ut there is very strong underlining racism that still exists. Thus, I do believe, like Goldhagen, that there can be undertones in a society to have hatred for another group unlike the majority. I am sure Goldhagen would then point out that America did not kill in the same extent as the Germans nor did Americans try to spread this belief. This then brings me back to the statement Goldhagen used that without “Hitler’s moral authority”, the “vast majority of Germans never would have contemplated” the genocide against the Jews and “Had there not been an economic depression in Germany, then the Nazi’s, in all likelihood, would never have to come to power.” America did not have economic depression while a man as Hitler was in power, but is it completely conceivable that a similar even could have happened in the United States, we did kill tens of thousands of African Americans. In a depressing manor, I do believe that people can do horrible things, we are animals, but I cannot single out the Germans to be as horrible as Goldhagen has made them out to be. His argument is a good one, but my grandfather, my grandmother, my father, my aunt, my uncle, my cousin, etc. etc. are not deeply routed fanatic Anti-Semites. During the war my grandfather did not willingly want to kill and actually escaped from a British prison and instead of going back, to join the fight of the Nazi Regime (which in Goldhagen's view he would have done) he went home and hid in is own home. He was found by Soviet men in his home and taken to Siberia, because he was too young, in their point of view, to not be a member of the Nazi party. This is a man that Goldhagen cannot say is a fanatic anti-Semite and because of his own story to me I cannot deem the entire German population to be Goldhagen’s ‘ordinary Germans’.It is not an easy debate and will probably never be one but I would hope that someone could...
