the logic of the goldhagen debate

RICHARD KAMBER

THE LOGIC OF THE GOLDHAGEN DEBATE

ABSTRACT. Since Daniel J. Goldhagen’sHitler’s Willing Executioners: OrdinaryGermans and the Holocaustattempts to show that the Holocaust is explicable and canbe understood largely in terms of a single cause, “eliminationist anti-Semitism”, it is notsurprising that the book has generated an international debate. What is surprising is themagnitude and emotional intensity of the debate. This article argues that the deepest flawsin Hitler’s Willing Executioners, as well as the chasm of disagreement between Gold-hagen’s detractors and defenders, have as much to do with reasoning and concepts as withmatters of fact. It concludes that Goldhagen’s central argument is stronger than many of hiscritics claim, but that the inadequacy of his cognitive interpretation of anti-Semitism andhis unexamined psychological assumptions weaken his attempt to explain the Holocaust.

KEY WORDS: Genocide, Goldhagen debate, Holocaust, philosophy of history, psycho-logy of perpetrators

CAN THE HOLOCAUST BEUNDERSTOOD?

One of the eeriest episodes in Elie Wiesel’sNight is the return of Moshethe Beadle to the town of Sighet. After being deported as a foreigner, hereturns from the killing fields of Poland to tell the Jews of Sighet thatJews in Poland are being systematically exterminated by the Nazis. Noone believes him. In Wiesel’s words,

[H]e went from one Jewish house to another, telling the story of Malka, the young girl whohad taken three days to die, and of Tobias the Tailor, who had begged to be killed beforehis sons . . . . People not only refused to believe his stories, but even to listen to them . . . .“They take me for a madman,” he would whisper, and tears, like drops of wax, flowed fromhis eyes.1

This was in Hungary in 1942. About the same time, Jan Karski, a memberof the Polish underground, made his way from Warsaw to London to meetwith American officials and Jewish leaders. He told Justice Felix Frank-furter everything he knew about the slaughter of Jews in Poland. To whichFrankfurter said, “I can’t believe you.” Assured that Karski was speaking

1 Elie Wiesel,Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 4–5.

Res Publica6: 155–177, 2000.© 2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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the truth, Frankfurter replied, “I did not say that this young man is lying. Isaid I cannot believe him. There is a difference.”2

The disbelief expressed by people who learned about the Holocaustduring the Holocaust or shortly after the liberation of the death campsmight be explained by the shock of the unexpected. Before World War II,few people could imagine any nation in Western Europe engaging in suchrelentless and systematically savage behaviour toward non-combatants. Itis not surprising that time would be needed to make the Holocaust compre-hensible. What is harder to explain is why expressions of incomprehensib-ility have continued to be voiced by people who have had decades to studyand reflect on the Holocaust. Since 1945, the examination of the Holocausthas grown exponentially into an industry bristling with academic depart-ments, institutes, museums, journals and racks of publications. In additionto extensive physical and documentary evidence, eyewitness testimony hasbeen provided in abundance by survivors, rescuers, bystanders and evenperpetrators. And yet for many the mystery remains. In the process ofwriting The Nazi Doctors, Robert Jay Lifton was warned by a survivorphysician from Eastern Europe:

[T]he professor would like to understand what is not understandable. We ourselves whowere there, and who have always asked ourselves the question and will ask it until the endof our lives, we will never understand it, because it cannot be understood.3

THE GOLDHAGEN DEBATE

In 1996, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen published a revised version of the prize-winning dissertation he had written for his Ph.D. in political science atHarvard University. The title of the book wasHitler’s Willing Execu-tioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.4 According to Goldhagen,“the overall purpose of this book is to explain why the Holocaustoccurred”.5 It is his contention that the Holocaustcanbe understood, andthat it can be understood largely in terms of a single cause: a form ofanti-Semitism which he calls “eliminationist antisemitism [sic]”. Given theboldness of this “overall purpose” it is not surprising thatHitler’s WillingExecutionershas attracted attention from the general reading public andprovoked criticism from professional historians. What is surprising is the

2 Walter Laqueur,The Terrible Secret(New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 237.3 Robert Jay Lifton,The Nazi Doctors(New York: Basic Books, 1986), 13.4 Daniel Goldhagen,Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holo-

caust(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).5 Ibid., 5.

THE LOGIC OF THE GOLDHAGEN DEBATE 157

magnitude of the attention it has attracted and the severity of the criticism ithas provoked. To date, over 329,000 copies of the book (in English) havebeen sold throughout the world.6 Scores of articles in both popular andprofessional journals have debated the merits of Goldhagen’s argument. Atleast four books have been devoted entirely to evaluatingHitler’s WillingExecutioners.7

The distinguished German historian, Eberhard Jäckel, with whomGoldhagen consulted frequently while doing his primary research inLudwigsburg, describedHitler’s Willing Executionersas “simply a badbook”, “riddled with errors”, “a step backward. . . even worse a relapseto the most primitive of stereotypes”.8 Raul Hilberg, the doyen of Holo-caust historians, characterized it as a book “lacking in factual contentand logical rigor”.9 These grim assessments were echoed by other influ-ential historians, including Hans Mommsen and Norbert Frei.10 NormanFinkelstein, a professor of political theory and international relations, andRuth Bettina Birn, Chief Historian in the War Crimes and Crimes AgainstHumanity Section of Canada’s Department of Justice, published a shortbook,A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and the Historical Truth,which condemns nearly every aspect of Goldhagen’s effort. Finkelstein

6 The sales figures provided to me by the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, are 140,000 forthe hardback edition and 189,000 for the paperback edition. I do not have sales figuresfor the German translation (1996), the Dutch (1996), or others that have appeared. I wantto thank Alfred A. Knopf for making an exception to their policy of not releasing salesfigures.

7 Franklin H. Littell, ed.,Hyping the Holocaust(Merion Station, Pennsylvania: MerionWestfield Press International, 1997); Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn,ANation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth(New York: Henry Holt andCompany, 1998); Robert R. Shandley, ed.,Unwilling Germans: The Goldhagen Debate(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Frank Wesley,The Holocaust andAnti-Semitism: The Goldhagen Argument and Its Effects(Lanham, Maryland: Interna-tional Scholars Publications, 1998). Goldhagen has also published a selection of someseven hundred letters from German readers ofHitler’s Willing Executioners: Daniel J.Goldhagen,Briefe an Goldhagen(München: Siedler Verlag, 1997).

8 Eberhard Jäckel, “Simply a Bad Book”, trans. Jeremiah Riemer, in Shandley, ed.,Unwilling Germans, op. cit., 87–91, pp. 87, 88, 90. A slightly different version of thisreview was originally published inDie Zeit, May 17, 1996.

9 Raul Hilberg, “The Goldhagen Phenomenon”,Critical Inquiry, 23 (Summer 1997),721–8, p. 724.

10 Hans Mommsen, “The Thin Patina of Civilization: Anti-Semitism Was a Necessary,but by No Means Sufficient Condition for the Holocaust” (originally published inDie Zeit,August 31, 1996), trans. Jeremiah Riemer, in Shandley,Unwilling Germans, op. cit., 183–95; Norbert Frei, “A People of ‘Final Solutionists’? Daniel Goldhagen Dresses an OldThesis in New Robes” (originally published inSüddeutsche Zeitung, April 13–14, 1996)trans. Jeremiah Riemer, ibid., 35–9.

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asserts that “Goldhagen’s book is not scholarship at all”, and that far fromenabling us to understand the Holocaust, “itsubtractsfrom our under-studying”.11 Jacob Neusner, a prolific author on Judaism, a Professor ofReligious Studies and a Rabbi, has claimed that Harvard disgraced itself byawarding a doctorate for a work “of such pretension and violent emotion,a work lacking rigorous arguments altogether”.12

On the other hand, Gordon A. Craig, distinguished scholar of Germanhistory, gaveHitler’s Willing Executionersa favourable review, and notedthat Goldhagen’s “extensive research of the various genocidal agenciesshould be a model for future scholars”.13 Volker Ullrich, political editorof Die Zeit, greeted the publication ofHitler’s Willing Executionersas “avery important book” and declared that its “case studies on the perpetratorsare more broadly substantiated and more thoroughly considered than anyprevious investigation”.14 In 1997, theJournal for German and Interna-tional Politics (Blätter fur deutsche und international Politik) awardedGoldhagen its “Democracy Prize”. The principal speaker at the awardceremony was Jürgen Habermas. Habermas commended the book as apotent corrective to the German tradition of viewing the past in terms of“anthropological pessimism and a fatalistic kind of historicism”.15 Anotherspeaker was Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Director of the Hamburg Institutefor Social Research, the institute which mounted the controversial 1995exhibition, “War of Extermination: The Crime of theWehrmacht1941–1945”. Reemtsma praised Goldhagen’s emphasis on individual freedomand moral responsibility and described his contribution as one “that cannever be ignored in the future”.16

Between these extremes of scorn and praise, the responses of OmerBartov, Josef Joffe, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning offera mixture of focused criticism and qualified concurrence on selectedpoints.17 Bauer, for example, who is Chair of the International Center

11 A Nation on Trial, op. cit., 87.12 Jacob Neusner, “Hype, Hysteria, and Hate the Hun”, in Franklin Littell,Hyping the

Holocaust, op. cit., 147–57, p. 151.13 Gordon A. Craig, “How Hell Worked”,The New York Review of Books, April 18,

1996, 4–8, p. 5.14 Volker Ullrich, “A Provocation to a NewHistorikerstreit”, originally published inDie

Zeit, April 12, 1996, trans. Jeremiah Riemer, in Shandley, op. cit., 31–3, pp. 32–3.15 Jürgen Habermas, “Goldhagen and the Public Use of History”, trans. Max Pensky,

ibid., 263–73, p. 272.16 Jan Phillip Reemtsma, “Turning Away from Denial”, trans. John E. Woods, ibid.,

255–62, p. 261.17 Omer Bartov, “Ordinary Monsters”,The New Republic, April 29, 1996, 32–8; Josef

Joffe, “Goldhagen in Germany”,The New York Review of Books, 18–21; Yehuda Bauer,


for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, agreed with Goldhagen that theHolocaust is explicable and that “by 1940–41 the general German societyhad become a reservoir for willing executioners”.18 He also commendedGoldhagen for stressing the centrality of anti-Semitic ideology: “[I]t is tohis great credit . . . that the discussion, in the wake of hisbook, will haveto deal with that central issue.”19 On the hand, he criticized Goldhagenfor arrogance, exaggerated claims to originality, oversimplification and afailure to recognize or account for the ups and downs of anti-Semitismin Germany from 1893 to 1941.20 Christopher Browning, whose meticu-lous and groundbreaking book,Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion101 and the Final Solution in Poland(1992), covers some of the samesubject matter and uses some of the same records asHitler’s Willing Execu-tioners, expressed his agreement with Goldhagen on two key points.21

He agreed with Goldhagen on “the extensive participation of ordinaryGermans in the mass murder of Jews and the high degree of volunteerismthey exhibited”, but argued that the motivation behind this participationand volunteerism needed to be explained in terms of multiple motivesand situational factors.22 Browning also criticized Goldhagen for unwar-ranted claims to originality, oversimplification and methodological error inexcluding all self-exculpatory testimony by perpetrators.23 For Browning,the key to explaining the Holocaust lies in a better understanding of humannature and not just in a better of understanding of German culture.24

The purpose of this paper is to make sense of the Goldhagen debateand the interest it has stirred outside the ranks of professional historians.In the pages that follow, I suggest that the deepest flaws inHitler’s WillingExecutioners, as well as the deepest differences between Goldhagen andhis critics, have as much to do with relations of ideas (reasoning andconcepts) as they do with matters of fact. Indeed, I suggest that the Gold-hagen debate has some distinctly philosophical aspects and that failure

“Daniel J. Goldhagen’s View of the Holocaust”, in Franklin H. Littell,Hyping the Holo-caust, op. cit., 59–72; Christopher R. Browning, “Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans”,first published inDie Zeit, April 8, 1999, reprinted in Robert R. Shandley, op. cit., 55–73.

18 Yehuda Bauer, “Daniel J. Goldhagen’s View of the Holocaust”, op. cit., 61, 67.19 Ibid., 63.20 Ibid., 61–72.21 Christopher R. Browning,Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final

Solution in Poland(New York: HarperCollins, 1992; HarperPerennial, 1993).22 Christopher R. Browning, op. cit., 55–6.23 Ibid., 55–73.24 Christopher R. Browning, “Human Nature, Culture, and the Holocaust”,The Chron-

icle of Higher Education, October 18, 1996, A72.

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to appreciate those aspects has contributed to the chasm of disagreementbetween Goldhagen’s detractors and defenders.

The core of this paper is organized around specific criticisms that havebeen levelled againstHitler’s Willing Executioners. I begin by consideringtwo quite common criticisms that rest primarily on misreadings of thebook and have written my responses to these criticisms so as to providean overview of Goldhagen’s principal theses. I turn then to an examina-tion of important criticisms that do not rest on misreadings of the bookand assess them with particular attention to their consequences for Gold-hagen’s central argument – his argument “to explain why the Holocaustoccurred”. In this connection, I take care to distinguish between flaws thatthreaten the soundness of his argument and those that do not. I suggest thatGoldhagen’s central argument is stronger than many of his critics haverecognized and that it could be made even stronger by judicious revisions.I conclude that the deepest flaws in his argument reside in his ‘cognitive’thesis regarding the motivation of perpetrators.

TWO COMMON MISREADINGS OFHITLER’SWILLING EXECUTIONERS

Goldhagen (always or sometimes) claims that eliminationist anti-Semitism was the necessary and sufficient cause of the Holocaust.25

Goldhagen claims that eliminationist anti-Semitism was both a neces-sary cause of the Holocaust and its sufficientmotivationalcause. But hedoes not claim that it was the necessary and sufficient cause of the Holo-caust; neither does he claim that it was the sole motivational cause of theHolocaust. Goldhagen uses the expression “motivational cause” to referto beliefs, desires and values. He contrasts the beliefs, desires and valuesthat motivated the choices and actions of Germans with other causallyrelevant conditions, such as available technology and territorial control,which impeded or facilitated particular options.

With respect to eliminationist anti-Semitism as anecessarycause,Goldhagen defends the following view. He argues that, decades beforeHitler, most Germans believed that Jews and/or ‘Jewish influence’ washarmful to Germany and should, if possible, be eliminated. He claims that,without this widespread belief, the Holocaust could not have occurredasit did.26

It is very important to note that Goldhagen distinguishes betweentheactual Holocaust, the tragedy that actually unfolded, anda possible Holo-

25 See, for example: Bartov, op. cit., 34; Finkelstein, op. cit., 8.26 Goldhagen, op. cit., 417.


caust, a similar tragedy that might have unfolded under different causalconditions. For example, one can imagine a scenario in which a ruthlessNazi dictatorship succeeds in killing millions of Jews by intimidating mostGermans into remaining silent, despite their personal opposition, whileit coerces other ordinary Germans into becoming reluctant executioners.Although a ‘possible’ Holocaust of this kind might produce a comparablenumber of deaths, it would not, Goldhagen contends, exhibit the wide-spread behavioural patterns of cruelty, volunteerism and celebration soevident in the actual Holocaust.

With respect to eliminationist anti-Semitism as a sufficient motivationalcause, Goldhagen argues several points. First, he admits that this brand ofanti-Semitism was “obviously not the sole source” of perpetrators’ actions.Second, he concedes that some ordinary Germans became perpetratorsbecause of other motivational causes, such as group pressure or opportun-ities for personal advancement. (He calls these motives “non-ideologicalfactors”.27) Third, he argues that these factors cannot explain the conductof “perpetrators as a class, but only some actions of some individuals whomight have killed despite their disapproval, or of others who might haveneeded but a push to overcome reluctance, whatever its source”.28 Fourth,he concludes that these “non-ideological factors were mainly irrelevantto the perpetration of the Holocaust”, and that the Holocaust would haveunfolded pretty much as it did if even none of these factors had beenpresent.29 (I shall return to the question of the causal relevance of collateralmotives.)

Nevertheless, Goldhagen denies that eliminationist anti-Semitism,however fundamental as a motivational cause, was sufficient to cause theHolocaust. He says of this thesis as a whole: “[T]his, it must be empha-sized, is not a monocausal account of the Holocaust. Many factors werenecessary for Hitler and others to have conceived the genocidal program,for them to have risen to the position from which they could implementit, for its undertaking to have become a realistic possibility, and for it thento have been carried out.”30 Although Goldhagen gives slightly differentlists in different places, his considered view seems to be that four condi-tions were necessary (and sufficient) for the occurrence of the Holocaust.31

27 Ibid., 417.28 Ibid.29 Ibid.30 Ibid., 416.31 Compare, for example,Hitler’s Willing Executioners, op. cit., 9, with “A Reply to

My Critics: Motives, Causes, and Alibis”,The New Republic, December 23, 1996, 37–45,p. 43.

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Interestingly, these lists are framed in terms of the actions of Germany’snational leadership. First, leaders had to come to power who were willingto undertake the extermination; second, they had to gain control over theJews, namely over the territory in which they resided; third, they had toorganize the extermination and devote to it sufficient resources; and fourth,they had to induce a large number of people to carry out the killings.

Perhaps one reason some critics have overlooked Goldhagen’s assertionthat things other than eliminationist anti-Semitism were necessary to causethe Holocaust is that he also embraces a thoroughly ‘intentionalist’ thesiswith regard to Hitler.32 Goldhagen argues that as early as 1920, Hitlerpublicly articulated his hope and desire to exterminate the Jewish people.33

Although Hitler learned to cloak his murderous intentions in more equi-vocal language as his political fortunes rose, he remained “incapable ofbecoming permanently reconciled to any ‘solution of the Jewish problem’save that of extinction”.34 Contrary to the Holocaust ‘functionalists’, whoargue that the final solution was arrived at through a series of practical andpolitical detours, Goldhagen insists that

[T]he road to Auschwitz was not twisted. Conceived by Hitler. . . its completion had to waituntil the conditions were right. The instant they were, Hitler commissioned his architects,Himmler and Heydrich, to work from his vague blueprints in designing and engineeringthe road. They, in turn, easily enlisted ordinary Germans by the tens of thousands, whobuilt and paved it with an immense dedication born of great hatred for the Jews whom theydrove down that road.35

Given Goldhagen’s intentionalist thesis, it follows that three out ofthe four conditions that he claims were necessary and sufficient to causethe Holocaust can be explained in whole or part by eliminationist anti-Semitism. Conditions three and four are fully explainable in terms ofeliminationist anti-Semitism, and condition one is partially explainablein terms of the willingness of the German nation to accept a leaderwith an eliminationist ‘at any cost’ policy. Thus, if Goldhagen is right,eliminationist anti-Semitism can explain much about why the Holocaustoccurred. But much is not everything. What eliminationist anti-Semitismdoes not explain, for Goldhagen, are the many other factors that contrib-uted to Hitler’s rise to power, his achievement in becoming an absolute

32 For a thoughtful examination ofHitler’s Willing Executionersin terms of theintentionalist-functionalist controversy see A. D. Moses, “Structure and Agency in theHolocaust: Daniel J. Goldhagen and His Critics”,History and Theory, 37/2 (1998),194–219.

33 Goldhagen,Hitler’s Willing Executioners, op. cit., 424–5.34 Ibid., 425.35 Ibid.


and immensely popular dictator, and the success of the Nazi governmentin gaining control over the territories in which Jews resided.

Since many Holocaust historians reject the strong intentionalist thesisthat Goldhagen embraces, and since Goldhagen does little to defend thatthesis, it should be asked to what extent his central argument dependson the truth of this thesis. The answer, I believe, is that the truth ofhis intentional thesis has relatively little bearing on the soundness ofhis central argument. Consider the possible alternatives. No responsiblescholar doubts that Hitler was intent on eventually eliminating Jews orJewish influence from German territories and that the final solution hadhis blessing. What remain open are questions about the decision-makingprocess that led to the final solution: who? where? when? what? and why?Yet even if one assumes that all of the critical decisions were made byHitler’s subordinates in response to dead-end solutions (the MadagascarPlan and other reservation schemes) the seductions of industrial techno-logy (the systematic use of camps, trains, gas chambers, crematoria, etc.),total war mentality (desensitization to mass slaughter in the crucible of twototal wars) and hopes for career advancement (by competing to please theFührer), eliminationist anti-Semitism still could be used to explain Hitler’smotivation in blessing the plan and the motivation of ordinary Germanswho became his willing executioners. Moreover, the common thread offunctionalist theories, namely that the final solution was not foreseen as agoal but evolved over time, is logically compatible with Goldhagen’s viewthat the eliminationist anti-Semitism of most Germans evolved over timeinto exterminationist anti-Semitism.

Long before Hitler came to power, Germany was an inherently evilsociety, a nation of monsters, obsessed with the elimination of Jewsfrom their society.36

Goldhagen never claims that there is, or was, any necessary connectionbetween being a German and being an anti-Semite or that the basic valuesof Germans were inherently evil. What he does claim is that anti-Semitismof a strong and racial variety was very common in Germany before Hitlercame to power. He tells us that a great number of Germans falsely believedthat Jews were harmful to their society and wished for some way to dealwith this problem. When Hitler came to power, the Nazis used every meansat their disposal to reinforce anti-Semitic beliefs and instituted increas-ingly harsh steps for dealing with ‘the Jewish problem’. What motivated

36 See for example Bartov, op. cit., 37; Hilberg, op. cit., 727; Klaus P. Fischer,TheHistory of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust(New York: ContinuumPublishing, 1998), 439.

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Germans to condone, support and participate in these steps was not gratu-itous malice but a conviction that they had the right and duty to protect theirsociety against a harmful, alien presence. Their beliefs about Jews mayhave been fantastic and false, but their values were not. In Goldhagen’sown words: “[J]ust as many young men have through the ages volunteeredto go to war in order to fight for their country, so too were Germans willingto volunteer to destroy this cognitively created enemy.”37

Far from implying that Germans were moral monsters, Goldhagen’s‘cognitive’ thesis implies that they were victims of misinformation. Thisimplication raises problems of its own, but I defer consideration of thoseproblems until later.

SIX CRITICISMS OFHITLER’SWILLING EXECUTIONERSWHICH DO NOT

REST PRIMARILY ON MISREADING THE TEXT

Goldhagen exaggerates the differences between German anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism elsewhere, while failing to offer anycomparative evidence.

Goldhagen claims that long before the Nazis came to power, Germananti-Semitism wassui generis: “[N]o other [European] country’s anti-semitism was at once . . . so widespread . . . so firmly wedded to racism. . . had its foundation in such a pernicious image of the Jews. . . and wasso deadly in content”. “Indeed,” he says, “virtually every other countryfell short on each dimension”.38 Yet Goldhagen does not appear to havedone a comparative study of German anti-Semitism with anti-Semitismelsewhere. Without such a study, Goldhagen has no basis for makingunqualified claims about the respects in which anti-Semitism was worsein Germany than elsewhere. He provides neither operational measuresnor documentation to show that anti-Semitism in Germany was morewidespread, racist, pernicious or deadly than in countries such as Russia,Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.

On the other hand, Goldhagen correctly points out that there is no needfor him to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was worse in Germany thanelsewhere in order to show that German anti-Semitism was the neces-sary and sufficient motivational condition of the Holocaust as it actuallyunfolded. As he puts it: “[I]t is precisely because antisemitism alone didnot produce the Holocaust that it is not essential to establish the differ-

37 Hitler’s Willing Executioners, op. cit., 396.38 Ibid., 419.


ences between antisemitism in Germany and elsewhere.”39 Goldhagen isright. He does not have to prove that anti-Semitism in other nations wasinsufficient to precipitate the systematic extermination of all the Jews whocould be reached, since nowhere else did a leadership come to power thatwas willing to undertake such an extermination.

Factually, Goldhagen’s comparative claims about German anti-Semitism are left unsubstantiated. Logically, they are not necessary to hiscentral argument. What Goldhagen misses, however, is a nice opportunityto counter the objection of many critics who point out that Lithuanians,Romanians, Ukrainians and others, as well as Germans, participated will-ingly in the Nazi extermination process. What Goldhagen could haveargued is that the cruel and brutal slaughter of Jews by non-Germanvolunteers from profoundly anti-Semitic cultures actually helps corrob-orate his thesis that anti-Semitism was the sufficientmotivationalcause ofthe Holocaust by exemplifying the ease with which anti-Semites becameeager executioners when those in power gave them the opportunity.(Goldhagen suggests something of this kind with respect to Austrians in1938, but does not explain whether he considers German Austrians to beGermans.40) Quite likely, he neglects this opportunity because he is need-lessly committed to the view that widespread eliminationist anti-Semitismwas peculiarly German.

Goldhagen exaggerates the breadth, virulence and motivational forceof German anti-Semitism.

Although Goldhagen’s argument does not require him to demonstratethat German anti-Semitism was worse than anti-Semitism elsewhere, itdoes require him to make a convincing case that German anti-Semitismwas sufficiently widespread and virulent to be the sufficient motiva-tional cause of the Holocaust. He attempts to fulfill this requirementin two related ways. First: he provides examples, statistics and refer-ences concerning the history of German anti-Semitism from Luther untilthe end of World War II. Second: he attempts to show that Germananti-Semitism after the emancipation of Jews in 1807 assumed a racial,chronic, ubiquitous and potentially lethal form. Goldhagen calls that form“eliminationist antisemitism”.41

The most distinctive and controversial aspect of Goldhagen’s conceptof eliminationist anti-Semitism is that it embraces a spectrum of Germanattitudes towards Jews that ran from wanting to kill Jews or chase them

39 Ibid.40 Ibid., 286–7.41 Ibid., 49–79, with a summary on 77.

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out of Germany, to wanting to eliminate Jewish influence from key areasof German life, to wanting to convince Jews to assimilate completely inGerman society.42 According to Goldhagen, the common element acrossthis spectrum was the perception that the existence or influence of a recog-nizably Jewish population in Germany posed a problem (Judenfrage) andthat Germany would be better off if that existence or influence couldsomehow be eliminated.43 Until the Nazis came to power, there was nearlyuniversal agreement that Germany had a Jewish problem, but little agree-ment on exactly what that problem was or how it should be addressed.The Nazis, Goldhagen claims, harnessed eliminationist anti-Semitism andtransformed it into exterminationist anti-Semitism.

Since the concept of eliminationist anti-Semitism lies at the heart ofGoldhagen’s central argument, it is important to consider three key objec-tions that have been directed at this concept and its uses inHitler’s WillingExecutioners. One objection is that the concept is far too broad, thatit yokes together things that do not belong together, such asvölkischfanaticism and liberal assimilationism.44 Another is that Goldhagen some-times reifies eliminationist anti-Semitism, treating it as though it were anautonomous force that shaped the beliefs and choices of Germans.45 Athird is that Goldhagen’s treatment of eliminationist anti-Semitism as achronic condition which varied only in the intensity of its outward mani-festations is inconsistent with the evidence that there were significantvariations in the depth and breadth of German anti-Semitism over the fourdecades before 1933.46

Although the usefulness of the concept “eliminationist anti-Semitism”cannot be ruled outa priori, the burden of establishing its usefulness restswith Goldhagen, and he comes up short. To be sure, he does providestriking anecdotal information to show that even opponents of the Nazisshared some of their anti-Semitic prejudices. He notes, for example, thatThomas Mann, an outspoken critic of the Nazis, said of the Nazi exclusionof Jews from the judiciary that “. . . it is no great misfortune after all . . . thatthe Jewish presence in the judiciary has been ended”.47 But Goldhagendoes not marshal enough evidence to demonstrate that “eliminationism”was the common thread of German responses to ‘the Jewish problem’or that anti-Semitism of this kind was nearly ubiquitous. Nevertheless,

42 Ibid., 55–62.43 Ibid., 70–4.44 Finkelstein,A Nation on Trial, op. cit., 15–16.45 Moses, “Structure and Agency in the Holocaust”, op. cit., 217.46 Bauer, “Daniel J. Goldhagen’s View of the Holocaust”, op. cit.47 Goldhagen,Hitler’s Willing Executioners, op. cit., 91.


Goldhagen does rely on eliminationist anti-Semitism, sometimes treatedas an autonomous force, to push his narrative forward. He is particularlycavalier in his interpretation of the voting patterns of Germans (the mostsystematic evidence available for anti-Semitic sympathies) as evidencefor but not against anti-Semitic sympathies.48 Furthermore, although hecites appropriate evidence to suggest that the Nazis’ relentless campaignto defame the Jews became increasingly effective after 1933, and greatlyexacerbated the anti-Semitism that had already reached new heights duringthe Weimar years, he does not show why the eliminationist feature of thisanti-Semitism was critical to the process.

How serious are these flaws for Goldhagen’s central argument? Theanswer, I believe, is that they are damaging but not fatal. They are notfatal for two reasons. First, his position can be revised without too muchdistortion to avoid dependence on eliminationism as the defining feature ofGerman anti-Semitism. Second, his strongest argument for anti-Semitismas the sufficient motivational cause of the Holocaust derives not from hisaccount of its historical genesis but from his account of the cruelty, zealand celebratory attitudes that characterized the behaviour of many arbit-rary perpetrators. It is by arguing backwards (transcendentally?) from whatperpetrators did to what could possibly explain their conduct that he makesthe best case for anti-Semitism. He presents case studies of occupationpolice (Ordnungpolizei), work camp personnel and death march guards toshow that, with few exceptions, ‘ordinary’ Germans (i.e. Germans whowere not ideological fanatics, sociopaths, sadists, career Nazis or ruth-less opportunists) became cruel and willing executioners when given theopportunity to do so.

It is instructive to note that a book published in the same year asHitler’s Willing Executioners, John Weiss’sThe Ideology of Death: Whythe Holocaust Happened in Germany, defends a position that would benearly identical with Goldhagen’s position on the motivational cause of theHolocaust if Goldhagen were to give up his insistence on the eliminationistcharacter and near ubiquity of German anti-Semitism.49 Like Goldhagen,Weiss believes that the Holocaust is explainable. He writes:

[T]he secret of the Nazis was their ability to focus preexisting anti-Semitism . . . . Racismwas the cement that enabled the Nazis to hold together a variety of disparate constitu-encies which, though racist long before Hitler, were otherwise separated by contradictoryinterests . . . . In fact, Hitler’s racism was typical of millions of lower-middle class Germansand Austro-Germans of his generation. These common attitudes explain why ‘racial puri-fication’ – or ethnic cleansing, as we would call it today – had the voluntary support of

48 See, for example, Bauer, “Goldhagen’s View of the Holocaust”, op. cit., 64–7.49 John Weiss,The Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996).

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many public and private institutions and the vast personnel necessary for the unprecedentedtask of isolating, oppressing, and murdering millions.50

For Weiss, the key concept is “racist anti-Semitism”, but, unlike Gold-hagen, he does not claim that racist anti-Semitism was nearly ubiquitousin Germany. He says, for example, that “[E]ven at the height of Hitler’spopularity about half of all Germans, mainly but not solely progressives orleftists, rejected the racist violence of the Nazis, though they could not haltit.” 51

Goldhagen’s reasoning about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust islogically fallacious. He begs the question, argues in a circle, or commitsthe fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.52

Although a number of Goldhagen’s critics accuse him of fallaciousreasoning in linking German anti-Semitism with the perpetration of theHolocaust, they are all somewhat vague about the terms of the fallacy.Typical of these accusations is Josef Joffe’s comment:

[H]aving earlier reasoned forward from the attitudes of the Germans to their behaviour –saying in effect “Only because of their anti-Semitism did ordinary Germans turn into massmurderers” – he then reasons backward from the conduct of the Germans to their culturein a grand circular argument.53

Joffe is right in saying that Goldhagen reasons both forward (fromanti-Semitism as sufficient motivation for the Holocaust) and backward(from the cruelty and zeal of ordinary German perpetrators to the conclu-sion that these individuals were motivated by anti-Semitism), but he iswrong to castigate this as circular reasoning. What Joffe mistakes for “agrand circular argument” is in facttwo complementary but logically inde-pendent arguments. Similarly mistaken is the complaint of A. D. Moses:“[W]hy the Germans did it is answered by the question-begging, tauto-logical assertion that the Germans intended it.”54 Since Goldhagen citesextensive independent evidence to establish the intentions of Germans whoparticipated in the Holocaust, it is unfair to accuse him of question-beggingor tautological assertion – even if one is dissatisfied with the evidencehe cites. Insofar asHitler’s Willing Executionershas logical problems,

50 Ibid., viii–ix.51 Ibid., ix.52 Joffe, “Goldhagen in Germany”, op. cit., 19; Moses, “Structure and Agency in the

Holocaust”, op. cit., 216–7; Finkelstein,A Nation on Trial, op. cit., 3; Neusner, “Hype,Hysteria, and Hate the Hun”, op. cit., 151–2.

53 Joffe, “Goldhagen in Germany”, op. cit., 19.54 Moses, “Structure and Agency in the Holocaust”, op. cit., 216.


they are more subtle than those mentioned above and arise almost exclus-ively in connection with Goldhagen’s cognitive thesis about the motivationof perpetrators. (Given the explanation below, the scare quotes around‘cognitive’ are no longer needed when referring to Goldhagen’s cognitivethesis. However I retain the use of quotation marks for Goldhagen’s ownterm for the image Jews as demonic enemies of the German people:“cognitive model”.)

Goldhagen oversimplifies the motivation of Germans who condoned,supported or participated in the Holocaust by dismissing as causallyirrelevant any motive other than anti-Semitism.55

One of the principal theses ofHitler’s Willing Executionersis thatGermans behaved as they did toward the Jews almost entirely because oftheir beliefs (or cognitive models) about Jews. In Goldhagen’s words:

[N]ot economic hardship, not the coercive means of a totalitarian state, not social psycho-logical pressure, not invariable psychological propensity, but ideas about Jews that werepervasive in Germany and had been for decades induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed,defenseless Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and withoutpity.56

To defend this cognitive thesis, Goldhagen employs three strategies.First, he attempts to show through selected data and examples that anti-Semitic beliefs in Germany were sufficiently strong to explain the conductof ordinary Germans in the Holocaust even if no other motives had beenpresent. Second, he argues that the conduct of most perpetrators was char-acterized by relentless cruelty, zeal and celebratory attitudes, and that suchcharacteristics cannot be explained by any of the other motives typicallycited to explain their conduct. Third, he invokes as a general psychologicaltruth the principle that if a person has a preference to carry out an act, thencollateral incentives are motivationally irrelevant. I shall comment on eachof these strategies.

Goldhagen’s first strategy in defence of his cognitive thesis dependsrather heavily on two methodological gambits. In combing the testimonyof perpetrators who were tried or investigated, Goldhagen highlights thetestimony of perpetrators who admitted to killing or tormenting Jews out ofanti-Semitism but excludes from consideration testimony that he considersself-exculpatory. The flaw in this methodology is obvious and has been

55 Browning, “Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans”, op. cit., 63–5; Browning, “HumanNature, Culture, and the Holocaust”; Birn,A Nation on Trial, op. cit., 110–11; Bartov,“Ordinary Monsters”, op. cit., 35.

56 Goldhagen,Hitler’s Willing Executioners, op. cit., 9.

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criticized in detail by Christopher Browning and Ruth Bettina Birn.57

The second methodological gambit is subtler. Given the limitations ofdirect testimony about motives, he resorts to a method of exposition whichstresses what he calls the “phenomenological” world of the perpetrators:

[E]xplaining the perpetrators’ actions demands . . . that the perpetrators’ phenomenologicalreality be taken seriously. We must attempt the difficult task of imagining ourselves in theirplaces, performing their deeds, acting as they did, viewing what they beheld.58

As Goldhagen practices it, this method sometimes seems more like thevivid narration of a flamboyant attorney than the descriptive distillationsof a phenomenologist. And yet it is clear that he intends this method toreveal the motivational essence of the actions he examines. It is, to borrowHusserl’s phrase, a kind ofWesenschau. Goldhagen asks his readers tostand back from the historical data and generalizations and ask themselvesto imagine the thoughts and feelings of a middle-aged German policemanon duty in Poland as he puts a bullet in the head of a twelve-year old childor a German-Jewish war veteran begging for his life – and, in some cases,even though that policeman has been told by his commanding officer thathe can be excused from killing Jews if he doesn’t feel up to it.59

Goldhagen’s second strategy in defence of his cognitive thesis may wellbe the most original aspect of his work. The focus here is on the shootingoperations that killed over a million Jews before gassing became the prin-cipal method of execution, the work camps in which the near-starvationand continual beating of Jewish labourers undermined productivity thatwas becoming increasingly important to the German war effort, and thedeath marches of emaciated Jews from one concentration camp to anotherin the final days of World War II. As most of his critics concede, Goldhagenargues convincingly that many of the perpetrators involved in these oper-ations exhibited cruelty, zeal and celebratory attitudes that were clearly inexcess of what they were ordered to do. These characteristics, he asserts,are entirely consistent with the thesis that Germans killed Jews becausethey (mistakenly) believed Jews to be dangerous and demonic enemies,but they are not consistent with any of the other motives typically adducedto explain German conduct. Motives such as peer pressure, obedience toauthority, careerism, dullness and resignation to the horrors of war mightexplain the conduct ofdutiful executioners, but it does not explain theconduct of cruel, zealous and celebratory executioners.

57 Browning, “Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans”, op. cit., 63–5; Birn,A Nation onTrial, op. cit., 110–11.

58 Goldhagen,Hitler’s Willing Executioners, op. cit., 21.59 Ibid., 219.


With regard to the cruelty, zeal and celebratory attitudes of ordinaryGerman perpetrators, Goldhagen’s critics challenge him on two points:the percentage of perpetrators who exhibited such characteristics; andthe exclusion of motives other than anti-Semitism as explanatory factors.Christopher Browning, for example, points out that available evidence,including Goldhagen’s own evidence, suggests that about ten to twentypercent of ordinary Germans directly involved in actions against Jewsrefrained from or evaded harming Jews.60 He also argues for a mixedmotivational model, one which combines cognitive and situational factors,and urges comparative studies with other cases of genocidal behaviour.61

Goldhagen’s third strategy in defence of his cognitive thesis is a briefand very unsatisfactory generalization about human motivation in general.This principle is adduced to counter historians, who, like Browning,advocate a mixed motivational model. In an article entitled “Motives,Causes, and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics”, he expresses confidence thathis own “simple explanation” is the only explanation that accounts for thecruelty and zeal of the perpetrators.62 He dismisses situational factors andincentive structures as part of the explanation and insists that “preference”alone explains why ordinary Germans did what they did:

[P]ut simply, if the perpetrators were anti-Semites who believed the extermination of theJews was right, then all of the situational factors so commonly asserted (without evidence)to have moved the killers are irrelevant. This is a fundamental point: if a person has apreference to carry out an act, then his action, his willingness to act, is to be explained byhis preference, and not by hypothesized incentive structures, whether they be positive ornegative incentives.63

Goldhagen’s psychological principle is problematic in at least fiverespects. To illustrate these problems, I shall mention examples of actionsand motives that are less disputed than those of German perpetrators.

First, not all beliefs about what is right are preferences and not allpreferences are beliefs about what is right. I may, for example, believethat it is right to risk my life to save another person’s life and yet prefer notto do it.

Second, even when beliefs about what is right and preferences coin-cide, other incentive structures may still influence how one acts. I may, forexample, believe that it is right to give to charity and have a preferenceto do so, yet my choice of charities, the amounts that I give and my styleof giving (e.g. publicly or anonymously) are likely to be influenced by

60 Browning, “Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans”, op. cit., 58–9.61 Ibid., 64–6.62 Goldhagen, “Motives, Causes, and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics”, op. cit.63 Ibid., 39.

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incentives such as tax breaks, the expectations of friends and associates,etc.

Third, collateral incentives may be decisive in one’s choice of actionwhen preference and moral conviction are confronted (as they usuallyare) with disincentives. For example, white Americans who believed thatselling their homes to black families was the right thing to do and hada preference to do so were more likely to avoid such sales because ofworries about neighbours, friends and employers, before the Civil RightsAct of 1968 gave them collateral incentive to act on their convictions andpreferences. In principle, one could respond to this objection by arguingthat “preference” is not merely “what one would most like to do – wereit not for powerful disincentives” but “what one intends to do – given theactual ensemble of incentives and disincentives”. Thus, it could be arguedthat white Americans who avoided selling their homes to blacks becausethey feared angering neighbours, friends and employers did precisely whatthey preferred to do – under those circumstances. In other words, it couldbe argued that onepreferswhat one settles for, not what one wishes for.However, this response is of little use to Goldhagen. His claim is thatordinary German perpetrators wished to kill Jews, not that they settled fordoing so under difficult circumstances.

Fourth, motives which are causally unnecessary for the initial perform-ance of an action may, over time, become relevant to the continuedperformance of the action. For example, a police detective who is trying tosolve a murder may learn that a large reward has been offered to the personwho brings the murderer to justice. It seems likely that hope of gaining thatreward will enter into the detective’s ensemble of motives for solving forthis case, even though she would have pursued the case (perhaps a littleless zealously) had no reward been offered. A similar but more extremecase is Gordon Allport’s example of the student who begins drinking beerto gain social acceptance but continues drinking beer because he acquiresa taste for beer. Allport’s example is more extreme because it suggeststhat one sufficient motive (desire for social acceptance) may be replacedover time by another sufficient motive (fondness for beer). Both of theseexamples point to Goldhagen’s error in dismissing collateral motives suchas self-advancement, peer pressure, obedience to authority and acquisitionof a taste for cruelty as causally relevant to the actions of ordinary Germanperpetrators.

The possible influence of self-advancement, peer pressure and obedi-ence to authority are interesting in this connection because for most peoplein most areas of life these motives are more powerful than ideological ones.The possible influence of an acquired taste for cruelty is intriguing, since it


provides an alternative explanation of the unnecessary cruelty with whichmany perpetrators carried out their tasks.

Although Goldhagen claims that Germans tortured and killed Jewsbecause of their beliefs about Jews (their “cognitive model”), he doesnot explain why front-line perpetrators failed to change their beliefswhen confronted with horrific counter-evidence.

This is a criticism of Goldhagen’s cognitive thesis which I havedeveloped at considerable length in another essay.64 I present it here inabbreviated form.

Goldhagen holds that, by 1940–41, most Germans had come to believethat Jews were an incorrigibly demonic race locked in apocalyptic battleagainst the German people. Consequently, they believed that the destruc-tion of the Jewish race was just and necessary, even a beneficent act forhumanity.65 But Goldhagen overlooks the need to explain how ordinaryGerman perpetrators were able to sustain beliefs that convinced them thattorturing and killing Jews was right in the face of experiences which shouldhave shaken those beliefs.

Curiously, some particularly revealing questions about the adequacy ofGoldhagen’s cognitive thesis are suggested by the evidence that Goldhagenhimself has marshalled. His ‘phenomenological’ accounts of face-to-face murders, relentless cruelty to Jewish prisoners, self-defeating misuseof Jewish labour and the proud, often celebratory attitude of ordinaryGermans who participated in these actions invite questions such as thefollowing. How was it possible for a mature man putting a bullet throughthe head of a twelve-year child in some remote village in Eastern Europenot to wonder whether that child was really his dangerous and implac-able enemy?66 How could police volunteers who executed Jewish Germanwar veterans not question the logic of their own conduct?67 How could(non-SS) staff members who helped supervise Jews in the ‘work’ campsnot have been appalled by the fact that the near-starvation and continualbeatings of their Jewish slaves undermined productivity that was becomingincreasingly important to the German war effort?68 How could the ordinarymen and women who led the agonizing death marches in the very last daysof the World War II continue to think of their helpless victims as the greater

64 Kamber, “Goldhagen and Sartre on Eliminationist Antisemitism: False Beliefs andMoral Culpability”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 13/2 (1999), 252–71.

65 Goldhagen,Hitler’s Willing Executioners, ibid., 393–6, 452–3.66 Ibid., 218.67 Ibid., 219.68 Ibid., 317–8.

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enemy, when their country was being reduced to rubble by powerful armiesfrom East and West?69

How, in general, could ordinary policemen, soldiers, foremen andguards engage repeatedly in the face-to-face torment and murder of help-less men, women and children not have deep and frequent doubts abouttheir “cognitive model” and the justice of irreversible actions based onsuch beliefs? Belief proper, as opposed to faith, is open to revision on thebasis of new experience. Why did so few German perpetrators revise theirbeliefs during the war (whereas many revised their beliefs after the war)?According to Goldhagen,

[D]uring the Nazi period, and even long before, most Germans could no more emerge withcognitive models foreign to their society – with a certain aboriginal people’s model ofthe mind, for example – than they could speak fluent Romanian without ever having beenexposed to it.70

Yet this analogy is profoundly implausible. Changing one’s beliefsabout another people is very different from becoming fluent in an unfa-miliar language, and models other than eliminationist anti-Semitism werereadily available to Germans both within German culture itself and withinthe collective heritage of Western thought. A far better answer is that theanti-Semitism which animated perpetrators was a passionate and, perhaps,defensive choice to be deceived. It has often been noted that Jews werephysically and psychologically degraded during the Holocaust in order to‘show’ that they were physically and psychologically inferior. The crueltyand zeal of perpetrators may have been less theproductof conviction thanways of producing and sustaining it.

Goldhagen’s cognitive thesis also leads to counter-intuitive ethicalconclusions. Whether he intends it or not, his way of explaining whythe perpetrators of the Holocaust acted as they did mitigates theirmoral blameworthiness.71

It is generally accepted by ethicists that factual ignorance or error mayexcuse or at least mitigate one’s blameworthiness for a wrongful act. IfI shoot an undercover policeman believing him to be a vicious thug who

69 Ibid., 362–3.70 Ibid., 34.71 Although several critics have noted that Goldhagen’s argument mitigates the culpab-

ility of perpetrators, they have failed to recognize that this is a direct result of his cognitivethesis. For an extended discussion of this issue, see Kamber, “Goldhagen and Sartre onEliminationist Anti-Semitism”, op. cit., as well as Finkelstein,A Nation on Trial, op. cit.,13; Erich Geldbach “Another Kind of Revisionism”, in Franklin H. Littell, ed.,Hyping theHolocaust, op. cit., 89–117, p. 97; and Ron Rosenbaum,Explaining Hitler: The Search forthe Origins of His Evil(New York: Random House, 1998), 362.


is menacing an innocent victim, I am certainly less blameworthy than Iwould be if I believed the man I shot to be an undercover policeman whowas trying to arrest a dangerous felon.

My excuse is even stronger if my erroneous beliefs were brought aboutby the lies of others. Repeatedly, Goldhagen reminds us that German elim-inationist anti-Semitism was systematically nurtured and reinforced byNazi education and propaganda. His point is clear: given the prevalence ofeliminationist anti-Semitism before the Nazis, and its intensification underthe Nazis, what else could ordinary Germans believe? And given thesebeliefs, what else could they do? Thus Goldhagen implies that the contri-bution of ordinary Germans to the Holocaust was by and large a result ofmisinformation, a crime not of malice or moral blindness but of factualerror, a tragic mistake. In a very brief exchange with me in April 1997,Goldhagen remarked that his account was intended to deal with the historyof what happened rather than with an analysis of its ethical implications.Nevertheless, counter-intuitive ethical implications are often warning signsof conceptual deficiencies.

CONCLUSION

While Hitler’s Willing Executionersclearly falls short of its avowedpurpose – “to explain why the Holocaust occurred” – the questions itraises, and even its shortcomings, are illuminating. Despite the difficulty offinding answers, Goldhagen is right to raise questions about numbers. Howmany Germans were anti-Semites? How many hoped for the elimination ofJews or of Jewish influence? How many contributed to the Holocaust? Howmany were cruel and zealous executioners? How many more would havebeen cruel and zealous executioners if the opportunity had come their way?By raising these questions he pushes the focus of responsibility down to thelevel of individuals who had to make choices every day. On the other hand,his tendency to overestimate and downplay exceptions should remind usof how little is known about critical masses in cases of minority perse-cution. We do not know, for example, what percentage of true believers(or dissenters) it takes to sway a majority to engage in (or refrain from)persecution.

Goldhagen also deserves praise for asking what mindset and motivesexplain the Holocaust as it actually unfolded – a Holocaust in which thehumiliation, degradation and suffering of Jews was nearly as important astheir extermination. Nazi bureaucrats may have played an important rolein the implementation of the Holocaust, but the beatings and killings werenot executed by distant functionaries. Goldhagen is not content to hear a

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litany of motives thatmighthave influenced such perpetrators: he wants toknow what motivesactually led them to do what they did.

Ultimately, Goldhagen’s answer to this question in terms of a cognitiveinterpretation of anti-Semitism is unable to bear the weight either of hiscritics’ counter-examples or his own test cases. But his answer fails for alarger reason as well. Intent, as he is, on giving a clear account of whyordinary Germans became willing executioners, he overlooks the needto embed his explanation of German behaviour in an adequate theory ofhuman conduct. He assumes that human beings know what they believeand value and are adept at judging how to maximize their preferences. Healso assumes that the causal relations between human motives and actionsare relatively easy to understand. Yet these are questionable assumptionsthat require a good deal of defence – and qualification – if they arelegitimate at all.

Goldhagen’s failure to question or defend these assumptions is tellinglyexemplified in his response to Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments onthe willingness of ordinary Americans to inflict intense pain and possibleinjury on strangers as part of a (bogus) learning experiment. UnlikeBrowning, who uses Milgram’s work as part of his explanatory frameworkin Ordinary Men72, Goldhagen dismisses Milgram’s work in a footnoteby mentioning another psychologist who has tried to show that it is“trust” rather than “obedience” which explains the behaviour of Milgram’ssubjects. What Goldhagen fails to see is that the relevance of Milgram’swork to his own theory about the motivation of ordinary German perpet-rators does not depend on whether “trust” rather than “obedience” is thebetter explanatory category, but on Milgram’s vivid demonstration that aremarkable cross-section of ordinary Americans were willing to tormentpeople they did not hate as part of an ‘experiment’ in which they had nostake.

Equally importantly, Goldhagen fails to take account of the lessonimplicit in Milgram’s discovery that other people, including experts inhuman behaviour, could not predict his results. When Milgram explainedall of the details of his experiments (except the results) to groups of psychi-atrists, graduate students and faculty in the behavioural sciences, collegesophomores and middle-class adults, none of these groups came close topredicting the appalling results that Milgram consistently obtained.73 Atthe very least, Milgram’s work should have shaken Goldhagen’s confid-ence about the ease of inferring motives from actions, or actions from

72 Browning,Ordinary Men, op. cit., 171–6.73 Stanley Milgram,Obedience to Authority(New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 27–31.


motives, when the ‘ordinary’ agents in question were living under theextraordinary circumstances of Nazi Germany.

Christopher Browning has described Daniel Goldhagen as “a latter-dayCopernicus . . . sweeping away the outmoded equants and epicylces of asuperseded system and replacing it with an explanation that is seductivelyattractive because of its simplicity”.74 He cites a warning from PrimoLevi’s essayThe Gray Zone: “[T]he greater part of historical and naturalphenomena are [sic] not simple, nor simple in the way we would like.”75

According to Browning,

[I]t is precisely the “gray zone,” that murky world of mixed motives, conflicting emotionsand priorities, reluctant choices, and self-serving opportunism and accommodation weddedto self-deception and denial – a world that is all too human and all too universal – that isabsent from Daniel Goldhagen’s Manichean tale.76

Department of PhilosophyThe College of New JerseyPO BOX 7718Ewing, NJ 08628-0718, USAEmail: [email protected]

74 Browning, “Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans”, op. cit., 67. Since the Copernicantheory was still geometrically complicated, requiring 17 instead of 83 epicycles, Keplermight be a better comparison, but the point is understood.

75 Ibid.76 Ibid.

the logic of the goldhagen debate

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