Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the HolocaustThis groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. "Hitler's Willing Executioner's is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer |
Contents
Reconceiving Central Aspects of the Holocaust | 3 |
Recasting the View of Antisemitism A Framework | 27 |
The Evolution of Eliminationist Antisemitism | 49 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Daniel Jonah Goldhagen Limited preview - 1997 |
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Daniel Jonah Goldhagen Limited preview - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
actions Aktion Reinhard anti anti-Jewish AR-Z Auschwitz beliefs Białystok brutal camp system camp's Christian Church cognitive model commander concentration camp cruelty death camps death marches deeds discussion Dörr economic Einsatzgruppen Einsatzkommandos eliminationist antisemitism eliminationist program European Jewry evidence executioners existence expression extermination Final Solution genocidal genocidal killing genocidal slaughter German antisemitism German society Germany's Gestapo ghetto guards Helmbrechts Himmler Hitler Hoffmann Holocaust human ideological initial institutions of killing Jewish Problem Jewish women Jews Józefów Juden kill Jews killers killing operations Kristallnacht labor lives Łomazy Majdanek mass slaughter moral murder Nazi Germany Nazi period Nazism non-Jews Order Police ordinary Germans Party perpetrators persecution Poland Police Battalion 101 political prisoners produced racial racial antisemitism regime Reich semitism shooting shot Sobibór socially dead Soviet Union SSPF Lublin testimony tion Trapp treated University Press Verlag victims workers York ZStL