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Unwilling Germans: The Goldhagen Debate

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The subtitle of this collection of articles is misleading. It's not a representation of the Goldhagen debate in Germany, but a thinly disguised apologia of Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". First, a number of critical reviews of Goldhagen's work that have appeared in other German newspapers than the weekly DIE ZEIT are ignored or have been deliberately omitted. For example, the historian Hannes Heer wrote a piece for the daily 'die taz' titled "The Great Tautology" that pretty much trashed Goldhagen's book. Second, and more disturbing, several well-argued and balanced appraisals of "Hitler's Willing Executioners", that appeared in scholarly journals in time for a possible inclusion in this volume, are conspicuously absent. The reviews by Juergen Matthaeus in "Zeitschrift fuer Geschichte", Reinhard Ruerup in "Neue Politische Literatur", and Dieter Pohl in "Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte" give Goldhagen credit where credit is due, but they also reveal repeated inconsistencies, undocumented assertions, and a selective reading of the primary sources and secondary literature. In all, this edition is a disappointment. For an overview of the Goldhagen debate it relies too heavily on statements by non-specialists and brief articles from a narrow range of newspapers.

This book collects some thirty essays and other materials on Daniel Goldhagen's controversial 1996 book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." Not every piece the reader might want to find is included here, but more than enough is presented to familiarize the reader with the chief objections to Goldhagen's theses raised by scholars and journalists, as well as the lines of defense offered by his supporters and Goldhagen himself. Although inherently somewhat repetitive, this book would prove rewarding to anyone interested enough in this arcane realm of Holocaust studies to be reading this review.

This was a very well organized collection of essays on Daniel Goldhagen's controversial book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". Goldhagen's main thesis is that the Jewish Holocaust was not a secret project of the Nazi elite, but was perpetrated by hundreds of thousands of ordinary Germans motivated by murderous Anti-Semitism. Though it sounds obvious that Anti-Semitism would be the prime mover in this horror, a body of scholarship holds that either 1) coercion within the totalitarian state, or 2) careerist ambitions in competing and poorly defined bureaucracies (the "structuralist" thesis) are mainly responsible. Articles are reprinted in chronological order, tracing the arc of the debate from near-universal condemnation of the thesis in Germany, to a grudging acknowledgment of its importance in light of the book's hugely enthusiastic popular reception.

Though dry and necessarily somewhat redundant, this collection offers a good introduction to various Holocaust theories, along with revealing insights into the psychic burdens and vulnerabilities of modern Germans.

I thought it was an extremely well written and researched debate. I liked Robert's perspective in the introduction the best. I've made the book a required reading for my class. Bravo on the unique perspective of one of the most controversail periods in World History.

Extremely thought provoking and eloquent. Capturing the spirit of the germans during a rough time.

Waste of paper. Same old GERMAN denials. (Anyone familiar with the same kind of lies the SWISS have been caught at lately?) No one knew anything. They were forced. No one could oppose the STATE. GOLDHAGEN's book, together with the latest 'touring' exhibit of photo's of ordinary GERMANs doing the rounding up, killing etc show more truth that this book ever could. This generation of GERMANS are seeing the reality of situation.

25% of the SS were ROMAN CATHOLICS. Who forced them to become SS murderers? Did they suddenly lose EVERY choice?