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UBC #22: Hitler's Willing Executioners
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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.