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Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of a widespread, profound, unquestioned, and virulent anti-Semitism that led them to regard the Jews as a demonic enemy whose extermination was not only necessary but also just.”1 The author proposes to show that the phenomenon of German anti-Semitism was already deep-rooted and pervasive in German society before Hitler came to power, and that there was a widely shared view that the Jews ought to be eliminated in some way from German society. When Hitler chose mass extermination as the only final solution, he was easily able to enlist vast numbers of Germans to carry it out.
About the Author - Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is Assistant Professor of Government and Social Studies at Harvard University and an Associate of Harvard's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. His doctoral dissertation, which is the basis for his book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust," was awarded the American Political Science Association's 1994 Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in the field of comparative politics.2
Summary - For the extermination of the Jews to occur, four principal things were necessary:
1. The Nazis - that is, the leadership, specifically Hitler - had to decide to undertake the extermination.
2. They had to gain control over the Jews, namely over the territory in which they resided. 3. They had to organize the extermination and devote to it sufficient resources.
4. They had to induce a large number of people to carry out the killings.
The vast literature on Nazism and the Holocaust treats in great depth the first three elements, the focus of this book, is t...
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...lity and having judged the mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say "no."
It is my belief that the author presents a very controversial view of the causes and implementation of the Holocaust. The root of the controversy is his contention that the German people, as a society, are responsible for the attempted extermination of the Jews. According to Mr. Goldhagen, in the eyes of the Germans, the Jews as nothing more than a cancer that must be removed in order to cure the ills of their nation. In the book Mr. Goldhagen has gone to great extents to prove his views. However, “…his theories will probably remain a point of contention with historians for years to come.”4 The brutality and horror that is described throughout the book is, at times, overwhelming. To realize that one group of people can treat their fellow man with such heartlessness and savagery in what we call a civilized world is almost beyond comprehension.
Notes
1. Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Book Jacket, 1996
2. Patterns of Prejudice, Erich Goldhagen, 1978, 12, No.1, 1-16
3. First Things, Richard John Neuhaus, August/September 1996, 36-41
4. U.S. News & World Report, David Gergen, May 24, 1996
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
This essay will review Daniel Goldhagen’s controversial moral inquiry, ‘A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair’, published in 2002. Goldhagen attended Harvard University as a graduate, undergraduate and assistant professor until he was denied tenure in 2003; this possibly indicates his limited status as an academic. Goldhagen notes that he is ‘indebted’ to his father, a Holocaust survivor, for some of his findings on the Holocaust. This personal connection to the Holocaust on the one hand allows Goldhagen to write more passionately. On the other hand, it obscures his ability to view evidence objectively, evident in this book under review. Goldhagen status rose to notoriety due to the controversial nature of his first book, ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’ published in 1996. This received much criticism and perhaps more importantly to Goldhagen, plenty of publicity. The contentious assertions of the book, whether academically valid or not, established the relative novice amongst historians. This is evident in the abundance of secondary literature that comments on Goldhagen’s work including that edited by F. Littell and F. Kautz. Goldhagen’s credentials as a controversial author explain the extremist content of his second book, ‘A Moral Reckoning’. Goldhagen’s academic background in political science is evident in the books emphasis on the church as a ‘political institution’ and the pope as a ‘political leader’ (p. 184). . This limits his work as a historian as he fails to fully examine the role of the individual.
Kershaw later depicts a comment made by Hitler discussing the dire need to deport German Jews, away from the ‘Procterate,’ calling them “dangerous ‘fifth columnists’” that threatened the integrity of Germany. In 1941, Hitler discusses, more fervently his anger towards the Jews, claiming them to responsible for the deaths caused by the First World War: “this criminal race has the two million dead of the World War on its conscience…don’t anyone tell me we can’t send them into the marshes (Morast)!” (Kershaw 30). These recorded comments illustrate the deep rooted hatred and resentment Hitler held for the Jewish population that proved ultimately dangerous. Though these anti-Semitic remarks and beliefs existed among the entirety of the Nazi Political party, it didn’t become a nationwide prejudice until Hitler established such ideologies through the use of oral performance and
In a speech on 30 January 1939, Hitler told the Reichstag that another war would mean the “total annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”. It seemed clear that Hitler intended to massacre the Jews - but many historians dispute this. They believe that the Nazis seriously considered forcing all the Jews to emigrate, or to resettle in a ‘Jewish homeland’, and that the idea of physically exterminating the Jews only gradually took over as the war went on. At a certain point, it came to be the most practical solution to the ‘Jewish problem’.
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
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
Many debates still arise surrounding the Holocaust. One such debate is whether the Allies could have and should have carried out a bombing on Auschwitz. During WWII, the leaders of the Allied forces were confronted with the decision of whether to bomb the crematoriums at Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau). These crematorium were the biggest complex of mass murder the Nazis used during the Holocaust. The decision not to bomb Auschwitz was a hard one for the Allies, but was ultimately the right decision.
...er of dividing and attacking his enemies one by one. He would win over people with tempting promises. In conclusion Racism,National pride and peer pressure played a major role in the German peoples participation in or indifference’s towards the state-sponsored genocide and murders in Germany.
Ordinary men have the capacity to commit extraordinary crimes and on April 11, 1961, Adolf Eichmann, an ordinary looking man, faced trial for the murder of five million Jews. Adolf Eichmann served in the Nazi party as their expert on Jewish matters. During the Nuremberg trials that took place years before Eichmann’s trial, many witnesses testified to the control Eichmann had over the implementation of the final solution. SS Captain Wisliceny worked under Eichmann in Hungary in 1944 and he proclaimed that Eichmann said, “he would jump into his grave laughing, because of the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience, gave him extraordinary satisfaction’” (48). Also, Eichmann worked with the members of Jewish councils, and they claimed in earlier trials that he had a direct hand in the “Jewish Question” (49).
The Jews were used as scapegoats by the Germans. They were treated terribly and lived in very poor conditions. Many of the Jewish children were put into homes,ther...
Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.
Hitler started volunteering for the German army.’ This supports one way of how he rose up to power and did everything he did. In addition, “As leader of the Nazi party he orchestrated the holocaust, which resulted in the death of four million Jews.’’ (BCC programmes) This shows Hitler was the one who was blamed and planned everything out.
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.