Talk:Hitler's Willing Executioners

Strange Perspective NPOV?
This article strikes me as extremely biased. It makes it seem as though there is no support whatsoever for Gooldhagen's thesis and ignores the substantial factual case that Goldhagen built.

Psychlist (talk) 14:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Absolutely. In the archived talk page of Goldhagen I mentioned a few Holocaust scholars who accept his thesis. I must, therefore, pov tag the critical section right now. —Cesar Tort 17:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "Factual case"? Exactly how did Goldhagen prove that Germans were uniquely evil and anti-Semitic? In fact, no historian supports his claims.Ojevindlang (talk) 12:17, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Please note that Wikipedia is not a place to discuss subjects besides the improvement of the page (BTW, Goldhagen does not believe in the Germans' collective guilt). —Cesar Tort 14:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As I wrote two years ago, I see very little sourcing in the criticism section.
 * Ojevindlang: "no historian supports his claims" extrordinary claims demand extrodinary evidence.
 * Cesar Tort, this: Talk:Daniel Goldhagen/Archive 1 is not evidence. I see few if any historians that you list, and plenty of illogical wide brush allegations against those who dispute this author. Ikip (talk) 08:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Why is the Hildberg quote "totally wrong about everything" and "worthless" repeated three times in this article. A bit of overkill there don't you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.2.131 (talk) 18:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

It totally fails in the NPV area. Why has this not been addressed? Should the item be "parked" somewhere until this issue is resolved? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.198.145.84 (talk) 09:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Criticism section
The criticism section, taking up a page, had one reference. I copy and pasted the two paragaphs in the author's article and copied it here. There appears to be some possible original research, which I tagged, and weasel words (not identifing the author). I tagged all the paragraphs and sentences with no sources.

I am willing to accept either side, but I need some evidence. Ikip (talk) 08:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The book: mentions how many historians were critical of this book. I don't have the energy to add this material to the article.  I mentioned the noble prize winner's praise, but I didn't mention all the criticism  from historians. the book mentioned that some authors liked chapter 6-9 and that one prominent historian said that as flawed as the book is, it ask important questions. You can read most of the book pages in the google link, above. Ikip (talk) 09:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Also: Shandley, Robert & Riemer, Jeremiah (eds.) Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen Debate, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998 ISBN 0-8166-3101-8. Mentions the positive reviews of German Jewish journalists, but that German historians were negative. Ikip (talk) 09:42, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * More:  says two well respected authors endorsed the German edition, on the front cover. Ikip (talk) 11:05, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I found and added a source to show that most historians saw the book as bad history. Ikip (talk) 10:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

"Yehuda Bauer has criticized the work of the American political scientist Daniel Goldhagen, who writes that the Holocaust was the result of the allegedly unique “eliminationist” antisemitic culture of the Germans. He has accused Goldhagen of Germanophobic racism, and of selecting only evidence favorable to his thesis. " (quote from Yehuda Bauer)85.216.89.205 (talk) 15:27, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Removed unsourced paragraphs
I removed the following to talk:
 * There are also critics who claim that Goldhagen is not internally consistent in advancing his "eliminationist" hypothesis. Goldhagen repeatedly claims that the average German was full of murderous antisemitism endemic to German culture. If this were true, it would imply that there were no further fundamental distinctions to be made among Germans as far as their susceptibility to participate in the worst crimes of the Holocaust, which begs questions of individual morality and therefore answerability. The men who became the killers profiled in Goldhagen's book only killed because it was part of their German identity. Had they grown up in some other culture, they presumably would not have become killers. Such a notion of motive would therefore be available as an excuse. As some critics would have it, Goldhagen recognized this and therefore repeatedly moralizes about evil choices ―if choices were available, any hypothesis of cultural determination would be sharply mitigated to the point of losing the explanatory power with which Goldhagen invests it. Critics taking this approach contend that Goldhagen is therefore ambivalent about his own conclusions.


 * In subsequent debates, Goldhagen characterised functionalist claims (there was no master plan by Hitler, and the holocaust came from lower ranks) associated with the period of 1938-1942 as "ahistorical". Even among scholars who wholly reject functionalist arguments, Goldhagen finds virtually no support in excluding examination of this period to understand why antisemitism, "eliminationist" or otherwise, became actively genocidal as and when it did.

Ikip (talk) 10:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Other research and books
Wow, the Critical reception of work is pretty daming. Despite this, I was wondering if anyone was familar with books similar to Hitler's Willing Executioners on other countries, say the Soviet Union, or even the United States. I am interested in studying the social history of wars in the United States.

It goes along with what Ward Churchill said:
 * Progressives...while acknowledging many of America's more reprehensible features...have become quite [consistent] in attributing all things negative to handy abstractions like "capitalism," "the state," "structural oppression," and, yes, "the hierarchy." Hence, they have been able to conjure what might be termed the "miracle of immaculate genocide," a form of genocide, that is, in which—apart from a few [indeterminate] "decision-making élites" —there are no actual perpetrators and no one who might "really" be deemed culpable by reason of complicity.

Ikip (talk) 08:37, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Critical Analyses
Recall that this was a PhD thesis, with characteristic emphasis on originality. It nor his undergraduate thesis appear to have had any accompanying peer reviewed publications. Perhaps these would not have changed the book's form or content to gain it more ready acceptance and less hysteria (critical or admiring). Rare is the soul who analyzes without some bias for guidance. With luck and evidence, biases change.

The subject is one of the least likely to encourage, decades after the crimes, Keats's negative capability. Evil occurred. We can learn by whom and the context better, but we may never understand it. Mutually inconsistant insights may be as educational as a grand theory. Sadly history allows no control experiments to test our hindsight. Original provocative work easily ends up producing more heat than light for interested raders who have no relevant expertise. Appealing to a plurality of scholars - whose agendas are obscure to us - to validate passions does not clarify, move understanding, stir compassion, nor guide actions to prevent recurrence.

Two articles from Clive James which I inserted may help the balance. He is scarily well-read, well-spoken and and well-tempered; aware both of the weaknesses of the book and its value. Eztach (talk) 23:33, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Mhazard9's edits
I apologize for undoing all that work, but I feel I have to. It feel like it has an ideological bent which completely ignores the citations it was based on; approximately the same criticism Goldhagen faced himself for writing it. Just a couple of examples to open the conversation:


 * The book is a "publishing phenomenon" because of the Historikerstreit, according to the citations; you altered it to say it it was criticized because of the Historikerstreit, when in reality it was criticized for what historians' believed to be its "worthlessness", or its ahistorical nature, or its getting everything "completely wrong", or its being racist. I don't want to suggest a favorite interpretation here, I'm just saying that's what's in the citations, which don't back this change.


 * You write that Goldhagen's "critics seek to “erase the distinction between ‘Germans’ and ‘Nazis’", but the citation and original text (and numerous other citations included in this text) write that Goldhagen is taking a racist view of Germans; that is, Goldhagen is erasing the distinction, not his critics (I'm not sure what that could even mean).

All of this good writing you put into it, I appreciate it and I'm not doing this lightly. It's just that it seems to be quite radically wrong, and irreconcilable with the sources. We'll talk it out. Cheers, DBaba (talk) 03:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Fred Kautz
I've raised a question about the use of Fred Kautz as a source (issues of UNDUE?) at the European history project talkboard. I thought I'd centralise discussion there.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:27, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Article or review?
i'll return later to highlight examples, but i want to say now that this "article" is not worthy of the name. it is instead a largely negative book review (and critique of Goldhagen's thesis and methods) interspersed with edits intended to "move the needle" away from the negative. whole sections are beyond salvaging and should be rewritten from scratch. others serve no informative purpose in re the book and should be elided entirely. when all opinion is removed, the piece will be 60 per cent shorter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adambrower (talk • contribs) 05:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I wholly concur. This "article" is an intersplicing of various reviews of the work, without any attempt to neutralize point of view. I have to wonder whether the primary or original author of large sections of this text actually read the book instead of just reading several reviews of the book. The entire page smacks of an under-motivated undergraduate's attempt to pass off google-fu for actually reading the text. -Spinozaium — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spinozaium (talk • contribs) 04:14, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Deleted faulty reference to a Goldhagen passage
I have removed this sentence: "Goldhagen argued that for ordinary German men and women murderous anti-Semitism was so deeply ingrained that when Germans had sex in World War II that they fantasied about the murder of Jews at the moment of orgasm." It was a rather shocking thing to read, so I looked for verification in the book at the page cited (p. 339), but found that the quoted 'paraphrase' was a grotesque misreading. The relevant passage begins: "The Germans made love in barracks next to enormous privation and incessant cruelty..." and goes on to ponder in about these hypothetical (non-civilian) Germans' post-coital conversations, suggesting the violence involved in their daily work might come up as pillow talk. It's a slightly ridiculous rhetorical exercise, but Goldhagen is not speaking about "ordinary German men and women," nor is he suggesting that anti-Semitic violence was fodder for anyone's sexual fantasies "at the moment of orgasm." Tothebarricades (talk) 22:41, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Dedication of Ordinary Men to Raul Hilberg
I have removed the random comment that Ordinary Men was dedicated to Raul Hilberg. Neither of the cited sources mention anything about this, and this is irrelevant. Is there some claim that Hilberg's opinion of the book was coloured by this fact? Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 11:56, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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A Nation on Trial
I've draftified Draft:A Nation on Trial, an unreferenced stub for eight years. Interested editors may wish to improve the Draft and submit it. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:56, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Use of –
Firstly from this edit I don't have an opinion in regards to the use of –  I don't know what the advantage is of using that instead of typing in the dash. I also don't understand what's going on with the spacing here. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:33, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The only advantage is to the editor who is writing the sentences in the first place -- that is, the person actually working at building the article. If it makes it easier and faster for them to write, that's fine, it's a personal choice.  Theres' no reason, however, that an editor needs to come by later and change what has been written to another form which means exactly the same thing, but is somewhat more esoteric in its meaning.  If one didn't already know what " – " means, it's not intuitively obvious by looking at it  The unnecessary mass replacement of one version with another less understandable one is a waste of time, cluttering up people's watchlist with edits that make non-rendering "cosmetic changes".  Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:14, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * That is a genuine concern that watchlists could be unnecessarily weighted with such cosmetic edits. Perhaps I can find a relevant village pump or discussion board so other editors can weigh in? WhisperToMe (talk) 22:18, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I created  so hopefully there can be some discussion about it there: Village_pump_(miscellaneous) WhisperToMe (talk) 23:58, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Which summary sentence is best?
Secondly here are two summaries to compare:


 * Current: "The book challenges several common ideas about the Holocaust that Goldhagen believes to be myths. These "myths" include the idea that most Germans did not know about the Holocaust; that only the SS, and not average members of the Wehrmacht, participated in murdering Jews; and that genocidal antisemitism was a uniquely Nazi ideology without historical antecedents."
 * Proposed by User:Skews Peas: "The book challenges several common ideas about the Holocaust that Goldhagen believes to be myths. These "myths" include the idea that most Germans did not know about the Holocaust, that average members of the Wehrmacht did not help the SS, and that genocidal antisemitism was a uniquely Nazi ideology."

Which summary is better and why? I haven't read the book, so some evidence such as direct quotes from the book may help in determining which best reflects the author's positions. (Seeing how book reviews characterize them may help too)

(if there is no consensus to change I'd personally err on the current sentence, not the proposed)

WhisperToMe (talk) 21:10, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * That link is nine words long (mine's only five) and, for whatever reason, contains a comma. Dis sayin' ... --Skews Peas (talk) 21:56, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * While I believe that the link should be "average members of the Wehrmacht" (War crimes of the Wehrmacht can be in the see also section), there's also the question of "that only the SS, and not average members of the Wehrmacht, participated in murdering Jews" is a better summary than "that average members of the Wehrmacht did not help the SS". WhisperToMe (talk) 22:52, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * While the two are obviously very similar, they do not actually say the same thing. The current one is very specific and reflects what Goldhagen says in the book, the misbelief that the Holocaust was only carried out by the SS, without the assistance of the Wehrmacht (a myth that has been thoroughly dispelled not only by Goldhagen, but by numerous other historians since, especially about the period known as the "Holocaust by bullet").  The proposed change, because of the way it is structured, might be interpreted to say that, but it might also be seen to state a more general claim that the Wehrmacht did not help the SS in any circumstances.  This comes about because the specific claim, about "murdering Jews" (i.e. the Holocaust), is dropped from the second version, leaving a more general and tepid claim which, in fact, Goldhagen did not make, and which is ridiculous on its face.  For these reasons, the current summary is clearer, and is better writing that the proposed change, which does not say what it is meant to say. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:04, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * "... was only carried out by [them]" (they didn't plan it, direct it, or even think of it in the first place). Try "was carried out only by them". Nothing at all wrong with that vocabule there, it's just that it's, yanno, like the comma, there. --Skews Peas (talk) 17:43, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the point that the central question was the Wehrmacht's role in the Holocaust in particular. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:16, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Of course. No one claims that the Wehrmach had a part in creating or devising the Holocaust, only that they played a role in carrying it out, something that was denied for years -- see Myth of the clean Wehrmacht.   If the summary doesn't make that clear, it's worthless, since the evidence is now undeniable that the Wehrmacht assisted the SS in carrying it out.  I fail to understand what this discussion is about, since Skews Peas' comments are entirely elliptical -- and seemingly arch -- and they are not at all clear about what their objections are; they seem to be making changes for the sake of making changes.  Time is being wasted here which could be spent improving Wikipedia. Beyond My Ken (talk)
 * Thank you, Ken, for finally confirming – with that lovely pair of double-hyphens – my suspicion that indeed you hadn't bothered to read "fail to understand" my ornery wrist at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skews Peas (talk • contribs) 22:51, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * It is not possible to understand something which has been deliberately written not to be understood. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:33, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Possible additional resources?
I found these while searching for articles about the book: WhisperToMe (talk) 16:21, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
 * - Online version revised December 2007 and January 2008 - Version prior to revisions
 * - Online version revised December 2007 and January 2008 - Version prior to revisions
 * - Online version revised December 2007 and January 2008 - Version prior to revisions
 * - Online version revised December 2007 and January 2008 - Version prior to revisions

Collective guilt
Added to the article. Ironcurtain2 (talk) 03:57, 12 June 2024 (UTC)