Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

Goldhagen asserted that this special mentality grew out of medieval attitudes from a religious basis, but was eventually secularized. Goldhagen argued that this 'eliminationist antisemitism' was the cornerstone of German national identity, and that this type of antisemitism was unique to Germany and because of it, ordinary German conscripts killed Jews willingly. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996) is a book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen that argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were as the title indicates 'willing executioners' in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent ' eliminationist antisemitism' in the German political culture, which had developed in the preceding centuries. Nevertheless, we commend Goldhagen for developing a methodologically explicit causal analysis of the Holocaust and encourage others to follow this example.Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaustįile:Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen (cover).jpg We suggest that key parts of Goldhagen's argument cannot be falsified by empirical evidence and thus should be regarded much more cautiously and tentatively than Goldhagen's firm conclusions suggest. In this article, we seek to move the debate in a more fruitful direction by clarifying Goldhagen's actual argument, and then critiquing this argument, not the simplified one presented in much of the literature.

Unfortunately, much of the debate over the book has been focused on a simplistic interpretation of Goldhagen's argument. Nevertheless, we commend Goldhagen for developing a methodologically explicit causal analysis of the Holocaust and encourage others to follow this example.ĪB - Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners has sparked an outpouring of controversy in the international and scholarly press. N2 - Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners has sparked an outpouring of controversy in the international and scholarly press. T2 - A clarification and methodological critique T1 - Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners

Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen