NP Willing Executioners?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

> jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
>
>> Otto, would you care to explain what you believe Goldhagen's argument 
>> to be, or what you think the wrong conclusion is?
>>
>> As I understand it, Goldhagen's thesis is that "ordinary" Germans 
>> supported, and in many instances were active and willing accomplices 
>> in, the persecution and murder of Jews in Nazi Germany.
>

On 23/09/2005 Otto wrote:

> Would this implicitness justify a whole book?
>
> Goldhagen says that "during the nazi-era there were people living in 
> Germany ruled/influenced by ideas which let many of them become 
> willing and unconsidered <se?lp=ende&p=/Mn4k.&search=unconsidered> 
> mass murderers and torturers".*(533)*
>
> I cannot recall the right numbers but I think I remember having read 
> somewhere in the book that it weren't as many as one would expect, 
> but, on the other hand, it could have been, let's say, one million 
> totally different Germans under the same regime and the "effect" (the 
> Holocaust) would have been the same. I think this is the most 
> "thrilling" part of his findings, which at the same time has been 
> widely misunderstood and misinterpreted, especially in Germany. It 
> doesn't mean that the majority knew that the Jews were killed in the 
> death camps in the east, but it means that another, totally 
> coincidental chosen group of other Germans would have done the same at 
> Auschwitz and elsewhere if being ordered to do so. This is true in my 
> opinion.

It isn't a numbers game at all. Goldhagen is saying is that, had they 
known about it, "ordinary" Germans of the time, and he means all of 
them, would have applauded and assisted in the persecution and murder 
of the Jews, just the same as those who were carrying out the killings. 
His overarching thesis is that anti-Semitism was a "cognitive map" 
shared by all Germans at the time. He's proffering a racial 
explanation, offering a simple and simplistic cause and effect 
hypothesis: the Shoah happened because *all* Germans were racially and 
culturally predisposed to exterminationist anti-Semitism.

It's not correct.

best