Unwilling Germans: The Goldhagen Debate

This was a very well organized collection of essays on Daniel Goldhagen's controversial book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". Goldhagen's main thesis is that the Jewish Holocaust was not a secret project of the Nazi elite, but was perpetrated by hundreds of thousands of ordinary Germans motivated by murderous Anti-Semitism. Though it sounds obvious that Anti-Semitism would be the prime mover in this horror, a body of scholarship holds that either 1) coercion within the totalitarian state, or 2) careerist ambitions in competing and poorly defined bureaucracies (the "structuralist" thesis) are mainly responsible. Articles are reprinted in chronological order, tracing the arc of the debate from near-universal condemnation of the thesis in Germany, to a grudging acknowledgment of its importance in light of the book's hugely enthusiastic popular reception. Though dry and necessarily somewhat redundant, this collection offers a good introduction to various Holocaust theories, along with revealing insights into the psychic burdens and vulnerabilities of modern Germans.

I thought it was an extremely well written and researched debate. I liked Robert's perspective in the introduction the best. I've made the book a required reading for my class. Bravo on the unique perspective of one of the most controversail periods in World History.

Extremely thought provoking and eloquent. Capturing the spirit of the germans during a rough time.