Language:
English
Year of publication:
1999
Titel der Quelle:
Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
1 (1999) 75-93
Keywords:
Haffner, Sebastian.
;
National socialism Philosophy
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Abstract:
In 1940, while in exile in Britain, the German conservative historian Sebastian Haffner (1907-1999) wrote the book "Germany: Jekyll and Hyde", a study of two types of Germans living side-by-side in Nazi Germany. Remarkably, this book contains a refutation of the main thesis of Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners". According to Haffner, "eliminationist antisemitism" was not inherent in German culture; moreover, "Hitler's variety of antisemitism, demanding extermination" was imported to Germany from Austria. Nazism separated the German people into two types; it attracted not "ideological warriors" but sadists, people who were merciless, lacking scruples. It was they who carried out the genocide. Haffner distinguishes this first generation of Nazis from the second generation "for whom Nazism had been offered as their sole spiritual food" and who were not accomplices in the Nazi acts of brutality (up to 1940).
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