pambo's Full Review: Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans an...
I was inclined to step gingerly into the fierce debate over this book.
But I can't. Let me say first that I liked it, a lot. It's a little slow going, thousands of words in rather small type, crammed into 461 pages, before another couple of hundred pages of notes. But it's not dry. It's matter of fact. And it's worth your time.
I don't think it reached some of the conclusions some others believe it has. It says throughout just what the book jacket promises--that peculiarities in German society led many Germans of a certain generation to a willingness to accept, and even eagerly participate in, the destruction of their fellow citizens. It does not say, as some claim, that there was some genetic reason for this.
Something has to explain what happened in Germany: while there was an underground movement in the country, it was quite limited compared to other countries, even though the Germans had plenty of opportunities to head off the disaster, even though as a country, Germany had more at stake than any other. Something happened. Why? Goldhagen has made a major effort to figure it out, with a great deal of documentation.
I won't claim to be able to verify the research of a Harvard historian. But something happened. And Goldhagen documents it time after time after time.
One example stands out, not because it was an instance of unique brutality but because it establishes for good what a lie it was for German soldiers to claim they had no way to refuse orders to butcher people.
At one point, a German officer is ordered to kill X number of Polish hostages. The task sickens him but he begins to carry it out. But he is so appalled, as his soldiers report later, that he stops, defying orders. His men later commend him for that. But he doesn't stop the butchery. He stops to go hunt down some Polish Jews and re-commence the slaughter. The men have no comment on this officer's fine qualities when it comes to the Jewish victims. This butchery, evidently, was not sickening. It involved personal choice. It was not condemned.
Lets believe for the moment that the average person didn't know that the Jews were being carted off to certain destruction, that the average person didn't know about the concentration camps, the ovens, the mass murders in the East. How then did the killing machine operate? The Jews didn't march off to the ovens by themselves, throw themselves and their children into ditches to be shot. They didn't invent the poisonous gas, the cattle cars, the disgusting medical experiments. The Germans, ordinary Germans, aided by others, made that happen. Ordinary Germans, in many cases. Why did so many Germans willingly participate? Goldhagen gives us example after example of Germans eager to volunteer for the ugliest duties, while others, but not enough, were able to opt out of murder, without penalty.
Whatever went wrong went wrong with German society. And not too many Germans seemed inclined to do anything about it. Who can explain this? Goldhagen has made a good start.
Subscribe to More Reviews on Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Get the RSS Feed: - Add to My Yahoo!: - Add to Google Homepage:
Subscribe to pambo's Reviews: Get the RSS Feed: - Add to My Yahoo!: - Add to Google Homepage:
Muze: Copyright 1995 - 2008 Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2008 Shopping.com, Inc.