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Hitler's Willing Executioners

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Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996) is a book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen that argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were as the title indicates "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in the German identity, which had developed in the preceding centuries. Goldhagen argued that this "eliminationist antisemitism" was the cornerstone of German national identitiy, that this type of antisemitism was unique to Germany and because of it, ordinary Germans killed Jews willingly and happily. Goldhagen asserted that this special mentality grew out of medieval attitudes from a religious basis, but was eventually secularized.

Goldhagen's book stoked controversy and debate, in Germany and the United States. 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. The book was a "publishing phenomenon",[1] achieving fame in both the United States and Germany, despite its "mostly scathing" reception among historians,[2] who were unusually vocal in condemning it as ahistorical and, in the words of Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, "totally wrong about everything" and "worthless".[3][4]

The book, which began as a Harvard doctoral dissertation, was written largely as an answer to Christopher Browning's 1992 book Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Much of Goldhagen's book is concerned with the same reserve battalion 101 of the Ordnungspolizei, during which Goldhagen attacks every aspect of Browning's book. Goldhagen had already indicated his opposition to Browning's thesis in a review of Ordinary Men in the July 13, 1992 edition of the New Republic entited "The Evil of Banality".

Hitler's Willing Executioners won the American Political Science Association's 1997 Gabriel A. Almond Award in comparative politics and the Democracy Prize of the Journal for German and International Politics. The Journal asserted that the debate fostered by Goldhagen's book helped sharpen public understanding about the past during a period of radical change in Germany.[5]

Goldhagen's thesis

Goldhagen argued that Germans possessed a unique form of antisemitism, which he called "eliminationist antisemitism", which developed over centuries prior to the 20th century. Goldhagen contends,

The German perpetrators of the Holocaust treated Jews in all the brutal and lethal ways that they did because, by and large, they believed that what they were doing was right and necessary. Second, that there was long existing, virulent antisemitism in German society that led to the desire on the part of the vast majority of Germans to eliminate Jews somehow from German society. Third, that any explanation of the Holocaust must address and specify the causal relationship between antisemitism in Germany and the persecution and extermination of the Jews which so many ordinary Germans contributed to and supported.[6]

Reception

What some commentators termed "The Goldhagen Affair"[7] began in late 1996, when Goldhagen visited Berlin to participate in debate on television and in lecture halls before capacity crowds, on a book tour.[8][9] Although Hitler's Willing Executioners was sharply criticized in Germany at its debut,[10] the intense public interest in the book secured the author much celebrity among Germans, so much so that Harold Marcuse characterizes him as "the darling of the German public".[11] Many media voices noted that, while the book launched passionate national discussion about the Holocaust,[12] this discussion was carried out civilly and respectfully. Goldhagen's book tour became, in the opinion of some German media voices, "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".[7]

Goldhagen was awarded the Democracy Prize in 1997 by the German Journal for German and International Politics, which asserted that "because of the penetrating quality and the moral power of his presentation, Daniel Goldhagen has greatly stirred the consciousness of the German public." The laudatio, awarded for the first time since 1990, was given by Jürgen Habermas and Jan Philipp Reemtsma.[9][13] Elie Wiesel praised the work as something every German schoolchild should read.[14]

Debate about Goldhagen's theory has been intense.[15] Detractors have contended that the book is "profoundly flawed"[16] or "bad history".[17] 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".[18] In a 1997 interview, the German historian Hans Mommsen said about Goldhagen:

Goldhagen does not understand much about the antisemitic movements in the nineteenth century. He only addresses the impact antisemitism had on the masses in Germany, especially in the Weimar period, which is quite problematic... He [Goldhagen] did not say that explicitly, but he construes a unilinear continuity of German antisemitism from the medieval period onwards, and he argues that Hitler was the result of German antisemitism. This, however, and similar suggestions are quite wrong, because Hitler's seizure of power was not due to any significant impact of his antisemitic propaganda at that time. Obviously, antisemitism did not play a significant role in the election campaigns between September 1930 and November 1932. Goldhagen just ignores this crucial phenomenon. Besides that, Goldhagen, while talking all the time about German antisemitism, omits the specific impact of the völkisch antisemitism as proclaimed by Houston Stuart Chamberlain and the Richard Wagner movement which directly influenced Hitler as well as the Nazi party. He does not have any understanding of the diversities within German antisemitism, and he does not know very much about the internal structure of the Third Reich either. For instance, he claims that the Jews lost their German citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws, while actually this was due to Hans Globke's collaboration with Martin Bormann in changing the citizenship legislation late in 1938.[19]

Others have contended that, despite the book's "undeniable flaws", it "served to refocus the debate on the question of German national responsibility and guilt", in the context of a reemergence of a German political right, which may have sought to "relativize" or "normalize" Nazi history.[20]

Goldhagen's assertion that the Germans "wanted to be genocidal executioners" has been viewed with skepticism by most historians, a skepticism ranging from dismissal as "not valid social science" to a condemnation, in the words of the Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer, as "patent nonsense".[1][21][22] Common complaints suggest that Goldhagen's primary hypothesis is either "oversimplified",[23] or represents "a bizarre inversion of the Nazi view of the Jews" turned back upon the Germans.[2] One German commentator suggested that Goldhagen's book "pushes us again and again headfirst into the nasty anti-Semitic mud. This is his revenge..."[24] Eberhard Jäckel wrote a very hostile book review in the Die Zeit newspaper in May 1996 that called Hitler's Willing Executioners "simply a bad book".[25] The British historian Sir Ian Kershaw wrote that he fully agreed with Jäckel on the merits of Hitler's Willing Executioners".[25]

In 1996, the American historian David Schoenbaum wrote a highly critical book review in the National Review of Hitler's Willing Executioners where he charged Goldhagen with grossly simplifying the question of the degree and virulence of German Antisemitism, and of only selecting evidence that supported his thesis.[26]: 54–5  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 anti-semitism.[26]: 55  Finally, Schoenbaum argued that Goldhagen failed to explain why the anti-Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933 was relatively ineffective or why the Kristallnacht needed to be organized by the Nazis as opposed to being a spontaneous expression of German popular anti-semitism.[26]: 56  Using an example from his family history, Schoenbaum wrote his mother in law, a Polish Jew who lived in Germany between 1928–47 never considered the National Socialists and the Germans synonymous, and expressed regret that Goldhagen could not see the same.[26]: 56 

Hitler's Willing Executioners also drew controversy with the publication of two critical articles: "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis", by the American political science professor Norman Finkelstein and initially published in the UK political journal New Left Review, and "Historiographical review: Revising the Holocaust", written by the Canadian historian Ruth Bettina Birn and initially published in the Historical Journal of Cambridge.[2] These articles were later published as the book A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.[2] In response to their book, Goldhagen sought a retraction and apology from Birn, threatening at one point to sue her for libel and according to Salon declaring Finkelstein "a supporter of Hamas".[2]

The Austrian-born American historian Raul Hilberg has stated that Goldhagen is "totally wrong about everything. Totally wrong. Exceptionally wrong."[3] Hilberg also wrote in an open letter on the eve of the book launch at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that "The book is advertised as something that will change our thinking. It can do nothing of the sort. To me it is worthless, all the hype by the publisher notwithstanding".[4] 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".[27] 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. Bauer also argued that these linguistic limitations substantially impaired Goldhagen from undertaking broader comparative research into European antisemitism, which would have demanded further refinements to his analysis.

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. Some of the outright falsehoods include: that little is new in the book; that it puts forward a monocausal and deterministic explanation of the Holocaust, holding it to have been the inevitable outcome of German history; that its argument is ahistorical; and that it makes an "essentialist," "racist" or ethnic argument about Germans. None of these is true.[28]

Accusations of racism

Several critics have characterized Goldhagen's text as adopting Nazi concepts of identity, and utilizing them to slur Germans.[2] David North wrote,

If all these elements of diverse social strata are to be lumped together as "ordinary Germans," it simply means that the concept of "ordinariness" does not reflect the internal antagonisms and conflicts of German society as it existed in 1933. What Goldhagen, therefore, offers his readers is not a scientific examination of German society as it really was constituted in 1933, but rather—and it is unpleasant to say this—an idealized portrait of a homogeneous society that uncritically substantiates the Nazi myth of a unified German Volk, defined by race and blood.

Having chosen this concept of the "ordinary German" as the basis of his entire analysis, Goldhagen is compelled to exclude from his book anything or anyone that might call into question the validity of this stereotype. His reply to the Nazi specter of der ewige Jude, the eternal Jew, as the relentless enemy of the German people is the specter of der ewige Deutsche, the eternal German, the relentless and unchanging enemy of the Jewish people.[29]

Goldhagen has asserted that there is no racist or ethnic argument about Germans in his text. Some of his critics are agreed with him that his thesis is "not intrinsically racist", including Ruth Bettina Birn and Norman Finkelstein.[30]

When the English edition of Hitler's Willing Executioners was published in March 1996, numerous German reviews ensued. 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 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.[21][31]

The overwhelming majority of American scholars have dismissed the book as racist, unscholarly and irresponsible. Its "mostly scathing" reception among historians,[2][32][33][34][35] who were vocal in condemning it as ahistorical and,[36] in the words of Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, "totally wrong about everything" and "worthless".[3][4] The pre-eminent Jewish-American historian Fritz Stern denounced the book as unscholarly and full of racist Germanophobia.[37]

Steve Crawshaw writes that although the German readership was keenly aware of certain "professional failings" in Goldhagen's book,

[T]hese perceived professional failings proved almost irrelevant. Instead, Goldhagen became a bellwether of German readiness to confront the past. The accuracy of his work was, in this context, of secondary importance. 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. Goldhagen's book was treated as a way of ensuring that Germany came to terms with its past.[1]

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.[1] In Germany, the leftist general public's insistence on further penitence prevailed, according to most observers.[23]

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.[38]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Crawshaw, Steve (2004). Easier fatherland. Continuum International. pp. 136–7. ISBN 978‐0‐8264‐6320‐3. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Shatz, Adam. (April 8, 1998) Goldhagen's willing executioners: the attack on a scholarly superstar, and how he fights back Slate. Accessed January 4, 2008. Cite error: The named reference "attack" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b c Hilberg, Logos Journal. Cite error: The named reference "logosjournal.com" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b c Jewish Studies (PDF), HU: CEU.
  5. ^ Harvard Gazette, 1997‐1‐9 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help).
  6. ^ Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, "The Fictions of Ruth Bettina Birn".
  7. ^ a b Art, David. The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria. 2006, pp. 88–9
  8. ^ Cowell, Alan. (September 8, 1996). Author goes to Berlin to debate Holocaust. The New York Times. Accessed January 4, 2008.
  9. ^ a b Elon, Amos. (January 26, 1997). The antagonist as liberator The New York Times. Accessed January 4, 2008.
  10. ^ Carvajal, Doreen. (May 7, 1996) Forum on Holocaust canceled after an author withdraws The New York Times. Accessed January 4, 2008.
  11. ^ Marcuse, Harold. Legacies of Dachau. 2001, p. 381
  12. ^ Landler, Mark. (November 14, 2002) Holocaust writer in storm over role of Catholic Church The New York Times. Accessed January 4, 2008.
  13. ^ Deborah Bradley Ruber. "Goldhagen Wins German Prize For Holocaust Book". Harvard Gazette.
  14. ^ Lamont, William (1998). Historical Controversies and Historians. Routledge. p. 16. ISBN 978‐1‐85728‐740‐0. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  15. ^ Aschheim, Steven E. (2001). In times of crisis. Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 93. ISBN 978‐0‐299‐16864‐3. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  16. ^ Barnouw, Dagmar (2005). The war in the empty air. Indiana University Press. p. 118. ISBN 978‐0‐253‐34651‐3. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  17. ^ Caplan, Jane. Nazi Germany. 2008, p. 18
  18. ^ Caplan, Jane (2008). Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978‐0‐199‐27687‐5. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  19. ^ Mommsen, Hans (1997). "Interview" (PDF). Yad Vashem. Retrieved 2010-02-06. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  20. ^ Stackelberg, Roderick (1999). Hitler's Germany. Routledge. p. 261. ISBN 978‐0‐415‐20115‐5. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  21. ^ a b Marcuse, Harold (2001). Legacies of Dachau. Cambridge University Press. p. 381. ISBN 978‐0‐521‐55204‐2. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  22. ^ Fulbrook, Mary (1999). German national identity after the Holocaust. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 230. ISBN 978‐0‐7456‐1045‐0. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help) "[thesis] shredded by many professional historians"
  23. ^ a b Jarausch, Konrad Hugo (1997). After unity. Berghahn Books. p. 15. ISBN 978‐1‐5718‐1040‐3. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help) "Most professional historians welcome [the book's] questions about the role of ordinary people in the holocaust, but rejected the charge of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" inherent in German culture as somewhat oversimplified.
  24. ^ Holtschneider, K. Hannah. German Protestants Remember the Holocaust. 2001, p. 99
  25. ^ a b Kershaw, Sir Ian The Nazi dictatorship: problems and perspectives of interpretation London: Arnold 2000 p. 255.
  26. ^ a b c d Schoenbaum, David (July 1, 1996), "Ordinary People?", National Review, vol. XLVIII.
  27. ^ Lamont, William. Historical Controversies and Historians. 1998, p. 16
  28. ^ Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah (February 6, 1997). "Motives, Causes, and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 2004-06-04. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
  29. ^ North, David (1996), Anti-Semitism, Fascism and the Holocaust; a critical review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Oak Park, MI: Labor Publications, pp. 5–7, ISBN 0-929087-75-5.
  30. ^ Finkelstein Trial, The New York Times.
  31. ^ McKale, Donald M (2002). Hitler's shadow war: the Holocaust and World War II. p. 446. "The reception in the country of Goldhagen's book... whose German translation appeared in August 1996, was unparalleled".
  32. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship : Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation London: Arnold 2000, pp. 254–56.
  33. ^ "The Past Distorted: The Goldhagen Controversy" in Einstein’s German World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 272–88.
  34. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation London: Arnold 2000, p. 255.
  35. ^ "The Goldhagen Controversy: Agonising Problems, Scholarly Failure, and the Political Dimension," in German History, vol. 15, 1997, pp. 80–91.
  36. ^ "Ordinary People?" National Review, vol. 48 no. 12, July 1, 1996, pp. 54–56.
  37. ^ Stern, Fritz "The Goldhagen Controversy: The Past Distorted", in: Einstein's German World, pp. 272–88, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999 ISBN 0-691-05939-X
  38. ^ Stern, Fritz Richard (2001). Einstein's German World. Princeton University Press. p. 287. ISBN 978‐0‐691‐07458‐0. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)

Further reading

  • Bauer, Yehuda. Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-300-08256-8
  • Eley, Geoff (ed.) The Goldhagen Effect: History, Memory, Nazism—Facing the German Past. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. ISBN 0-472-06752-4.
  • Feldkamp, Michael F. Goldhagens unwillige Kirche. Alte und neue Fälschungen über Kirche und Papst während der NS-Herrschaft. München: Olzog-Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3‐7892‐8127‐1
  • Finkelstein, Norman & Birn, Ruth Bettina. A Nation On Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. ISBN 0-8050-5871-0
  • Guttenplan, D. D. The Holocaust on Trial. New York: Norton, 2001. ISBN 0-393-02044-4
  • Kwiet, Konrad: “‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’ and ‘Ordinary Germans’: Some Comments on Goldhagen’s Ideas”. Jewish Studies Yearbook 1 (2000).
  • LaCapra, Dominick. “Perpetrators and Victims: The Goldhagen Debate and Beyond,” in LaCapra, D. Writing History, Writing Trauma Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 114–40.
  • Pohl, Dieter. "Die Holocaust-Forschung und Goldhagens Thesen," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 45 (1997).
  • Shandley, Robert & Riemer, Jeremiah (eds.) Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen Debate. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8166-3101-8
  • Stern, Fritz. "The Goldhagen Controversy: The Past Distorted" in Einstein's German World, 272–88. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-691-05939-X
  • Wehler, Hans-Ulrich "The Goldhagen Controversy: Agonising Problems, Scholarly Failure, and the Political Dimension" in German History, Vol. 15, 1997, pp. 80–91.
  • Wesley, Frank. The Holocaust and Anti-semitism: the Goldhagen Argument and Its Effects. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1999. ISBN 1-57309-235-5
  • The “Willing Executioners/Ordinary Men” Debate: Selections from the Symposium, April 8, 1996, introduced by Michael Berenbaum (Washington, DC: USHMM, 2001).

Critical analyses

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