NP Willing Executioners?

[Otto]

jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> 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
>
Sorry, I cannot recall having read in the book 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."

If he indeed says so of course he's wrong because this would be 
nonsense. Nobody would be able to prove such an assertion. But I 
remember having read in the book that Hitler and the Nazis "activated" 
the widespread latent anti-Semitism in the German population (which is 
still there btw, but more in the form of a general ethnophobia) for 
their purposes, and this isn't wrong historically.

It's an interesting book, it sparked lively discussions when it first 
came out, especially among those who hadn't read it.

I've found more parts and statements in it to agree to than to disagree. 
Goldhagen's conclusion that a different group of Germans would have done 
the same under the same circumstances doesn't mean that *all* Germans, 
as you've put it, "had they known about it, would have applauded and 
assisted in the persecution and murder of the Jews, just the same as 
those who were carrying out the killings." I don't think that he says so 
and indeed it wouldn't be correct.

Otto


	

	
		
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