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Rating: 
Summary: Accomplishes its objective
Review: Extremely thought provoking and eloquent. Capturing the spirit of the germans during a rough time.
Rating: 
Summary: Impressive compilation of essays on the "Goldhagen Debate."
Review: This book collects some thirty essays and other materials on Daniel Goldhagen's controversial 1996 book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." Not every piece the reader might want to find is included here, but more than enough is presented to familiarize the reader with the chief objections to Goldhagen's theses raised by scholars and journalists, as well as the lines of defense offered by his supporters and Goldhagen himself. Although inherently somewhat repetitive, this book would prove rewarding to anyone interested enough in this arcane realm of Holocaust studies to be reading this review.
Rating:
Summary: Accomplishes its objective
Review: 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.
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Summary: No one knew anything. It was everyone else's fault.
Review: Waste of paper. Same old GERMAN denials. (Anyone familiar with the same kind of lies the SWISS have been caught at lately?) No one knew anything. They were forced. No one could oppose the STATE. GOLDHAGEN's book, together with the latest 'touring' exhibit of photo's of ordinary GERMANs doing the rounding up, killing etc show more truth that this book ever could. This generation of GERMANS are seeing the reality of situation. 25% of the SS were ROMAN CATHOLICS. Who forced them to become SS murderers? Did they suddenly lose EVERY choice?
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