(no subject)
Very tired and busy this week, so not much to say. There was a very interesting article in today (Sunday's) Times about 'Hallelujah' by Leonard Cohen and its rendition by various people including Gainsbourg and Buckley.
Rather less impressive was the article from well-known popular (and crap) historian Daniel Goldhagen. Admittedly it was probably largely to market his new book on the role of the catholic church in the holocaust, but bear in mind the very significant criticism his writings and research methods have recieved from other historians of far greater standing. His most famous work, 'Hitler's Willing Executioners,' worked on a theory that there was some sort of latent anti-semitism inherent in the German people as the perpetrators of the Holocaust. I won't go into it in any great detail, save to say that the man writes a complete load of tosh based on poor and selective research - he is a politician for his own cause more than a historian. I would advise the below articles for reviews of his work
R Birn, ‘Revising the Holocaust’ Historical Journal, Vol. 40 (1997)
G Yahoda, ‘Ordinary Germans before Hitler’: a critique of the Goldhagen thesis’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 29 (1998)
For a review of HWE go here
For his new book, try here
I wrote
From any study of the Nazi regime, it is clear that Hitler was at the centre of it. He gave it its intense and radical nature which characterised it, pushing for a society purified of non-Teutonic elements and an economy controlled for the expansion of the German nation. However, with the publication of Hitler’s Willing Executioners by David Goldhagen, a major rift came in scholarship surrounding the holocaust. In it, he argued, firstly that the perpetrators of the ‘crimes’ against Jews were ordinary Germans, countering the previous categorization of them as ‘Nazi’ and SS. Further to this he argued that anti-Semitism was inherent in the nature of the German people, following its strength during medieval times, and this developed into an ideology which called for the elimination of the Jewish race in Germany. For this to occur, he asserts that the leadership, more specifically Hitler had to assent to it; the leadership had to control the Jews; and they then had to undertake the elimination, and devote the sufficient financial human and financial resources. He suggests several explanations for why people worked in the extermination of the Jews, ranging from forceful coercion, to obedience to bureaucratic myopia. However, for Goldhagen none of these is sufficient to explain the motivating force of Nazi ideology and as a result cannot answer the question of why the perpetrators committed such crimes against humanity. In fact, these people were motivated by a kind of anti-Semitism that led them to the conclusion that the Jews ought to die. Although not the sole one, this part of their nature was the central cause of what enabled them to justify their actions. Aside from this debate, and significantly for the question at hand, Goldhagen does also argue the consistency of the Nazis in carrying out policy, and puts Hitler at the forefront of any debate regarding Jewish policy, stating him to be the “prime mover of the persecution that culminated in genocide.” He argues that Hitler never deviated from his eliminationist precepts which had already become clear earl during his career as a public speaker, and that these precepts and their constancy provided the essential framework for Nazi policy towards the Jews.
Unsurprisingly, Goldhagen has been the subject of much criticism, despite receiving widespread public acclaim during the years following the publication of his book. Ruth Birn, despite being cited in the work has provided the most virulent of these, damning the way in which he has used minimal evidence essentially to back up his pre-existing viewpoints. She notes the lack of comparison to a non-German society to explain this apparent anti-Semitic nature, and the fact that Goldhagen glosses over the widespread participation of eastern Europeans in the genocide, such as that perpetrated by the Ukrainian Arajs Kommando. Where he does briefly touch on this, Goldhagen states that their actions where the result of pressure from their German rulers, seemingly ignoring the comparatively violent nature of the crimes committed. Further criticism has come from Gustav Jahoda, who says that Goldhagen’s assertions actually serve to diminish Hitler’s role in the holocaust, implying that he was only really a spark to natural and latent anti-Semitism, masking the question of his consistency surrounding this issue thereby less important. He concludes that this cultural acceptance of genocide is not supported by the evidence of the Third Reich, though the Nazis were able to exploit, in their early years, intense antagonism towards capitalists and redirect it into a distorted view of ‘Jewry.’ Goldhagen’s assertions, if looked at objectively, do seem to verge on the ridiculous in their simplest form, but the very fact of their existence does point towards the fact that it was not simply Hitler’s own personal anti-Semitism which led to the Holocaust. in my second year at Oxford as part of an essay on the driving forces behind Nazism
Is there any point in reading him? To be honest I think only if you have nothing else at all to read. There is certainly little value in his works historically - the man makes grevious mistakes of fact! What I find difficult to understand is how a man like this gets a seat at Harvard. I would also question what is going on in his own mind when he completely departs from the findings of the most positively regarded historians of Nazi Germany, such as Ian Kershaw, Alan Bullock and Joachim Fest. Both Kershaw and Eric Hobsbawm have criticised Goldhagen - how does this sit with him? In some ways he seems the equivalent to David Irving, the only difference being that Irving found Goebbel's diaries and amassed literally paper tons of evidence which have contributed significantly to the study of this period.
Where the danger in his new work lies is for people, either to accept his comment at face value or to resent a certain brand of Jewish holocaust scholarship. In the article I refer to he mentions the fact of stereo-typing jews as 'Christ-killers,' done by Catholics. I have no idea what he hopes to achieve by this. For a start, according to the bible, 2000-odd years ago Christ had to die. Secondly part of every Catholic Easter service includes prayers for the jews. It really is not his place to make points about calls for the beatification of Pius XII - he is not a Catholic and comments like "How can we not ask: if this is a saint, then what kind of a church is this?" are inflammatory and verge on the offensive. If anyone made an equivalent remark towards jewry, they would be publically crucified (excuse the language) and probably be the butt of numerous lawsuits.
The question remains how does one deal with Goldhagen? Historians must continue to mount their criticism, but perhaps just not supporting him publically will make his exposure decline. His comments do not help people's views of jews when the actions of Israel generate a lot of negative feeling among westerners. Since he is not writing history, perhaps he should take stock of this, and ask himself what really is the purpose of this new work.