Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

[Junkie88]

Brilliant and controversial book. I read it, it's quite long but very interesting.

a short introduction:

This book is a bit of a rant. It is a good rant, an expanded doctoral dissertation by a young professor of political science at Harvard. The book exemplifies how creative writing that is bolstered by 125 pages of footnotes can be put to telling effect. Certainly you are likely to learn a great deal from it that you might not already know, principally about the gruesome tactics of the Holocaust. It also makes short work of some of the academic nonsense on the subject that has become fashionable in recent years, such as the hypothesis that the Jewish communities of Europe were killed by an accidental confluence of local initiative and administrative negligence. It proves to any reasonable judge that the extermination of the Jews was an act of high policy by the German government during the Nazi era. It also shows that the government's public antisemitic measures were not unpopular and that ordinary Germans did not need to be coerced to carry out the Holocaust itself. What the book does not prove is its thesis, which is that "eliminationist antisemitism" was a long-standing peculiarity of German culture to which the Nazi regime simply gave free rein.

[Stalin]

Sounds very interesting, will give this a look.

[Dave]

'Did a quick recce and confirmed the obvious - it divides opinion !
My first thought is that ordinary people are ordinary people whether or not they are German.

[Junkie88]

myes.

But if hitler was the only antisemitic, what about the thousands that helped him with his dream. The germans that tortured the jews? the germans that burned them? they are guilty too, a sane man like you and me would ask some serious questions with such actions. But not the german in that era.
It's a historically grown hate against the jews, a heritage of their struggle for identity. (bismarck and wilhelm II).

[Dave]

Hmmm, anti-semitism and full scale persecution of the Jews dates back to the middle ages and further, across the whole of Europe, not just in Germany.
Also, most Germans that signed up to National Socialism before about the mid 1930's had no idea that their leaders' visions were fueled by racial hatred.
I think there is some painful psychology for us all to accept concerning what happened in Germany.

[Junkie88]

antisemtism was never organised on such grand scale like in WWII
It's grown into the german popular belief. Kids in school learned that jews were evil (before hitler!!). Youth movements like Wandervogel were filled with hatred for the jews.

That's on a different level. not just bashing the jews like in the middle ages. (jews had money, and they were the doctors in town, so when somebody died, the jews were made guilty, that's what i've learnt about it). Never on full scale.

Besides, all those people who betrayed jews and informed the gestapo. All those people are guilty too, because they knew(!) what happened there in auswitz and Treblinka.

[Dave]

"Full scale persecution" yes, hatred as strong as it gets, Europewide, hundreds of years before Nazism.
The massacres of tens of thousands of Jews during the Crusades; the accusations of ritual murder & blood libel; being blamed for spreading the black death by poisoning wells; being kicked completely out of England, France, Germany , Italy, the Balkans, Spain etc etc etc after outrageous trials....

Junkie88:
Besides, all those people who betrayed jews and informed the gestapo. All those people are guilty too, because they knew(!) what happened there in auswitz and Treblinka.

Sure I agree, but then of course there were those interesting ones that did not inform and betray, who were also German.

[Junkie88]

No, persecution came in waves;
when the plague striked, and the jews were found guilty, then they were persecuted. Only the jews in that very city. they were never big.
The amount of jews killed through nazism is bigger than the amount of jews killed by others.

[Dave]

Junkie88: No, persecution came in waves;

Yes Junkie, tidal waves and tsunamis over thousands of years

Junkers88:
The amount of jews killed through nazism is bigger than the amount of jews killed by others.

Yes, but you can predict I will point out that in every country occupied by Nazi Germany there were collaborators who betrayed with a venom equal to their temporary masters. Did not the French police for example help to round up a quarter of a million Jews and send them to certain death at Auschwitz?

Apologies to you anyway, I had missed this from your original post. This conclusion is all I have been concerned with, and the (doomed) thesis is the reason I don't like the look of the book. From your original post:

Junkie88
What the book does not prove is its thesis, which is that "eliminationist antisemitism" was a long-standing peculiarity of German culture to which the Nazi regime simply gave free rein.

[Junkie88]

that introduction was copied, it's not from me.

if you want to kill 6million jews (that's more than whole yorkshire), you need the collaboration of loads of people.

Perhaps you dont know it, but we're stuck in the same discussion hunderds of historics are stuck in: Was Hitler the genuis, and made he everyone believe the jews were the enemy(intentionalism)? Or was Hitler just a little wheel in a big machine of antisemitsm, did he go where the wind was going (functionalism, and that's what i believe)?