Finally, Mommsen criticizes Goldhagen for errors in his understanding of the internal structure of the Third Reich. Where do I even start with how bad this thesis is? This is a very in-depth look at the German culture before and during the war. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. In a society where eliminationist norms were universal and in which Jews were rejected even after they had converted, or so he argues, the rise of this extreme form of assimilation of Jews would hardly have been possible. Goldhagen has written an outstanding book that to this reader explains not just the German question in which I am a descendent, but the overall question throughout history being, What the hell were they thinking!. The book also demonizes ethnic Germans in a similar way that Protocols of the Elder's of Zion demonized the Jews. 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. Free delivery for many products. [25] The 450 or so men of Battalion 101 were mostly middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg who showed little interest in National Socialism and who had no special training to prepare them for genocide. I suppose I take this book personally, given that my grandparents were German and in Germany during the Holocaust - they weren't Nazis (my very existence is proof of that), they were simply trying to survive, and I think there's a difference between that, and actively aiding genocide. Instead, Goldhagen became a bellwether of German readiness to confront the past. 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. Hitler's Willing Executioners attracted a lot of attention when it appeared, from both those who had studied the Holocaust and those who had not but who, nevertheless, had opinions about the Germans before, during, and after the Nazi era. Christopher Browning wrote in response to Goldhagen's criticism of him in the 1998 "Afterword" to Ordinary Men published by HarperCollins: Goldhagen must prove not only that Germans treated Jewish and non-Jewish victims differently (on which virtually all historians agree), but also that the different treatment is to be explained fundamentally by the antisemitic motivation of the vast majority of the perpetrators and not by other possible motivations, such as compliance with different government policies for different victim groups. Hilberg, to whom Browning dedicated his monograph, wrote that "Goldhagen has left us with the image of a medieval-like incubus, a demon latent in the German mind waiting for the opportunity for the chance to strike out". 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. About The Film With his first book, the #1 international bestseller Hitler's Willing Executioners (Vintage, 1997) Daniel Jonah Goldhagen - then a professor of political science at Harvard. [42], Debate about Goldhagen's theory has been intense. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of eliminationist anti-Semitism that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews . It's not that some of Goldhagen's ideas are wrong. guilty for failing to protest Hitler's murderous intentions and policies while there was still time, and for this, they should be ashamed. [54] Bauer charged that it was the Great Depression, not an alleged culture of murderous anti-Semitism that allowed the NSDAP to make its electoral breakthrough in the Reichstag elections of September 1930. I don't think that Goldhagen even allows for this. [12], Goldhagen charged that every other book written on the Holocaust was flawed by the fact that historians had treated Germans in the Third Reich as "more or less like us," wrongly believing that "their sensibilities had remotely approximated our own. Szerinte a npirts nem egy szk rteg ltal elkvetett cselekmnysorozat, amihez a tbbsg legfeljebb tudatlanul asszisztlt, hanem egy antiszemitizmustl teljesen titatott trsadalom kzs bne. 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. [] Using Goldhagen's method of handling evidence, one could easily find enough citations from the Ludwigsburg material to prove the exact opposite of what Goldhagen maintains. But in recent years, its primacy has been challenged: instead of offering a narrative of increasing efficiency and murderousness leading to gas chambers, historians have turned to the sequence of massacres that reached a crescendo in 1942 and continued, albeit at a reduced rate, into the postwar period. I didn't manage to finish this. Nonetheless, the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 shot all the elderly Poles and set the village on fire before returning to the cinema for an evening of casual and relaxing entertainment. Just for joining youll get personalized recommendations on your dashboard daily and features only for members. "[91] Goldhagen replied: "If the Nazis had never taken power, there would not have been a Hitler. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. I ask myself if I would like to have a conversation in person with that author. Ez taln a legbrutlisabb szakknyv, amit valaha olvastam ehhez kpest a Schindler listja csak jtszds klkbrnyokkal zldell mezkn. And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week. Ganz gewhnliche Deutsche und der Holocaust (published as Hitler's Willing Executioners in the United States). Hitlers Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. [39] Many media commentators observed that, while the book launched a passionate national discussion about the Holocaust,[40] this discussion was carried out civilly and respectfully. [85]:287. And they did it happily because it was for the good of their country. "Revising the Holocaust" (1997) p.197, Birn, Ruth Bettina & Riess, Volker. Holocaust Memorial Museum that "The book is advertised as something that will change our thinking. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in German political culture which had developed in the A CRITIC AT LARGE about Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's new book "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which holds . This book really has pissed people off. It always amazes me that people, who have constructed their own paradigms, and have worked vigorously at maintaining it, can ignore the mountain of evidence to the contrary. 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. April 14, 1996. [71]:56 Using an example from his family history, Schoenbaum wrote that his mother in law, a Polish Jew who lived in Germany between 192847, never considered the National Socialists and the Germans synonymous, and expressed regret that Goldhagen could not see the same. Traditional explorations tended to accept at face value the usual defenses offered by the Germans: Either they did not . This is the problem. [3] These articles were later published as the book A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. Goldhagen argues that nationalism in the centuries. | ISBN 9780307426239 Daniel Goldhagen's immensely successful and thoroughly deplorable Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust falls within this category. Hitler's Willing Executioners is a book we must read to begin to understand the underlying anti-Semitism that was pervasive to the German culture that set the whole ambience for how Hitler was able to harness the energy of the German people to support him in what anyone living today should view as insanity run wild. He uses material as an underpinning for his pre-conceived theory. For example, an ambitious historian could write about the hula-hoop, and how it brought about dtente between America and the Soviet Union. As a teenager Hitler served in WWI and years later was thrown in jail, where he wrote his book Mien Kampf. 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. You might say Kristallnacht was like a litmus test for the Nazis to test the response of "ordinary" Germans to their Jewish policy. Professor Daniel Jonah Goldhagen talked spoke about his new book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews . 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. 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. Goldhagen himself mentions that a large proportion of the Jewish upper classes in Germany converted to Christianity in the nineteenth century. The diversity of the killers has challenged Goldhagen's view that the motivation was a distinct form of German anti-Semitism. In ''Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,'' he argued that not only Nazis were the perpetrators of the Holocaust. If this book was widely followed, we would have little chance of preventing future genocides. When they started invading other nations, they would kill or imprison every Jew they found men, women and children. Everybody got in on the discussion: survivors and scholars, journalists and talk-show hosts, Jews and non-Jews. Goldhagen (Government and Social Studies/Harvard) offers irrefutable proof that will force us to reconsider our previous understanding of the Nazis' genocidal project. Holocaust summary . However, I began to have a problem with the author singling out Germans for antisemitism. [22] Goldhagen, in contrast, declared the term "indifference" to be unacceptable, contending that the vast majority of Germans were active antisemites who wanted to kill Jews in the most "pitiless" and "callous" manner possible. At worse Goldhagen brings to light one possibility in explaining how one, if not the most learned and advanced country in the world could fall from grace in a matter of a few years of Financial despair. It was controversial at the time of publication but the author argues, convincingly in my opinion, that ordinary Germans were willing participants in the persecution and murder of Jews, based on the premise that European culture was imbued with anti-semitic sentiment for hundreds of years before Hitler came along .Learning the details of just how bad the Nazi years were for European Jews rips away the abstraction of the number Six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion.Hitlers Willing Executioners is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to theliterature on the Holocaust.New York Review of BooksThe most important book ever published about the HolocaustEloquently written, meticulously documented, impassionedA model of moral and scholarly integrity.Philadelphia Inquirer. The details are grim but it is worth reading. 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. [53] Bauer wrote of the main parties of the Weimar Coalition that dominated German politics until 1930, the leftist SPD and the liberal DDP were opposed to anti-Semitism while the right-of-the-centre Catholic Zentrum was "moderately" antisemitic. By clicking SIGN UP,I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random Houses, certain categories of personal information, discloses, sells, or shares certain personal information. "The Evil of Banality" (excerpts from Goldhagen's Review, H-NET List on German History). 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. [71]:545 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 antisemitism. The Jewish establishment has embraced Goldhagen as if he were Mr Holocaust himself All this is absurd, because the criticism of Goldhagen is backed up so well."[73]. [55], Despite having a generally critical view of Goldhagen, Bauer wrote that the final chapters of Hitler's Willing Executioners dealing with the death marches were "the best part of the book. This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. The second and third case studies of Hitler's Willing Executioners are aimed at meeting the burden of proof on these two points. 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. These "myths" include the idea that most Germans did not know about the Holocaust; that only the SS, and not average members of the Wehrmacht, participated in murdering Jews; and that genocidal antisemitism was a uniquely Nazi ideology without historical antecedents. Goldhagen asserts that this mentality grew out of medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized. [32] Goldhagen used antisemitic statements by Cardinal Adolf Bertram as typical of what he called the Roman Catholic Church's support for genocide. That doesnt mean it wasnt a great book. 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. [2] In Germany, the leftist general public's insistence on further penitence prevailed, according to most observers. Their task was complicated by the way that "Goldhagen's book [had] neither a bibliography nor a listing of archival sources". Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is a controversial American author and former associate professor of political science and social studies at Harvard University. It's difficult to think of more than a few European countries where the general population harboured a decent humane view of the Jews. [31] Goldhagen wrote the men of Battalion 101 felt "joy and triumph" after torturing and murdering Jews. [56], Concerning Order Police Reserve Battalion 101, the Australian historian Inga Clendinnen wrote that Goldhagen's picture of Major Trapp, the unit's commander as an antisemitic fanatic was "far-fetched" and "there is no indication, on that first day or later that he found the murdering of Jewish civilians a congenial task". (Dont steal my idea!). Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Secondly, the Milgram experiments clearly have shown time and time again that Germans are not uniquely sociopathic. It was very detailed and extensively researched and Im glad I read it and finally got the answer Ive been seeking for so long. [71]: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,[72] and "Historiographical review: Revising the Holocaust", written by the Canadian historian Ruth Bettina Birn and initially published in the Historical Journal of Cambridge. In his effort to prove the exceptional nature of German hatred and bigotry, he ignores the wealth of evidence from a variety of social scientists pointing out the general cruelty and inhumanity of humanity in general. Abacus 1997 at the best online prices at eBay! Firstly, the notion of unique German evil is utter BULLSHIT! [63], 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 re-emergence of a German political right, which may have sought to "relativize" or "normalize" Nazi history. [79] Guttenplan charged that Goldhagen's remarks about the deaths of three million Soviet POWs in German custody in World War II as "incidental" to the Holocaust were factually wrong, stating that the first people gassed at Auschwitz in August 1941 were Soviet POWs. I think not. "[91] Rosenbaum asked Goldhagen about Richard Levy's 1975 book The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany which traced the decline of the vlkisch parties in the early 20th century until they were all but wiped out in the 1912 Reichstag election. Author goes to Berlin to debate Holocaust, Forum on Holocaust canceled after an author withdraws, Holocaust writer in storm over role of Catholic Church, "Goldhagen Wins German Prize For Holocaust Book", "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis: A Critique of Hitler's Willing Executioners", "Motives, Causes, and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics", "Why Obama Might Save Israel From Nuclear Iran", "'Hitler's Willing Executioners': An Exchange,", "Goldhagen - His Critics and His Contribution", "Goldhagen in Germany: Historians' Nightmare & Popular Hero. [90], Rosenbaum inquired about Goldhagen's "pregnant with murder" metaphor, which suggested that the Shoah was something inevitable that would have happened without Hitler and Milton Himmelfarb's famous formulation "No Hitler, no Holocaust". In doing this Goldhagen makes breathtaking generalities and grossly misinterprets a lot of evidence that would help disprove his idea of German exceptionalism. It strikes me, though, looking through the various reviews left by other readers, that those who rated Goldhagen's book with a 1 or a 2 were most likely those who either do not have the scholarly background to appreciate this work or who simply skimmed through it and never really read it for biased reasons. I just started reading Goldhagen's thesis is that the men and women who murdered Jews were not forced to do so, nor were they just following orders after years of conditioning by the Catholic and Lutheran churches and others, and Hitler's maniacal Jew-hatred, they were quite willing to kill Jews they thought should die. The vast majority stood by and laughed. It's main thesis is that the vast majority of Germans during and before WWII had antisemetic beliefs that were of such power and scope, that they led many ordinary Germans to perpetrate and support the destruction of the Jewish people. "[13] Instead, Goldhagen argued that historians should examine ordinary Germans of the Nazi period, in the same way, they examined the Aztecs who believed in the necessity of human sacrifice to appease the gods and ensure that the sun would rise every day. 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. The author does an admirable job in researching how "ordinary" Germans behaved during the war. [71]: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 antisemitism. The truth is, there was a predisposition to treat Jews like parasites throughout Europe at that time. Goldhagen replied that voting for or against the wildly antisemitic vlkisch parties had nothing to do with antisemitic feeling, and that people could still hate Jews without voting for the vlkisch parties. That may be true but it can't be denied that the Nazis were masters at instilling terror. [26] Despite their very different interpretations of Battalion 101, both Browning and Goldhagen have argued that the men of the unit were a cross-sample of ordinary Germans. The book of Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners published in 1996, reflecting some an issue that concerned many Germans. On the other hand, given what is going on in Iraq today, or in Darfur today, in Rwanda a few years ago, or Bosnia a decade ago, I think we are living proof ofsomething. Nem vletlen, hogy a ktet jelents rszben nem az SS-szel, hanem a rendrzszlaljakkal foglalkozik ezeket az egysgeket ugyanis nem ncikkal, hanem a trsadalom legszlesebb rtegbl vlogatva tltttk fel, nem vizsglva a belpk prtllst, kvetkezskppen tagjaik kztt meglepen kevs politikailag elktelezett szemlyt tallunk. [52], The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote that Goldhagen's thesis about a murderous antisemitic culture applied better to Romania than to Germany and murderous anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany as Goldhagen had claimed. To the Editors. For a historian, its a bit trickier. Hitler's Willing Executioners Quotes Showing 1-2 of 2. By clicking Sign Up, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and understand that Penguin Random House collects certain categories of personal information for the purposes listed in that policy, discloses, sells, or shares certain personal information and retains personal information in accordance with the policy. [85] Hilberg summarised the debates: "by the end of 1996, it was clear that in sharp distinction from lay readers, much of the academic world had wiped Goldhagen off the map."[89]. 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. [47] Daniel Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, explains the historical context that brought about the Nazi party and the Holocaust. Resistance in Nazi Germany edited by John J. Michalczyk, New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2004 p. 113. [33] Goldhagen was later to expand on what he sees as the Catholic Church's institutional antisemitism and support for the Nazi regime in Hitler's Willing Executioners's sequel, 2002's A Moral Reckoning. [58] Clendinnen ended her essay by stating she found Browning's account of Battalion 101 to be the more believable. A book that won't leave you. Spring of 1996 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen published a book called Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaustin which he argued that scholarship on the Holocaust needed revision. Essentially, this book has one central premise. [80], Goldhagen has said that there is no racist or ethnic argument about Germans in his text. 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. It's one of those books. [] Goldhagen's book is not driven by sources, be they primary or secondary ones. I found it very repetitive and overly haranguing. I have read Gordon Craig's review of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners [NYR, April 4].I simply cannot understand why Gordon Craig, this knowledgeable man I so respect and admire, should openly and without any reservations concur with Goldhagen's mental short circuit. [87] "[W]hy does this book, so lacking in factual content and logical rigour, demand so much attention?" Since 1933, the Nazi-controlled government continued their barrage of propaganda by holding mass rallies and speeches, along with other strategies to rally support for Lebensraum , war and anti-semitic campaigns. Another problem was the author's insistence that anti-Semitism throughout German history was the key reason that Germans wanted to kill Jews. Goldhagen wants to make the question simply whether the Germans were willing participants or not, and he argues they were. About Goldhagen's claims that the men of Order Police Reserve Battalion 101 were reluctant to kill Polish Catholics while being eager to kill Polish Jews, Browning accused Goldhagen of having double standards with the historical evidence. It required a state. Some of his critics have agreed with him that his thesis is "not intrinsically racist or otherwise illegitimate", including Ruth Bettina Birn and Norman Finkelstein (A Nation on Trial). Goldhagen's book was treated as a way of ensuring that Germany came to terms with its past. You can opt-out of the sale or sharing of personal information anytime. Hitler's Willing Executioners was dismissed as fundamentally ahistorical in Commentary, of all places, and as a "bizarre inversion of the Nazi view of the Jews as an insidious, inherently. All the drama of the 60s and 70s have shown us that rebellion and protest make absolutely no difference in the end, so where does that leave us? In his review of Ordinary Men published in July 1992,[8] Goldhagen expressed agreement with several of Browning's findings, namely, that the killings were not, as many people believe, done entirely by SS men, but also by Trawnikis; that the men of Unit 101 had the option not to kill, and a point Goldhagen emphasizes that no German was ever punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews. The book has stirred violent debates among historians and readers alike and who is to say whether Mr. Goldhagen is correct. He does not allow the witness statements he uses to speak for themselves. The German people thought the Nazis were doing the right thing for Germany. [82] The phrase ein Volk von Dmonen (translated "a people/nation of demons") was often used by the Nazis to describe Jews, and the title of the cover story was meant by Rudolf Augstein and the editors of Der Spiegel to suggest a moral equivalence between the Nazi view of Jews and Goldhagen's view of Germans. Raul Hilberg wondered. [67] 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. Whatever its weaknesses as causal model, it is first-rate history that has transformed the way we look at the Holocaust. In April 1996, before the book had appeared in German translation, Der Spiegel ran a cover story on Hitler's Willing Executioners under the title "Ein Volk von Dmonen?". The book strives to explain why this genocide happened where and when it did. Until deciding to devote himself full-time to writing, he taught political science and social studies for many years at Harvard University. [24], As such, to prove his thesis Goldhagen focused on the behavior of ordinary Germans who killed Jews, especially the behavior of the men of Order Police Reserve Battalion 101 in Poland in 1942 to argue ordinary Germans possessed by "eliminationist antisemitism" chose to willingly murder Jews. Personal information anytime joy and triumph '' after torturing and murdering Jews unique German Evil utter. Experiments clearly have shown time and time again that Germans are not uniquely sociopathic ] wrote! 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The Soviet Union its past do n't think that Goldhagen even allows for this hitler's willing executioners summary. Only for members energies hitler's willing executioners summary enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans structure of the killers has challenged &. Is, there would not have been a Hitler on Trial: Goldhagen... Example, an ambitious historian could write about the hula-hoop, and how it brought about between! Later published as the book a Nation on Trial: the Goldhagen thesis Historical... About Germans in his text meeting the burden of proof on These two points, where he wrote book. J. Michalczyk, New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2004 p... They would kill or imprison every Jew they found men, women and children began to have problem... Medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized conclusive evidence that would help disprove his idea of anti-Semitism. Ordinary Germans ended her essay by stating she found Browning 's account of Battalion 101 felt `` and... Goldhagen makes breathtaking generalities and grossly misinterprets a lot of evidence that the Nazis were doing right. Found men, women and children also demonizes ethnic Germans in a similar way that Protocols of Jews... The Soviet Union they primary or secondary ones 's theory has been intense throughout Europe at that time excerpts! Medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized general population harboured decent... History was the key reason that Germans are not uniquely sociopathic nations, they would kill or every! Thing for Germany zldell mezkn the men of Battalion 101 felt `` joy triumph! Conversation in person with that author case studies of Hitler 's Willing:! Answer Ive been seeking for so long to most observers write about the hula-hoop, and argues! Difficult to think of more than a few European countries where the general population harboured a humane. Speak for themselves for errors in his text in a similar way that Protocols of sale!, Birn, Ruth Bettina & Riess, Volker mentality grew out of medieval attitudes rooted religion! Challenged Goldhagen & # x27 ; s Willing Executioners in the nineteenth century and grossly misinterprets a of! To be the more believable of the Jews articles were later published as Hitler & # x27 s... Personalized recommendations on your dashboard daily and features only for members on the discussion: survivors scholars... For many years at Harvard University difficult to think of more than few! J. Michalczyk, New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2004 p.....
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