Reacting to Goldhagen

Reacting to Goldhagen REACTING TO GOLDHAGEN This review.and the attached comments were given as a roundtable discussion, "The Goldhagen Controversy: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust," chaired by Joseph Haberer at the Hillel Foundation at Purdue University on November 17, 1996. Following these contributions to the roundtable discussion is a paper also discussing Goldhagen's book that was given at the Midwest Jewish Studies Conference, held in Chicago in October I 1996. 77 Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. 622 pp. $30.00. Review by Saul Lerner Department of History and Political Science Purdue University-Calumet Daniel Goldhagen's thought-provoking study, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, has generated much scholarly controversy regarding the thesis of the book: that the Holocaust was a product, not just of Nazi hatred of the Jews, but of the deeply held and pervasive eliminationist antisemitism of the German people. Critics have also questioned whether Goldhagen's evidence supports his thesis. Goldhagen argues that eliminationist antisemitism was a shared legacy of the German people who not only were merely "following orders" as they murderedJews, but were murderingJews because they believed that it was right and proper, that it was good for Germany and for all Germans. The author insists that, with very few exceptions, those Germans who objected to the Holocaust did so only because of concern about the methods of elimination of the Jews and not because of their rejection ofor opposition to elimination (pp. 3-22). Goldhagen's six-part book has actually been organized into three sections. The elaboration of his thesis, which appears in his first two sections ("Understanding German Antisemitism: The Eliminationist Mindset " and "The Eliminationist Program and Institutions"), is followed by 78 SHOFAR Winter 1997 Vol. 15, No.2 selected evidence drawn from descriptions of the functioning of German police battalions, the nature of "work" as it was imposed upon the Jews, and the death marches. The conclusion is the outcome of Goldhagen's analysis of the evidence and is carefully drawn to confirm his thesis (passim). Based on his consideration of the behavior and .the activities of ordinary Germans, Goldhagen attempts to determine "the mind-set" of those Germans. For the author, awareness of what ordinary ·Germans thought about Jews and how they acted toward them has contributed to an understanding of how and why the Holocaust occurred (p. 5). Because Goldhagen says, "the perpetrators, 'ordinary Germans,' were animated by antisemitism, by a particular type of antisemitism that led them to conclude that the Jews ought to die" (p. 14), he argues that "the Holocaust defines not only the history ofJews during the middle of the twentieth century, but also the history of the Germans" (p. 8). Much has been written about the nature and development of antisemitism. George 1. Mosse's very fine book, Toward the Final Solution: A History ojEuropeanRacism (1978), showed how antisemitism was deposited, layer by layer, upon the consciousness, the attitudes, the thought processes of many Europeans-both intellectuals and ordinary people-during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 Goldhagen has repeated some of this interpretation with particular regard to Germans. What Goldhagen has added to this well established view of the development of racism and antisemitism is his description of the unique nature of German antisemitism-a description of an eliminationist variant of antisemitism, which he defines with specificity. Insisting that this set of ideas originated in the eighteenth century and characterized the entire development of German antisemitism, Goldhagen's interpretation moves beyond the Mosse interpretation and was a significant addition to an understanding ofGerman antisemitism, ofits negative portrayal ofJews, and of the nature and viciousness of German behavior toward the Jews. Goldhagen holds that the advocates of the eliminationist variant of antisemitism believed that "For Germany to be properly ordered, regulated, and, for many, safeguarded, Jewishness had to be eliminated from German society" (pp. 60, 69, 77). Goldhagen insists that this view had become the dominant view in German society by the twentieth century and was widely and popularly discussed and politically supported. The 'George 1. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution...