I didn't manage to finish this. I found it very repetitive and overly haranguing. Essentially, this book has one central premise. That Germany as a nation was murderously antisemtic long before the Nazis came to power, dating back in fact to Martin Luther's hate-spewing speeches and beyond and that it's erroneous to single out the Nazis instead of making culpable the entire German population as being responsible for the Holocaust. That its erroneous to believe the Nazis were capable of brainwashing an entire nation that wasn't already predisposed to embrace a hatred of Jews. The author does an admirable job in researching how "ordinary" Germans behaved during the war. This isn't the first book I've read on the subject and I have to say it's depressing how widespread racial hatred for the Jews was in Germany even among so called intelligent, sophisticated people. You might say Kristallnacht was like a litmus test for the Nazis to test the response of "ordinary" Germans to their Jewish policy. The vast majority stood by and laughed. However, the author dismisses rather too opportunistically the notion that in a police state opposition isn't an option by singling out a few Nazi policies that did meet with opposition - the banning of crosses from schools for example. That may be true but it can't be denied that the Nazis were masters at instilling terror. He focuses a lot on the police battalions, often middle aged men who didn't belong to the Nazi party but who had no problem murdering Jews, even women, children and the infirm elderly. However, I began to have a problem with the author singling out Germans for antisemitism. The truth is, there was a predisposition to treat Jews like parasites throughout Europe at that time. Were Austrians, Hungarians, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians on the whole any better than the Germans? It's difficult to think of more than a few European countries where the general population harboured a decent humane view of the Jews. 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. Racial hatred is unfortunately a widespread virus that is always awaiting an opportunity to break out. It has no nationality. It can begin its hateful work anywhere. To single out Germans in this manner felt naïve and overly simplistic to me.

*cracks knuckles*

Ok, let’s do this.

When I was in college, I had to write a paper comparing an excerpt from this book and Browning’s Ordinary Men . At the time, I wondered why my professor didn’t just assign the whole book. Now, though, I completely understand. Beyond all of its other issues, this book is just way too long.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a long book, but only if it’s long because it has a lot to say. Nothing annoys me more than a book that is long because it’s full of fluff and the same information over and over again. So much of this book needed to be edited out because it was just unnecessary repetition and irrelevant examples. Goldhagen repeats himself over and over and over, and he piles on example after example when just one or two would have done the job just fine. When writing, it’s important to support your claims with evidence, but Goldhagen goes way overboard by including so many different pieces of evidence that don’t add anything new. Frankly, it makes reading the book exhausting. He also tends to go off on tangents that are only vaguely related to his main points, and he’s honestly just plain wordy. I think this work would have been so much stronger if the editor had gone through and cut out all of the excess.

I was also rubbed the wrong way by Goldhagen’s arrogance. He basically completely dismisses all of the contending arguments in the field. Though he does explain why he dismisses these arguments, I don’t feel as though he does so in a measured way. He makes so many claims as if they’re self-evident without establishing that that’s the case. And, honestly, between his dismissive tone and use of overly sophisticated vocabulary, he comes off as a little pompous.

I won’t go too much into my issues with the actual content of this book because much smarter people than me have already done so. All I’ll say is that I think he went into his research intending to support his own conclusion and lost some of his objectivity. It seems a bit like he had blinders on when examining his sources and completely disregarded other possible interpretations. One thing that I really could not get past was how he refused to compare German antisemitism with antisemitism in other countries. At least for me, that substantially damaged the credibility of his argument.

What I mainly took away from this book was the research that he cited. I learned a lot about the history of antisemitism in Germany and the death marches. Though I disagree with the framework he used to incorporate these topics into his book, I think he has done valuable work in analyzing and sharing these sources.

Overall, I would strongly recommend Browning’s works over Goldhagen’s. I may check out the debates between Goldhagen and Browning, but, if Goldhagen is as long-winded in those debates as he was in this book, I’m not sure if I can get through them.

Goldhagen's vilification of other scholars, in both the text and throughout the footnotes, made me question the integrity of his work. I subsequently read some compelling criticism of both the author and the book, and thus I cannot recommend it. I think he has assembled a well-researched and vividly written history, but his academic and professional prejudices make me unable to trust it.

Il concetto del titolo è ripetuto più volte, 'provato' più volte. Una 'volontà' capillare, fin nella rotaia che si prestava al trasporto dei treni, tanto per far capire quanto il popolo tedesco fosse deciso a obbedire, perché nell'obbedienza stava il proprio potere. Inquietante l'epilogo.

The author makes a strong case for the proposition that the mass of gentile Germans (and Austrians) held very strongly hostile attitudes towards their Jewish fellow citizens and Jews in general. 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.

The book begins with some historical background, showing how widespread anti-Jewish beliefs were throughout Christendom. Believing them to be, on the basis of a reading of one gospel, the killers of Jesus, the traditional view was that Jews, in failing to repent by conversion to the new revelation in Christ, were an obstinate people at odds with God. More recently, however, the Nazis and other right-wing groups there and elsewhere, adapting Darwin to the 'science' of eugenics, recognized the Jews as a pernicious race, a native evil opposed to the instrinsically superior Aryans. Although often represented as inferior in all respects for propagandistic purposes, the real inferiority of the Jews was moral. In matters of business (especially banking), politics (witness the Bolsheviks), and a certain kind of cunning intelligence, Jews were worthy--and dangerous--opponents.

While an important work, one that future students of the racial policies and practices of Nazism must deal with, 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' is not without flaws. It reads like the worked-over dissertation it is, being dry and long-winded. There is a great deal of repetition. The focus on Germany and gentile Germans is so narrow as to encourage the, in my mind, mistaken belief that such evils are peculiar to them. One thinks, for instance, of contemporaneous events in Croatia. Going back a ways, one thinks of common 'American' beliefs as regards black Africans and the First Peoples of these continents.

Beyond mere scholarship, the point of such research should be to effectuate a raised consciousness in its students. Narrowly focusing on the Germans of a bygone era too easily lends itself to the continuation of the projection of evil unto others. The point should be to reveal the potential of evil within our own selves and how our governments, our schools and temples manipulate, if not instill, our prejudices.

There’s been so much written about this controversial book that I’m sure I don’t have too many details to add that haven’t been covered before … so instead I’ll gather some thoughts that have been mulling around in my mind in the week since I finished reading it.

First, I find this an important book in that it reminds us that this period in history – and the actions of the Germans - shouldn’t be blithely discounted with the standard “it happened because of the economic climate of the time.” As the mother of a high-schooler, I heard this as the primary lesson covered in their history class and it disturbed me greatly. As with most issues, I believe it’s more complex than that.

Do I believe, especially after reviewing some of Mr. Goldhagen’s examples, that the common German people were more culpable than we speak aloud? Sure. It’s a disturbing thought. It should be. But before we jump on the condemnation bandwagon, I don’t believe this is due to some genetic marker inherent only in Germans (and I say this not because I’m partially of German extraction). Nor do I believe that dire economic times alone are enough to trigger such extremely sadistic treatment.

I believe it was an historic “perfect storm” that included economics, bigotry and a charismatic leader, and possibly other things I can’t think of at the moment.

Was there already an active bigotry against Jews throughout Germany? Sure. Throughout most of the world, in fact. Most Christian faiths at that time were disdainful of other Christian faiths, so it’s no great leap to acknowledge that they were particularly intolerant of Jews or any other non-Christian faith.

And, as history has shown in instances such as Jim Jones’ Jonestown massacre, a charismatic leader can persuade large numbers of people to do appalling things and feel righteous about doing them. This is particularly true of religions, which have a tradition of creating an elitism among believers by convincing them that they’re superior to nonbelievers who may be lesser (even evil) human beings. Sometimes they even convince the believers that their souls are in jeopardy should they not eradicate nonbelievers. This didn’t begin or end with the Germans of WWII.
I won’t even start in on the very human condition that makes these events possible (although, should you doubt that, I suggest you revisit “The Lord of the Flies”).

I don’t disagree with those who state that Mr. Goldhagen is unable to be impartial with his research, or that the book is difficult to read. There were many times that I found the writing repetitive and pedantic.

But I also find it an important book to read because, as I look around our globe, the air is easily stirred and there are “perfect storms” gathering all around us. Even among us. We need constant reminders of what all of us are capable of doing given the right situation. For that reason, I’ve given the book high stars and recommend that it’s worth reading.

Vulgar, unscholarly, and inflammatory. Takes no consideration whatsoever of previous historical work on the topic. A zionist I lived with in halls two years ago waved this book at me whilst arguing with me that 'all Germans are fundamentally evil'. It's work like this that legitimises excessive force by Israel, whilst fuelling unwarranted anger, hatred and fear.

For those genuinely interested in the causes of ordinary germans as perpetrators of war crimes, read Finkelstein's A Nation on Trial, and Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men.

“Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the essence of what Primo Levi once called the 'grey zone' of human affairs, described by the historian Christopher Browning as that foggy universe of mixed motives, conflicting emotions, personal priorities, reluctant choices, opportunism and accomodation, all wedded, when convenient, to self-deception and denial. I thought that by marshalling his research into an overly narrow narrative, painted without nuance in black and white, the author had missed the human complexity and the ordinariness of racism.” ― Erna Paris, Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History

I recommend this book to anyone who thinks the attrocities committed by Nazi Germany were the acts of a few deranged individuals who forced an unwilling population/military to obey.
I read this book more than ten years ago, and it made a lasting impression. What I specifically remember is a letter from a member of the Einzatsgruppen to his family back home. In it, the perfectly ordinary young man talks about the unpleasantness of his job, but also about his responsability to perform it well, because it is necessary. His job, of course, was to gas Jewish men, women and children in the back of a truck.
After reading that, I realised that these people somehow truly believed that exterminating entire ethnic groups was a bit like doing the spring cleaning: dirty and unpleasant, but unquestionably useful. I found it truly chilling.

The would-be book is marred by extensively superficial research and exceptionally poor scholarship.

Comparison: Please reference A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.

The editor of the libearl German newspaper, Die Zeit, Marion Countess Dönhoff wrote a detailed and balanced review of the book: "The decidedly misleading nature of Goldhagen’s book Hitler's Willing Executioners.”

Marion Countess Dönhoff was involved in the nearly successful July 1944 bomb assassination attempt on Hitler's life. Whereby Colonel Klaus Stauffenberg and co-conspirators were all executed thereafter, Countess Dönhoff was one of only three who eluded capture.
The other two surviving conspirators were Philipp v. Boeselager and Ewald v. Kleist Schmenzin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewald-H...)


Review of the Goldhagen book Marion Countess Dönhoff – excerpt (translation from German)
https://www.zeit.de/1996/37/goldhage....

I am of the opinion that DIE ZEIT has made far too much fuss about the book. The questionable methods are used to support a theory, which, it seems to me, has not been proven by the author himself.

Goldhagen's questionable method: he starts from the "final solution" i.e. the Holocaust, and rewinds the causal chain, whereby the "final solution” automatically remains present until all prehistoric times. In this way, he proves that "the whole of German society has always shared Hitler's virulent anti-Semitism of extermination."

He claims that the enforcers were representative of the German population in their composition. He does not say whether his statistics include the Austrians, who made up a third of the SS extermination units and commanded four of the main death camps, as Paul Johnson writes in the Washington Post.

(Please reference The Holocaust by Paul Johnson)

If this is the argument, one has to wonder what such a passionately anti-Semitic people would have done if Hitler had fallen on the Western Front in 1917 - where he had been wounded? An authoritarian regime may well have been established in Germany, as in Spain or Italy, but certainly not Hitler's National Socialism.

Goldhagen's questionable thesis: he says that the Holocaust was a "German national project.” The Germans were not only anti-Semitic in the usual sense, they also paid homage to a special anti-Semitism, "extermination anti-Semitism.” This, as he calls it, "eliminatory” anti-Semitism had the goal of eradicating the Jews.

If this kind of racism is in the genes of the Germans, as Goldhagen apparently believes, then one wonders what may have happened to these genes after 1945, because, as he admits, the Germans changed completely.

Of course, the author of the book takes the precaution of defending himself against the accusation that he has postulated a collective guilt of the Germans ("I categorically reject the idea of collective guilt"); but the talk of the "whole people” or "all Germans” refers to nothing other than a collective. Goldhagen also claims: "The entire German elite wholeheartedly embraced the anti-Semitism of extermination.” Another collective! Goldhagen cites two pieces of evidence for the Germans' willingness not only to tolerate the brutal massacres, but also to approve of them with relish.

The first piece of evidence: the people cheered Hitler, even after the "Kristallnacht” in November 1938. This can only surprise someone who views the complete period monocausally in terms of the Holocaust. In fact, people were by no means cheering because of the discrimination against Jews - the "Kristallnacht” in particular was disapproved of by many. Rather, Hitler's great, enduring, and acclaimed myth was based on the rare combination of success and terror.

Success: the elimination of unemployment, the annexation of Austria, the return of the Sudetenland, the victory over France, which believed itself safe behind the Maginot Line. Under these circumstances, the majority of the people regarded the seizure of power as a national uprising worthy of gratitude.

Terror: immediately after the seizure of power, 4,000 communist functionaries were arrested; in the first year alone, the Nazis set up thirty concentration camps for people who did not toe the line: those who listened to the BBC station or expressed skepticism about the regime. Even in the last week of the war, soldiers were executed because they did not believe in the final victory; a Catholic priest was executed because he had not reported to the Gestapo what he had learned during the confession of a resister.

In view of such measures, the second piece of evidence for the allegedly great approval of all Germans for Hitler's Jewish policy is also unconvincing. In a Spiegel interview, Goldhagen answered Augstein's question as to how he knew that the majority of those who saw the synagogues burning thought: "It serves the Jews right.” Goldhagen's answer: "The lack of evidence is itself evidence . . ."

How does Goldhagen imagine life in a dictatorship? Every person who was seriously against it naturally did everything to cover their tracks. The few lists of key positions that were drawn up before the assassination attempt of July 20 (because it was feared that otherwise a vacuum might develop somewhere and the Gauleiter in charge might unleash a civil war) had a disastrous effect. All those whose names were listed on them were executed.

Which in turn proves that Goldhagen's claim that there was no resistance is incorrect. After the assassination attempt, which had been planned for years and then failed, the following were executed: 21 generals, 33 colonels, 2 ambassadors, 7 diplomats, a minister, 3 state secretaries, and the head of the Reich Criminal Police; also several chief presidents, police presidents and district presidents. Since 1940/41, the number of death sentences handed down by military courts has doubled every year. In 1944/45 there were 8,200, while the People's Court handed down 2,140 sentences in the same year.

The fate of the Scholl siblings and countless unknown people should not be forgotten either - even if they did not all risk their lives directly for the sake of the Jews, but had the goal of eliminating the supreme authority - the criminal system - in mind. But for many of them, the barbaric massacres in Poland strengthened their resolve to join the resistance.

Incidentally, many Jews did not consider themselves threatened at all. My closest Jewish friends, Professor Ernst Kantorowicz and Richard Meyer, head of the Eastern Department in the Foreign Office, were not prepared to emigrate early - they remained in Germany until the late 1930s.

Goldhagen's book is nevertheless important because it is able to make the unimaginable atrocities shockingly clear like no other. It is also important because it raises the question of how it was possible that ordinary people, members of the nation of poets and thinkers, were capable of such deeds. Even if Goldhagen does not answer this question, it remains and will continue to torment us.

It is regrettable that he exaggerates and exaggerates his theses to such an extent that they provoke contradiction and the reaction is therefore likely to be negative. Instead of opening people up to new insights, it is to be feared that they will close themselves off with the argument "it wasn't like that” and no longer think about these outrages at all. Unfortunately, the fear that the Goldhagen book could revive … silenced anti-Semitism cannot be entirely dismissed.

In this book we learn that not only did the average German know the full details of the Holocaust and General Plan OST (despite both being highly classified), but supported these measures with glee. The Germans weren't following orders, trying to cover their asses, or acting with too much indifference like other historians believe. They all actively hated Jews, Slavs, Roma, blacks, and others with extreme passion and happily participated in their murder. We also learn that only the Germans could commit a genocide of this scale due to their unique evil. This unique evil comes from their deeply racist culture throughout their history and the uniquely sociopathic nature of ethnic Germans. Finally, we learn that Germans overwhelmingly supported these measures because the Nazis didn't punish opposition like the Soviets did! Despite the fact that up to 70,000 Germans were killed for real or imagined opposition to the Nazis. Also the author acts like Germans could easily choose to object conscription and simply not fight, despite the fact this was punishable by death. The author of the German fantasy book, Neverending Story, avoided fighting for the Wehrmacht only by diving out of a moving train headed to Russia and spending the rest of the war running from the gestapo. 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. Where do I even start with how bad this thesis is? Firstly, the notion of unique German evil is utter BULLSHIT! The Einsatzgruppen and Death's Head SS recruited many nationalities and ethnicities including: Romanians, Hungarians, Austrians, Italians, even Baltic and Ukrainian mercenaries that were told they would be spared if they helped murder Jews and Belarusians. Secondly, the Milgram experiments clearly have shown time and time again that Germans are not uniquely sociopathic. They follow orders just like everyone else, which is why MANY other peoples have committed hateful genocides including: Turks, Mongols, Japanese, Hutu, Serbs, Belgians, Russians, and too many more to even count. What made Germany unique was the level of organization and planning that went into this genocide. It would be more accurate to say Germans are unusually organized than unusually evil. Another problem was the author's insistence that anti-Semitism throughout German history was the key reason that Germans wanted to kill Jews. Goldhagen doesn't separate the religious anti-Semitism of Martin Luther with the racial anti-Semitism of the 1800s and later the Nazis. Did I mention most of the racial theories including the creation of the fictional "Aryan" race and the concept of killing the Jew race were developed outside of Germany? France, UK, and the US actually are responsible for most of the racist theories that the Nazis used with Hitler considering the Madison Grant, American bestseller Passing of the Great Race to be his Bible. 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. Would the German Royal family have kept marrying with people they considered subhuman? I think not. The Germans DID make a lot of Polack jokes, but that was typically as far as it went. Overall, this book does a grievous disservice to the 17 million victims of Nazi racial policies by confining the problem of genocide into just being a German problem. If this book was widely followed, we would have little chance of preventing future genocides. The book also demonizes ethnic Germans in a similar way that Protocols of the Elder's of Zion demonized the Jews. I am actually shocked that Goldhagen didn't end the book by suggesting that all ethnic Germans should be rounded up and executed to prevent future atrocities. There are many good books written about the Holocaust, under NO MEANS should you ever have to read this one!

Everyone knows it’s hard to get published. There are a lot of authors and a lot of books, and it’s difficult to stand out among the sea of words. It’s a bit easier for memoirists, who can rely on shabby childhoods and drug addictions. For a historian, it’s a bit trickier. One tactic is the micro-history: find yourself a historical footnote, and then elevate it to the turning point of mankind. For example, an ambitious historian could write about the hula-hoop, and how it brought about détente between America and the Soviet Union. (Don’t steal my idea!)

There is another route you can take, a road less traveled. It’s perilous, and might make it difficult for you to travel in the future, but it will get you noticed (and in publishing, there is no such thing as bad attention). What do you do? Simple. Make a shocking statement that insults at least 80 million people but that is at least half-defensible.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen nails this principle in Hitler’s Willing Executioners. It’s why his presumably-turgid Harvard dissertation was repackaged into a best-selling book that most buyers probably found impossible to read.

Probably the most popular notion to come out of the Holocaust is Hannah Arendt’s famous conception of the “banality of evil.” The phrase, while it has a certain pseudo-intellectual ring, is shallow, clichéd, and specious. Moreover, it was derived from Arendt’s observations of Adolf Eichmann, who was fighting for his life in a Jerusalem courtroom, and thereby willing to say anything. Still, there are certain aspects of the Holocaust that might qualify as banal. After all, it never would have occurred without lawyers, accountants and engineers (and IBM!), who managed to tabulate, round-up, and transport millions of Jews. Presumably, many of these people never saw the awful end result of their work.

Goldhagen doesn’t believe in this H&R Block explanation of the Holocaust. He does not accept that it was somehow diffused enough that most perpetrators didn't know what they were doing, or to what ends. Of course, you probably already figured that out, after having read the title.

Suffice it to say, Hitler’s Willing Executioners has a different way of explaining the Holocaust. First, Goldhagen broadens the typical indictment of “the Nazis” to include the whole of the German people. He does not lay blame simply with the tens of thousands of einsatzgruppen who shot Jews in Russia, or the camp guards who manned the wire at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Rather, he casts his net over virtually all Germans, from the SS officer delivering a coup de grace with his Luger to the German stationmaster who helped the trains run on time to the German inhabitant of Dachau, who lived within sight of a concentration camp.

Secondly, Goldhagen posits that the Holocaust occurred because of Germany’s unique brand of anti-Semitism (he terms this “eliminationist anti-Semitism”).

It is this second point that provides the thrust of Goldhagen’s book. There are dozens of explanations as to why the Holocaust occurred: the magnetic sway of Hitler; Germanic obedience to authority; various social and psychological pressures; the alleged exigencies of the war. Goldhagen finds these explanations unconvincing (as though any explanation could possibly suffice).

To Goldhagen, the justification for the Holocaust begins and ends with German anti-Semitism. He spends roughly the first half of the book, in terms of total pages, trying to explain the nature of this mindset. It is this portion of the book that will likely try the patience of most readers. As I mentioned above, Hitler’s Willing Executioners began life as a PhD dissertation. If you’ve ever read a dissertation, you know that clarity is not the foremost concern; getting a PhD is. Goldhagen’s writing, especially in these early sections, is quite frankly, awful. It is dry, turgid, overly technical, awkwardly phrased, and freighted with fancy Harvard words. (Goldhagen uses the word “phenomenological” so often it started to lose meaning for me).

A discussion about German anti-Semitism is not inherently complex. It’s not, after all, particle physics or fractal geometry. Goldhagen, though, has a particular way of obfuscating the obvious, of hiding his meaning in a tangle of clauses. He uses entire paragraphs to extol meanings better accomplished with a single sentence. The denseness of his writing comes across as uncertainty, as though he’s trying to hide the flaws in his arguments by making his arguments incomprehensible.

What you should get out of this section, when all is said and done, is the proposition that the anti-Semitic, eliminationist mindset of the Germans caused the Holocaust.

The next part of the book is devoted to proving this hypothesis. Goldhagen does this by way of three case studies: (1) the Police Battalions; (2) the “work” camps; and (3) the death marches. These sections are a bit more manageable in terms of ease of comprehension. I’m guessing that most of the changes in the dissertation-to-book transformation took place here. While Goldhagen avowedly eschews any type of narrative, he does pepper the proceedings with enough first-hand accounts to keep a reader at least mildly interested. (At the very least, it reminds you that humans were involved in the Holocaust. This is important to remember, because Hitler’s Willing Executioners could have been written by a supercomputer).

Goldhagen does not set out (or make any attempt) to tell the story of the Holocaust. Instead, he enters the realm of social-science to try to prove a point. To do so, he relies heavily on the case study method, in which you do an in-depth study of a single group.

The first of these groups are the Police Battalions, specifically, Police Battalion 101. The men of these Battalions were involved in “actions” on the Eastern Front, in which they followed in the wake of the fast-advancing Wehrmacht, rounded up Jews, and shot them in the thousands.

Goldhagen spends a lot of time in this section critiquing the work of Christopher Browning, who wrote Ordinary Men about Police Battalion 101. Browning’s thesis, which Goldhagen disputes, is that the Germans of Battalion 101 were not fanatical Nazis, but “ordinary” guys who were very obedient to authority (think Stanley Milgram’s Yale experiments).

I didn't care for Goldhagen’s attacks on Browning. First off, he comes across as a douche (I suppose this really isn’t a substantive criticism). Goldhagen seems just like your typical grad student: young and callow, piggybacking off another’s hard work. It’s hard to come up with an original idea, and quite easy to find flaws. Browning built a sandcastle; Goldhagen, wearing a blazer and turtleneck and walking his labradoodle, saw Browning’s sandcastle and kicked it over.

More pertinently, Goldhagen’s critique of Browning is logically and factually unpersuasive. Goldhagen wants so much to find empirical support for his arguments, but while he’s talking empiricism, he’s relying on anecdotes. For instance, Goldhagen makes a huge deal over the fact that a couple soldiers in Battalion 101 asked for, and were allowed, to avoid taking part in the shootings of Jews. Goldhagen points to this as proof that the Nazis didn't have to follow orders to shoot Jews. Of course, this never takes into account Browning’s arguments regarding obedience, peer pressure, or the stages of violent brutalization. How does Goldhagen get around this? He dismisses Browning’s arguments by writing I dismiss these arguments. Literally. He simply writes off Browning in favor of his own precious, monocausal idea: that age-old, all-pervading German anti-Semitism answers all Holocaust questions.

The sections on the “work” camps and the death marches are similar to the discussion about Police Battalion 101. In each, Goldhagen isolates a discrete group of Holocaust perpetrators and attempts to show that their actions were predicated upon eliminationist anti-Semitism. These sections share the same problems that I noted above. Simply put, Goldhagen can’t prove his point to any degree of certainty. Unfortunately for the historian, the Nazis did not do exit interviews with the SS, the Police Battalions, or the camp guards. This leaves Goldhagen casting about for concrete conclusions based on flimsy bits of evidence such as social class, profession, and Nazi party affiliation.

In many ways, a book like this lives and dies based on the strength of its argument. After all, its incendiary revelations (“Everything you know is wrong!”) is its raison d’être. And that’s fair. If your book purports to be a landmark restructuring of the Holocaust story, you better be ready to back this up. On this level, I found the book to be an utter failure. I wasn’t convinced by Goldhagen; I wasn’t even moved.

I’m aware that actual scholars (as opposed to me) have criticized Goldhagen’s research, or lack thereof. However, that doesn’t matter to me, since I am not a leading authority of 19th century German anti-Semitism (I apologize if I’ve been giving off that misleading vibe). I don’t know how accurately Goldhagen presents the reality of Germanic anti-Semitism. All I know is that there were dozens of times throughout the book when a thought-bubble formed over my head; inside that thought bubble was a question mark.

First and foremost, while Goldhagen goes to great lengths to show that anti-Semitism was a necessary condition to the Holocaust, he falls woefully short trying to prove it was sufficient. From a common sense standpoint, it makes no sense that an otherwise ordinary German could be convinced to kill, and kill brutally, simply because he or she holds anti-Semitic beliefs. There has to be a lot more: peer pressure; social pressure; professional pressure; psychological brutalization (that is, training in violence); obedience to authority; a belief in the ultimate goals. You also need a regime in which this action is not only tolerated, but demanded. In other words, you need the perverted genius of an Adolf Hitler, who, despite the book’s title, never makes an appearance.

It may seem like a dodge, but the explanation for the Holocaust isn’t any one thing; it’s a combination of a lot of things. (And this combination of things is different for each person who participated). The only proof I have of this is that anti-Semitism goes back to the time of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, yet the Holocaust did not occur until the mid-20th century. If Goldhagen is right, and anti-Semitism is both necessary and sufficient for the Holocaust, then the Holocaust should have occurred much earlier. But it did not. Accordingly, there must have been a confluence (anti-Semitism plus Versailles plus the Depression plus Hitler plus the failure of Weimar plus an authoritarian regime plus…well, you get the picture), rather than a sole cause. (Besides, many other genocides have occurred without the aid of anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic mindset alone, at least to me, does not explain anything except that Germans hated Jews. Which I sort of figured out without Goldhagen’s assistance).

Even if Goldhagen had convinced me of the worth of his assertions, it wouldn’t have done a lot to improve my opinion of his book. This is due to a startling lack of readability. Hitler’s Willing Executioners seems almost intentionally graceless and ponderous, as though the only way to write about the Holocaust is through cement-like prose. Goldhagen has taken as his subject one of the world’s great tales of human suffering. What’s more, he professes to know this. At one point, he emphasizes the brutality of the Holocaust, not in terms of numbers, but in terms of physical destruction: spattered blood, torn flesh, shattered bones. His writing, however, does not support his own declamations. In short, Hitler’s Willing Executioners would have benefited greatly from an infusion of humanity.

Terrible history, but a good read, especially if you're not a big fan of Germans. And the author is a nice man, I hear.