Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

For those readers who have the stomachs to wade through the book to its conclusions, they will find some useful material. In particular, Goldhagen has shown that more ordinary Germans were active participants in the Holocaust than has been previously believed, and in this he is to be commended.

If he had left it at that (and had made his book somewhat more readable), most of the criticism this book has received never would have occurred. Unfortunately, Goldhagen attempts to extend his argument by stating that virtually all Germans were culturally hard-wired to participate in a Holocaust, once the right circumstances were in place. He maintains that German culture has essentially programmed Germans to be eleminationist anti-semites, either tacitly or actively, and furthermore, this is a cultural feature unique to the Germans.

The flaws in this argument should be obvious to anyone. For one thing, Goldhagen assumes that the average German, if he or she did not actively oppose the Nazi regime, was therefore tacitly supporting it and by extension was anti-semitic, abetting the more active Holocaust participants. How does one prove that one is not an eliminationist anti-semite under the conditions Goldhagen has provided? It would be virtually impossible for any human on the planet to prove that he or she wasn't ready to participate in the Holocaust, except that Goldhagen has focused his sights on the Germans alone.

This raises the most glaring flaw: obviously, a great deal of the killing was done by non-Germans, and the majority of the victims in the Holocaust were not Jewish! From Eastern Europe to France, Germany certainly had plenty of help in liquidating the millions of victims it did. How does Goldhagen reconcile this with his argument? Simply put, he doesn't. The sections of the book where he tries to rationalize these discrepancies are unravelling before he even finishes them.

In fact, even his argument that Germany had a uniquely historical predisposition towards anti-semitism is difficult to accept. How does one explain that Jews in 19th century Germany were probably the most prosperous in Europe, if they are living in a region filled with people who are programmed to kill them under the right circumstances? How does one explain away the fact that anti-semitism in France was probably even more virulent at the turn of the century? For that matter, how does one explain away the pogroms in Russia which were clearly taking place long before Nazi ideology began to form?

Goldhagen's argument that Jews were killed by Germans because, well, that's what Germans do, in its own perverse way lets the rest of us, the human race, off the hook. The implication is that the rest of us shouldn't worry about a holocaust in our back yard because we aren't Germans hard-wired to participate in a holocaust. This is very troubling, because obviously the human race at large is very much hard-wired to engage in genocidal activities just as the Germans did, given the right circumstances. The events of the past century should demonstrate that genocide is by no means a German specialty, although the Nazis practiced it with unequalled efficiency.

Goldhagen seems to have focused his enmity towards the Germans to the point he is able to ignore the plentiful evidence of genocide all across the globe, and in so doing, he has cheapened the lives of the victims of genocide who happened not to be Jewish. Genocide isn't a Jewish problem, and it isn't a German problem, it is a human problem. I don't think Goldhagen has fully accepted that; otherwise his book would have written much differently.


Erudite Thesis Of German Complicity In The Holocaust!   December 11, 2000
Barron Laycock (Temple, New Hampshire United States)
68 out of 106 found this review helpful

In one of the most controversial and sensational books published in the last decade, Harvard professor Daniel Goldhagen forwards a provocative thesis regarding the culpability of the German people at large for the execution of the Holocaust. In a massively documented, carefully argued, and enormously researched effort that was in fact culled from his doctoral dissertation on the same subject, the author weaves together a stunning indictment of millions of Germans who, through their active participation and willing consent, helped in the achievement of the Nazis' so-called "Final Solution". However, while this is truly a fascinating and often spellbinding argument, in the end Goldhagen fails to sustain the argument with enough evidence to prove the German people were active, willing, and even enthusiastic executioners of its Jewish citizens.

This is neither to deny the power of Goldhagen's narrative nor to deny that this is a work of great historical importance, being quite as authoritatively written and documented as it is, and based on the evidence he provides. Nor is it to deny that "Hitler's Willing Executioners" is a titanic work that has fundamentally changed the reading public's perception of both the Holocaust itself and of the German people during the reign of the Nazi regime. However, while there is no denying this or the fact that Goldhagen reaches conclusions that are quite uncompromising and very well substantiated, I believe that ultimately he failed to provide adequate actual evidence that the German people, as racist and as predisposed as they might be toward scapegoating, vilifying, and victimizing the Jews among them, actually were actively aware and consciously and deliberately and voluntarily involved in the systematic murder of the Jewish population in the Holocaust.

One of the primary problems that is evident in this work is the fact that most of the European Jews exterminated were in fact not German. So too, the vast majority of the extermination camps were located in other countries, especially in Poland. Moreover, it does not appear that the movement toward the systematic campaign of murder of either the German Jews or their European brethren was as organized or as well thought-through as Goldhagen maintains. Other scholars, many of them Jewish themselves (as is Goldhagen) argue that the Holocaust appears to have evolved from a number of factors, including the lack of coherent and cohesive control over the Nazi bureaucracy, especially in conquered territories. What transpired seems as much the consequence of exigent circumstance (lack of food, potable water, and lack of space to house refugees) as it was the deliberate decision to systematic murder the Jews. This isn't to suggest that the Nazis were intending to spare either the German Jews or the indigenous Jewish population in the conquered areas, but rather that they originally intended to starve and work them to death, in concert with teir general plans to so use all the so-called "sub-humans" that they considered the subjugated populations of the Eastern Front to be. As secretive as the Nazis were, much of what happened did in fact appear to occur without a great deal of publicity or public knowledge. To my mind, Goldhagen never successfully counters this fact with evidence showing the German people at large knew what was going on, or that they participated in its execution.

While I consider this a monumental work of tremendous importance, I do not believe Goldhagen has proven his thesis that the German people at large were active and willing participants in the Holocaust here. What he has accomplished, however, is to provide a well-documented roadmap to further meaningful research regarding this issue. My own suspicion is that we will find that the German people...did in fact succumb to a disturbing degree to the rampant racism prevalent in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, they were also guilty of moral indifference, a striking self-interested disinterest in what was happening around them to non-Aryan Germans, and a craven cowardice that resulted in an "every creep for himself" attitude that turned a deaf ear to all the horrors transpiring around them. They may not have been the willing executioners Goldhagen claims them to be, but they certainly were un-indicted co-conspirators in the horrific deliberate campaign to disenfranchise and victimize the Jews. I recommend this book to anyone who is a serious student of the Holocaust, and to the general public as an immensely educational book.


UNCONVINCING   March 2, 2002
kaysixone
63 out of 98 found this review helpful

Whatever the merits of Goldhagen's scholarship, the first thing to make clear about this book is that his ponderous, repetitious writing style does not make its 600-plus pages an easy read. However, his basic argument can be summed up as follows:

Because antisemitism was so integral to the psyche of ordinary Germans, Nazi policy unleashed their latent desire to exterminate the Jews, which they did with willingness and enthusiasm. Although most Germans would never have consciously considered acting in this way before the Nazis ascended to power, all the latter effectively had to do was provide the spark which then produced the fire.

To back this up the author first of all provides us with evidence that antisemitism was deeply ingrained in German society. Next, he tries to demonstrate that the perpetrators of the Nazi holocaust were basically just typical Germans (ie they were a fairly representative sample of the whole German population). Furthermore, they willingly participated in atrocities against the Jews even though they could have avoided doing so.

From these postulations he infers that, if placed in their shoes, the average German would have behaved in exactly the same way as they did.

It's all seems so simple doesn't it?
Too simplistic by far in my view.

Even if we accept Goldhagen's figures for the actual number of German perpetrators, they are still a small minority of the total population. His assertion that the rest would undoubtedly have behaved in a similar manner because they were equally imbued with antisemitism is dubious to say the least.

And does this imply that members of other nationalities would not have acted the same way? Or that Germans never acted with equal cruelty against their non-Jewish victims?

I don't think it could logically be claimed that non-Germans who wore the Nazi uniform were less cruel to the Jews than Germans were. Presumably Goldhagen would contend that this is because they were also highly antisemitic. But there's no shortage of evidence of excessively sadistic behaviour towards their fellow-Jews by Jewish police in the ghettos and Jewish kapos in the camps. Were these people Germans disguised as Jews? And are there really no examples of Germans acting with deliberately excessive brutality towards non-Jews? In my experience they're quite easy to find. Try reading (for example) "Forgotten holocaust: the Poles under German occupation 1939-44" by Richard C Lukas or "Did the children cry?" by the same author....

How does German antisemitism explain Nazi genocides against disabled people, gypsies, homosexuals and of course, millions of Slavs, all of whom were being killed by the same Germans at the same time as the Jews?

Isn't it just possible that antisemitism is only part of the story (just as Nazi policy towards the Jews was also just one part of a bigger picture)?

And although Goldhagen asserts that the Nazi holocaust of the Jews is the most shocking event of the 20th century, are there really no other examples of equal degrees of cruelty (or public culpability) in any of the 20th century's other genocides, whose total victims number in the tens of millions?

These are some of the questions which Goldhagen's ultimately worthless thesis leaves unanswered.


Challenging and Well Done   July 8, 2000
Mark D. Warren (Madison Heights, MI USA)
41 out of 59 found this review helpful

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book is the most challenging and necessary book to be written about the Holocaust and the pre-1945 German people I have ever read. Goldhagen attempts to prove that, in his words, "a vast majority" of Germans actively supported and participated in the destruction of German and European Jews. His arguments are cogent, pertinent, and reasonable. His conclusions are controversial but not encumbered by prejudice, or preconceived ideas, or bias against Germans. His facts and arguments speak for themselves. Make no mistake though, Goldhagen is discussing antisemitism in pre-1945 Germany, the persecution and elimination of Jews by the Germans, and the causes and participants in this monumental human tragedy. This is not a pleasant topic; it assaults our humanity so savagely that we seek for some sign of hope or heroism or redemption in the accumulative horrific events. To Goldhagen's credit he does not succumb to providing anything but a cold, rational scrutiny of this horror and leaves it to his readers to cope in the pages of his book with what six million people (or more) had to face in harsh reality.

Some false questions or criticisms have been written regarding Goldhagen's work. I'll mention the most frequent I've noticed and explain why the questions or criticisms are not valid, in my opinion (and I presume in Goldhagen's).

First: Why focus on the Jews when the Nazis killed many other groups as well? The answer is self-evident - any book on such a huge, monstrous travesty as perpetrated by Germans before and during WW II does not have to be all-encompassing to be valid. Goldhagen's subject is Germany's treatment of German and European Jews (the Holocaust) - he makes no statement that other groups did not suffer and die, or don't merit study on thier own; it is simply beyond the scope of his inquiry.

Second: His work is biased or unbalanced because he does not include any study of so-called "good Germans." The very issue Goldhagen tackles in this book is, if you look at it inversely, just how many Germans were NOT Hitler's Willing Executioners. Goldhagen is always imprecise on actually how many Germans participated in one or more facets of the Holocaust - but his research and book is a search into quantifying who participated, when, and how. What Goldhagen has found and has proved about participants and non-participants is fundamental to his thesis.

Third: He is illogical or contradictory. Only reading the book will definitively put these questions to rest. But Goldhagen states his working assumptions, argues well for their coherence and pertinence to his thesis, and continually references his previous arguments as he makes point after point. I read plenty that disturbed me, but very little of it had to do with Goldhagen's methods and reasoning. Human nature, I think, demands that Goldhagen's thesis not be true. We don't want to believe something so monstrous about a people, a nation, a milieu. Goldhagen's arguments are forcable enough to withstand our own unwillingness to believe. One summation of this book would be that it explores a time, a place, and a people where "norms" of human nature -- of civilization broke down completely.

I have two major concerns about Goldhagen's work. He admits that it would be a monumental task to determine the actual numbers of people who were involved in even the major aspects of the Holocaust - such as how many pulled a trugger or turned on the gas or herded a child into a cattle car or supervised an incineration (see footnote 13 for Chapter 5). Quantifying and qualifying ordinary German's participation in the Holocaust is his central thesis. To form a lasting judgement on Goldhagen's questions and concerns, we must have this analysis of actual numbers. For Goldhagen's thesis to be universally accepted he or someone must undertake that task. In the interim, Goldhagen provides acceptable, reasonable, and fair arguments (in my opinion) upon which he bases his conclusions. But I can understand why this may not be acceptable or totally convincing to others.

The second concern is Goldhagen's sometime sparcity of sources for some aspect of an argument. A single author may suffice to "reasonably" prove a given point but I would feel much more comfortable if the author had found multiple corroborating sources. (In one instance he even cites a Gestapo report as a source for a town's participation and willing involvement in an event! There are few sources more questionable and untrustworthy than propaganda-prone Nazi institutions. In Goldhagen's defense he does not often cite Nazi institutions to corroborate an important interpretation for his thesis.)

This is a good book. It will challenge you. It is a first or early step in an endeavor I hope Goldhagen and others will continue to pursue.


Failure   December 23, 2001
Dr. Margret Popp (Wuerzburg Germany)
39 out of 51 found this review helpful

Goldhagen's book fails mainly on account of its basically circular argument, which runs as follows.

1) Since the destruction of the Jews occurred in the name of the German people, it has to be the case that this people, in all its traditions, has been forever sharply antisemitic.

2) There is no other possibility to explain the catastrophe than that all German traditions always were bent on nothing but the destruction of the Jews.

This circular argument closes the door on research of the real causes and obfuscates large sections of reality contradicting such a prejudice. It sinks into insignificance the entire cluster of causes, including the numerous misadventures that led to the Nazis seizing the power in 1933. It excludes from attention the harmless behavior of the majority of the population, the virtual absence of outbreaks of popular antisemitism even after the Jews had been outlawed by the dictatorial regime around 1936. (The Kristallnacht atrocities committed by plainclothes party soldiers precisely did not represent the "spontaneous wrath of the people" Goebbels' mendacious propaganda made them out to be; but compare the spontaneous lynchings of black citizens in the US South, which indicate what a really racist society is likely to do.) It sinks into oblivion the relatively fortunate situation of Jewish Germans before the Nazis (at least from 1871, when the German Empire was founded), as compared to their situation in other European or American countries.

This circular argument does nothing but create a general mistrust against all Germans, who then are observed suspiciously by everybody, to spy for "their cultural traditions" surfacing again, since the allegation is that the German traditions are to be rejected altogether. Not only is this unjust, but, by attempting to lock the catastrophe in the German history, Goldhagen is also playing down the real threat to human nature.

In reality, what the atrocities demonstrated, was not the expression of particular German traditions, but the breach of the varnish of civilization over man as beast in the perpetrators, and the breach of all cultural traditions. Not for nothing did the Nazis' propaganda scream out against "Humanitaetsduselei". They wanted that breach. Such breaches of culture can happen elsewhere, too, and have happened elsewhere.

Goldhagen further fails on account of bad sociological method. Starting from singular cases like the well known crimes of the Hamburg police battalion, who perpetrated mass executions against Jews behind the Eastern front during the Second World War, he concludes that the entire German people (80 million) would have been prone to commit the same mass murder at any given moment. Such a farfetched conclusion would not be permissible, on account of the absolutely special situation these perpetrators were in, amidst the brutalization of an extremely brutal war, even if the total German population for whom the conclusion is supposed to hold were still completely present; even less permissible is such a farfetched conclusion for a historical situation where most of the Germans active and in positions of responsibility around 1943 are no longer alive, and the result can in no way be verified.

On a third count, Goldhagen fails because of his unclear, nay, often, ludicrous, rhetoric. The way he uses his phrase "eliminationist antisemitism" e.g., it might be used for too large a number of things, starting with the expression of a mild discomfort with some Jews to the industrially organized genocide itself. Though no expression of racism is harmless, this is over-extending the term; at a more precise look, this key expression of Goldhagen's is virtually empty and explains nothing about German society.

The question how the catastrophe could happen, what it implies about the Germans in particular and for mankind in general, is still open.