Can anyone help me with this

[Allison Webster]

Hiya,
I have been given an essay question to be answered for revision for my a-levels, please could you help me with it.

"Were Germans 'Hitler's willing executioners'?"

(I do not actually like this question cos it is rather difficult to answer in a short space of time)

allison

[harry palmer]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/goldhagen.html

[Richard Murphy]

The short answer is YES! (That will raise a stink!)

Goldenhagen's book has been given a fairly rough ride (And I too think he pushes the point a bit far.), but his basic surmise; that there is little evidence of Germans refusing to carry out the killings, and certainly none for any being punished for so doing, has not been refuted.

Of course, this does not mean that all Germans were involved, but a great many had a good idea what was going on (Even if only in the most general terms.), but, naturally, denied it after the war.

Good luck with the essay.

PS. If you e-mail or personal message me your address, I'll send you the book.

[Victor´s Justice?]

The bright Daniel Goldhagen also said that Germans must have special "Jew-hating" genetics...what a pearl; anyway, just another part of the "Shame on you" policy on Germans. Every generalization is stupid, and that´s what Daniel Jonah did.

But, as far as politically correct answers go, you can tell the kids a resounding "Yes"; then everyone will be happy for sure.

[Scott Smith]

As much as I despise Goldhagen, another Über-Jew waving the bloody-shirt, I also think that the short answer is YES.

The Germans have for too long been able to hide behind the blanket of SS "criminality" as an alibi-of-a-nation. The Nazis and Hitler did not invent European anti-Semitism. Hitler was merely the most successful in using it politically to accomplish his goals.

However, what is exactly meant by "executions" is troubling to me. There is no doubt that the German people have been beaten with the atrocity-propaganda club endlessly. Yes, the Jews suffered unjustly and horrendously. But so also did the world suffer in a world war of unprecedented magnitude and scope, that killed tens of millions--the fault of which cannot be laid on any one doorstep, IMHO.

In my view, peace can be found not by waving bloody flags but with respect and reconciliation. Goldhagen's work is a necessary historical corrective, but its spirit, I think, is aimed not at reconciliation and respect at all; it merely forms another club with which the younger generation of Germans can beat their elders with from the frozen and severed limbs that form their own ignominious postwar legacy as the losers. It is no wonder that Goldhagen was so hailed in modern Germany and has been so savaged by reviewers elsewhere, including by many Jews such as Finkelstein.

Just my two-cents,
Scott

[BakedAlaskan]

Actually,as an American,I can say that we would have killed even more American Indians than the Germans killed jews if we had the chance(More jews in Europe than Indians in the US).One problem about wars is that whoever wins the war gets to write the history.Whatever happened happened.It's just that many things get swept under the rug while other events get full publicity.Germany used POW's as "slave labor" while Americans used German POWs as slave labor we simply called it"working off their debt to the American people".I wouldn't say all Germans were "willing executioners" or even most.All it takes are a few fanatics in the right spot to make it happen.

Since many soldiers killed themselves because they couldn't stand the killings anymore tells me that not all were willing.They started up the death camps because of this(mostly).The American version of death camps at the time of the move westward,were sending the Indians blankets and supplies laden with small pox and such.Maybe because it was cheaper and maybe there weren't so many"willing executioners".Any time I watch "Dances With Wolves"I often compare the actions of some of the army with the Nazis.I'm sure some of those idiots didn't represent the American psyche at the time.But do remember that propaganda was quite easier to pull off before TV and let alone the internet existed.Telling everyone that there are savages and subhumans in our way of progress is not a German invention.

[Richard Murphy]

Hi Scott, sorry about the blizzard of e-mails!!

Given the much media hyped "rise" of the right (Which is just that- a load of hype-the number of votes won by the likes of Le Pen and co was about the same as in any other election, it was just the fact of voter apathy that inflated the percentage. As for the UK; 3 BNP councillors? So What? There are more than 3,000 councillors in England alone!), I do think it is time Germany was able to look at it's past as just that, it's past. I also believe that the constanting harping back to the "(Insert the country/regime/person of your choice) were just as bad" is futile because, in the end, it makes no difference. Knowing what happened, and understanding WHY it happened is important, but certain persons see it purely as either some sort of Jewish plot to discredit Germany and establish a Jewish state (Even though we know that the British, who administered the region of Palestine, had been working towards this goal since 1917!) or a darstadly Communist plot to cover up their own atrocities (Even though there is substantially less evidence for them than exists to support the basic claims of the Holocaust.) and, because they tend to make the most noise (And quote from the most obscure sources.) their words attract attention out of all proportion to their substance.

My very best regards,

Rich

[Mensch Meyer]

Hiya,
I have been given an essay question to be answered for revision for my a-levels, please could you help me with it.
"Were Germans 'Hitler's willing executioners'?"
(I do not actually like this question cos it is rather difficult to answer in a short space of time)
allison

Before you write your essay, I could recommend that you first read all 4 chapters of this link:

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2000/08/ ... index.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and then in this following link you will find author's comments about Goldhagen, as follows:

"Finkelstein is more than used to taking on the Holocaust establishment. In the mid-Nineties he published a scathing critique of Hitler's Willing Executioners, a book by Daniel Goldhagen, Harvard Professor of Jewish History, which claimed the entire German nation had, through ingrained anti-Semitism, been eager accomplices in the genocide of the Jews."

http://observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,343931,00.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is part of Finkelstein's critique:
"Replete with gross misrepresentations of the secondary literature and internal contradictions, Goldhagen's book is worthless as scholarship. The bulk of what follows documents this claim. In the conclusion I speculate on the broader meaning of the Goldhagen phenomenon."

http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/crazygo ... NKEL1.html

---------------------------------------------------------------

Here are several important critiques of Goldhagen's book. Before writing an essay based on one source (Goldhagen) it is advisable to first check the credibility of this source (Goldhagen.)

Generally among SCHOLARLY historians Goldhagen's book does not merit respectability. Here is one of numerous negative critiques:

"Stern concludes that "Goldhagen’s manipulated, public-relations-orchestrated success tells us more about the culture of the present than the book’s substance tells us about the horrors of the past."

Then: "The counterpoint to Goldhagen’s popular success has been
the unsparingly critical response by historians.

Yehuda Bauer, Professor Emeritus of Holocaust studies at
Hebrew University and director of the Research Institute of
Yad Vashem, wrote: "Goldhagen’s book has been praised by
journalists and public figures, but I have yet to read of
a single historian who has publicly expressed agreement.
Not one, and that is a very rare unanimity. In my university,
this book would never have passed as a Ph.D. dissertation


Dr. Ruth Birn is one of the scholars critical of Goldhagen’s book.
Since 1991, Dr. Birn has been the chief historian of the war-crimes
division of Canada’s Department of Justice. Ironically, Goldhagen
thanks her in his acknowledgements. According to the Boston
Globe, it was Birn, an able archivist, who directed Goldhagen to
the Ludwigsburg materials that are the foundation of his thesis.
Familiar with these same documents, Birn found that Goldhagen’s
book reads like a "bad historical novel."

She concluded that, "using Goldhagen’s methods of handling"
evidence one could easily enough find citations from the Ludwisburg
material to prove the exact opposite of what Goldhagen maintains."

Birn’s critique appeared in the Historical Journal published
by Cambridge University Press.

Rather than accepting the Cambridge journal’s offer of an
opportunity for rebuttal, Goldhagen had his British lawyers send a letter
demanding a halt to further publication, inviting compensation for
"libels" and asking for a statement in "open court."

Professor Norman Finkelstein published his criticism of
Goldhagen’s book in England’s New Left Review. Both
Finkelstein’s parents were survivors of Nazi death camps,
but he claims no special scholarly expertise in this area.
Finkelstein focused on Goldhagen’s use of secondary sources
and on the consistency of his reasoning, concluding that
there is copious misrepresentation of these sources and
gross internal illogic.

Like Fritz Stern, he reflected on this juxtaposition of
glaring scholarly deficiency and enormous popular success.
So the concluding section of Finkelstein’s article offers
a sketch of the intellectual history of Holocaust studies,
and advances a hypothesis that one prominent branch of
these studies is an integral part of the advancement of
Israeli state policies."

--------------------------------------------------------------------
I regret I only saved the text (above) however I no longer have the link.

[Allison Webster]

Thanks for your help, I have got enough information to write my essay now.

Allison

[Roberto]

However, what is exactly meant by "executions" is troubling to me. There is no doubt that the German people have been beaten with the atrocity-propaganda club endlessly. Yes, the Jews suffered unjustly and horrendously. But so also did the world suffer in a world war of unprecedented magnitude and scope, that killed tens of millions--the fault of which cannot be laid on any one doorstep, IMHO.

C’est la guerre, n’est pas, Mr. Smith? As pointed out by master Goebbels in his diary entry of 27.03.1942:

Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.

The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is to carry this measure through, is doing it with considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention. A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophesy which the Fuehrer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime would have the strength for such a global solution of this question. Here, too, the Fuehrer is the undismayed champion of a radical solution necessitated by conditions and therefore inexorable. Fortunately a whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime. We shall have to profit by this.

The ghettoes that will be emptied in the cities of the General Government now will be refilled with Jews thrown out of the Reich. This process is to be repeated from time to time. There is nothing funny in it for the Jews, and the fact that Jewry's representatives in England and America are today organizing and sponsoring the war against Germany must be paid for dearly by its representatives in Europe - and that's only right.

Source of quote:
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/g/goe ... 942-mar-27

Emphasis is mine.

As to the blame for the war going to no one in particular: Can’t your beloved Führer at least be blamed for the unprovoked aggressions against Poland and the Soviet Union, the latter of which opened a theater of war that killed a lot more people than all others put together?

I think, is aimed not at reconciliation and respect at all; it merely forms another club with which the younger generation of Germans can beat their elders with from the frozen and severed limbs that form their own ignominious postwar legacy as the losers.

Why, Mr. Smith, how about providing some sources demonstrating how the “younger generation of Germans” enthusiastically took that despicable Jew Goldhagen’s work as another tool to beat their poor elders with. Preferably not some IHR/Codoh nonsense.

[Scott Smith]

Why, Mr. Smith, how about providing some sources demonstrating how the "younger generation of Germans" enthusiastically took that despicable Jew Goldhagen's work as another tool to beat their poor elders with.

Simple. You make the perfect example, my most-mendacious friend. And obviously you haven't given up trying to put your slogans into my mouth. Now it is "despicable Jew," I see.

[Mensch Meyer]

Roberto wrote: "Why, Mr. Smith, how about providing some sources demonstrating how the “younger generation of Germans” enthusiastically took that despicable Jew Goldhagen’s work as another tool to beat their poor elders with. Preferably not some IHR/Codoh nonsense.

"Roberto" allow me to add some lines to this subject:

Actually Germans accepted "guilt" because the Holocaust happened during the last 4 years of Hitler's 12 years of reign -- and because of a stipulation in their constitution ...

As has been mentioned often, there were many other "Holocausts" in the past, like the Armenians' - or the Ukrainians' - which belong to STALIN's Holocaust, long before Hitler, and which created millions more victims than Hitler's ever did.

History deserves more credibility than Spielberg's docudramas, and someday when he makes another docu-drama about the atrocities suffered by people at the hands of the Soviets, his labors would not be so infantile. I am waiting to see a Spielberg-flick about Operation Keel Haul or about the Baltic peoples in 1944 - or East Germans, and other Germans who were mass deported to Siberian forced-labor-gulags, about German POWs that were abandoned in Stalingrad, and about the Germans who were expelled because of their ethnicity, speak "ethnic cleansing" - of 14 million Germans - (2 millions died in the process,) the largest number of forced expulsion/ migration in all history.

During WWII German cities, hospitals, churches, museums, art treasures, libraries with millions of books and universities were levelled and - years of "bombing of civilian targets," killing of women and children, the German race - German culture - her history were being systematically destroyed. It fits the definition of genocide or a "Holocaust tm*". And then Eisenhower's "Other Losses, " a peace-time international crime! - And no tribunal, no monuments and NO HISTORY - Only "GUILT."

It is understandable that none of these other holocausts became siginifacant, because it was only the Jewish holocaust that turned WAR TIME atrocities into the only lucrative segment of history, when only Germans ended up to produce the money to compensate victims.

In 1952 Germany was turned into the "Money Cow" that was forced to underwrite the newly created State of Israel, the result of WWII. That's the year Konrad Adenauer presented Germany's new democratic constitution to the American Military Occupation Forces for ratification. -- Part of this document, (the Basic Law) was the "Wiedergutmachungsgesetz"/ the Luxemburg Agreement...the condition whereby the US military Occupation Forces ratified Germany's "New Democratic Constitution..."

With the legacy of the concentration camps, the new Germans took on culpability of the past, the task to compensate holocaust victims.

Practically unknown to the world are the huge reparations paid to this day to Israel, to International Jewry and Organizations everywhere throughout the world - by Germany - by now in excess of $120 billion. This includes compensation for all camp victims and in behalf of 12 European countries that were under Hitler's war-time control. These recipients include old Bolsheviks, former German WWII enemies in the former USSR, who after the Fall of the Wall were given the chance to catch up with their Western fellow Jews. In addition to compensations, every holocaust survivor receives a German pension to this day, and their children were given educational indemnities.

During the Iron Curtain period Communist East Germany was forgiven by its Jewish victims, but as soon as unification ocurred, Germany was asked for additional $38 bill. - Bonn however turned this demand for more compensations into loan guarantees instead.

Whether $$$ can amend for Nazi crimes that happend 50 years ago, can only be decided by the victims - but German "restitutions" have been the commitment of the German people since 1952.

Germany is the first and ONLY nation that has made restitutions for past injustices. --

For these reasons, instead of "Eternal Shame," Modern Germans - distinct from all other people in all history - can raise their heads in PRIDE - as no others can!

[Roberto]

Why, Mr. Smith, how about providing some sources demonstrating how the "younger generation of Germans" enthusiastically took that despicable Jew Goldhagen's work as another tool to beat their poor elders with.
Simple. You make the perfect example, my most-mendacious friend.

That would be "verus in uno verus in omnibus", the no less imbecile counterpoint to "falsus in uno falsus in omnibus". But can the Reverend quote a statement of mine that shows me beating not the Nazi regime, but my elders?

And obviously you haven't given up trying to put your slogans into my mouth. Now it is "despicable Jew," I see.

Why, Smith, did you lose your sense of humor? And then, I'm not so far off:

As much as I despise Goldhagen, another Über-Jew waving the bloody-shirt, I also think that the short answer is YES.

Emphasis is mine.

[Roberto]

Germany is the first and ONLY nation that has made restitutions for past injustices. --

For these reasons, instead of "Eternal Shame," Modern Germans - distinct from all other people in all history - can raise their heads in PRIDE - as no others can!

Mensch,

The rest of your post is so-and-so-also-did-this-and-that - irrelevancies (as to the "wartime" nature of German atrocities against Jews and other minorities, read Goebbels' diary entry of 27 March 1942 quoted in my post of Tue May 28, 2002 1:46 pm on this thread) but the above two statements I fully subscribe. The pride you feel is also mine.

One of the things that honor modern Germany and even provide an example for other countries where genocide has occurred is the thoroughness with which Nazi crimes have been investigated and prosecuted by German criminal and judicial authorities since the 1960’s. Although often criticized for sentencing the convicted to prison terms ridiculously low considering what they did, they have provided an extensive documentation about the horrors that occurred during the Third Reich. In chapter 4 of The Gulag Archipelago, which deals with the various “organs” of Lenin’s and Stalin’s terror (“Die blauen Litzen”, in the German translation by Anna Peturnig, the term being a reference to the blue berets worn by the henchmen of the secret services), Alexander Solshenizyn mentions and praises the fact that, until 1966, 86,000 Nazi criminals were convicted in West Germany, while lamenting that, on the other hand, no more than a dozen of Stalin’s killers were ever sentenced by a Soviet court. In Solshenizyn’s opinion:

A country that has condemned an evil eighty six thousand times through its judges (and definitely condemned it in its literature and among its youth) will be purified from that evil year by year, step by step.

This quote is especially meant for those who think that to speak or write about Nazi crimes and to promote and further knowledge about them is to slander the German name and/or to needlessly enhance hatred of Germany's "elders".

[Scott Smith]

Why, Smith, did you lose your sense of humor? And then, I'm not so far off:

As much as I despise Goldhagen, another Über-Jew waving the bloody-shirt, I also think that the short answer is YES.

Emphasis is mine.

Not even close. Goldhagen is not despicable because he is a Jew. However, the practice of "super-Jews" who would speak for all Jews, waving-the-bloody-shirt and wearing Victimology on their sleeves is despicable. I did, however, agree with his oversimplified thesis, the short answer.