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

Goldhagen's premise (thesis) is pretty logical and straightforward: the palpable and continuous history of Anti-Semitism generally in Europe and in Germany particular, created the conditions for the Holocaust. Germans generally had no regard for the Jews, a distorted "cognitive model" Goldhagen calls it, bolstered by centuries of Anti-Semitic apoplexy. It's difficult to swallow, perhaps, for modern readers, that human beings could detest other human beings, or at the least, have such little regard for their annhilation, but Goldhagen provides evidence, reams of it, all of it footnoted, and unlike Finkelstein, his chief critic, Goldhagen actually knows German and has pored through hitherto neglected documentation to bolster his premise. (It is an argument, remember folks, and you can always feel free to disagree with him after you've "read" the book...)

He shows that ordinary Germans, despite what many scholars of the Holocaust have said, were not just people simply following orders, or who provided little or no hindrance to the killing of the Jews because they were "afraid" of the Nazis, but that they in fact actively resented and contributed willingly to their murders. How? Goldhagen gives a litany of examples -- focusing on the police battallions -- of how average and "ordinary" Germans assisted in the kinds of crimes that we liken to killers like Henry Lee Lucas. But unlike that psychopath, these were Germans (cops) who had families and children and who played sports and even went to the theater. How could they do such things? Some of the police battallions Goldhagen mentions even had the option not to perform killings, but they chose to do so, including the murdering of women and children. Why? They had been programmed to despise Jews; from the Reichstag to the church, Anti-Semitism was brayed at them constantly by German officials.

Goldhagen does in fact mention other genocides, other mass murders, but shows how this particular genocide was a specific and programmatic one reducible to one simple fact: the hatred of Jews. Yes, he says perhaps not every German hated them, that some even acted on their own to help them, but this evidence is drastically overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary; for every Schindler there were millions of compliant killers.

The book isn't perfect; it's too long, by at least a hundred pages, and as other reviewers have already commented, extremely repetitive, but Goldhagen obviously felt he really needed to hammer his points home.

I will next read Christopher Browning's book on the same subject (and police battallion) and see how he reaches a different conclusion, but for anybody who really wants to know why and how the Holocaust could have happened, Goldhagen is a must read.

Goldhagen spends the first part of his book repeatedly and redundantly explaining his thesis of elimination anti-Semitism. While he makes good points to the "why's" of the anti-Semitism, he seems to have a problem with his "where's". Goldhagen is so intent on this argument preceding his ordinary German argument that he creates an anti-Semitic Germany which stands alone in Europe in its depth of anti-Semitism. The history of Western Europe does not exactly agree with Goldhagen's analysis that Germany was the only place the Holocaust could have occurred because of its unique brand of elimination anti-Semitism.

Goldhagen goes to great lengths to explain the German brand of anti-Semitism and provides some good research and points that help us understand the thinking of Germany just prior and during World War II. This explanation does help to provide a sense of how a crime of this magnitude could be perpetrated. He further helps us to comprehend how the German Jews could be so easily led to the slaughter. The systematic process that Goldhagen details provide us with an appreciation of the thought patterns on both sides of the Holocaust.

Goldhagen moves from the thought processes that led Germany to the Holocaust to the German solution of "the Jewish Problem." In these chapters, Goldhagen provides details of the police battalions, work camps, and death marches that should be required reading for every human being. Whatever flaws Goldhagen may have in his theses and his arguments are minimal when compared to the vast amount of detail that he has provided about the suffering, humiliation, and carnage the Jews had to endure at the hands of the Germans. Goldhagen presents anecdotal evidence of the brutality of the Germans and the suffering of the Jews that has heretofore not been reported. The incidents Goldhagen reports are heart wrenching in their brutality and inhumanity. It is critical that this information is preserved for future generations. The evidence that Goldhagen provides for his argument that ordinary Germans were capable of genocide is compelling and convincing. There is little doubt that ordinary Germans committed horrible acts during the Holocaust. Goldhagen does an excellent job of showing us that the "Final Solution" was not carried out by brain-washed SS men "just following orders."

Goldhagen's book does an excellent job of explaining how ordinary Germans were capable of and did play a major role in the Holocaust. The problems are, as stated earlier, that he insists on making the Holocaust sound as if was only perpetrated on Jews by Germans. The reality was that many other Eastern Europeans held similar anti-Semitic ideas and participated enthusiastically in assisting the Germans in murdering the Jews. The second reality is that many other non-Jews were victims of the Holocaust. Goldhagen mentions them but is rather condescending in his treatment of their plight. Having pointed out these weaknesses, Goldhagen's book is still an excellent treatise on the Holocaust and a must-read for students of the Holocaust and/or anti-Semitism.

What Goldhagen does is present the fact that many people would rather avoid--that ordinary German condoned, supported and actively participated in the mass slaughter of European Jews. He unflinchingly presents a picture of pre-war Germany and the long line of anti-Semitic behavior present in Europe, especially Germany. There is no escaping blame under Goldhagen's view--any German who did not actively resist were as guilty as those who participated, and that, in essence, is what made the Shoah the tragedy on the grand scale that it was.

Goldhagen's scathing view of Germany as well as his conviction often comes across as negative, especially to those who are more willing to forgive and forget, to consign the actions of the Nazis to a different time and place. However, what Goldhagen makes evident is the truism so often repeated in Holocaust Studies: All evil requires to flourish is that good men do nothing. So it was in Hitler's Germany, and so it is in "Hitler's Willing Executioners".