Indicting "the Germans"—Again?: Review Essay

Indicting "The Germans"-Again? INDICTING "THE GERMANS"-AGAIN? Review Essay Robert Koehl University of Wisconsin-Madison 129 Politische Denunziation im NS-Regime oder Die ldeine Macht der "Volksgenosse," by Gisela Diewald-Kerkmann. Bonn: Dietz, 1995. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. New York: Knopf, 1996. Die Gestapo-Mythos und Realitat, edited by Gerhard Paul and KlausMichael Mallmann, with a foreword by Peter Steinbach. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995. Milieus und Widerstand: Eine Verhaltensgeschichte der Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus, by Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann. Vol. III of Widerstand und Verweigerung im Saarland 1935-1945, edited by Hans-Walter Herrmann. Bonn: Dietz, 1995. These seeminglywidely divergent books share a common message that large sections of the German people participated enthusiastically in Nazi persecution, not only ofJews, gypsies, homosexuals, and Communists but of their neighbors and each other. All of the books are systematic and well documented. While this is hardly the whole message of any of the books, it is strongly present in all of them. The purpose of this review will be to relate that message to the other arguments and findings of the authors. Both German and non-German authors have had a field day indicting some or all Germans since the First World War. In fact, many features of the familiar indictment go back to German unification in 1871, and not only from non-Germans. Before unification, German authors also contributed their share of negative characterizations, some of which were easily carried over to post-1871 discourse, such as "Prussianism," subservience to the state, narrow loyalties to confession and dynasty, and lack of any sense of citizenship in a grander political unit. In this postmodern era, of 130 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 course, it is customary to dismiss references to national character as essentialist twaddle, and to aver belief that aU these earlier descriptions of a people, as well as subgroups like Catholics, Jews, Prussians, and homosexuals , are constructions, sometimes conscious, more often mixtures of prejudice, misconceptions, and unconscious projections of rivalry, fear, and ignorance. What are we to make, then, of thousands of pages describing the behavior ofGermans, largely since 1871 (except in the case of Goldhagen), striking in conformity to Obrigkeit (superior authority), disgusting in their willingness to denounce others, remarkably chameleon-like in their adaptation to the Nazi regime, and aU too useful to the instruments of oppression like the Gestapo, the Sicherheitsdienst (SO), the reserve police battalions, the Party, and the SS? With the exception of Milieus und Widerstand, these works do not describe or account for divergence among Germans from the reported norms of collaboration and meanness. There is a tendency to pile up anecdotes and telling contemporary remarks in such a way that German behavior toward the oppressed-and even toward persons of social standing and wealth-seems-uniformly--vicious- and -hateful:-While . Goldhagen reserves his indictment exclusively for an alleged "universal" antisemitism among Germans, the traits he summarizes fit well into the picture drawn by Diewald-Kerkmann, Gerhard PaullKlaus-Michael Mallmann, and contributors to the symposium on the Gestapo. In the following analysis, besides reporting on specifics from each work, I hope to shed light on the issues entailed in wholesale indictment of a generation or indeed of a nation. Certainly all the books deserve careful reading and thoughtful consideration. If it were not for this striking common indictment of Germans, it might seem strange to combine these four books in a review essay. Hitler's Willing Executioners, the only book by an American-there is one American and one Canadian author in the compendium on the Gestapo-is the most explicit indictment of nearly all Germans for the Holocaust, whereas the works written or edited by Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann make their charges largely by indirection. On the other hand, Gisela Diewald-Kerkmann is very direct in establishing the endemic character ofdenunciation ofGermans-by Germans during the Nazi regime. Denunciation of Jews, while hardly incidental, was not even the predominant phenomenon. The books differ among themselves in other dimensions as well. Politiscbe Denunziation im NS-Regime is the shortest work, a doctoral dissertation of 1994 at Bielefeld. The other...