Fifty years after Adolph Hitlers failed attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe, there still remains no consensus upon the causes of this event. DanielJonah Goldhagen, author of Hilters Willing Executioners, attempts to provide anew approach and new explanations to the perplexing questions left in theaftermath of 1945. Upon its publication, Goldhagens thesis came under muchscrutiny by his academic peers. Goldhagens argument is that the usualhistorical explanations of the Holocaust do not add up. The Holocaust was notperpetrated by a small band of Nazis but by ordinary Germans in the hundredsof thousands. The abrupt transformation of Germans from bakers, bankers andbureaucrats to mass murderers was due to a particularly virulent strain ofanti-Semitism. Goldhagens indictment focuses on the citizenrys complicity inthree of Nazi Germanys institutions of mass killing; the Ordnungspolizie (theNazi Police Battalions), the work camps where Jews were incarcerated, and thedeath marches from the those camps led by prison guards and their chargesnear the end of the war. While Goldhagen efficiently states the thesis to his dissertation, hisorganizational style leaves much to be desired. One of the primary problemswith his style is its irritatingly repetitive nature. Goldhagen simply reiterates hisposition, particularly in the opening chapters. In these chapter, on no less thanfive occasions, he states the need for academicians to reconceive ourunderstanding of modern German anti-Semitism by applying the theoretical andmethodological prescriptions enunciated here, including the dimensionalframework, to a more specific analysis of the history of anti-Semitism in Germanyprior to the Nazi period, and then to an analysis of anti-Semitism in Germanyduring the Nazi period itself. (Goldhagen, 47) The immense size of the bookdoes not provide continuing evidence to support the thesis, rather it redundantlyapplies the same information. Goldhage...
