Divergent Historical Interpretations of the Holocaust

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When approaching the topic of the Holocaust, historians often become concerned with uncovering the motivations of the perpetrators. Two particular historians, Christopher Browning and Daniel Goldhagen, hold views that are fundamentally opposite. Goldhagen directly challenges Browning’s postulation that the murderers of the Jews were not all fanatical and murderous Nazi’s, by arguing that Germany had a very strong cultural history of anti-Semitism that ultimately moved many German people to murder Jews. The two historians appear to disagree in two major significant areas of the historical interpretation of the Holocaust – the first being their assessments of the role of anti-Semitism in German history and the second being their assessments of the motivations of the German men who ultimately carried out the murders during the Holocaust.

Documents used by Browning show that the members of the Police Battalion 101 were men of all ages and from all walks of German life. Many of these men were not raised in the Nazi-era and were initially offered places in …show more content…

Opposing Browning’s view that the Final Solution implementers were ordinary citizens, Goldhagen believes that anti-Semitism had governed the life of German civil society centuries before the Nazi’s had come to power. He argues that the vast majority of ordinary German citizens were willing executioners during the Holocaust, owing to the aggressive degree of anti-Semitism that was rife in German political culture. Anti-Semitism was the cornerstone of the German’s national identity; and it was so prominent that ordinary German men were willing to kill Jews in support of it. Goldhagen does not believe that the German soldiers were coerced or threatened to kill the victims of the Holocaust, but rather he sees them as volunteering for the killing

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