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A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth
Attempts to refute the claim that Germans supported the Jews' executions during the Holocaust
176 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 1998
About the author
Norman G. Finkelstein
28 books1,794 followersNorman Gary Finkelstein, is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Son of a holocaust survivor, Finkelstein is a fierce critic of Israeli policy, especially toward Palestinians. He has had a tense rivalry with his pro-Israel counterpart, Alan Dershowitz. In 2007 DePaul University denied his tenure, a decision for which Dershowitz lobbied. For his views and suspected connections to anti-Zionist groups, Israel has denied Finkelstein entry and banned him from the country for a decade.
Son of a holocaust survivor, Finkelstein is a fierce critic of Israeli policy, especially toward Palestinians. He has had a tense rivalry with his pro-Israel counterpart, Alan Dershowitz. In 2007 DePaul University denied his tenure, a decision for which Dershowitz lobbied. For his views and suspected connections to anti-Zionist groups, Israel has denied Finkelstein entry and banned him from the country for a decade.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 23, 2015
First published in 1998 in response to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's much-hyped, so-called history book 'Hitler's Willing Executioners', this savaging of Goldhagen's work remains just as compelling and relevant today.
Finkelstein gets the bulk of the pages (about half, his co-author gets a quarter or so, as do the meticulous endnotes) and is his usual caustic self. In her essay, Ruth Bettina Birn seems to take less gleeful pleasure in insulting Goldhagen and giving his lurid nonsense the utter kicking it deserves, but she does so expertly, and raises the same deeply troubling issues.
Not only is Goldhagen's entire idea insultingly racist (all Germans have always been desperate to eliminate the Jews) it's illogical and ridiculous. By pointing out his slapdash research, his cherry-picking of quotes, his misrepresentation of source material, his outright making things up, his seeming ignorance of basic scholarship and the obvious contradictions he writes about but fails to notice, Finkelstein and Birn have done a valuable job. And done it brilliantly.
Finkelstein gets the bulk of the pages (about half, his co-author gets a quarter or so, as do the meticulous endnotes) and is his usual caustic self. In her essay, Ruth Bettina Birn seems to take less gleeful pleasure in insulting Goldhagen and giving his lurid nonsense the utter kicking it deserves, but she does so expertly, and raises the same deeply troubling issues.
Not only is Goldhagen's entire idea insultingly racist (all Germans have always been desperate to eliminate the Jews) it's illogical and ridiculous. By pointing out his slapdash research, his cherry-picking of quotes, his misrepresentation of source material, his outright making things up, his seeming ignorance of basic scholarship and the obvious contradictions he writes about but fails to notice, Finkelstein and Birn have done a valuable job. And done it brilliantly.
July 16, 2012
He demolishes Goldhagen's Zionist thesis that the German people in 1940 were all anti Semitic and proceeds to look more closely at the facts and circumstances of the Holocaust.
December 28, 2014
A thorough and damning response to Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. I don't think I quite agree with Finkelstein's argument that Goldhagen's work was intended to justify Zionist ideology or to suggest that Israelis have a right to act with impunity, but I found the earlier sections detailing the internal contradictions and flaws in Goldhagen's thesis convincing. And Ruth Bettina Birn's contextualization of the documents Goldhagen used were careful and equally appreciated.
Recommended if you have an interest in Goldhagen's thesis or in Finkelstein's or Birn's work. I can't imagine why else anyone would read it, although I personally quite enjoyed it.
Recommended if you have an interest in Goldhagen's thesis or in Finkelstein's or Birn's work. I can't imagine why else anyone would read it, although I personally quite enjoyed it.
March 13, 2024
TWO AUTHORS STRONGLY CRITIQUE ‘HITLER’S WILLING EXECUTIONERS’
Norman Finkelstein wrote in the introductory section of this 1998 book, “Rarely has a book with scholarly pretensions evoked as much popular interest as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s study, ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners.’ … Although initial reviews were not uniformly positive, once the Goldhagen juggernaut proved unstoppable, even the dissenting media voices joined in the chorus of praise…. What makes the Goldhagen phenomenon so remarkable is that [the book] is not at all a learned inquiry. 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.” (Pg. 4)
He states, “For argument’s sake, let us assume that Goldhagen is correct. Consumed by a ferocious loathing of the Jews, the German people jumped at Hitler’s invitation to exterminate them. Yet the question still remains, Whence the hatred of Jews? A nation of genocidal racists is, after all, not exactly a commonplace. On this crucial issue, Goldhagen sheds no light. Antisemitism, he suggests, was symptomatic of a much deeper German malaise… Yet he explains neither why these normally quiescent passions burst forth in Germany nor why they were directed against the Jews.” (Pg. 10)
He notes, “to demonstrate Hitler’s greater popularity right after the seizure of power, Goldhagen recalls that the throttling of all dissent ‘did not deter voters, but increased the Nazi vote to over seventeen millions people’ in March 1933… One may have supposed that this increment in Nazi votes was perhaps BECAUSE all dissent was l throttled…” (Pg..34)
He asserts, “The remarkable thing about Goldhagen’s argument is that the exact opposite is true. What distinguished Nazi anti-Semitism WAS the reluctant and mechanical as against the gratuitously cruel implementation of the Final Solution. ‘The killing of the Jews,’ reports Raul Hilberg, was regarded as historical necessity.’” (Pg. 60)
He reports, “‘German children,’ recalls a survivor of the Helmbrechts death march, ‘began to throw stones at us.’ Clutching his thesis, Goldhagen concludes: ‘The German children, knowing nothing of Jews but what they learned from their society, understood how they were to act.’ Thus, to dispel any lingering doubt that pre-Nazi homicidal German anti-Semitism explains the Final Solution, Goldhagen points to German children stoning Jews in 1945.” (Pg. 79)
Ruth Bettina Birn observes, “The evidence itself has not been examined by reviewers, because most of them are not familiar with Goldhagen’s sources. In fact, the author uses historical documents only to a minimal extent; apart from some Nuremberg documents and a few files from the German Federal Archives, he relies mainly on secondary literature.” (Pg. 105)
She points out, “The incident described by Goldhagen seems to have been in the nature of a pogrom, caused by a group of officers who… were ideologically zealots… the perpetrators in this case can be specifically identified. Of the fourteen main perpetrators who stood trial, thirteen were career police officers and one came via the Waffen-SS, eight were party members. One of the two company leaders had been involved, after World War I, with right-wing groups such as the ‘Freikorps’ while the other was an SS member in 1933. They can hardly be considered ‘ordinary Germans.’” (Pg.117-118)
She asserts, “Goldhagen’s book is not driven by sources, be they primary or secondary. He does not allow the witness statements he uses to speak for themselves, he uses source material only as an underpinning for his preconceived theory. Rather the book is driven by the author’s choice of language , and it can only be understood by analyzing those choices and his generally argumentative style. Verbosity and repetitiveness are the book's most striking features.” (Pg. 136)
She concludes, “Whether this is really the role of a scholar is doubtful. After all, there is an extensive collection of survivors’ testimonies, in which we can hear the voices of the victims themselves. In the approach Goldhagen advocates, the historian takes on the position of an intermediary who is not interpreting sources but retelling the events in the light of his own imagination. It’s his voice we hear!” (Pg. 147)
This book will be of great interest to those seeking critiques of Goldhagen’s book.
Norman Finkelstein wrote in the introductory section of this 1998 book, “Rarely has a book with scholarly pretensions evoked as much popular interest as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s study, ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners.’ … Although initial reviews were not uniformly positive, once the Goldhagen juggernaut proved unstoppable, even the dissenting media voices joined in the chorus of praise…. What makes the Goldhagen phenomenon so remarkable is that [the book] is not at all a learned inquiry. 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.” (Pg. 4)
He states, “For argument’s sake, let us assume that Goldhagen is correct. Consumed by a ferocious loathing of the Jews, the German people jumped at Hitler’s invitation to exterminate them. Yet the question still remains, Whence the hatred of Jews? A nation of genocidal racists is, after all, not exactly a commonplace. On this crucial issue, Goldhagen sheds no light. Antisemitism, he suggests, was symptomatic of a much deeper German malaise… Yet he explains neither why these normally quiescent passions burst forth in Germany nor why they were directed against the Jews.” (Pg. 10)
He notes, “to demonstrate Hitler’s greater popularity right after the seizure of power, Goldhagen recalls that the throttling of all dissent ‘did not deter voters, but increased the Nazi vote to over seventeen millions people’ in March 1933… One may have supposed that this increment in Nazi votes was perhaps BECAUSE all dissent was l throttled…” (Pg..34)
He asserts, “The remarkable thing about Goldhagen’s argument is that the exact opposite is true. What distinguished Nazi anti-Semitism WAS the reluctant and mechanical as against the gratuitously cruel implementation of the Final Solution. ‘The killing of the Jews,’ reports Raul Hilberg, was regarded as historical necessity.’” (Pg. 60)
He reports, “‘German children,’ recalls a survivor of the Helmbrechts death march, ‘began to throw stones at us.’ Clutching his thesis, Goldhagen concludes: ‘The German children, knowing nothing of Jews but what they learned from their society, understood how they were to act.’ Thus, to dispel any lingering doubt that pre-Nazi homicidal German anti-Semitism explains the Final Solution, Goldhagen points to German children stoning Jews in 1945.” (Pg. 79)
Ruth Bettina Birn observes, “The evidence itself has not been examined by reviewers, because most of them are not familiar with Goldhagen’s sources. In fact, the author uses historical documents only to a minimal extent; apart from some Nuremberg documents and a few files from the German Federal Archives, he relies mainly on secondary literature.” (Pg. 105)
She points out, “The incident described by Goldhagen seems to have been in the nature of a pogrom, caused by a group of officers who… were ideologically zealots… the perpetrators in this case can be specifically identified. Of the fourteen main perpetrators who stood trial, thirteen were career police officers and one came via the Waffen-SS, eight were party members. One of the two company leaders had been involved, after World War I, with right-wing groups such as the ‘Freikorps’ while the other was an SS member in 1933. They can hardly be considered ‘ordinary Germans.’” (Pg.117-118)
She asserts, “Goldhagen’s book is not driven by sources, be they primary or secondary. He does not allow the witness statements he uses to speak for themselves, he uses source material only as an underpinning for his preconceived theory. Rather the book is driven by the author’s choice of language , and it can only be understood by analyzing those choices and his generally argumentative style. Verbosity and repetitiveness are the book's most striking features.” (Pg. 136)
She concludes, “Whether this is really the role of a scholar is doubtful. After all, there is an extensive collection of survivors’ testimonies, in which we can hear the voices of the victims themselves. In the approach Goldhagen advocates, the historian takes on the position of an intermediary who is not interpreting sources but retelling the events in the light of his own imagination. It’s his voice we hear!” (Pg. 147)
This book will be of great interest to those seeking critiques of Goldhagen’s book.
November 30, 2024
The book is good and well-written. It serves its purpose. The purpose is relatively limited. Two authors refute the argument of a popular, promoted as scholarly, book on the Holocaust, Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen.
The arguments by Finkelstein and Birn are very convincing. Goldhagen started with a conclusion and looked for evidence and misinterpreted evidence to fit his conclusion.
The book is relevant for our time, as the incoming US administration is talking of deporting millions of immigrants and dealing with internal enemies. Goldhagen's thesis is that the Holocaust was unique and could only happen in Germany. Finkelstein and Birn show that historical circumstances and leadership can get people to do things that they ordinarily would not do. What will Americans do if faced with similar questions?
The arguments by Finkelstein and Birn are very convincing. Goldhagen started with a conclusion and looked for evidence and misinterpreted evidence to fit his conclusion.
The book is relevant for our time, as the incoming US administration is talking of deporting millions of immigrants and dealing with internal enemies. Goldhagen's thesis is that the Holocaust was unique and could only happen in Germany. Finkelstein and Birn show that historical circumstances and leadership can get people to do things that they ordinarily would not do. What will Americans do if faced with similar questions?
January 13, 2024
I'll be honest, I can't say it's a triumphant feeling to close a book that pretty centrally features Elie Wiesel as the responsible party for a whole world of deeply disingenuous and intellectually-dishonest writing and punditry and be thoroughly convinced.
November 29, 2025
A pretty damning riposte to Goldhagen.
June 21, 2025
Two-pronged
surgical strike dissects hack
history. Dissent!
surgical strike dissects hack
history. Dissent!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews