Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 09:15:30 -0600
Reply-To: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers
Sender: H-NET List on German History
From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers
Subject: Goldhagen's _Hitler's Willing Executioners"
We have received several communications wondering about a possible
H-German review of Daniel J. Goldhagen's _Hitler's Willing Executioners_,
though no one who has read the book has offered any comment directly to
H-German. In order to insure that all H-German subscribers are aware of
this book, which has received attention, among other places, in the
_Chronicle of Higher Education_, the _New York Times_, the "Today Show,"
and _Time_ magazine, we are cross-posting a single item that recently
appeared on the H-Net list Holocaus. At the end of this message there
also appears an excerpt from a recent _Time_ on-line story about the book.
While we appreciate the passions that Goldhagen's book has awakened, we
would also be grateful if, at this early stage, we could limit the
discussion to those who have actually read _Hitler's Willing
Executioners_. If other comments were to then follow from those who
haven't read the book, fine; but we do not wish to start a free-for-all on
"what did the Germans know and when did they know it" at this point. Many
thanks. d.r.
Submitted by: Peter Erspamer
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 09:43:00 CST
Sender: H-Net History of the Holocaust List
From: "Tadeusz K. Gierymski"
Subject: Goldhagen's "Hitler's willing executioners."
Daniel J. Goldhagen had an article in NYT, March 17, 1996, about his
book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holo-
caust," Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Since then NYT has published two reviews of it, including the one in
today's issue of April 1, 1996, by Dinitia Smith, under the title:
View of Ordinary Germans' Role in Holocaust Is Challenged
In his immense, angry new book, Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen has challenged a fundamental
assumption of the Holocaust, that Germans
blindly followed orders, or were coerced by
their superiors, in murdering Jews.
In "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust" (Alfred A. Knopf)
Goldhagen argues that thousands of Germans, even
though told by their superiors they could refuse
orders to kill Jews, eagerly participated in the
slaughter, and killed zealously, with unnecess-
ary brutality.
Goldhagen, an assistant professor of government and social studies at
Harvard University and a son of a Holocaust survivor, said last week
in his office:
I say these people believed what they were doing
to Jews was the right thing. The most committed
anti-Semites in history come to power and turn a
private fantasy into the core of the state.
Goldhagen depicts Germany even before the Nazi period as "pregnant
with murder," gripped by "hallucinatory anti-Semitism," a society in
which anti-Semitism was a "culturally shared cognitive model," a
profoundly ingrained, reflexive response, writes Dinitia Smith.
The book, 461 pages of text, 141 pages of
footnotes and appendices, is one of the most
scathing indictments of ordinary Germans during
the Nazi period to be published.
"This book is a challenge," said the 36-year-old Goldhagen. "I put
forward the conventional explanations. And I say they're all wrong."
In chapter 15, "Explaining the perpetrators' actions: Assessing the
competing explanations," pp. 375-415, he rejects as false such
explanations for German behavior as:
1. That the killing was primarily done by SS and Nazis.
2. That the perpetrators were coerced.
3. That they were compelled according to the once famous Milgram's
model of obedience to authority.
4. That, as Hannah Arendt maintained, they behaved like mindless
bureaucrats.
5. That the entire Final Solution was so fragmented and compart-
mentalized that the ordinary Germans did not know what they were
doing.
6. That were they to disobey they would suffer dire consequences.
Many other writers (e.g. Christopher R. Browning) made points
somewhat similar to Goldhagen's contention about ordinary Germans'
extraordinary willingness to take part in the murder of Jews,
But no other major book has made the point with
such force that there was something basic in the
German character that brought about the
Holocaust.
He writes
It was as if humanity had entered "a new moral
order."
But their actions were the result of a German
society saturated with anti-Semitism. Even Karl
Barth, the Swiss theologian who taught in Germa-
ny in the early 1930s and became an opponent of
Nazism, had "a deep-seated anti-Semitism.
Most anti-Semites just wanted to get Jews out of
the country, but to Germans, Jews were metaphy-
sical enemies. Some Germans protested the kill-
ing of Poles, and of handicapped people, but not
of Jews. Even members of the anti-Hitler
Resistance were anti-Semitic.
Finally, when SS chief Heinrich Himmler, hoping
to negotiate with Americans at the end of World
War II, forbade the further killing of Jews,
some Germans kept on.
There is already a strong reaction against Goldhagen's book.
Istvan Deak, professor of history at Columbia University in New York,
whose writings on WW II and Holocaust are highly and deservedly res-
pected, said:
I refuse to accept that any nation has national
characteristics. We can only say many Germans
participated. To say that anti-Semitism is a
German specialty is wrong. To say this is
somehow a national characteristic is
unhistorical.
Walter Laqueur, author of "The Terrible Secret" and chairman of the
International Research Council of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, questions the newness of
Goldhagen's thesis:
That the Germans were eager participants --
there are any number of books by people who
survived which attest to this.
There will be a symposium on "Hitler's Willing Executioners" at the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington next Monday.
His book will be published in Germany this August. Goldhagen hopes
that the reaction to it
is based on the veracity of the book,
but he obviously expects some flak, saying
My account raises difficult issues that Germans
need to address.
He reflects on his "radical" thesis thus:
Everyone is ready to believe perpetrators of
other mass slaughters wanted to do it. Do
you know anyone who says that the Serbs didn't
want to murder Muslims? Only with Germans do we
say they were obedient to authority. There is a
reluctance to believe that people who are core
members of Western civilization would do such a
thing.
What, then, does his book say about modern Germany? - asked Dinitia
Smith. His answer:
Germany is a very changed country. After 1949, it
was against the law to make an anti-Semitic
statement. It's very hard for an individual to
maintain views the whole world is saying are
wrong. Germany is the great success story of the
post-war period. The Germans have remade them-
selves into liberal democrats.
Smiling, Goldhagen gave a small shrug, and said:
They're like us.
Tadeusz K. Gierymski
(Based on NYT articles, Goldhagen's book, and other sources.)
[end of Holocaus cross-post]