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17 comments

1 Kronocide  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 9:27:40am

Wow, great find. I look forward to watching it this weekend.

2 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 9:31:03am
The host of the film is Daniel Goldhagen, who you might remember as the author of the mid '90s bestseller "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust".

Well, that's a bummer - Goldhagen is a hack and his book's been ripped to shreds by serious historians, so his credibility is quite low.

3 Cheese Eating Victory Monkey  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 9:35:13am

re: #2 Sergey Romanov

Wow. I'm surprised to hear this. Does that mean this film has no merit?

4 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 9:41:45am

re: #3 Cheese Eating Victory Monkey

No, of course not. It's just I would prefer if such films were made by respectable researchers. When your book is condemned by such leading historians of the period as Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer, Ian Kershaw and Richard Evans, Browning and Jaeckel...

Here's an example of scholarly opinion from the official expert report by Evans during the Irving v. Lipstadt trial:

[Link: www.hdot.org...]

2.5.12 Craig, however, has carried out little first-hand archival research on the history of Nazi Germany himself; and he is well known as a generous reviewer. Recently for example he was taken to task for his favourable review of a controversial book by the young political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, a book which argued in a crude and dogmatic fashion that virtually all Germans had been murderous antisemites since the middle ages, had been longing to exterminate the Jews for decades before Hitler came to power, and actively enjoyed participating in the extermination when it began. The book has since been exposed as a tissue of misrepresentation and misinterpretation, written in shocking ignorance of the huge historical literature on the topic and making numerous elementary mistakes in its interpretation of the documents. Faced with mounting evidence of its unscholarly nature, Craig was forced to publish what amounted to a withdrawal of his first, positive reaction.40 His critical faculties were evidently equally in abeyance when he reviewed Irving's Goebbels, as this Report will demonstrate through repeated and detailed examination of the techniques Irving uses in his book.

5 Kronocide  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 12:23:50pm

Thanks for the comments Sergey. I will still watch it but will keep the Skeptic's Eye open.

6 philosophus invidius  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 4:27:40pm

re: #4 Sergey Romanov

The interesting thing is that Goldhagen's whole point in his book seems to have been that there was something unique about Germans' murderous hatred of the Jews. Could the film be a way for Goldhagen to start to see his way past his earlier thesis?

7 Almost Killed by Space Hookers  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 6:37:22pm

re: #4 Sergey Romanov

re: #6 philosophus invidius

This film is quite excellent. He talks to way too many first hand sources who are utterly credible.

You should watch it. Also the reaction to his first book, I believe was overly harsh. His basic about how many Germans knew and had to be into it seems quite sound. Many got very sensitive though and read into is some notion that all Germans were die hard Nazis. Feathers were ruffled because no one really wants to admit how widespread the effort of the Holocaust was.

I recall reading a paper in college that simply looked at the manpower requirements of Dachau, including running transport and the people who built the facilities. The numbers were staggering. From that camp alone, on the order of 100,000 Germans were directly involved in a way where there is no sane way they could have denied knowledge.

He does have errors in his first work. However, ironically, the main thesis of his book, that so many don't want to look at how many are into it when genocide happens, was largely vindicated by all of the ruffled feathers of people who had every argument under the sun, that it wasn't as widespread as Goldhagen argued.

8 Almost Killed by Space Hookers  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 6:38:02pm

re: #6 philosophus invidius

The interesting thing is that Goldhagen's whole point in his book seems to have been that there was something unique about Germans' murderous hatred of the Jews. Could the film be a way for Goldhagen to start to see his way past his earlier thesis?

There wasn't something unique about the Germans. That is the point of this documentary.

9 Almost Killed by Space Hookers  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 6:39:25pm

Clarification:

He does have errors in his first work. However, ironically, the main thesis of his book, that so many don't want to look at how many are into it when genocide happens, was largely vindicated by all of the ruffled feathers of people who had every argument under the sun, that support for it wasn't as widespread as Goldhagen, I believe correctly, argued.

10 Pepi  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 7:26:06pm

re: #2 Sergey Romanov

Well, that's a bummer - Goldhagen is a hack and his book's been ripped to shreds by serious historians, so his credibility is quite low.

His credibility is far from low - folks just don't want to admit the facts. The mass killings by the Germans would have been impossible with out the willing assistance of ordinary Germans (and others nationals in conquered/allied countries willing to kill Jews). You quote one person and list many. Indeed, your quote of Evans was in relation to Craig - with a liberal amount of bashing of Goldhagen mixed in because Evans doesn't agree with Goldhagen's hypothesis and conclusions. Craig was being dismissed for his movie review-ish get my name in lights book reviews. Those comments are in no way a reflection on Goldhagen or his work. And note - none of this is a comment on Evans' own work. But as for Evans' work itself, other seem to think he is a bit light compared to Goldhagen on certain topics


Review: The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster, by Richard J Evans

The result is a pudding without a binding theme. It flits between subjects, each thoroughly covered already by many other historians, although in the footnotes Evans criticises Omer Bartov, Christopher Browning, Daniel Goldhagen and others who have researched these subjects more thoroughly than he has. This reviewer was often reminded of incidents derived from his own oeuvre, although that provenance sometimes passes unacknowledged.

Further, as pointed out in another other comment, the mass killing required a huge manpower commitment. Did all the Germans hate Jews and actively work towards eliminations - No. But did a large part of the population agree with and participate in the killings - Yes.

11 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 7:36:43pm

re: #10 Pepi

LOL, of course, some anonymous commenter knows more about the political scientist (not a historian) Goldhagen than a bunch of historians. Riiight.

And no, when we talk specifically about the murder of Jews "huge manpower" was not required at all. The Aktion Reinhardt camps, for example, which killed about 1.3 million Jews were staffed with several dozens of SS-men and several hundred Soviet collaborators, mostly Ukrainians. Einsatzgruppen had about 3000 Germans - a bit too little more their gigantic task, true, but again they used local collaborators. So all in all there were several thousands participating in direct murder, and of course there were more that would participate indirectly, but no evidence that they were in the millions.

12 Almost Killed by Space Hookers  Sat, Nov 20, 2010 9:02:41pm

re: #11 Sergey Romanov

True, but Dachau was a major SS training facility. Many thousands of SS trained there.

I am not disputing what you have posted about a number of the historical points in Goldhagen's first book. I absolutely agree with you about there are issues with certain points of his history. I agree that there were things which were overstated. However, his central thesis, that the number of people who were just into it is quite large, is not so easily dismissed.

In any case, this documentary is really quite good.

13 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Sun, Nov 21, 2010 3:37:37am

Ludwig, I don't take the issue with the documentary, I only voiced my concern about Goldhagen. Perhaps he did good this time.

In regard to Dachau: we must distinguish between concentration camps and extermination camps. Dachau was not an extermination camp, though Jews died there too from mistreatment and murder, but it didn't have the dedicated extermination function. Even its small gas chamber was not functioning or completed, according to the Museum. The factories of death were Auschwitz (esp. Birkenau), Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Maly Trostinets, Majdanek and some other smaller-scale camps. All were in occupied Poland or USSR. For a reason. Despite the alleged eliminationist antisemitism of the Germans, Nazis didn't want them to know about the ultimate Jewish fate.

Again, it doesn't mean that Jews weren't murdered inside Altreich, like in Belsen, but it was mostly towards the end of the war (especially when evacuation of prisoners began towards Germany), and on a much smaller scale, mostly done through starvation and mistreatment. Some Germans from surrounding areas would know that mistreatment of prisoners (not only Jewish) went on, though they wouldn't necessarily make a conclusion that there was a policy of extermination from this fact.

Some Germans from mobile killing squads in USSR would inform their families in letters about the murders, perhaps some people from the camp personnel would do the same. Of course, Wehrmacht soldiers would sometimes be witnesses and some of them would write home. So there are potentially tens of thousands of Germans inside Altreich who would know about this more or less directly - mostly the family members (and this is on the assumption of high "secrets transfer" rate).

They would not necessarily inform their neighbors though, since such information would be dangerous and unnecessary to discuss. In fact, the very letters describing murder of the Jews could get their authors in hot water. For example, all the German camp personnel signed an oath that they would keep mum about this Geheime Reichsache, the potential punishment was severe. But still there were those who would leak information, and they would basically start rumors, which would spread, so I wouldn't be surprised if a very general picture ("it is said that Jews are being killed in the East") was relatively widespread as a rumor, though I wouldn't venture to say how much of the population would know about such rumors (30%? 50%? 70%? We'll never know for certain. A study published by Johnson and Reuband, What we knew, estimates "knowledge" of 30-50% of the population, but this includes information like BBC broadcasts, that many would dismiss as war-time propaganda (esp. considering the source) and not necessarily believe).

But there's the rub. Rumors don't equal knowledge, and, what's more important, knowledge doesn't equal consent and approval. How many of those who would pass on the information would do so because they were outraged?

As for another aspect of Goldhagen's work, that the murderers were "the ordinary Germans", even if true, it wouldn't prove anything about the Germans at large. I happen to believe that under certain conditioning no group of average people is immune to becoming mass murderers. Cf. Milgram etc. The veneer of civilization is indeed thin, no matter how cliche that sounds. Still, in regard to Goldhagen's specific arguments please see Christopher Browning's reply in his updated edition of Ordinary Men, HarperPerennial, 1998, pp. 191ff.

14 Almost Killed by Space Hookers  Sun, Nov 21, 2010 7:51:47am

re: #13 Sergey Romanov

While I understand the distinction you are making between types of camps. One still should not diminish the scope or scale of Dachau in terms of the deaths that occurred there, or in this case the number of ordinary GErmans who had to know something terrible was going on either through their employment, or proximity.

The argument that many of the worst camps were in Poland is of course true, but the way you have phrased it, perhaps misleading. Did the Germans build them there because it was a secret? Or, did the Germans build them there because it was in the heart of the Eastern European Jewish community and therefore a central place and efficient place to send people to - rather than sending them back into Germany to be killed?

I also do not doubt that there were many average Germans who really never put two and two together. Many, all around the world, even when faced with indisputable evidence, could not believe it.

That does not change the very important fact that no German who turned in someone to the authorities could possibly think that they were being nice. That does not change the many killed in the streets by ordinary Germans. That does not change all of those soldiers who got into their jobs of hunting down and killing innocent people. I mean the regular German army (and yes I know there were those who refused orders, and that certain generals were opposed to using the army for the job). That does not change the history of one atrocity after another, that when taken in total, was the work of many more than a few or even a hundred thousand.

As to the rest, between the endless Nazi propaganda and the open acts of violence in Germany against Jews and other groups - one would have to be an idiot not to get the idea that really bad things were going on. However, I do understand the concept of willful blindness. I will call Germans many things. Stupid is not one of them. The monsters who did those things in "the field," in German towns, in other nations, were "salt of the Earth" Germans and there were lot of them directly involved in horrible deeds to an extent where claims of innocence become ludicrous.

The point which Goldhagen makes repeatedly is that these monsters - were everyday people and that no it was not because there is something wrong in German genes that makes them evil. Germans are like all others, and the will to do such things and to actively support such things, is present in all too many common people.

15 Kronocide  Sun, Nov 21, 2010 3:41:23pm

I watched it and appreciate the comments about his previous work. This film was not as much a scholarly detailed endeavor as much a visual and human interaction movie. I really enjoyed Goldhagen going to the places and interviewing survivors, and asking aloud some simple questions. I think he's right in that he probably should not have directed the movie, it would not be the same. Looking at people in the interviews made it very human, which I think is what they were trying to achieve.

Good find, very moving.

16 Cheese Eating Victory Monkey  Mon, Nov 22, 2010 12:47:31pm

re: #15 BigPapa

Nice to hear you liked the film and thanks for the feedback.

17 Cheese Eating Victory Monkey  Mon, Nov 22, 2010 12:52:02pm

Many thanks to Ludwig and Sergey for the educational discussion.


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