Hitlers willing executioners

Does anyone here have an opinion Daniel Goldhagens assertion that the german people were Hitler willing executioners in the Holocaust? I need to write an essay and was just wondering about people thought.

I'll apologise now if this is an emotive subject. I'm just asking a question. I don't want it to degenerate. I would just like peoples opinions on what they have read. Thanks guys.

 

I have only read extracts but I find Goldhagen rather worrying. His apparent belief that the German people are 'unique' and that is why the Hollocaust could have happened. I am afraid I found his work rather sickening and almost painful to read.

 

I didn't read the book, but if Stefan is right about the content of the book, then I'm horryfied.

It is very painfull for the Germans, because they didn't even know what was going on with the Jews. When I ask the mother of my uncle - she lives in Haßloch - she says that she didn't know what was going on.

In other countries there also have been mass murders of certain groups of the population. E.g.: Hutu's, Tutsi's, Kurds, Indians, ...

 

I read his book and it's definately worth the time to read. His chapters about Police Battalion 101 (his "proof" that randomely, ordinary, average germans wrer the executioneers) is a good supplement to Christopher Browning's "Ordinary men", and his Chapter of the "Death Marches" (he used them as an example that the extermination wasn't just carried out behing the barb wire of the Concentration Camps, but under the eyes of millions of Germans) is very valuable, too.

Having this said, I do not agree with his main thesis about a common "consprirancy" among the Germna population, having some kind of "immanent termination program" in their agenda. I can't remember any respected Holocaust scholars agreeing with his thesis, neither.

His argumentation that the public antisemitism (which of course was immanent in Germany, as in most other nations at this time) was elimnatory by intetion can not be followed. Main problem is that you cant "switch off" antisemitism (as he argues that happened to the German people after 1945) and he is completely silent abou the willing participation in the Holocaust of other nations and people (Baltic States, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania etc.).

There are literally thousands of links dealing with Goldhagen's thesis and reviewing it, here's just one:

http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/hwe.htm

Recently, he proofed his name as being a "plactative" and highly controversy historian by his book about the Catholic Church's role in the Holocaust ("A Moral Reckoning"). This book received even worse reviews, putting it near to being non-scholarly at all.

Basic line, using Goldhagen as the main source of information about the Holocaust will give you a twisted, untrue picture of what happened in reality. However, it's a good piece of literature covering an extreme POV of Holocaust studies.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

 

Thanks guys. Andy cheers for the link. Personally i don't agree with the point of his arguement. As has been said how can an entire country do it and given the highly choatic nature of the third reichs government it, personally, doesn't hold much weight. I agree that the german were very anti semetic, but they weren't the worst, and to go to the trouble of killing a race of people i don't agree with that.

[ 10. May 2003, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: Mahross ]

 

I have not read that book, but I was given last Christmas the book "Backing Hitler. Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany" By Robert Gellately. I have not have enough time and will to read it but I've looked into some chapters and Gellately's main arguement is that people indeed particìpated in great shape in the extermination of European Jewry. However, I must remember that many other books I have read about war veterans and other people they all say that they didn't know what Auschwitz, Majdanek or Belsen were. Well, not even they knew the truth about the wll known Dachau and Buchenwald.

I should read this book to give you a more revised analisis of this.

 

Hi Guys. What follows is a copy of the essay i wrote on this subject. It was done very quickly so there could be errors, but hope you find it interesting.

--------------------------------------------------

How far do you agree with Goldhagen's view that ordinary Germans were
'willing executioners?'

1996 saw the publication of a book, which shook not only the history community but also Germany. This book was Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen. The basic premise of Goldhagen’s thesis was that it was not just Hitler and the Nazi party that sought to kill the Jews but also that the German people, who he claims were uniquely anti-Semitic, wanted them murdered. As Ian Kershaw has commented this:
“…amounted to the indictment of a nation”(1)

Goldhagen’s revisionist history of the Holocaust has brought into question the role that the people of Germany played in the killing of approximately six million Jews. Goldhagen’s argument goes along the lines of an intentionalist-conspiracy interpretation in which he depicts a conspiracy that is as broad as the German population of the Nazi era.

Goldhagen did his research in Germany at the end of the 1980’s. His book has attempted to re-focus the debate on Germanys guilt over the Holocaust. During the 1980’s, the debate had shifted in focus away from Germany to a comparison of their atrocities with those of Stalinist Russia. The main proponent of this brazen revisionism was Ernst Nolte. Nolte claimed that there were similarities between the two states and therefore Germany was not unique in its persecution of other ‘races’. This was an attempt at normalising Germanys actions during the Second World War.

Goldhagen's book is split into three main sections in which he attempts to explain why the German people are as guilty as Hitler and the Nazi party. The first section deals with the Police Battalions and in particular Battalion 101. The second section deals with the work camps, to which the Jews were sent. The final section deals with what he entitles the ‘Death March’ i.e. how the Jews were transported to the camps.

In the first section on the Police Battalions Goldhagen claims that these units:
“…were not “Nazi” institutions…not particularly Nazified…save that they were… representative of the Nazified German Society”(2)
By claiming this, he is using the men who made up the Police Battalions as a comparison with every person in German society. In using these men, he is claiming that the German people have a deep-rooted hatred of Jews that goes back much further than the rise of the Nazis. The reason he uses them is that he claims that the 450 men who made up Police Battalion 101 ranged across the spectrum of German society. The men who made up these units were neither well trained nor heavily indoctrinated. By using this as his evidence, Goldhagen attempts to recreate a narrative of the action of Battalion 101 in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, he runs into problems with his analysis of their actions. His work tries to detail actions but fails to deal with why they did it. It become too much of a narrative. His main problem is that he already believes he knows why these men did what they did and therefore, uses their actions as an example of how the German people sought to kill the Jews. As Inga Clendinnen comments:
“The ‘Why?’ is already determined: these men were Germans, and therefore heirs to a deep rooted…anti-Semitism which had nothing to do with [the] experience…of Hitler…”(3)

In his second main section, Goldhagen attempts to explain the actions of those who forced the Jews to work in the death camps and factories. He claims that the attempt to make the Jews work was a reaction to the German belief that Jews shirked hard work. He claims that this belief went farther back in time than the emergence of National Socialism in Germany. In this section, he claims that the Germans used the forced labour as a form of ritual humiliation for example, scrubbing the pavements with toothbrushes. He also believes that by working the Jews to death the German people were achieving their goal of whipping out European Jewry.

His third section deals with the route to the death camps and in this he claims that the:
“…Germans showed no concern on either one for the Jews comfort, dignity, or even for keeping them alive.”(4)
He then goes on to detail several of the ‘Death Marches’, most specifically the Helmbrechts march, and asks the question of why did the Germans stay with them on this pointless march to nowhere and why were they not supervised by officers. He argues that Himmler had ordered that the Jews not be harmed on the marches and therefore should have shaped the behaviour of the guards on their march. He claims that this did not happen and that consistently on the march the German guards killed Jews daily. He claims that while the guards were members of the SS they had received no more indoctrination than the average German and therefore, is representative of German attitudes towards European Jewry.

Therefore, what has been seen is the main angle of Goldhagen's argument. He claims, consistently, using specific examples, that the average German person was as inclined to harm the Jews as any member of the Nazi Party or the SS. Both his argument and evidence has come in for a lot a criticism from the academic world. Many historians see Goldhagen's argument as over simplistic. The main point where Goldhagen’s argument is seen to fail is that the Holocaust was uniquely German. Therefore, in his belief it could not have been perpetrated by anyone else. This is the key to his argument, he believe the German people are uniquely anti-Semitic. He then links this with a belief that the German peoples anti-Semitic tendencies date back centuries. Therefore, it could have happened at any time and that Hitler was just a catalyst to their beliefs. What Goldhagen fails to do is give any comparative analysis of the German people with any of the other perpetrators of brutality of the Second World War. For example, the Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians all participated in persecution and killing during the war, as Kershaw comments, Goldhagen fails to explain the:
“…reasons for their high level of barbarism related to the …alleged German uniqueness of…anti-Semitism.”(5)
Kershaw also argues that he fails to give an adequate explanation of what happens to this unique anti-Semitism after the war. To Goldhagen it resends as the German people become disturbed by what happened. This is hard to understand because he constantly argues that it is a deeply rooted form of anti-Semitism, therefore, he fails to adequately explain this sudden and dramatic change in a people attitude.

Another criticism of Goldhagen has been that he attacked the writing of this book with one clear answer in mind; all Germans were guilty for the Holocaust. As mentioned before the deeply ingrained anti-Semitism caused it. Therefore, he sees the rise of Hitler as giving them the opportunity to act out their inherent anti-Semitism. To explain this he uses specific examples of where he believes this eleminationalist form of anti-Semitism was able to act itself out. In using these examples, he has left himself open to questions of his motives. Each case has a possible counter argument, and as mentioned above, he fails to compare the Germans to other countries or circumstances. For example he fails to compare Police Battalion 101 to any other battalion, he just assumes that they are alike. Therefore, to him it is representative of German society. It could be argued that he has used specific examples that support his argument and ignored the others as they do not fit his thesis.

Goldhagen’s work while generally adding a new aspect to the historiography of the Third Reich and re-focusing the debate surrounding the role of Germans in the Holocaust fails to do what its author believed it would. He attempts to argue that anti-Semitism was inherently German and led to the Holocaust. Part of this thesis has rarely been in doubt. That Germans, along with the rest of Europe, are anti-Semitic. What has been question is his over simplistic answer that all Germans caused the Holocaust and his use of specific examples to support his argument. Therefore, while an important piece of work, he fails to realise that to label a whole people is not understanding the nature of the problems as while they would have uncountable been section of German society willing to murder this can not be truly said for the rest of the society, who possible never fully knew what was occurring.

Footnotes:

(1) Kershaw I (2000) The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Fourth Edition, Pg. 253
(2) Goldhagen D J (1996) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Pg. 182
(3) Clendinnen I (1999) Reading the Holocaust, Pg. 118
(4) Goldhagen D (1996) Op Cit, Pg. 328
(5) Kershaw I (2000) Op Cit, Pg, 261

Bibliography:

Bauer Y (2001) A History of the Holocaust: Revised Edition

Bloxham D (2003) Genocide on Trail: War Crimes and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory

Cledinnen I (1999) Reading the Holocaust

Goldhagen D (1996) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

Kershaw I (2000) The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (4th Edition)

Stackelberg R (1999) Hitler’s Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies

 

I think this has been discussed alot before but anyway I don´t think anti-semitism was only Germany´s problem. The whole Europe suffered from it. One good example of the forgotten is the armenians...

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=17032

 

Britain went to war to uphold its treaty with Poland in 1939....

Polands record on anti semitism before ww2 had much in parallel to Germany's treatment of the Jews at that time before the outbreak of war.

We tend to forget that at times.

Poland and the Jewish folk before ww2 are a story all of their own.

 

Urgh,

Do you mean that Britain was wrong to keep its promise to declare the war against Germany...

I mean nothing new but is that what you´re saying?

 

No not saying that at all Kai, just pointing out that in regards to this thread and the mention of anti semitism in Germanyh..and the now long years since world war 2, many of us in the west have forgotten that Germany was not the only nation with a policy before ww2 on Jewish folk.

I would say if there had not been a second world war Poland could well have been lambasted today on its treatment of the Jewish folk as well as Germany.

We certainly in Britain had to go to Polands even if not in effect sending troops to assist them, I have no problem with that.

I dont though prescribe to the case that Poland was poor little bullied Poland, her treatment of her own religous minorities if it were today would preculde any such alliance between Poland and Britian today if not then..If it were today, we certainly would not be an ally.

The subject of the thread here being that the German nation was in a way fully behind the killings etc...I find that Germany was not alone at that time, if we are to accuse the whole German nation of the time of culpability then the Poles but for the second world war could well have found themselves accused of the same thing..my tuppence worth..

 

Yes Erwin, there HAVE been many other mass murders in history, but 6MILLION just because they are Jews,? That is just sick!! But to stick to the topic, how could the Germans NOT know? I mean, the camps were built right in the TOWNS for God's sake!! People knew what was going on, they just did nothing to stop it because of their fear of Hitler, SS, and the Gestapo. Also, with the air of Anti-Semitism in Europe at that time, why would any of the Germans CARE? They had their scapegoat for WWI, so in their minds, what's a few dead Jews?

 

Well, buff. The average German worker or soldier didn't know what was happening besides: "Oh, yes the SA beat a Jewish man the other day and took him away". "I know that Dachau is an special prison for very dangerous criminals". But nearly any German knew where or what was Auschwitz, much less what was happening there...

And Urgh is right, we cannot forget that Jews were mistreated and segregated In the USSR, in the UK, Poland, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and the USA... at very different levels, of course. Maybe your football mates called you 'Jew pig' back there in Virginia and didn't bet you to death like in Munich or sent you to Siberia like in the USSR...

 

I agree with Friedrich. Not all Germans were in the know of what was going on BEHIND the camp walls. Not all of the camps in Germany were death camps. The existence of concentration camps and the deportations was known by majority of the Germans. I doubt anybody from the Rhineland would have known much about the camps. Even those serving in the Waffen SS (with the exception of the Totenkopfverbande and Polizei) had little knowledge of the happenings behind the camps. Yes they knew Jews were being killed in the field and most were being deported but the organized killings at Treblinka and such was as much of a shock to them as to the whole world.

 

As two of my German vet friends have told me in the past.....they had no clue about the camps until after the war. And the disgrace they both felt knowing that their own countrymen could do such things. both served on the Ost Front and in 1945 they were too concerned about just staying alive and most of the time did not know what was happening in the homeland as mail was not received on a daily basis......

~E

 

Ok, they knew the man was taken away. But do you think it doesn't seem odd that they never questioned why he never came back? Why, may I ask you, would they not ask such a question except if they already knew why that was? Because they DID know! And what's more,(as I have already stated) they didn't CARE!! This, my good(but new) friends is the embodiment of evil. Thanks for listening to me ramble.

 

No, Buff. You should read some book called "The rise and fall of nazi Germany" by J.T. Jarman, who makes a deep philosphycal, historic and psichologycal analysis of why the German people was subjugated by the Führer.

They DID NOT know what was happening IN side the camps. Yes, they knew that their kind Jewish neighbour had not come back. But propaganda was telling them that "Jews are being expelled from Germany, are being held in 'nice' work and settlemen camps or are being re-settles in the East" and I, an average German obbey and believe what they tell me because I was raised to do that. I have a nice job, anice house, my kids go to a fine school, I live in a pride and powerful country, that VERY FINE for me. It's a pity that I can't express very openly and that they took my kind neighbour away, but I prefer living like this and avoiding trouble. Anyway, I can't do much myself.

Cold but true.

 

I don't know, I guess some knew that they get killed, but most ordinary Germans didn't know. The extermination camps were in Poland, the majority of Jews killed weren't neighbors, it was war, hearsay, propaganda, counter-propaganda was flying around all the time. How many French, Dutch etc. people knew until 1944-45 that thier Jewish neighbors weren't "evacutated" into slave labour in the east but physically exterminated?

Hell, even as the first reports of gas chambers and mass extermination arrived in UK, they dismissed it as being propaganda as unbelievable as it was. It took the Allies until they kliberated the first KZ's and extermination Camps to see and believe.

Let's face the question: We have dozens of refugees from all around the world arriving here asking for "political" asylum. In fact, they are poor dogs want to have a better living as dishwasher etc in rich Europe. Guess it's not different in the U.S. 95% of those aplliances for Asylum are denied, the illegal refugees are placed into an airplane to send them "back to thier country".

Are we sure they are REALLY sent back and not, well...? Now, unless one is a hopeless believer into conspirancy theories, there's no reason to believe otherwise.

Do we care what is happening to them back in thier country? No.

Cheers,

 

One, they lived in a police state and when more overt events took place, it was too late an not much could be done about it unless you wanted to join those that were taken away. They knew about the deportations and knew those were not coming back. They did not or want to know where those folks were sent too.

Living in a democracy, the victors had the luxury of judging the Germans for whom lived in a country with no freedom of speech, religion or representation. By the time they figured out the true meaning behind Nazism, it was too late. But they still did not know the WHOLE story behind the deportations and because of that, should they be condemned as a nation? It does not mean that all Germans knew what was going on. Those that did chose not too do anything about it because they could not do anything about it.

You bring up good points from the democratic perspective but does not apply in this case.

 

Well, I thank you and will take that into consideration. i am by no means condeming the Germans as a nation. I understand that they are not to blame for the actions of a select few. I do, however, feel they could have done more to stop what was going on but wouldn't or couldn't. But, as you have already stated, I am speaking in 1)hindsight and 2) a democratic state.