A Moral Reckoning?

T H E J E W I S H QUA R T E R LY RE V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Spring 2004) 386–391 A Moral Reckoning? C A R O L R I T T N E R , RS M WHEN DANIEL JONAH GOLDHAGEN’S FIRST BOOK, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, appeared in 1996, a firestorm erupted. Why? Because, according to Goldhagen, a relatively young scholar at the time, Germans who carried out Hitler’s ‘‘final solution of the Jewish question’’ were not hand-picked sadists or criminals in the service of a vile and evil ideology, but ordinary Germans going about their ‘‘work’’—willingly. It was not a new idea. Christopher R. Browning had said as much in his highly acclaimed book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland,1 published four years previously . What Goldhagen contributed to the discussion about Germans during the Nazi Third Reich was the concept of ‘‘eliminationist antisemitism ,’’ which meant ‘‘that in Germany during the Nazi period an almost universally held conceptualization of the Jews existed which constituted what can be called an ‘eliminationist’ ideology, namely the belief that Jewish influence, by nature destructive, must be eliminated irrevocably from society.’’2 Germans not only disliked Jews—itself nothing new in ‘‘Christian’’ Europe—but, in fact, they despised Jews, considered them subhuman and evil, worthy of extermination. Goldhagen argued that when Hitler and his rabidly anti-Semitic German Nazi party came to power in January 1933, bent upon turning antiSemitic fantasy into state organized slaughter, ordinary Germans embraced their views. Far from being threatened or coerced, ordinary Germans enthusiastically participated in the Nazi program against the Jews, carrying out all the tasks that needed to be done to rid Germany of Jews and all things Jewish. During the years of the Nazi Third Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust (1933–45), ordinary Germans knew exactly 1. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992). 2. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996), 48. The Jewish Quarterly Review (Spring 2004) Copyright 䉷 2004 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. A MORAL RECKONING?—RITTNER 387 what they were doing: irrevocably eliminating Jews from Germany and from German-occupied Europe. Thanks to nineteen hundred years of Christian contempt for Jews and Judaism, ordinary Germans did not suffer ‘‘pangs of conscience.’’ They believed they were doing something good for Germany and for the German people, indeed, for the whole world. Theologically inspired Jew-hatred had strong roots in the New Testament, and, over the centuries, Roman Catholics, from the popes down through the ranks of bishops, priests, monks, and nuns to the simple Catholic faithful, were nurtured on a widespread, consistent, and systematic hatred of the Jews and Judaism. It all helped to prepare the seedbed for Nazi anti-Semitism. 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. Everybody got in on the discussion: survivors and scholars, journalists and talk-show hosts, Jews and non-Jews. According to Yehuda Bauer, no book on the Holocaust caused the kind of public controversy that Hitler’s Willing Executioners did. The less the commentator knew about the subject matter, and the more s/he was emotionally involved, the greater the enthusiasm for Goldhagen and his notion of ‘‘eliminationist antisemitism.’’3 In his new book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair,4 Goldhagen turns his attention to the Roman Catholic Church, ‘‘the most powerful institution remaining intact and independent in German-occupied and -dominated Europe’’ (p. 12). He focuses on the Church because he believes that despite the many books written about this period, ‘‘the Church has escaped full scrutiny’’ (p. 12). What Hitler’s Willing Executioners attempted by way of explaining the contours and causes of the Holocaust, A Moral Reckoning does for...