Language:
German
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft
Angaben zur Quelle:
44,9 (1996) 827-832
Keywords:
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah.
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
Discusses the question of German guilt for the Holocaust in the context of the controversy over Daniel J. Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners" (1996). Acknowledges that before 1933 there was widespread social antisemitism in Germany, and it survived after 1945; in self-justification, postwar Germans denied any affinity between this and the murderous antisemitism of the Nazis. The singular monstrosity of the Holocaust leads historians like Goldhagen to look for an equally singular, demonic cause. But any approach to an explanation entails the interaction of many different causes. One of these is the split between the private and the "occupational role" of the perpetrators, who did not merely follow orders but found "creative" solutions to ideologically-set goals. Suggests that Goldhagen's book was so disturbing to the Germans because it sets before the reader the choice between accepting the singularity of German criminality or the even more frightening belief in a universal tendency to genocide.
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