Geschichtswissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit: Der Streit um Daniel J. Goldhagen (review)

164 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 bright yellow folding rules, making neat little notes in black leather books, oblivious to the blood-bath." The devil is, indeed, in the details. But as this worthy book reveals, evil is also present in the steady accumulation of effort by people who can reduce the most horrendous achievements to mere technical problems. Wm. Laird Kleine-Ahlbrandt Department of History Purdue University Geschichtswissenschaft und Offentlichkeit: Der Streit urn Daniel J. Goldhagen, edited by Johannes Heil and Rainer Erb. Frankfurt a.m.: Fischer, 1998. 349 pp. DM 26.90. First published in the United States at the beginning of 1996 as Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen's controversial study ofthe Ordnungspolizei appeared in Germany the same year under the title Hitlers willige Vol/strecker, becoming a bestseller and earning its author the Democracy Prize from the Blatter fir deutsche und internationale Politik. Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, and Hebrew translations appeared in rapid succession, fueled by the growing controversy over Goldhagen's contention that the German people as a whole were motivated by an extreme "eliminationist" brand of antisemitism which culminated in the Holocaust. Within the space of two years, Goldhagen's book provoked no less than twenty volumes of criticism. While the majority of historians everywhere (and not just in Germany) attacked Vol/strecker for apparently blaming the Shoah on"ordinary Germans," today's generation of "ordinary Germans" have paradoxically turned out to be the book's biggest defenders. At a time when serious scholars largely dismissed Goldhagen's work with contempt, the German public hailed him as a young knight in search oftruth. Now Johannes Heil and Rainer Erb, staffers at the ZentrumfUr Antisemitismusforschung (TV Berlin), have brought together eighteen scholars from Germany, Israel, and the United States to better understand the dynamics of this paradox. After a briefforeword by Wolfgang Benz and a short introduction by the editors, Raul Hilberg leads offby noting how Goldhagen's monocausal model ofthe Holocaust met the public's need for a simple explanation ofan unbearably complex phenomenon. In a discussion of Vol/strecker's sources, Ruth Bettina Biro and Volker RieB agree that Goldhagen used only part of the available material on the Ordnungspolizei in order to paint them as single-mindedly committed to extermination, a point echoed elsewhere by Christopher Browning. Olaf Blaschke joins the attack by arguing that there were many different ways to "eliminate" the Jews, including assimilation, exclusion, ghettoization, and expulsion, which Goldhagen merely subsumed under the allembracing category of"eliminationist antisemitism." Book Reviews 165 But, as Christof Dipper notes, this simplification was precisely Vollstrecker's charm. Goldhagen replaced detailed analysis with a coherent vision, a provocative thesis, and a talent for vivid description, sure recipes for a best-seller. Bernd-A. Rusinek agrees, noting in his contribution how Goldhagen not only repudiated the subtleties of a functionalist approach, but embraced a "crass" intentionalism emphasizing the will to murder. But even if Vollstreckerrepudiated clinical detachment in favor ofemotional engagement, the book provided a "worthwhile provocation" by challenging the pretensions of scientific history (p. 128). In contrast, Werner Bergmann suggests that the gap between a scientifically oriented historical profession and an emotionally oriented public rendered the whole Goldhagen controversy an "irrational" discourse between two sides which barely understood each other. Significantly, it was the communication theorist and philosopher (but non-historian!) Jiirgen Habermas who sought to enlist both camps under Goldhagen's banner in a speech significantly entitled "The Public Use ofHistory" ( "Ober dem offentlichen Gebrauch der Historie "), given in honor of the young author's democracy prize. As Uffa Jensen notes in her contribution, Habermas saw the public acceptance of Goldhagen's work as a way for the German people to come to terms with their past. Habbo Knoch points out, however, that to bring his readers to a catharsis Goldhagen imp9rted the techniques ofmass media to paint a terrifying picture ofmass murder. This cathartic (and therapeutic) character of Vollstrecker is emphasized by Stephen Aschheim, who notes how Goldhagen granted absolution to the German public by proclaiming antisemitism dead in postwar Germany (p. 189). Indeed, it is precisely by championing Goldhagen's book that ordinary Germans have sought to...