Hitler's Willing Executioners
Fifty years after Adolph Hitler’s failed attempt to exterminate the Jews of
Europe, there still remains no consensus upon the causes of this event. Daniel
Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hilter’s Willing Executioners, attempts to provide a
new approach and new explanations to the perplexing questions left in the
aftermath of 1945. Upon it’s publication, Goldhagen’s thesis came under much
scrutiny by his academic peers. Goldhagen’s argument is that the usual
historical explanations of the Holocaust do not add up. The Holocaust was not
perpetrated by a small band of Nazis but by “ordinary Germans” in the hundreds
of thousands. The abrupt transformation of Germans from bakers, bankers and
bureaucrats to mass murderers was due to a particularly virulent strain of
anti-Semitism. Goldhagen’s indictment focuses on the citizenry’s complicity in
three of Nazi Germany’s institutions of mass killing; the Ordnungspolizie (the
Nazi Police Battalions), the work camps where Jews were incarcerated, and the
death marches from the those camps led by prison guards and their charges
near the end of the war.
While Goldhagen efficiently states the thesis to his dissertation, his
organizational style leaves much to be desired. One of the primary problems
with his style is it’s irritatingly repetitive nature. Goldhagen simply reiterates his
position, particularly in the opening chapters. In these chapter, on no less than
five occasions, he states the need for academicians to “reconceive our
understanding of modern German anti-Semitism by applying the theoretical and
methodological prescriptions enunciated here, including the dimensional
framework, to a more specific analysis of the histor...
... middle of paper ...
...oners. However, these people were
guilty for failing to protest Hitler’s murderous intentions and policies while there
was still time, and for this, they should be ashamed.
Bibliography:
Bibliography
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996
Pagination
Complete Pagination: 622 pages
Map Pagination: 8 maps appear throughout the text.
Appedices Pagination: 2 Appendices include 9 total pages.
Indices Pagination: 15 pages
Chart Pagination: N/A
Bibliography: The extended bibliography is found in the Notes section of the work. The
pagination of the note section is 126 pages.
Miscellaneous Pagination:
2 pages entitled Acknowledgement
1 page entitled Pseudonyms
2 pages entitled Abbreviations
2 pages of Photo Credits
The atrocities of war can take an “ordinary man” and turn him into a ruthless killer under the right circumstances. This is exactly what Browning argues happened to the “ordinary Germans” of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the mass murders and deportations during the Final Solution in Poland. Browning argues that a superiority complex was instilled in the German soldiers because of the mass publications of Nazi propaganda and the ideological education provided to German soldiers, both of which were rooted in hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism. Browning provides proof of Nazi propaganda and first-hand witness accounts of commanders disobeying orders and excusing reservists from duties to convince the reader that many of the men contributing to the mass
Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened.
Bard, Mitchell G., ed. "Introduction." Introduction. The Holocaust. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2001.
The contradictions imposed by the demands of conscience on the one hand and the norms of the battalion on the other are discussed. Ordinary Men provides a graphic portrayal of Police Battalion 101's involvement in the Holocaust. The major focus of the book focuses on reconstruction of the events this group of men participated in. According to Browning, the men of Police Battalion 101 were just that—ordinary. They were five hundred middle-aged, working-class men of German descent.
Goldhagen, Daniel J. (1997) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Abacus : London)
On July 13, 1942, the Jewish community of Jozefow, Poland was annihilated by Reserve Police Battalion 101, who was working with Einsatzgruppen, the most fanatical members of the SS. This group received orders to collect the town’s Jews and to kill them all, except for the young boys who could perform labor. Christopher Browning’s arguments in his essay, Reserve Police Battalion 101, reveal that the humans who partook in the killings of Jews were just humans doing typical things. They were blindly obedient and pressured by their peers. Also, when people are around their friends, they can have a tendency to be less moral and humane.
During World War II, Germany made an attempt to overrun Europe. What happened when the Nazis came into power and persecuted the Jews in Germany, Austria and Poland is well known as the Holocaust. Here, human's evil side provides one of the scariest occurrences of this century. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi counterparts conducted raids of the ghettos to locate and often exterminate any Jews they found. Although Jews are the most widely known victims of the Holocaust, they were not the only targets. When the war ended, 6 million Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, and others targeted by the Nazis, had died in the Holocaust. Most of these deaths occurred in gas chambers and mass shootings. This gruesome attack was motivated mainly by the fear of cultural intermixing which would impurify the "Master Race."
Norton, James R. The Holocaust: Jews, Germany, and the National Socialists. New York: Rosen Pub., 2009. Print.
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One of the darkest episodes in the recorded history of mankind was the Nazi effort at systematic extermination of the Jewish race. This notorious act mostly took place in concentration or extermination camps. This paper will analyze the location, infrastructure, conditions, people involved and the brutal nature of three concentration camps- Auschwitz, Treblinka and Chelmno.
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