"Goldhagen’s book is worthless as scholarship.” (Finkelstein and Birn, 1998) In the light of the public success of Daniel Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Evaluate whether this statement is justified.
After its publication in 1996, Daniel Goldhagen’s PHD Thesis and book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Goldhagen, 1996) evoked great public fascination and popular interest, almost more than any other historical research on the Holocaust that came before it. His book seemed to mesmerise the public and press; The New York Times claimed it as “one of those rare new works that merit the appellation landmark.” (Bernstein, 1996). The book sold eighty thousand German copies in the first month (Adams, 2011) and as a result, Goldhagen toured the world hosting sold-out panel discussions, featuring in articles in Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, and participating in several television talk shows. (Ullrich, 1996) (Spiegel Online, 1997) (Ridderbusch, 1996) However, it also aroused distaste from certain Holocaust researchers and was met with other works of rebuttal; “it is not at all a learned enquiry” (Finkelstein and Birn, 1998, p.4) and “[h]is moral theory is radically incomplete” (Smith, 1997, pp. 48-57). Goldhagen’s book was claimed to be “a blanket [of] accusation lies” (Locke, 2007, p.26), “[r]eplete with gross misinterpretations of the secondary literature” (Finkelstein and Birn, 1998, p.4) and “simply bad” (Jäckel, 2007, p.161). The thesis was greeted with such controversy, because of its seeming lack of recognition for past research: “it dismisses the careful findings […] of several generations of eminent scholars, many of whom have devoted a lifetime t...
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Rieger, B. 1997. 'Daniel in the Lion's Den?'The German Debate about Goldhagen's" Hitler's Willing Executioners". pp. 226--233.
Smith, R. W. 1997. "Ordinary Germans," The Holocaust, and Responsibility: Hitler's Willing Executioners in Moral Perspective. In: Littell, F. H. eds. 1997. Hyping The Holocaust. 2nd ed. Pennsylvania: Merion Westfield Press International, pp. 48-57.
Spiegel Online, G. 1997. Holocaust als Andachtsbild. [online] Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-8812232.html [Accessed: 13 Feb 2014].
Ullrich, V. 1996. : Daniel J. Goldhagen in Deutschland: Die Buchtournee wurde zum Triumphzug. [online] Available at: http://www.zeit.de/1996/38/goldhg.txt.19960913.xml [Accessed: 13 Feb 2014].
Weingart, P. and Pansegrau, P. 1998. Reputation in der Wissenschaft und Prominenz in den Medien: Die Goldhagen-Debatte.
The Holocaust is a topic that is still not forgotten and is used by many people, as a motivation, to try not to repeat history. Many lessons can be taught from learning about the Holocaust, but to Eve Bunting and Fred Gross there is one lesson that could have changed the result of this horrible event. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and The Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both portray the same moral meaning in their presentations but use different evidence and word choice to create an overall
“The Holocaust: 36 Questions & Answers About the Holocaust.” 36 Questions & Answers About the Holocaust. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2014
Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism "more or less governed the ideational life of civil society" in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a
Activities in the concentration camp struck fear within the hearts of the people who witnessed them, which led to one conclusion, people denied the Holocaust. Nazis showed no mercy to anybody, including helpless babies. “The Nazis were considered men of steel, which means they show no emotion” (Langer 9). S.S. threw babies and small children into a furnace (Wiesel 28). These activities show the heartless personality of the Nazis. The people had two options, either to do what the S.S. told them to do or to die with everyone related to them. A golden rule that the Nazis followed stated if an individual lagged, the people who surrounded him would get in trouble (Langer 5). “Are you crazy? We were told to stand. Do you want us all in trouble?”(Wiesel 38). S.S guards struck fear in their hostages, which means they will obey without questioning what the Nazis told them to do due to their fear of death. Sometimes, S.S. would punish the Jews for their own sin, but would not explain their sin to the other Jews. For example, Idek punished Wiesel f...
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
Goldhagen, Daniel J. (1997) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Abacus : London)
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is The Holocaust Unique?. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008. 387. Print.
...he So-Called Mischlinge.” The Holocaust and History. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. 155-133.
Orlando: Houghton Publishing Company, 2012. 510-564. Print. The. Achieve 3000 “Remembering The Holocaust” 13 Mar. 2006.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Print.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened.
During the Holocaust, around six million Jews were murdered due to Hitler’s plan to rid Germany of “heterogeneous people” in Germany, as stated in the novel, Life and Death in the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche. Shortly following a period of suffering, Hitler began leading Germany in 1930 to start the period of his rule, the Third Reich. Over time, his power and support from the country increased until he had full control over his people. Starting from saying “Heil Hitler!” the people of the German empire were cleverly forced into following Hitler through terror and threat. He had a group of leaders, the SS, who were Nazis that willingly took any task given, including the mass murder of millions of Jews due to his belief that they were enemies to Germany. German citizens were talked into participating or believing in the most extreme of things, like violent pogroms, deportations, attacks, and executions. Through the novel’s perspicacity of the Third Reich, readers can see how Hitler’s reign was a controversial time period summed up by courage, extremity, and most important of all, loyalty.
"Cracking The Code Of Genocide: The Moral Psychology Of Rescuers, Bystanders, And Nazis During The Holocaust." Political Psychology 29.5 (2008): 699-736. Business Source Premier. Web. The Web.