Goldhagen, Daniel

Goldhagen’s 1996 book Hitler's Willing Executioners was a landmark work on orthodox Holocaust historiography, in that it tried to prove that the German populace in general knew and willingly assisted Hitler in his wanton mass murder of millions of Jews. This theory drew heavy criticism from various quarters, not just revisionists.

Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. New York: Knopf, 1996. x+622 pages. $30.00. This is an evil book, as evil as the well-known incitement to hatred against Germans by Elie Wiesel, who praises this thick volume as “a tremendous contribution to the understanding and …

"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death." George Orwell A professor of history was put on trial for having written a book that calls into question the theory that the Nazis had developed a systematic plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Dariusz Ratajczak, 37, argued that he was …

I. At the end of March, my book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust was published, with several unexpected results. I did not anticipate that a scholarly book would become a best-seller not only in the United States but also in Germany and a half dozen other countries, …

Having recently finished reading Nation on Trial, Norman Finkelstein's acclaimed critique of Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, I was struck by his identification of an important distinction. Finkelstein draws a contrast between what he calls "holocaust scholarship," which he defines as historical and multicausal, and "Holocaust literature," which he …