Product Description

Daniel Goldhagen re-visits a question which history has treated as settled, and his research leads him to the inescapble conclusion that none of the answers holds true. That question is: How could the Holocaust happen? His response is an exploration of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism that demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945. The author marshals fresh, primary evidence - including extensive testimony from the actual perpetrators - to show that the killers were ordinary Germans who were not compelled to act as they did (they knew they could refuse without retribution) yet they killed willingly and zealously.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105170 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

Review
** 'A monumental achievement.' SUNDAY TIMES ** 'Powerful and well-researched... this book stimulates thought... It is a serious book written by a gifted scholar.' TLS ** 'As stomach churning in its grueseome detail as it is mind-blowing for its radical facade stripping of one of the ghastliest episodes of human history.' DAILY MAIL ** 'There is enough material here to disturb the human race to the end of time.' ROBERT KEE 'This book is a tremendous contribution to the understanding and teaching of the Holocaust...it should be read in every school.' OBSERVER 'Daniel Goldhagen's astonishing, disturbing and riveting book, the fruit of phenomenal scholarship and absolute integrity, will permanently change the debate on the Holocaust.' SIMON SCHAMA 'A must read...Daniel Godlhagen's book is a landmark...a profound analytical and graphic book.' SUNDAY TIMES 'This shocking and well docuemented book is an indictment of the vast number of Germans who directly or indirectly took part in Hitler's extermination of the Jews...genuinely shocking. I hope this book will be widely read.' EVENING STANDARD

About the Author
Daniel Goldhagen is Associate Professor of Government and Social Studies at Harvard University. His doctoral disseration, which is the basis for this book, won the Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in the field of comparative politics.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating But Sensationalist and Flawed.
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.

The truth will out!
This book should be avoided at all costs, especially by the discerning reader interested in enhancing their understanding of the past via works of serious history. Gladly, I do not have to write too much about the book itself, as Finkelstein and Birn have already conducted a thorough study refuting its validity Nation on Trial: the Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. Please bear in mind that, while Finkelstein and Birn did not receive any prizes for a work of non-fiction for their very necessary and important endeavour, one of the key observations to arise about Goldhagen's book (and they don't get any more important for a serious historian) is the selective use of historical testimony on the author's part. To put it bluntly, Goldhagen's 'phenomenal scholarship' (Schama) amounted to simply citing only the few hundred sources that supported the central thesis of his book, while he conveniently ignored many thousands of examples which demonstrated a contrary point of view, and which might easily have led, therefore, to a radically opposed set of conclusions. It may seem ironic to some readers, but I, for one, think the views expressed by Professor Eric Hobsbawm when reviewing Finkelstein and Birn's study demonstrate most clearly the importance of their book and why you should read it rather than Goldhagen's unbalanced and misleading exercise in charlatanism: "All reader's of Goldhagen's controversial book should take note of these much-needed studies, which, in line with serious historians, convincingly and authoritatively dismantle its arguments." For that matter, anyone seriously interested in getting to grips with serious studies of atrocity and the collapse of civilization in wartime Europe might wish to consider reading Bacque's seminal account of 'the mass deaths of disarmed German soldiers and civilians under General Eisenhower's Command' in French and American-controlled concentration camps during the years immediately following the end of the Second World War Other Losses: An Investigation Into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans After World War II. It certainly constitutes 'astonishing, disturbing, and riveting' reading.

I couldn't even get past the first 20 pages...
I haven't really got anything to say on the arguments contained within this book, simply as i can't read it! I can't bear ploughing through books written by someone who takes 2 pages to describe what could be more concisely put into a single paragraph. Is it really necessary to constantly use overly long words just for the sake of it, as Goldhagen does? To sound clever and garner the respect of the academic community?

I don't know, maybe i'm a bit thicker than i gave myself credit for. I studied Nazi Germany at A-Level and have read numerous books on the subject and usually struggle to put them down. This is the first one that fixed my Insomnia!