![]() Goldhagen will probably be attacked for indicting a whole society. That part of his book is likely to be the most controversial. Goldhagen provides the reader with massive evidence of both the depth and scope of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and the degree to which it impregnated the political culture before Hitler. ![]() The only convincing explanation is ideology: it is anti-Semitism that drove ordinary Germany to unspeakable murders. He shows that those who refused to become murderers were given the opportunity to opt out of the massacres and were not punished. The result is overwhelming and devastating, not only because of the detailed account of the crimes, but also because the author shows that tens of thousands of ordinary Germans - not just the SS or Nazis - took part in the Holocaust, and because he systematically and convincingly dismisses such standard explanations as the habit of obedience, coercion, and group pressure. ![]() Goldhagen has done prodigious research in order to find out who the ‘willing executioners’ were and what they did. A challenging, powerfully argued, and morally passionate account of the extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany. ![]()
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