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At University of Michigan forum

Historians criticize Goldhagen bookBy Martin McLaughlin17 November 1997

   At a forum held at the University of Michigan onNovember 8 an international panel of historiansconcurred that the bestselling book by Daniel JonahGoldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, was atravesty of historiography.   Goldhagen's 1996 volume, published by RandomHouse, became a bestseller in the United States andGermany with its claims the Holocaust was theoutcome of the German national character. Goldhagenargued that anti-Semitism was universal in Germanyand that Hitler's slaughter of the Jews was only thelogical conclusion of the prejudices of "ordinaryGermans."   The panel discussion, sponsored by the Center forEuropean Studies, attracted a standing-room-onlyaudience at the Michigan League, an indication ofgrowing interest in a serious discussion of the majorhistorical issues of the 20th century.   The forum brought together five university professorsto discuss the impact of Hitler's Willing Executionerson public opinion in the United States, Germany,France and Austria. The speakers dealt with the contentof the book only in passing—making clear their scornfor its method and argument—while concentrating theirremarks on the political and cultural significance of thebook's reception by popular audiences.   Omer Bartov of Rutgers University noted thatGoldhagen's thesis that all Germans were guilty of theHolocaust is based on a study of those Germans whoserved as policemen during World War II, a muchnarrower cross section of the population than the Wehrmacht, the German Army, which enlisted morethan ten million men.   Laura Downs of the University of Michigandescribed Goldhagen's argument as a version ofidentity politics, in which anti-Semitism is presented as

the essence of Germanity, and all explanations of astructural character—rooting the rise of Nazism in thesocial structure of Germany, including its economicstructure—were rejected.   Atina Grossman of Cooper-Union and ColumbiaUniversity said she had been appalled by the positiveresponse of her German friends to the book. Shereferred to Goldhagen's "breathtakingly ill-informedcomments on the history of anti-Semitism inGermany."

Marketing techniques   Grossman credited Goldhagen with clever marketingtactics and handling of the media, especially inGermany. She suggested, however, that it was not justMadison Avenue techniques, but rather the content ofthe book which explained its runaway popular success.The book is a combination of simpleminded argumentand pornographic violence, she said, both of themappealing to the worst instincts in the public.   As the child of German Jews who survived theHolocaust, Grossman said she was particularlydisturbed by the book's depiction of Nazi Germany as"relatively benign—for Germans," as well as its claimthat the Allied occupation of Germany had produced apermanent democratization and ended anti-Semitism asa significant danger.   There was a sinister side to the enthusiastic receptionof the book in Germany, she said, given its insistencethat anti-Semitism is an essential part of the Germancharacter. Grossman said the widespread discussion ofthis thesis had the effect of legitimizing the openexpression of anti-Semitic sentiments, which she foundwere being voiced more frequently in Germanacademic circles than before.   Another scathing critique of Goldhagen came from

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Pieter Judson of Swarthmore College, who examinedthe impact of the book in Austria, where the right-wingpopulist movement of Georg Haider has emerged as thesecond-largest party, based on virulent nationalism anda thinly veiled appeal to anti-Semitism.   When Goldhagen was interviewed on Austrian radio,he refused to make any distinction between Germanand Austrian anti-Semitism. He appeared genuinelyignorant of the specific historical roots ofanti-Semitism in Austria, where the Catholic Churchsponsored a right-wing anti-Semitic party at the end ofthe 19th century as a means of competing with theSocial Democrats. It was in this political milieu that theAustrian-born Adolf Hitler grew up.   Judson explained that Goldhagen's arguments led himto advance positions similar to those of the neo-fascistHaider: that Austrians are Germans, pure and simple,and that anti-Semitism in Austria is no longer a danger.   The final speaker, Professor Geoff Eley of theUniversity of Michigan, one of the organizers of theforum, summed up professional opinion on Hitler'sWilling Executioners as "a very bad book, not just onthe Third Reich, but on German history as a whole."   He said the issue posed by the book's publishingsuccess was the gulf between scholarly works and whatpasses for history in the broader public. He expressedregret that in Germany the book had been embraced byfigures such as JUrgen Habermas, despite misgivings,because they believed it might serve to dampen thewave of German nationalism which followed the 1990reunification.   In the discussion which followed, one historianidentified himself as Goldhagen's senior thesis adviserfrom his undergraduate days. He described the authoras quite intelligent, saying that he knew enough toknow what good history is. The clear implication wasthat Goldhagen was not merely mistaken in his views,but was deliberately distorting history in an attempt tostir up a public reaction.

Struggle against anti-Semitism   A representative of the Socialist Equality Party spokein the discussion, noting that Goldhagen failed to giveany account, not only of the history of anti-Semitism,but of the struggle against anti-Semitism, particularlythat led by the socialist working class movement.   "This is a book about the history of Germany in

which the names of Marx and Engels, Bebel andLiebknecht, do not appear," he said. "But it isimpossible to understand how Nazism came to powerand carried out the Holocaust if one does notunderstand that the first victims of the concentrationcamps were the Socialists and Communists."   The speaker pointed out that Goldhagen's bookeffectively legitimizes the ideology of Nazism, bydeclaring that the essence of being a German is to be ahomicidal anti-Semite, and by suggesting that Hitler'sregime was established with overwhelming popularsupport, not by dictatorial methods.   The SEP speaker concluded by cautioning against apragmatic approach to the book's popular success—thehope that a false book could nonetheless have apositive impact on political consciousness, especially inGermany. The success of the book was an indication ofthe present low level of political understanding andhistorical knowledge in both America and Germany, hesaid, something which historians had an obligation tocombat.   Many students and teachers continued the discussionafter the forum and at a literature table set up by theSocialist Equality Party, and at least a dozen boughtcopies of the pamphlet Anti-Semitism, Fascism and theHolocaust. This pamphlet contains the text of a lecturegiven by SEP National Secretary David North atMichigan State University last April, in which Northanalyzed Goldhagen's falsification of history andexplained the central role of the working class in thestruggle against anti-Semitism and fascism.   See also:   Fascism & the Holocaust: A critical review of DanielGoldhagen'sHitler's Willing Executioners A lecture by David North[17 April 1997]   Why did the Holocaust take place?[David Walsh reviews the lecture][2 June 1997] 

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