Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust [Hardcover]

Anyone who has read this book, and those who haven't, should read Finkelstein's A nation on trial.
This is a splendid critique of Daniel Goldhagen's much-hyped book, Hitler's willing executioners. Goldhagen blamed the Holocaust on Germany's uniquely `extraordinary, lethal political culture'.

Goldhagen absurdly claimed that even the smallest manifestation of anti-Semitism, even philo-Semitism, `tends strongly towards a genocidal `solution'.'

Goldhagen asserted that anti-Semitism `has been a more or less permanent feature of the western world', which is untrue. It also contradicts his main thesis, that Germany was uniquely anti-Semitic. It is odd that he did not accuse the rest of the world of anti-Semitism too, though perhaps by now he is asserting that the whole eastern world is also innately, ineradicably, anti-Semitic.

Germany did not have a single, unchanging monolithic culture. Goldhagen admitted that in the late 19th century German Jews experienced a `meteoric rise from pariah status'. How could they, if Germany was always fanatically committed to anti-Semitism? Nor did all Germans think the same way at any point. Other, more objective, historians have noted that the Social-Democratic party in the 1920s was `a committed opponent of organized anti-Semitism' (Peter Pulzer) and that `all Social Democrats' proved `consistent' in their `advocacy of the civil rights of German and East European Jews' (Donna Harsch).

By demonizing the German people, Goldhagen was promoting the Zionist lie that Jews are only safe in Israel, that they can never be safe in Germany, or by extension in Europe, or even in the whole Western world. Of course, the truth is that nowhere are Jews less safe than in Israel.

He wrote that the Nazis ruled `without massive coercion and violence' and that their regime `was on the whole, consensual'. This is to falsify the historical record and prettify Nazism.

Finkelstein writes, "by proposing a transhistorical explanation for the Nazi holocaust, Goldhagen effectively detaches the most extreme manifestation of anti-Semitism from its historical context. Anti-Semitism becomes a chronic mental aberration `divorced from actual Jews' and it follows that at all times and for no reason, Gentiles harbor homicidal anti-Jewish animus, while Jews always enjoy a priori moral impunity. That ahistorical conception is of evident utility to those who maintain that all critiques of Zionism are simply disguised forms of anti-Semitism. The Jewish state is accordingly immunized from legitimate censure of its policies: all criticism is and must be motivated by fanatical anti-Semitism. Intent as Gentiles always are on murdering Jews, Jews have every right to protect themselves however they see fit; whatever expedient Jews might resort to, even aggression and torture, constitutes legitimate self-defense."

Finkelstein sums up, "Replete with gross misrepresentations of the secondary literature and internal contradictions, Goldhagen's book is worthless as scholarship." Simon Schama proved that he was no expert on German history by foolishly writing of Goldhagen's `phenomenal scholarship and absolute integrity'. Ian Kershaw, a fine historian of Germany and of Nazism, praised Finkelstein and Birn's `devastating critique of Daniel Goldhagen's simplistic and misleading interpretation of the Holocaust'.

The debate is growing regarding the place of ordinary Germans in the Holocaust. From the publication, to critical acclaim, of "Hitler's Willing Executioners - Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" (USA: 1996) (hereinafter "HWE"), Goldhagen has shifted from relative obscurity, to the central figure in what has become known as the Goldhagen Debate. His argument, as the title of the book suggests, is first that the German people share a collective responsibility for the Holocaust, and second, that the death camp systems 'exposes not just Nazism's, but Germany's true face'. For the Holocaust to have happened the Nazis 'had to induce a large number of people to carry out the Killings'. With the premise that this had thus far been ignored in the academic literature, he makes it his focus. The intent of his methodology is to partially dash conventional explanations of the Holocaust, believing that they ignore the willingness of the perpetrators, ordinary German, to make a moral decision regarding mass murder. He advocates the 'eschewing' of convenient labels for the killers, such as Nazis and SS men and their replacement with Germans, going on that some were Nazis and SS men, some were not, but he argues, they 'were overwhelmingly and most importantly Germans [...] this was above all a German enterprise'. To this end, he forms his overarching argument that:

'[T]he perpetrators, "ordinary Germans," were animated by antisemitism by a particular type of antisemitism that led them to conclude that the Jews ought to die. The perpetrators' belief, their particular brand of antisemitism, though obviously not the sole source, was, I maintain, a most significant and indispensable source of the perpetrators' actions and must be at the center of any explanation of them. Simply put, the perpetrators, having consulted their own convictions and morality and having judged mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say "no.'

Goldhagen's arguments have, unsurprisingly, not gone unchallenged. His analysis is critisised for being naive in interpretation, and cynical in the use of sources, both primary and secondary. One of his foremost critics, Finkelstein, problematises the thesis in "A Nation on Trial - The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth" (USA: 1998), because it crosses the previously untransgressed line 'between holocaust scholarship - primarily a branch of European history - and holocaust literature - primarily a branch of Jewish studies', '[s]eeking to reconcile an ideologically loaded thesis with radically incompatible empirical findings'. Considerations of space limit this critique largely to Finkelstein's accusation that "HWE" is a '"Crazy" thesis'. His deconstruction can be schematised into fivefold analysis. First, misrepresentation of facts and data. For example, Goldhagen's implication that erection of anti-Semitic signs such as "Entry Forbidden to Jews" was widespread amongst Germans, and evident of their 'eliminationist intent', However, Finkelstein's referral to the source used by Goldhagen, Gellately's "The Gestapo and German Society", indicates that it was actually coordinated 'by local hotheads in the Nazi movement'. Second, rash assumptions are made throughout "HWE", based largely around Goldhagen's attempt to prove his eliminationist anti-Semitism theory, which is in turn a third criticism: monocausal explanation of the Holocaust. His argument that 'it was only in Germany that an openly and rabidly antisemitic movement came to power [...] that was bent upon turning antisemitic fantasy into state organized genocidal slaughter', is criticised by Finkelstein. He questions why such a force did not come to power elsewhere, rubbishing arguments such as comparative uniqueness in Europe, or the economic depression as providing a satisfactory answer. Fourth, it is observed by Finkelstein that "HWE" is replete with contradictions. For example, Goldhagen appears to be unclear as to whether Hitler was central or peripheral, arguing first that Hitler's role was to 'unleash pent-up anitsemitic passion', but later that were it not for "Hitler's moral authority", the "vast majority of Germans would never have contemplated" Jewish genocide. Fifth, the text contains gross generalisations. Goldhagen argues that 37.4 per cent of the German population, 14m people, cast their vote for Hitler in July 1932, arguing that 'Hitler's virulent, lethal-sounding antisemitism did not at the very least deter Germans from throwing their support to him'. Finkelstein contests that he (a) ignores the rest, who did not vote for Hitler, and (b) if he had promised to unleash their anti-Semitism, they should be voting for him because, not despite of it. Further, Finkelstein argues that "HWE" 'is not intrinsically racist', as has been argued by other critics and refuted by Goldhagen:

'My book never invokes or even hints at any ethnic, racial, or biological notion of Germans; it, in no sense, posits anything about some eternal German "national character", it is, in no sense about any essential, unchangeable psychological dispositions of German. All of these are inventions of critics like Bartov who claim that mine is an essentailist view of Germans and that I maintain that Germans acted as they did because of "what they [were]".

In an Afterword to the 1997 Abacus Edition of "HWE", Goldhagen further refutes criticism:

'[A]rticles by both journalists and academics consisted almost wholly of denunciations and misrepresentations of the book's contents, including that I was charging Germans with "collective guilt," that the book's arguments attributes to Germans an unchanging "national character," that it impermissibly generalizes about Germans of the time, and that it puts forward a monocausal explanation of the Holocaust. The critics presented no serious argument and no evidence to support their contentions on these and other points. They did not do so because such arguments and evidence do not exist'.

The fundamentally important point, over and above whether Goldhagen is right or wrong, is that, however contentious his conclusions, he has regenerated the discussion of one of the most difficult aspects of the contemporary period - due to the mass public consumption of "HWE", it has moved the debate from academia into a joint-venture with 'parlour discussion'. However, a disturbing side effect is that, whereas Goldhagen may indeed have been sensationalising the Holocaust, there are those who appear to be 'jumping on the bandwagon' and using the debate for profit, both commercially and in their (academic) career.

Goldhagen's book is a response to Christopher Browning's book "Ordinary Men". I suggest reading that first, and the afterword in the second edition, where Browning responds to Goldhagen's criticisms. It is a pity that while Godlhagen's book was racked-out on tables in branches of Waterstones, Browning's book is little-read outside academic circles.
Browning's book is a stunning example of how good forensic history writing can have genuine ethical import. Goldhagen's book is an equally stunning example of how not to write a history book.
I would not tell anyone that they ought not to read Goldhagen. However, I would say read Browning first (including the Afterword to the second edition) and then read Goldhagen with a critical eye.