Reviewed by Nermin AYDEMIR

The Holocaust has been accepted as one of the most, to many the most, disastrous happening(s) in the history of humankind. As it is known, for about 6 millions of Jews were killed under the rule of the third Reich in the mid 1900’s. Goldhagen’s book of Hitler’s willing Executioners is one of the most thorough studies in this field. However, his way of handling the issue has been perceived as controversial to many and his work has led to serious academic debates. 

The author gives a controversial answer to the question of why such disastrous killings took place. According to the author; it was not Hitler, his Nazi regime, SS Commandos, or something else but the anti-Jewish attitude among the entire German population which led the mass killings during those years. Goldhagen labels the entire German nation as perpetrators of the mass murder. The author asserts that not the Nazi party nor the officials but the “ordinary” Germans voluntarily and willingly killed Jews within and outside the country. The Nazi regime only provided necessary conditions for such a mass murder according to the author’s point of view. Goldhagen mentions several times that anti-Semitist tendencies existed for a long time within the German society and the German people reflected this when the necessary conditions were met. The role of the severe economic conditions is represented as having only a slight impact on all these happenings. Germans first excluded and then eliminated Jewish when the “right time” came according to Hitler’s Willing Executioners.         

Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a detailed historical study which is based on documentary analysis. Putting all these documents makes the book one of the most profound studies on the Holocaust issue. However, this is also a significant weakness since he gives too many details and says the same thing over and over. On the other side, the one-sided attitude raises to such high levels that even leads to questions of whether this is an academic study or not. Goldhagen acts much like a lawyer than being a scholar. His blind attitude considerably undermines the academic quality of his work. The author persistently explains how the Holocaust happened in a highly tragic manner.  He puts so much emphasis on how a great tragedy the Holocaust was that, there is almost no place left for explaining the reasons behind.

Goldhagen persistently underlines the anti-Semitist motives of the German identity. However, he does not point out the factors leading this. His assumption is that the Holocaust happened because Germans were anti-Semitist. But does not explain what make them so. Being anti-Jewish is the independent variable in his thesis but his dependent variables are quite inadequate. Explanatory variables are also really vague and sometimes highly superficial one may have still have questions about why the Holocaust happened after reading his entire book. The author ignores many other serious aspects, which prepared such a brutal case. Goldhagen rarely mentions, or sometimes does not indicate at all, the impacts of social, economic, psychological, and political conditions before and during the Holocaust.

His passionate explanations hinder his academic quality in many aspects. First of all, accusing an entire population for such a mass murder is unacceptable. His blind generalization undermines the persuasive capability of his thesis from the beginning. Labelling an entire population as murders is really controversial. There should have been many fractions within the German identity. For instance, not the entire, but only about 25% of the German population had voted for the Nazi party in the 1939 elections. Goldhagen ignores the economic hardship to a great extent and totally denies the impacts of the coercive means of a totalitarian state, socio-psychological pressure, and invariable psychological propensities. Generalizations are unbelievable. Goldhagen stereotypes Germans as evils and Jews as victims on the other side. Furthermore, Goldhagen also contradicts with himself in his footnotes. He claims that Germans have changed after the Holocaust and now became a democratic society. Is it possible to for such a big change to occur in 50 years time? The author asserts that “ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany, and had been for decades, induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenceless Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and without pity" (page 6). He does not answer why such a sense of hatred can be kept silent for decades. On the other hand, anti-Semitism did not only take place in Germany in the 20^th century. There were also outbursts of anti- Jewish movements in France and Russia as well.

Besides these, it was not only the Jews, who were killed by what Goldhagen calls “Ordinary German”. Due to his blind perception of the Holocaust as a crime committed by "ordinary" Germans against Jews, he is not especially interested in what Germans did to each other. At any rate, his thesis does not permit him to recognize the existence of any substantial opposition to Hitler among Germans. In addition to 6 million Jewish people; 200-800 thousand Romans & Sintis, and 2 thousand Jehovah Witnesses were killed. There were also German victims in the bloodiest event of the human history. Besides the 200-300 thousand of disabled, 10-25 thousands of homosexuals were murdered as well as the foreign victims.[1] Goldhagen mentions that not only the direct murderers but also people who took indirect roles; such as arranging papers, transmitting Jews should be accepted as the murders. Nevertheless, the author ignores that many European countries sent thousands of Jews to death camps. Furthermore, there were active participants among Lithuanians, Latvians, Poles, and Ukrainians participated in the Holocaust.[2] Goldhagen also does not compare the Holocaust with other mass killings in the human history. Massacres are not only done by Germans, but also by other nations as well. Even if the scope is different, things happened in Bosnia or Rwanda is not less tragic than the Holocaust.

Another methodological problem about generalization is that the Battalion of 101 is taken as the representative of what Goldhagen calls “ordinary” Germans. However, 25 % of the officials in this battalion were members of the Nazi party and all of them were low educated, semi-skilled, marginally employed middle aged men who had been grown under the totalitarian doctrine.

To sum up, Goldhagen’s work is poorly relevant to the general debate in scientific aspect. His single-minded attitude decreases the quality of his work considerably. It seems that Goldhagen had found his conclusions in advance before making the research. The author Goldhagen persistently shows how a tremendous tragedy was the Holocaust, how brutal the Germans acted but rarely deals with explaining why Germans did it.