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.
By Charles E. Weber ∙ March 1, 1996
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 teaching of the Holocaust.” Author…
By Bradley R. Smith ∙ May 1, 1996
The latest Holocaust fad of the month is Harvard Professor Daniel J. Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. The book was published last month by Alfred A. Knopf (at about the same time David Irving's Goebbels was canceled by St. Martin's) to a torrent of media hosannas unmatched since the apotheosis…
By Richard A. Widmann ∙ December 1, 1998
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 defines as ahistorical and monocausal….
By CODOH ∙ November 16, 1998
“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 innocent. He claims that his book…
By Daniel Jonah Goldhagen ∙ December 23, 1996
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, or that it would produce…
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