UBC #22: Hitler's Willing Executioners

[truepenny]

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. 1996. New York: Vintage Books, 1997

---

This is a very hard book to read, I give you all fair warning. The photographs, in particular, are hard to look at, hard to force oneself to understand. On page 407, that really is a German soldier posing for the photographer as he takes aim at a Jewish woman and her child. On page 224-25, those really are pictures, taken by a German soldier as mementoes, of Jews waiting to be massacred.

I don't understand antisemitism. I should say that, too. The Salem witchcraft trials make more sense to me than do the commonly held German beliefs about Jews Goldhagen describes in this book.

Goldhagen's thesis, reduced to the compass of a nutshell, is that the Nazis did not invent German antisemitism. He argues--and, I think, persuasively--that the Nazis reflected and acted upon beliefs that were quite widely held in Germany and had been for a hundred years or more, and that therefore, it wasn't a matter of the Germans obeying the Nazis (for whatever reason, fear or ingrained obedience or what have you) but--and this he never quite says, but I think it is a logical extension of his argument--the Nazis giving Germans permission, explicitly, repeatedly, and with approbation, to do what they wanted.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Because that's what Goldhagen proves, over and over again: that the Germans involved in the genocidal slaughter of the Jews were involved because they wanted to be involved. They weren't necessarily Nazis; they weren't necessarily in agreement with the Nazis (Goldhagen remarks that the men who plotted to assassinate Hitler were staunch antisemites; some of them participated in the extermination of Soviet Jews). They weren't coerced. They chose to kill Jews by the hundreds of thousands because--somehow--they believed, sincerely, that it was the right thing to do.

That "somehow" reflects a cognitive gap I can't bridge. I believe Goldhagen's evidence that these were beliefs sincerely and passionately held, but I can't put myself imaginatively into the shoes of someone who could believe those things.

Which, mind you, is not necessarily a bad thing, but it made the experience of reading this book rather hallucinatory.

I am not, of course, an expert on twentieth century German history, so when I say that Goldhagen's argument seemed persuasive, well researched, and compelling to me, you may take that for what it's worth. His writing style is pedestrian ranging to clunky, and he sometimes doesn't have the sense to let the atrocities committed by the Germans speak for themselves, indulging--albeit understandably--in rhetoric that is superfluous to the needs of his material. But these are surface flaws that do not detract from the achievement that is the book itself.

Comments

[hundakleptisis.livejournal.com]

I was talking to an elderly German man once (he was in his seventies and I was a young impressionable teen at the time) and this came up in discussion once. Apparently the hatred was also almost like brainwashing in the schools. He told me he remembered the classes vividly and even years after, when he knew antisemitism was wrong, he still had to fight the sense of loathing he felt whenever he saw or met a Jew.

I think that total lack of indiviual thought was the scariest part of it all.

*shivers*

S.J.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Sorry about all those utterlies. Vivid memories make me less articulate than usual.

[hundakleptisis.livejournal.com]

yep, it's easy to instill an extra fear of a race that is already hated.

Sad.

S.J.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oddly, the exact nature of German anti-Semitism is not something I know much about despite a lot of reading on the Holocaust, but wasn't a lot of it the idea that the Jews were out to get the non-Jewish Germans; that they were not merely a lower race (whatever that means) but actively evil and plotting the downfall of everyone else?

If you think people are out to get you, I'm not surprised that you'd want to get them first. I see a lot of this going around right now, actually.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

What German antisemitism boils down to, as I understand it, is that everything bad that ever happened to Germany was the Jews' fault. Everything. And every single Jew on the planet was culpable, with malice aforethought.

Racially, the idea is that the German Volk is the best possible race; all other races (especially Slavs) are inferior, and the Jews are a disease that will infect and destroy the Volk given even the slightest shred of a whisper of opportunity. Jews were constructed, in this ideology, as not even being human--he has this amazing and horrible quote from a perpetrator who was honest in his post-war testimony that says exactly that.

[the-monkey-king.livejournal.com]

This same attitude seems to live on in Wahabbi Arabic culture, though the notion of others as subhumans is also extended to Africans (witness Darfur). The discussion of Jews as responsible for all ills is endemic in the Arab press. It's not just Al-Jazeera, but Al-Arabiya and the Saudi press in general.

But it's too easy to say this is just German culture. It's very human. The same attitude was central to both American slavery and Jim Crow. It's not hard for me to imagine this sort of instititionalized racism, since its traces still haunt America today.

Fortunately, people of good will now rage against racism, and the past few generations in the US and Germany have striven to stamp it out. The pro-torture lobby in the US is one of the few places that I think the argument for others as subhuman still holds sway.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

If anything in what I said implied that I think antisemitism (or any other kind of racism) is somehow uniquely a German failing, then I was not expressing myself properly.

[the-monkey-king.livejournal.com]

I think I read too much into the discussion.

How whole cultures (Germany being a prime example) give rise to and institutionalise racism is clearly still a current topic in cultures everywhere from Africa to our own backyard. Wish it weren't so.

On a bit of a tangent, increasing tourism, Internet friendships, and climbing global emigration all share one virtue; they make the Other more accessible. I'd like to think they offer a bulwark to strengthen understanding and reduce racism going forward, but I fear that xenophobia is strengthened as well.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Alas, the internet also means that you can deliberately filter out all peopel and points of view you dislike.

I'm sure you know how often the sudden arrival of a new subculture into a neighbourhood previously homogenous tends to stir up the worst of reactions.

[earthgoat.livejournal.com]

The ultimate problem of Goldhagen's book is the conclusion. What is going on with this generation or the baby boomer generation in Germany? According to Goldhagen, they are a-okay, no antisemitism to be found or any of the negative qualities that their parents and grandparents possessed. Goldhagen neglects the aftermath and how people reacted. Within literally a few years, the climate of centuries that had bred German antisemitism was destroyed. That is so far unlikely as to be simply unfeasible. Goldhagen appears to look at the German people post-WWII with a pair of rose-tinted glasses.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

True.

But, to be fair:

1. Goldhagen is manifestly going out of his way to make it clear that he does not hold the children of the perpetrators responsible for what the perpetrators did. This may be what elisem describes as an act of faith, as distinct from an act of analysis (http://truepenny.livejournal.com/454276.html?thread=3104644#t3104644), but I prefer it to the alternative.

2. Germany after WWII is equally manifestly outside the scope of his book.

He would possibly have been wiser to keep his mouth shut on the subject of postwar Germany, but I don't see that it affects the strength of the book as a whole.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Except that it seems to be true. Austria is a different matter entirely. See below for my more general comments.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I recall studying theology in college, and meeting a visiting professor who was friends with my advisor. He'd known several prominent European theologians (among them, was a fellow student of Bonhoeffer's), and got out of Europe to the US, I think, just before France fell -- it's been a few years, I can't recall the specifics.

What I do recall is this: at one point, he mentioned waiting in line to buy various household goods, including soap. A small child was in line ahead of him, and asked her mother if it was really true what so-and-so said in the schoolyard, that soap is made from people? Everyone in line got very, very quiet; no one looked anyone else in the eye.

His observation was that it'd be false to say that there were Nazis over there, doing A, B, C, and the rest of the people were downtrodden and/or ignorant. That, in fact, the entire nation of Germany bears the burden because everyone knew: they knew where the Jews were going, they knew where their soap was coming from, and they didn't do a damn thing about it. Those who actively took advantage of the political/judicial permission to act on centuries-old antagonism is one thing, but it's equally evil (and with this, I do agree) to keep one's mouth shut and let it happen.

Although I must admit that seeing the thelemic law quoted in the middle of a discussion about Nazism being institutionally permissive antisemitism does seem... unexpected.

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

This is the final subject of my German Major, Jews in German Culture 1749 - 1924.

During the Enlightenment, the Jewish question was mostly philsophical and religious - which religion is the right one. But the only way into German intellectual life was to assimiliate. Most Jewish leaders didn't like this idea and insisted that Jews speak Hebrew rather than German. Both 'sides' assumed or accepted a distinction between German and Jewish, which was fine, because there was no Germany yet.

Napoleon gave Jews rights, and when the German lands expelled him they recinded the rights, too. During the establishment of Germany, the question focussed on who was German. There was a great fear that the Jews would assimilate, and being inherently immoral and un-Christian, would destroy German society from the inside. That you wouldn't be able to tell who was Jewish.

At the turn of the century, a pseudoscience of race and Social Darwinism took over the intellectual life. The question was then racial, not religious, and there was no hope for Jews even if they converted. Otto Weiniger, who was himself a converted Jew, published a tretise describing how women were inferior to men and Jews inferior even to women. They weren't really human, not the way German men were. Weiniger then killed himself.

It's been since the establishment of Germany as a nation that part of German identity was founded on anti-Semitism. Not to the point of exterminating Jews, but social and legal exclusion was entrenched. Hitler tied the extermination of the Jews to the German recovery from the unjust conditions of the Treaty of Versailles.

[peneli.livejournal.com]

I was less impressed by Goldhagen, who I read in the context of a Nazism seminar in college. I far preferred Christopher Browning's interpretation. (Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and th Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.) I admit that this is probably because it fits into certain of my biases considering the study of history and the nature of humanity, but I would highly suggest reading both and coming to your own conclusions.

PS: The 1998 edition has an afterword in which Browning specifically addresses his problems with Goldhagen's work, and which I found worth reading just for the fact that it was essentially an academic diss.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Honestly? Academia is just one damn diss after another.

(And I mean that pun.)

[fitzcamel.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I also read both books for a course in college, and came to the same basic conclusion about the relative merits of Browning and Goldhagen.

[msss.livejournal.com]

What I find disturbing is that today's news reports are saying that Australian soldiers have also made videos of themselves abusing Iraqis.

How can they be so oblivious to the wrongness of their actions? I mean, the fact that they voluntarily record evidence against themselves suggests that they don't even think they may face prosecution in the future.

Or perhaps they're not thinking at all.

[msss.livejournal.com]

Actually, it appears that they were dressing up as Arabs and stuffing around with guns. Hmm.

[j-luc-pitard.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, I was in Rwanda following the genocide of April 1994. It was August and there was still evidence being preserved of what had gone on. Now the racism there was between two cultures that had been in conflict for many generations, but I don't know exactly how long. I do know that the Hutu and Tutsis had/have some very similar things to say about each other as far as how awful the "other" is and the things they say sound remarkably similar to what you'll find in that book. They are both catholic though, this is clan/racial/cultural.
What stays with me long after that trip (I work in news) was the question I put to myself and others, could this happen here? Clearly we aren't different from the Rwandans as humans. Why did the people participate? Why did some sit by quietly? Why did a few people stand out as heroes? Which one would I be?
The answer to the first question, that which lets me sleep at night is: it was believed to be in the interest of those in power to stoke the flames of hatred and to work hard at dividing the two groups. When the time came to set the match to the tinder, the sparks were ready. Does that exist in America? There are many divisions, but for the people in power (or who want power) to get us up into a lather would take some doing. When WWII was on, there was the internment of the Japanese and there was scattered violence against Germans and those misidentified as German. That's as close as we've gotten, in my opinion. (Today I mean, hundreds of years of slavery counts as a form of genocide.)
That I don't know the answer to the rest of my questions still keeps me up at night. I'd hope to be someone who stands against the lie, stands with those unjustly treated... but would I? If I directly benefited? What if I was in the effected group? Would I kneel in front of the machete or hide in my garden? Do you have any answers?

[the-monkey-king.livejournal.com]

I don't have any answers, but I think that the US torture policy and abandonment of Geneva Article 3 is step toward dehumanizing a group of people. The idea of torturing even our enemies, without a trial or recourse to the law, seems deeply unAmerican to me. But as a nation, we're letting it happen in our name.

It's infuriating.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I agree. More to the point, would you let your partner and children and parents go under a machete for your personal political views? There's all kinds of places where people learn not to ask too many questions, because those who do have bad things happen to them or their families, or folks simply disappear.
The pro-torture folks seem to me to be taking a very long broad-jump toward making our country operate in that same way, which infuriates me for several reasons.
Aside from the protection of corrupt people in power, and whatever your views on social policy and entitlements, from a purly competitive capitolist businss point of view, it's incredibly stupid. Corrupt governments do not serve business as well as those who have clearly enforced rule of law applied more fairly to everyone. I believe twistedchick had links to studies on that topic some months ago, veryinteresting stuff. But she posts a lot of links! More recently, she posted a link today to an ex-FBI agent discussing how torture fails to get the inquisitor what they claim they want, accurate information.
Givent hat we *know* this, I see no more excuse for it than for letting the genocide in Darfur carry on without interference by an effective government.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

The problem with the book is twofold. First, it's not comparative between cultures. Second, it treats Germany as a whole.

Jews were very well assimilated in *some* parts of Germany. They had been there for generations, they spoke German and many of them were fairly secular. Reform Judaism came from Germany and it was structured around a notion of dual nationality and loyalty to the state. Jews held office, and served in the professions. Until the First World War Germany was considered a model of enlightenment and civilisation. However, part of this was a consequence of Bismark's Kulturkampf. This is one of those movements which was good or bad depending on how you thought of yourself and your country. The idea that all should be assimilated as Germans suited the reform Jews. It was anathema to Catholics. So you have a nationwide policy which *encourages* the "evil ones" to assimilate and "represses" your own belief in your purity. Not a good combination. In some ways Nazi-ism was a backlash to this nineteenth century policy.

If you had been going to choose a country for a Holocaust in 1920 it would have been France, where anti-semitism was naked, or one of the Eastern states.

I'm not denying anti-semitism existed but it dominated in the Catholic countries where the strucure of the Easter services unleashed a wave of anti-semitism each year (I have been to one High Anglican Easter service and almost threw up from fear and revulsion and that's the *modified* form).

As for "it was just waiting to get out". This may be true but the same was probably true of most of Europe including the UK. As far as I know, only Denmark resisted Jewish deportation *as a nation*. The Italians were relatively desultory about it and delayed for quite a while.

It's important to remember that the Germans did not vote for Hitler, he was appointed. They went along because people never think it wil get that bad, and before they know it they are part of the system and grateful only that they are surving. It's also worth remembering that the first people the Nazis rounded up were the voices of dissent, the Communist, the Trade Unionists, left wing pastors. It's hard to have courage when you can see what having courage achieves.

Goldhagen's is an interesting book, not because it argues all Germans knew and supported, but because it demonstrates how easily we become supporters and become complicit,

I live in a country which is deporting people to a country *we* are bombing and claiming that they have no right to refugee status. I have done nothing about this. I am, therefore, complicit. Most of the people I am surrounded by are complicit. Many, many people are exhorted by the newspapers to believe that asylum seekers are all "bogus", that they are "scroungers" and that they are "coming to take our jobs" (the fact that they can neither work nor claim benefit is then used to castigate them as beggars).

We are lucky in that it's very hard for a small minority party to take power in this country, but you know? With Thatcher and Blair manipulating our conciences I don't know we need them.

--

Re the post-war period. Germany seems to have gone back to its enlightenment traditions. There were lots of war trials, there was a very real attempt to educate. In contrast almost every other nation figured itself as a victim. When in the 1980s the levels of collaboration in France, Austria and Hungary came out, there was both shock and backlash. And as for Poland! On the basis of the Poles I've met, and their casual, unthinking racism (Jews, Gypsies, anyone darker than them) it will be a long time before I visit Poland.

And one extra thought; there is only one country which has a stake in WWII which I know of which *still* has no teaching at all on the Holocaust in its schools. I think this explains a lot about that country's foreign and domestic policy.

That country is Israel.

The reason for this (according to my cousins) is to avoid producing a generation of victims. I suspect it has had a quite different effect.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I was going to make most of the same points as fjm but all I can say now is that she is absolutely right. I am speaking as someone who is half German, half English, whose parents fought on both sides in WW2, and whose German family included at least one committed Nazi (fortunately deceased); in mitigation, my German granny never, even pre war, used the words "Herr Hitler" without adding "das dumpkopf." On the other hand, her children all fought for Germany, whether they believed in the fascist cause or not, and whether they were anti-Semitic or not. It takes an enormous amount of courage and mental independence, more than most people have, to actually act against the government of your country and all the propaganda being poured out at you plus all you have been taught, to actually risk your life in these circumstances, when you can actually achieve so little - or, to put it another way, save so few.

Can I also confirm, from family conversations, that most people in Germany did know what was happening in the concentration camps, by rumour. Many, I suspect, did not want to believe it. Others did, but were just glad it wasn't them. Others, of course, approved - but in a war atmosphere, the government of the day can get away with almost anything under the "security" label - just look around you.

If you read a lot of 20s and 30s British and American genre literature - and I have - you will know that there was a lot of anti-Semitism about in both countries. We were just plain downright lucky - no, we are not better than anyone else - that we got through the Depression without a fascist leader coming to power in either country. During the war, the existence of the Holocaust appears to have been known to all the Allied leaders, and deliberately supressed. Boatloads of Jewish refugees were turned away.

Of course, if you listen to present day governments, very few people in Poland, Austria, France or the Ukraine supported Hitler. Odd, therefore, that whole Waffen SS regiments were raised in those countries. Not to suggest that it couldn't have happened here... I am, unfortunately, sure that it could have.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Goldhagen oversimplifies. And he does it a lot. Post-WWII Germany, the American South (almost anything he uses as a comparison, really), his model of the psychology involved.

What I found helpful in this book though--and which I still think is helpful--is the demonstration of the continuum between pre-Nazi German antisemitism and Nazi German antisemitism. The demonstration that part of went so horribly wrong in Germany was exactly that the Nazis' completely stark barking madness was an exploitation, an exaggeration (and sometimes not even much of an exaggeration, given what he quotes of 19th century antisemitic literature), of ideas that were present in German culture. The Social Darwinism as much as the antisemitism.

I'm not pretending to be any kind of an expert; I'm saying that this book made me think in ways that I find valuable.

Ramblings of an Austrian girl, living with the past

[(Anonymous)]

I'm 21, I'm an Austrian. When I was about 5 I asked my father: "Daddy, who was Hitler?" He frightened me when he got angry and forbid me to talk about it ever again or even to mention this name. At school I learned all about Hitler and WWII of course. I watched films, I read books, I visited Mauthausen. But despite informing myself with a certain morbid curiosity, I didn't question too closely. How could I? I knew that my grandparents and great-grandparents all participated in WWII. They grew up with Hitlers indoctrination, they believed what he said, they killed for him. When I look at my family tree, my direct line reaching back to the 16th century, I know it was done to prove that we are pure blooded. I also look the part: tall and pale, with long blond hair and blue eyes.
Do I understand how this could happen or why my beloved grandparents believed and participated in such atrocities? Nope, I can't and I don't think they do either. They're too busy forgetting, pretending it didn't happen. When their world and their ideals shattered and they where confronted with the "new" reality, they had to go on somehow.

So, I'm 21 and attend a college. It's nowhere near my specialty, but I do see structures (?) where I find them.
The best way to motivate a people is to make them feel special and to give them an enemy. It unites, gives focus and hightens tolerance for drastic steps no one would accept otherwise. Good/Successful politicians know that, they needn't be German.

Now I'm having fun, so I'll ramble on.
Austrian nationality is made up from Wiener Sängerknaben, Mozart, Lippizaner and good cooking. What sounds like a (bad) joke, holds a kernel of truth. Identification with Austria is almost nonexistant. Flags are frowned upon, the lack of a national identity a virtue. We don't understand the pride that other people take in their country (like the Americans or the French), 'cause for us it will always leave a bad taste in our mouths.
There is one famous exception however, the famous "Schulterschluss" after the "schwarz-blaue Wende" in 2000, when almost every country trounced upon Austria for voting a the populistic party FPOE into government (admittedly it does have roots in the FDP). If it had been possible, the EU would have expelled us, instead the individual countries stopped bilateral contact for several months. The irony is, that this stopped the innernational criticism (which was very strong) almost completely: it was us against everybody. Suddenly being an Austrian, standing up for our government, was a matter of pride. (See, an enemy unites). That the FPOE crumbled under the pressure of ruling, is one irony more.
Since I was in France at that time, I had a slightly different experience. I constantly had to explain myself as if I were personally responsible for the FPOE or as if they wanted to start another WW. It was awful, but I never felt more austrian than then.

This experience is also the reason why I see antiamericanism with a critical eye. Antiamericanism is very popular in Europe these days, even in intellectual circles. At our college it happened more than once that an US student had to justify US policies in front of the whole class - poor guy if he/she was an Republican on top of that. But in Austria especially we see much that fills us with unease. (Even so "simple" things like Schwarzenegger not stopping the executions - it was a scandal. I mean, what did people expect - that guy is more American than most Americans.) Take our past into consideration and you'll understand.

Racism is not a trait unique to Germans and Austrians (even if a big part of the world made us believe that). Looking away isn't either. And I won't take the (emotional) responsibility for what my great- and grandparents did when I wasn't even born. What I will do, however, is to question the reasoning of politicians and the media and I will think twice before I start throwing stones. Oh, and I will try to explain when my child should ask me one day: "Mommy, who was Hitler?"

Monika H.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

There was a book I read a few years ago (I can't remember the title off the top of my head, but I can look it up if you're interested) that talked about the Holocaust in relation to hundreds of years of antisemitism in Europe. So, yes, I'd agree with the argument that the Nazis were tapping into long-held beliefs rather than creating new ones. And I think that they wouldn't have abused the Jews as much if they hadn't known that, by and large, the rest of western civilization would let them.

[dolmena.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, antisemitism was rampant throughout Europe (and the USA) before the rise of the Nazis.