I don't know what I thought. I read this because it comes up pretty frequently in other books on WWII and the Holocaust as being controversial. Basically, Goldhagen's argument is that Hitler and the SS did not conduct the Holocaust by themselves. They had the help of thousands of other German people. (And some other nationalities, which Goldhagen chooses not to discuss much) Many other scholars have analyzed reasons that these other Germans participated in the Genocide, some saying the Germans were afraid of the Nazis and following orders, or were giving in to group pressures, or didn't understand the full extent of the killing, or were brainwashed. Goldhagen argues that actually, these people didn't need to be coerced into killing the Jews, they participated because they wanted to do so, because they believed it was the right thing to do.
He certainly has some evidence to back up his claim. There were apparently many instances in which German policemen or soldiers were explicitly told that did not have to participate in killing operations, but participated anyway. There were cases in which one or two men requested and received transfers out of battalions that were massacring Jews. The death marches provide even more evidence; many Germans were starving and shooting Jews mere days before the end of the war, when they knew that they couldn't possibly win. The problem with this book is that interspersed with some decent argument are statements like "the entire Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastical leadership was fully cognizant of the extermination of the Jews," which is a pretty bold claim for which Goldhagen doesn't seem to have any proof. He also repeats himself constantly, sometimes covering ground late in the book that he has already covered, and sometimes just arguing the same point over and over again for multiple pages. His argument also centers on this idea that the Germans, and only the Germans, possessed this special kind of 'eliminationist antisemitism' which prepared them for the Genocide. Goldhagen failed to convince me of this.
It seemed in reading this that Goldhagen's goal was basically to rub the reader's face in the absolute misery and evil of the Holocaust. He accomplishes that goal. This is even worse than you thought, he is saying, and every time you feel like giving common Germans a pass because they claimed not to know what was going on, here are a few images to keep in mind. Not an easy book to stomach. Hard to recommend.