Hitler's willing executioners
lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. - Publisher.
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What Hacker News says
- I think the author rather exposes his ideological biases in this paragraph:
> "The most notorious 20th century case may have been the Cultural Revolution. Though initiated by Mao to undermine his rivals, the Cultural Revolution was otherwise mostly a grass-roots phenomenon. Mao said in essence: There are heretics among us. Seek them out and punish them. And that's all the aggressively conventional-minded ever need to hear. They went at it with the delight of dogs chasing squirrels."
A more balanced approach would have included the rise of authoritarian fascism in Germany as an example of the persecution of the heretics, namely any who opposed the power of the Party or questioned the validity of the 'untermenschen' concept that relegated so many groups - Slavs, Jews, homosexuals, political dissidents to 'unperson' status. Indeed, Hitler's acolytes - like Mao's - also 'went at it with the delight of dogs chasing squirrels.' A rather popular book was published about this phenomenon that's worth reading, called "Hitler's Willing Executioners."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/784848.Hitler_s_Willing_...
In any case, whenever a commentator chooses to exclusively focus on fascist atrocities or communist atrocities when examing '20th century atrocities', you can be sure they have a severe ideological bias and are hardly honest interlocutors. In this context, 'x-ist' could refer to either communist or fascist, although I suspect the author is implying 'racist' or perhaps 'classist'?
- Assuming for a moment that your comment is not sarcasm, I point you to first the excellent book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” by Daniel Goldhagen which makes a solid case that had it not been for a compliant German citizenry, much of the Holocaust might never have happened.
So you tell me: Who operates the Chinese concentration camps?
- If you haven't already, you should read Daniel Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners."
- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich
- I'm familiar with Ordinary Men and also with Hitler's Willing Executioners and I think they prove my point.
> what does (and doesn't) happen to them if they don't
This is key. What happens if they didn't follow orders? It turns out that... pretty much nothing. You could get away with not following orders. So those who did anyway, murdered, tortured and raped, are monsters in my eyes. Their lives weren't even in immediate danger!
> I think that most of us like to think we would be the moral exception, it offers some mental comfort, but it's far more likely that we won't.
If you think you would break down and commit rape, torture and murder, then I'm sorry for you. I'm nothing like you then, and most decent people aren't either.
I'm not naive: I know there's a lot of behavior people will engage in under extreme conditions -- I can admit cannibalism, robbery, violence and lots of things unacceptable in normal society -- but there IS a line, and torture and rape are way beyond that line. I'm willing to admit under exceptional duress I'd betray my country and my friends. I can see myself being forced to shoot another human being "or else". What I cannot absolutely accept from you or anybody else is to claim "well, if I'm threatened with torture or death then I can break and be willing to rape women and crush their babies". I'm sorry but I cannot, and if you think you would, I hope I never meet you in person: you terrify me.
If it comes to a point where someone tells me "unless you rape this child, I'll do the same to your children" then I might as well accept we're all doomed and it's beyond anything I can do. I won't commit rape, period.
Note we're discussing the Trawniki men in this context. Read about what they did before claiming everyone in their position would do the same. These were really scum, the worst of the worst.
- Daniel Goldhagen does a good job of illustrating the involvement of everyday Germans in the Holocaust in his book "Hitler's Willing Executioners."[0]
This book has received a lot of criticism from historians but it contains a lot of fascinating information.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioner...
