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History Forum / General / General Topics / March 2006Goldhagen's Radical Version of Holocaust Takes Few Prisoners
This book is now several years old though as bothersome as ever. His ugly thesis is that the Jews were willingly done-in by the average folks. My opinion: I hope it's not true. I can't stand to borrow/read it. Everybody has a subjective opinion, while some deny the Holocaust happened, which I generally take as a conscious/willing role of their propagating of the overall NAZI propaganda/denial line. Norman Finklestein I tentatively take as an anti-zionist leftist very pissed about use of the Holocaust (his parents were murdered) as justification for modern Israel; but, helle, I don't really know. I recall via C-SPAN a large seminar of bashing/criticizing of Goldhagen by some noted Israeli Holocaust scholars. www.amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679772685/qid=1142553293/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2 _1/002-2682287-2387249?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 >From Publishers Weekly Goldhagen's gripping and shocking landmark study transforms our understanding of the Holocaust. Refuting the widespread notion that those who carried out the genocide of Jews were primarily SS men or Nazi party members, he demonstrates that the perpetrators?those who staffed and oversaw the concentration camps, slave labor camps, genocidal army units, police battalions, ghettos, death marches?were, for the most part, ordinary German men and women: merchants, civil servants, academics, farmers, students, managers, skilled and unskilled workers. Rejecting the conventional view that the killers were slavishly carrying out orders under coercion, Goldhagen, assistant professor of government at Harvard, uses hitherto untapped primary sources, including the testimonies of the perpetrators themselves, to show that they killed Jews willingly, approvingly, even zealously. Hitler's genocidal program of a "Final Solution" found ready accomplices in these ordinary Germans who, as Goldhagen persuasively argues, had absorbed a virulent, "eliminationist" anti-Semitism, prevalent as far back as the 18th century, which demonized the Jews and called for their expulsion or physical annihilation. Furthermore, his research reveals that a large proportion of the killers were told by their commanders that they could disobey orders to kill, without fear of retribution?yet they slaughtered Jews anyway. By his careful estimate, hundreds of thousands of Germans were directly involved in the mass murder, and millions more knew of the ongoing genocide. Among the 30 photographs are snapshots taken by the murderers of themselves and their victims. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Just about everyone will agree the entire German people went insane during the nazi years, not just some bad apple government officials. You don't need to be a Montesquieu or a Jefferson or a DeTocqueville to doubt that an assassination of Hitler or any number of other nazi figures would have changed events much. That's how so many Nobel Laureates knew removing Saddam and expecting utopia to break out in Iraq was pure fantasy. To bring about real change requires introducing good ideas more than removing bad individuals. Someone will probably tip off UC Berkeley how Robert Reich managed to lose tenure at Harvard. But it won't be me. Bret Cahill > Someone will probably tip off UC Berkeley how Robert Reich managed to > lose tenure at Harvard. Huh?  SignatureLife exists. Get over it. So many censors, so little time. Bret Cahill DeTocqueville cites Lafayette that lazy/incompetent leaders attribute events/developments to general laws and the individual does not and can not make any difference. DeTocqueville then says that the same could be said about a lot of lazy incompetent historians. Individuals do matter, at least to some extent. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking it to be all one way or all the other which is partly why Goldhagen provoked a controversy. I know it sounds like a Justice O'Conner least squares regression fit opinion but DeTocqueville said the truth was somewhere in between both camps with it creeping more and more in the general causes [Goldhagen] direction and away from the important individual direction. A king can ruin his country a lot easier than a politician can. (W. Bush is the exception that proves the rule.) Applying DeTocqueville/Lafayette as best I can to three examples: 1. An assassination of Hitler in 1936 would not have changed much. If you dropped Jefferson, Madison and Montesquieu down into 1930s Germany to straighten it out Jefferson would have said, "hey, give me something to work with. These people are ALREADY dead as far as I'm concerned. Maybe we can save the scientists. What? They already left? OK, then there's nothing I can do. I'm outta here too." Hitler wasn't a significant individual. He didn't really make any difference. Excessive focus on Hitler is a mistake. 2. The assassination of Rabin set Israel back 20 years but didn't change all that much for the really long term. Rabin was a significant individual. His assassination made a difference. He needs a biographer. 3. A coup or an assassination of Saddam for regime change wouldn't have changed much. The next dictator would have been just as brutal, anti-Israel, etc. The occupation of Iraq wouldn't/didn't do any good either. In fact, it has already condemned hundreds of thousands of still walking Iraqis to death in the inevitable civil war. If the U. S. released Saddam from prison and told everyone Saddam wasn't that bad after all and that Saddam is now back in power, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would still die in the civil war. No matter what the U. S. does now Saddam is now permantly out of power and would never be able to restore order under any circumstances, even if he was allowed to gas half the population of Iraq to death. Saddam wasn't a significant individual. His removal was meaningless as far as real change is concerned. Two or 3 years ago Dan Schorr chided the "cynical French" for supposedly believing "the more things change the more they stay the same." Schorr is correct if he believes it is cynical to believe the individual can never make any difference, but it is merely political common sense to understand that just eliminating a bad guy doesn't bring about real change. Bret Cahill The best you can do is try to disrupt synchronization in human societies. Get any monkey wrench you can find and throw it into the gears of the goose steppers. Bret Cahill > The best you can do is try to disrupt synchronization in human > societies. Get any monkey wrench you can find and throw it into the > gears of the goose steppers. > > Bret Cahill One might argue conversely that it was the disruption of the depression which got the "goose steppers" going in the first place. <> The best you can do is try to disrupt synchronization in human <> societies. Get any monkey wrench you can find and throw it into the <> gears of the goose steppers. < One might argue conversely that it was the disruption of < the depression which got the "goose steppers" going in the < first place. The depression was caused by synchronization too; everyone believed there was a genuine job shortage. When FDR said, "there's nothing to fear but fear itself" he was breaking up synchronization. Bret Cahill > <> The best you can do is try to disrupt synchronization in human > <> societies. Get any monkey wrench you can find and throw it into the [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > > Bret Cahill What is this "synchonization" you are talking about? If you place two identical pendulums next to each other and swing them out of phase, after awhile they will become synchronized in phase. This happens in humans as well. For example, all the women living in a dorm will eventually have their periods at the same time. It shouldn't be too surprising if there is an intellectual equivalent as well, assuming you want to call it "intellectual." One easy obvious way to avoid synchronization is to live far from other people "up in the mountain air" as Nietzsche put it. He clearly saw the "herd instinct" and its dangers in crowded N. Europe. Bret Cahill "Flee! There are still places for solitary men and solitary couples." -- Nietzsche > If you place two identical pendulums next to each other and swing them > out of phase, after awhile they will become synchronized in phase. [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > > -- Nietzsche Perhaps there are benefits to "synchronization". Is desynchonization a form of "synchonization"? Perhaps it benefits the solitary to the detriment of the "herd". Perhaps desynchonization is simply the prejudice of a few at the expense of the many. Who says everyone must be desynchonized? < Perhaps there are benefits to "synchronization". Music is the most obvious. Bret Cahill |
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