Hitler's willing executioners : ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

Summary: Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researchers have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. That question is: "How could the Holocaust happen?" His own response is a new exploration of those who carried out the Holocaust and of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism - and it demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945.

Record details

ISBN: 0679446958
ISBN: 9780679446958
Physical Description: print
x, 622 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1996.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [475]-601) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Recasting the view of antisemitism: A framework for analysis -- The evolution of eliminationist antisemitism in modern Germany -- Eliminationist antisemitism: The "common sense" of German society during the Nazi period -- The Nazis' assault on the Jews: Its character and evolution -- The agents and machinery of destruction -- Police battalions: Agents of genocide -- Police Battalion 101: The men's deeds -- Police battalion 101: Assessing the men's motives -- Police battalions: Lives, killings, and motives -- The sources and pattern of Jewish "work" during the Nazi period -- Life in the "work" camps -- Work and death -- The deadly way -- Marching to what end? -- Explaining the perpetrators' actions: Assessing the competing explanations -- Eliminationist antisemitism as genocidal motivation.