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 From the Trade Paperback edition. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - eowynfaramir - LibraryThingI like that Goldhagen delineates his thesis and methodology clearly in the opening chapters. I have read other reviews here that I believe are negative because they feel that Goldhagen draws with too ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - Magatha - LibraryThingGoldhagen's vilification of other scholars, in both the text and throughout the footnotes, made me question the integrity of his work. I subsequently read some compelling criticism of both the author ... Read full review
Contents
| 5 | |
| 25 | |
The Evolution of Eliminationist Antisemitism | 49 |
Eliminationist Antisemitism The Common Sense | 80 |
THE ELIMINATIONIST PROGRAM AND iNSTITUTIONS | 129 |
The Agents and Machinery of Destruction | 164 |
oRDINARY GERMANS WILLING KiLLERS | 179 |
Police Battalion 101 The Mens Deeds | 203 |
Work and Death | 317 |
The Deadly Way | 327 |
Marching to What End? | 355 |
Explaining the Perpetrators Actions | 375 |
Eliminationist Antisemitism as Genocidal Motivation | 416 |
The Nazi German Revolution | 455 |
Afterword to the Vintage Edition | 463 |
Schematization of the Dominant Beliefs in Germany | 473 |
Police Battalion 101 Assessing the Mens Motives | 239 |
Police Battalions Lives Killings and Motives | 263 |
The Sources and Pattern of Jewish Work | 283 |
Life in the Work Camps | 293 |
Pseudonyms | 484 |
Acknowledgments | 615 |
Photographic credits | 634 |
Other editions - View all
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Daniel Jonah Goldhagen Limited preview - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
actions Aktion Reinhard anti anti-Jewish Auschwitz beliefs Belzec brutal camp system camp's Christian Church cognitive model commander concentration camp cruelty death camps death marches deeds deportation 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 Gestapo ghetto guards Helmbrechts Himmler Hitler Hoffmann Holocaust human ideological initial institutions of killing Jewish Problem Jewish women Józefów kill Jews killers killing operations Kristallnacht labor lives Łomazy Lublin 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 SSPFLublin task testimony tion Trapp treated treatment of Jews University Press Verlag victims workers York ZStL
Bibliographic information
| Title | Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust |
| Author | Daniel Jonah Goldhagen |
| Publisher | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007 |
| ISBN | 0307426238, 9780307426239 |
| Length | 656 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Europe / Germany History / Jewish History / Military / World War II |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |