Wikipedia

Daniel Goldhagen

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen(born June 30, 1959)[1]is an American author, and formerassociate professorof government and social studies atHarvard University.Goldhagen reached attention and broad criticism as the author of two books aboutthe Holocaust:Hitler's Willing Executioners(1996) andA Moral Reckoning(2002). He is also the author ofWorse Than War(2009), which examines the phenomenon of genocide, andThe Devil That Never Dies(2013), in which he traces a worldwide rise in virulentantisemitism.[2][3]

Daniel Goldhagen
Goldhagen in Manor house
Goldhagen in Manor house
BornDaniel Jonah Goldhagen
(1959-06-30)June 30, 1959(age 65)
Boston, Massachusetts
OccupationPolitical scientist,author
EducationHarvard University
SpouseSarah Williams Goldhagen

Biography

edit

Daniel Goldhagen was born inBoston, Massachusetts,to Erich and Norma Goldhagen. He grew up in nearbyNewton.[4]His wifeSarah (née Williams)is anarchitecturalhistorian, and critic forThe New Republicmagazine.[5]

Goldhagen's father is Erich Goldhagen, a retired Harvard professor. Erich is a Holocaust survivor who, with his family, was interned in aNazi Jewish ghettoinCzernowitz(present-dayUkraine).[4][needs update]Daniel credits his father for being a "model of intellectual sobriety and probity".[6]Goldhagen has written that his "understanding ofNazismand of the Holocaust is firmly indebted "to his father's influence.[6]In 1977, Goldhagen enteredHarvard,and remained there for some twenty years - first as an undergraduate and graduate student, then as an assistant professor in the Government and Social Studies Department.[7][8]

During early graduate studies, he attended a lecture bySaul Friedländer,in which he had what he describes as a "lightbulb moment": Thefunctionalism versus intentionalismdebate did not address the question, "WhenHitlerordered the annihilation of theJews,why did people execute the order? ". Goldhagen wanted to investigatewhothe German men and women who killed the Jews were, and their reasons for killing.[4]

Academic and literary career

edit

As a graduate student, Goldhagen undertook research in the German archives.[4][9]The thesis ofHitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaustproposes that, during theHolocaust,many killers were ordinary Germans, who killed for having been raised in a profoundly antisemitic culture, and thus were acculturated — "ready and willing" — to execute the Nazi government's genocidal plans.

Goldhagen's first notable work was a book review titled "False Witness" published byThe New Republicmagazine on April 17, 1989. It was one in a series of hostile reviews of the 1988 bookWhy Did the Heavens Not Darken?by an American-Jewish professor ofPrinceton Universityborn in Luxembourg,Arno J. Mayer.[10]Goldhagen wrote that "Mayer's enormous intellectual error" was in ascribing the cause of the Holocaust toanti-Communism,rather than to antisemitism,[11]and criticized Prof. Mayer's saying that most massacres ofJews in the USSR,during the first weeks ofOperation Barbarossain the summer of 1941, were committed by local peoples (see theLviv pogromsfor more historical background), with littleWehrmachtparticipation.[11]Goldhagen accused him also of misrepresenting the facts about theWannsee Conference(1942), which was meant for plotting thegenocideofEuropean Jews,not (as Mayer said) merely the resettlement of the Jews.[11]Goldhagen further accused Mayer of obscurantism, of suppressing historical fact, and of being an apologist forNazi Germany,likeErnst Nolte,for attempting to "de-demonize"National Socialism.[11]Also in 1989, historianLucy DawidowiczreviewedWhy Did the Heavens Not Darken?inCommentarymagazine, and praised Goldhagen's "False Witness" review, identifying him as a rising Holocaust historian who formally rebutted "Mayer's falsification" of history.[10][12]

In 2003, Goldhagen resigned from Harvard to focus on writing. His work synthesizes four historical elements, kept distinct for analysis; as presented in the booksA Moral Reckoning: the Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair(2002) andWorse Than War(2009): (i) description (what happens), (ii) explanation (why it happens), (iii) moral evaluation (judgment), and (iv) prescription (what is to be done?).[13][14]According to Goldhagen, his Holocaust studies address questions about the political, social, and cultural particulars behind other genocides: "Who did the killing?" and "What, despite temporal and cultural differences, do mass killings have in common?", which yieldedWorse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity,about the global nature ofgenocide,and averting suchcrimes against humanity.[15]

Books

edit

Hitler's Willing Executioners

edit

Hitler's Willing Executioners(1996) posits that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in theHolocaustbecause of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism"in German identity that had developed in the preceding centuries. Goldhagen argued that this form of antisemitism was widespread in Germany, that it was unique to Germany, and that because of it, ordinary Germans willingly killed Jews. Goldhagen asserted that this mentality grew out ofmedievalattitudes with a religious basis, but was eventually secularized.[16]Goldhagen's book was meant to be a "thick description"in the manner ofClifford Geertz.[17]As such, to prove his thesis Goldhagen focused on the behavior of ordinary Germans who killed Jews, especially the behavior of the men of Order Police (Orpo)Reserve Battalion 101inoccupied Polandin 1942 to argue ordinary Germans possessed by "eliminationist anti-Semitism" chose to willingly murder Jews in cruel and sadistic ways.[18]Scholars such as Yehuda Bauer, Otto Kulka and Israel Gutman among others had asserted before Goldhagen, the primacy of ideology, radical anti-Semitism, and the corollary of an inimitability exclusive to Germany.[19]

The book, which began as a doctoral dissertation, was written largely as a response toChristopher Browning'sOrdinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland(1992).[20]Much of Goldhagen's book was concerned with the same Order Police battalion, but with very different conclusions.[21]On April 8, 1996, Browning and Goldhagen discussed their differences during a symposium hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[22]Browning's book recognizes the impact of the unending campaign of antisemitic propaganda, but it takes other factors into account, such as fear of breaking ranks, desire for career advancement, a concern not to be viewed as weak, the effect of state bureaucracy,[23]battlefield conditions and peer-bonding.[21][24]Goldhagen does not acknowledge the influence of these variables. Goldhagen's book went on to win theAmerican Political Science Association's 1994 Gabriel A. Almond Award in comparative politics and the Democracy Prize of theJournal for German and International Politics.[25]Timemagazine reported that it was one of the two most important books of 1996,[26]andThe New York Timescalled it "one of those rare, new works that merit the appellation 'landmark'".[27]

The book sparked controversy in the press and academic circles. Several historians characterized its reception as an extension of theHistorikerstreit,the German historiographical debate of the 1980s that sought to explainNazihistory.[28]The book was a "publishing phenomenon",[29]achieving fame in both the United States and Germany despite being criticized by some historians,[30][31][32][33][34]who called it ahistorical and,[35]according to Holocaust historianRaul Hilberg,"totally wrong about everything" and "worthless".[36][37]Due to its alleged "generalizing hypothesis" about Germans, it has been characterized asanti-German.[38][39][40]The Israeli historianYehuda Bauerclaims that "Goldhagen stumbles badly", "Goldhagen's thesis does not work",[41]and charges "... that the anti-German bias of his book, almost a racist bias (however much he may deny it), leads nowhere".[42]The American historianFritz Sterndenounced the book as unscholarly and full of racistGermanophobia.[43]Hilberg summarised the debates, "by the end of 1996, it was clear that in sharp distinction from lay readers, much of the academic world had wiped Goldhagen off the map".[44]

A Moral Reckoning

edit

In 2002, Goldhagen publishedA Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair,his account of the role of the Catholic Church before, during and afterWorld War II.In the book, Goldhagen acknowledges that individual bishops and priests hid and saved a large number of Jews,[45]but also asserts that others promoted or accepted antisemitism before[46]and during the war,[47]and some played a direct role in the persecution of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust.[48]

David Dalin andJoseph BottumofThe Weekly Standardcriticized the book, calling it a "misuse of the Holocaust to advance [an] anti-Catholic agenda", and poor scholarship.[49]Goldhagen noted in an interview withThe Atlantic,as well as in the book's introduction, that the title and the first page of the book reveal its purpose as a moral, rather than historical analysis, asserting that he has invited European Church representatives to present their own historical account in discussing morality and reparation.[50]

Worse Than War

edit

InWorse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity(2009), Goldhagen describedNazismand theHolocaustas "eliminationist assaults". He worked on the book intermittently for a decade, interviewing atrocity perpetrators and victims inRwanda,Bosnia,Guatemala, Cambodia, Kenya, and the USSR, and politicians, government officers, and private humanitarian organization officers.[51]Goldhagen states that his aim is to help "craft institutions and politics that will save countless lives and also lift the lethal threat under which so many people live". He concludes that eliminationist assaults are preventable because "the world's non-mass-murdering countries are wealthy and powerful, having prodigious military capabilities (and they can band together)", whereas the perpetrator countries "are overwhelmingly poor and weak".[52][53]

The book was cinematically adapted, and the documentary film ofWorse Than Warwas first presented in the U.S. inAspen, Colorado,on August 6, 2009 – the sixty-fourth anniversary of the atomic bombing ofHiroshimain 1945.[54]In Germany, the documentary was first broadcast by theARDtelevision network October 18, 2009,[55]and was to be nationally broadcast byPBSin 2010.[56]Uğur Ümit Üngörcriticized the title of the book, stating "Worse than war? What does that mean? If I write a book about the enormous destruction and deaths of innocent people brought about by war, could I call itBetter than Genocide?"[57]

David Rieff,characterizing Goldhagen as a "pro-Israel polemicist and amateur historian", writes that the subtext of what Goldhagen deems "eliminationism" may be his own view of contemporary Islam. Rieff writes that Goldhagen's website states that the author "speaks nationally... about Political Islam's Offensive, the threat toIsrael,Hitler's Willing Executioners,theGlobalization of Anti-Semitism,and more ".[53]Rieff questions Goldhagen's equating the "culture of death" of Nazism with that of "political Islam", as well as Goldhagen's conclusion that, in order to prevent "eliminationism", the United Nations should be remade into an interventionist entity focusing on"a devoted international push for democratizing more countries".[53]

Adam Jones,who praised this book for its fluid style and commendable passion, concludes however, that the book is undermined by a casual approach to basic research, and by the author's tendency to overreach and overstate his case.[58]The British historianDavid Elsteinaccused Goldhagen of manipulating his sources to make a false accusation of genocide against the British during theMau Mau Uprisingof the 1950s inKenya.[59]Elstein wrote in his view that the chapter on Kenya left Goldhagen open "...to the charge that he is the kind of scholar who is either unaware of the facts or prefers to exclude those which do not fit his thesis".[59]

Personal life

edit

Goldhagen has been avegetariansince the age of 10.[60]Since 1999, Goldhagen has been married toSarah Williams Goldhagen.

Selected works

edit
  • 1989: "False Witness",The New Republic,April 17, 1989, Volume 200, No. 16, Issue # 3, pp. 39–44
  • 1996:Hitler's Willing Executioners:Ordinary Germans and The Holocaust,Alfred A. Knopf, New York,ISBN978-0-679-44695-8
  • 2002:A Moral Reckoning:The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair,Alfred A. Knopf, New York,ISBN978-0-375-41434-3
  • 2009:Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault On Humanity,PublicAffairs, New York,ISBN978-1-58648-769-0
  • 2013:The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Anti-Semitism

References

edit
  1. ^U.S. Public Records IndexVol 1 & 2 (Provo, UT: Ancestry Operations, Inc.), 2010.
  2. ^Benhorin, Yitzhak (July 31, 2012)."Report: Rise in global anti-Semitism".Ynetnews.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  3. ^Goldberg, Jeffrey (October 11, 2013)."Jonah Goldhagen's Devil That Never Dies".The New York Times.
  4. ^abcdSmith, Dinita (April 1, 1996)."Challenging a View of the Holocaust".The New York Times.RetrievedOctober 2,2009.
  5. ^"The New Republic Masthead".RetrievedOctober 2,2009.
  6. ^abGoldhagen, Daniel (1997).Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and The Holocaust.Alfred A. Knopf.
  7. ^Ruber, Deborah Bradley (January 9, 1997)."Goldhagen Wins German Prize For Holocaust Book".The Harvard University Gazette.Archived fromthe originalon June 4, 2011.RetrievedOctober 2,2009.
  8. ^"Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Website".RetrievedOctober 2,2009.
  9. ^Carl F. Lankowski, ed. (August 1999).Breakdown, Breakup, Breakthrough: Germany's Difficult Passage To Modernity.Berghahn Books, Incorporated.ISBN978-1-57181-211-7.
  10. ^abGuttenplan, D. D.The Holocaust on Trial,New York: Norton, 2001 p. 74.ISBN0393346056.
  11. ^abcdGoldhagen, Daniel. "False Witness,"The New Republic,April 17, 1989 pp. 39-43.
  12. ^Dawidowicz, Lucy, "Perversions of the Holocaust", pp. 56–60, fromCommentary,vol. 88, no. 4, October 1989, p. 58.
  13. ^Goldhagen, Daniel (2002).A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church In The Holocaust And Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair.New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp.5–6.ISBN978-0-375-41434-3.
  14. ^Goldhagen, Daniel (October 2009).Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.New York: Public Affairs. p.32.ISBN978-1-58648-769-0.
  15. ^Goldhagen, Daniel (October 2009).Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.New York: Public Affairs. p.631.ISBN978-1-58648-769-0.
  16. ^Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah (1996).Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and The Holocaust.Alfred A Knopf, p. 53.
  17. ^Clendinnean, Inga (1999).Reading the Holocaust.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 117.
  18. ^Clendinnean, Inga (1999).Reading the Holocaust.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 115–117.
  19. ^Bauer, Yehuda (January–April 1997). "On Perpetrators of the Holocaust and the Public Discourse".The Jewish Quarterly Review.New Series.87(3/4): 345.doi:10.2307/1455190.JSTOR1455190.
  20. ^Hilberg, Raul(Summer 1997). "The Goldhagen Phenomenon".Critical Inquiry.23(4): 721–722 (721–728).doi:10.1086/448851.JSTOR1344046.S2CID161718990.
  21. ^abBauer, Yehuda(2002).Rethinking the Holocaust.New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 107.
  22. ^"The 'Willing Executioners'/'Ordinary Men' Debate".United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, selections from the symposium of April 8, 1996.
  23. ^Stern, Fritz (November–December 1996). "The Goldhagen Controversy: One Nation, One People, One Theory?".Foreign Affairs.75(6):134–135.doi:10.2307/20047834.JSTOR20047834.
  24. ^Browning, Christopher (1992).Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.New York: Harper Collins. pp.195–201.ISBN978-0060995065.
  25. ^Harvard Office of News and Public Affairs (January 9, 1997)."Harvard Gazette".News.harvard.edu.RetrievedAugust 26,2012.
  26. ^"Books: The Best Books of 1996".Time.December 23, 1996. Archived fromthe originalon January 10, 2007.
  27. ^Bernstein, Richard (March 9, 1997)."Was Slaughter of Jews Embraced by Germans?".The New York Times.RetrievedOctober 2,2009.
  28. ^Donat, Helmut (1991)."Auschwitz erst möglich gemacht?": Überlegungen zur jüngsten konservativen Geschichtsbewältigung.Bremen: Umbruch Verlag & Versandantiquariat.ISBN9783924444396.
  29. ^Crawshaw, Steve (2004).Easier fatherland.Continuum International Publishing Group. pp.136–137.ISBN978-0-8264-6320-3.
  30. ^Shatz, Adam. (April 8, 1998)Goldhagen's willing executioners: the attack on a scholarly superstar, and how he fights backSlate.Retrieved January 4, 2008.
  31. ^Kershaw, IanThe Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of InterpretationLondon: Arnold 2000, pp. 254–256.
  32. ^"The Past Distorted: The Goldhagen Controversy" inEinstein's German World,Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 272–288.
  33. ^Kershaw, IanThe Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of InterpretationLondon: Arnold 2000, p. 255.
  34. ^"The Goldhagen Controversy: Agonising Problems, Scholarly Failure, and the Political Dimension", inGerman History,vol. 15, 1997, pp. 80–91.
  35. ^"Ordinary People?"National Review,vol. 48 no. # 12, July 1, 1996, pp. 54–56.
  36. ^"RAUL HILBERG – IS THERE A NEW ANTI-SEMITISM? A CONVERSATION WITH RAUL HILBERG – LOGOS 6.1–2 WINTER-SPRING 2007".Logosjournal. Archived fromthe originalon April 7, 2012.RetrievedJanuary 6,2011.
  37. ^http://web.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/01_kwiet.pdfArchivedOctober 3, 2011, at theWayback Machine[bare URL PDF]
  38. ^Bill Niven, William John Niven.Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich.2004, p. 116
  39. ^Robert R. Shandley.Unwilling Germans?: the Goldhagen debate.1998, p. 17
  40. ^Paul Gottfried.Multiculturalism and the politics of guilt.2004, p. 94
  41. ^Bauer 2000, p. 100.
  42. ^Bauer 2000, p. 108.
  43. ^Stern, Fritz (1999). "The Goldhagen Controversy: The Past Distorted", in:Einstein's German World.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 272–288.ISBN0-691-05939-X
  44. ^Hilberg 1997,p. 725.
  45. ^Goldhagen 2002,pp.50–51.
  46. ^Goldhagen 2002,p.226.
  47. ^Goldhagen 2002,p.227.
  48. ^Goldhagen 2002,p.60.
  49. ^"The Usefulness of Daniel Goldhagen"ArchivedFebruary 27, 2008, at theWayback MachineThe Weekly Standard,October 23, 2002
  50. ^Gritz, Jennie Rothenberg. (January 31, 2003)The Guilt of the Church.The Atlantic.Retrieved January 4, 2008.
  51. ^Mike Hale(April 13, 2010)."A Fiery Scholar on the Trail of Genocide and Its Causes".The New York Times.RetrievedJuly 6,2023.
  52. ^Worse than War,p. 658
  53. ^abcDavid Rieff(October 28, 2009)."The Willing Misinterpreter".The National Interest. Archived fromthe originalon November 18, 2018.RetrievedJuly 6,2023.
  54. ^"Worse Than War Screening".Clal.Archived fromthe originalon July 29, 2012.RetrievedOctober 3,2009.
  55. ^"ARD Program Guide for October 18, 2009".RetrievedOctober 2,2009.
  56. ^"PBS International: Worse Than War Documentary".RetrievedOctober 3,2009.
  57. ^"The comparison of genocides: An interview with historian Ugur Ümit Üngör".eurozine.July 7, 2011.RetrievedDecember 3,2020.
  58. ^Adam Jones' book reviews,Journal of Genocide Research(2010), 12:3–4, pp. 271–278
  59. ^abElstein, David(March 4, 2010)."Daniel Goldhagen and Kenya: recycling fantasy".Open Democracy. Archived fromthe originalon December 15, 2018.RetrievedAugust 10,2012.
  60. ^Frangos, Alex (February 26, 2004)."Carni-Fuhrer".Slate.Archivedfrom the original on October 15, 2018.RetrievedOctober 26,2018.

Further reading

edit
  • Eley, Geoff(ed.)The Goldhagen Effect: History, Memory, Nazism—Facing the German Past.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.ISBN978-0-472-06752-7.
  • Feldkamp, Michael F.Goldhagens unwillige Kirche. Alte und neue Fälschungen über Kirche und Papst während der NS-Herrschaft.München: Olzog-Verlag, 2003.ISBN978-3-7892-8127-3
  • Finkelstein, Norman&Birn, Ruth Bettina.A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.New York: Henry Holt, 1998.ISBN978-0-8050-5871-0
  • Kwiet, Konrad: "‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’ and ‘Ordinary Germans’: Some Comments on Goldhagen’s IdeasArchivedOctober 3, 2011, at theWayback Machine".Jewish Studies Yearbook1 (2000).
  • LaCapra, Dominick. "Perpetrators and Victims: The Goldhagen Debate and Beyond", in LaCapra, D.Writing History, Writing TraumaBaltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 114–140.
  • Mommsen, Hans,Podium discussion,Die Deutschen – Ein Volk von Tätern?: Zur historisch-politischen Debatte um das Buch von Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, 'Hitlers willige Vollstrecker',ed. Dieter Dowe (Bonn, 1996), 73. In "Structure and Agency in the Holocaust: Daniel J. Goldhagen and His Critics" by A. D. Moses,History and Theory37, no. 2 (May 1998): 197.
  • Pohl, Dieter."Die Holocaust-Forschung und Goldhagens Thesen",Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte45 (1997).
  • Rychlak, Ronald. "Goldhagen vs. Pius XII"First Things (June/July 2002)
  • Shandley, Robert & Riemer, Jeremiah (eds.)Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen Debate.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.ISBN978-0-8166-3101-8
  • Stern, Fritz."The Goldhagen Controversy: The Past Distorted" inEinstein's German World,272–288. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.ISBN978-0-691-05939-6
  • Wesley, Frank.The Holocaust and Anti-semitism: the Goldhagen Argument and Its Effects.San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1999.ISBN978-1-57309-235-7
  • The "Willing Executioners/Ordinary Men" Debate: Selections from the Symposium,April 8, 1996, introduced by Michael Berenbaum (Washington, D.C.: USHMM, 2001).

Afterword in “Ordinary Men, Reserve Police battalion 101 and the Final Solution. By Cristopher R Browning 1992 Harper Collins) 2001 (Penguin Books)

edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daniel_Goldhagen&oldid=1275279870"