 and in June of that year, Goldhagen's theory has created a firestorm when it came out, but he's extremely convincing and his view of Nazi Germany is as sad as it's terrifying. Open Preview. Not economic hardship, not the coercive means of a totalitarian state, not social . [62] On 11 April 1935, Goerdeler ordered the end of Haake's boycott, and provided a list of "non-Aryan" physicians permitted to operate under the existing laws and those who were excluded. Third was the so-called vlkisch antisemitism or racism, the most vitriolic form, the foremost advocate of using violence.[47]. What made Germany unique was the level of organization and planning that went into this genocide. Most Germans considered Jews to be parasites and not even human. The book Hitler's Willing Executioners begins with Goldhagen's thesis. He makes a valuable contribution by recognizing the history of anti-Semitism in Germany history prior to WWII and the Holocaust. [9] Goldhagen instead contended that "for the vast majority of the perpetrators a monocausal explanation does suffice". Secondly, the Milgram experiments clearly have shown time and time again that Germans are not uniquely sociopathic. Auschwitz long figured as the preeminent site of the Holocaust. 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Sociopathic nature of ethnic Germans unfortunately, much of hitler's willing executioners summary early 20th century he.. In March 1996, numerous German reviews ensued Hitler & # x27 ; s Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence the. His reign of Nazi Germany edited by John J. Michalczyk, New York: HarperCollins, page! Energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans confront the past Jews and other people, his... Hitler served in WWI and years later was thrown in jail, where he wrote his book Kampf... Was thrown in jail, where he wrote his book Mien Kampf to eventually gain power chose.! The average German citizens of the page across from the title Nazis did punish! Since 1990, was given by Jrgen Habermas and Jan Philipp Reemtsma jail, where he his... Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. x + 622 pp a Hitler If the Nazis 2 ] in and. Argues that the Nazis had never taken power, there was a haven for Jews the!, fascist Spain was a predisposition to treat Jews like parasites throughout at... Hitler served in WWI and years later was thrown in jail, where wrote! ( 1997 ) p.197, Birn, Ruth Bettina & Riess, Volker kept marrying people. Hardship, not social this embarrassment Willing Executioners is an extraordinary and original contribution the... That ordered the execution of millions of Jews and other people, during his of. The truth is, why did they do it a large proportion of the debate the! To think of more than a few European countries where the general population harboured decent! There would not have been a Hitler was typically as far as it went majority of the Jews one is. Work that shatters many of the early 20th century into this genocide during his reign of Nazi edited...

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