The Goldhagen Phenomenon Author(S): Raul Hilberg Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol

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The Goldhagen Phenomenon Author(s): Raul Hilberg Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Summer, 1997), pp. 721-728 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344046 . Accessed: 08/02/2015 10:20

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This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The GoldhagenPhenomenon

Raul Hilberg

Raul Hilberg's"The Goldhagen Phenomenon" was wrzttenin responseto a requestby Claude Lanzmann, and published in Les Temps Modernes("Le Phe- nomeneGoldhvagen," trans. Marie-France de Palomera, no. 592 [Feb.-Mar:19977: 1-10). Althoughoccasioned by the claims in DanielGoldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners,Hilberg's d?scussion of thecontent and receptionof thisbook ra?ses someof thecentral h?stortographical tssues concerning the study of theHolocaust. Moreover,by focussing on the appropriatenessand inapproprtatenessof various formsof explanation,Hilberg articulates once more in thtscontext the ep?stemologi- cal stakesthat lie behindthe Goldhvagen debate. ArnoldI. Davidson

Daniel Goldhagen'sbook, based on his doctoral dissertationin political science, was first published in the early spring of 1996. The English- language title, Hitler'sWilling Executioners, states in large print what we have alwaysknown: Not only were these men shooters;they were willing. In the subtitle, OrdinaryGermans and theHolocaust, Goldhagen repeats another fact that has alreadybeen recognized: Most executioners in shooting operations were not speciallyselected for their task;they were simple German policemen who had patrolled ordinaryGerman streets. Goldha- gen's use, however,of the phrase "ordinaryGermans" also has a special meaning with a purposeful edge. It was calculatedas an attackon a senior scholar, Christopher Browning, who had previously authored a work

We are grateful to Raul Hilberg for allowing us to publish the original English version of his text.

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 722 Raul Hilberg TheGoldhagen Phenomenon titledOrdinary Men. l In Goldhagen'sstudy, the centerpieceis the German ReservePolice Battalion 101, which was madeup of personnelfrom the Hamburgarea and whichmassacred Jews in Poland.Browning had written his bookabout that particular battalion. It is Browningwho had madea discoveryand who had recognized its significance.On the daywhen the battalionwas first confronted with the taskof killingJews, its commander,Major Wilhelm Trapp, had made a speechto his men and had given them the choiceof not firingtheir riflesat the victims.Some of the men steppedout; the otherswere ready to shoot.This sceneis a revelationbecause it shakesto its foundationthe long-heldsupposition that orders were indispensable. Whythen did Goldhagenwrite another book about the sameevent? Therewas something he wantedto add.To Goldhagenthe shooterswere not only willingbut eagerand brutal.Since it is possibleto characterize the entireHolocaust as an act of brutality,one mustask what he had in mindwhen he used thatword with specific reference to the actionof the battalionand whatevidence he cites for whathe has to say.Here is the passagein his ownlanguage about the mannerof the shooting:

they chose to walkinto a hospital,a house of healing,and to shoot the sick,who musthave been cowering,begging, and screamingfor mercy.They killedbabies. None of the Germanshas seen fit to re- countdetails of such killings.In all probability,a killer either shot a babyin its mother'sarms, and perhaps the motherfor goodmeasure, or, as was sometimesthe habitduring these years,held it at arm's length by the leg, shootingit with a pistol. Perhapsthe mother lookedon in horror.The tinycorpse was then droppedlike so much trashand left to rot.2 Thatis not quiteall. Goldhagenwanted to describewhat these men werethinking in the courseof suchactions. Since they were street policemen, and mostof them had not evenjoined the Naziparty, he does not assumethat they were speciallyindoctrinated. He is certain,however, thatthey must have hated the Jews to act as theydid and thatthis hatred

1. See ChristopherR. Browning,Ordinary Men: ReservePolice Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992). 2. DanielJonah Goldhagen,Hitlers WillingExecutioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holo- caust (New York, 1996), pp. 215-16.

Raul Hilberg is professoremeritus at the Universityof Vermont, wherehe held the John G. McCulloughchair of politicalscience. He is the authorof TheDestruction of the EuropeanJews (1961;rev. ed. 1985), Sonderzagenach Auschwitz ( 1981),and Perpetrators,Victims, and Bystanders: TheJewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 ( 1992).

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CriticalInquiry Summer1997 723 musthave been so "ubiquitous"and "profound"in Germansociety that theyabsorbed it as a matterof course.The originof the hatred,he goes on to say,had to be anti-Semitism,but sincethat ideologywas not con- finedto Germans,the Germanbrand had to be a specialproduct, which containeda "genocidalpotential." He labels that brand as "elimina- tionist."Only such a pervasivebelief system, he declares,could have gen- erateda "cultureof cruelty"vis-a-vis the Jews. Anti-Semitismwas widespread in Europeduring the late nineteenth centuryand in the yearsbefore the outbreakof WorldWar I. The anti- Semitesproclaimed their beliefs in speeches,pamphlets, and political programs.In some countries,this movementresulted in discrimination againstthe Jews,and in Russiait was dangerousenough to bringabout pogroms,which the TsaristMinister of the Interior,Count Nikolai Pav- lovichIgnatyev, likened to the verdictof a "people'scourt." Germananti-Semitism, on the otherhand, was not onlyweaker than the easternEuropean variety, but by 1914it beganto decline.Although the Nazisrevived it in their propagandisticliterature, it neverbecame altogetherrespectable or trulyprevalent. In his heavybook, Goldhagen does not discussthe manyorganizations that made up the Gestaltknown as Nazi Germany.The bureaucraticapparatus was led by lawyers,engi- neers, accountants,and other professionals.These functionarieswere modernmen withclear eyesight and a necessaryunderstanding of com- plexity.The railways,which transported the Jewsto theirdeaths, or the financeoffices, which confiscated their property, or the nearlytwo hun- dred privatefirms that were involvedin the constructionof Auschwitz, werenot staffedby pureanti-Semites, and neitherwere the urbanpolice forces.For his insistencethat virtually all of Germanywas virulently anti- Semitic,Goldhagen marshals such evidence as graffitiwith rhymed words and a lectureby a leaderof the GermanChristian Church. He also cites MeinKampf; but not the paragraphin whichHitler writes that his own fatherhad regardedanti-Semitism as a sign of backwardness.Nor does Goldhagennote thatthe youngHeinrich Himmler once described a Ger- mannovel as "polemical"and "fullof anti-Semiticlectures." Goldhagen overstatesthe extent and depth of German anti- Semitism.At the sametime he underplaystwo factors that greatly weaken his basicthesis. One is thatnot all the shooterswere Germans, the other, thatnot all the victimswere Jews. The killersincluded ethnic Germans, who were drawn from a popu- lationthat had livedoutside Germany. An ethnicGerman Kommando, re- cruited in villagesof the Berezovka-Mostovoyeregion of the western Ukraine,shot morethan 30,000 Jews in thatarea. Moreover, men of ethnic Germanbackground were not only shootersbut by 1944they consti- tutedmore than a thirdof the guardforce in Auschwitz.Goldhagen does not even mention them. The "executioners"were also Romanians, Croats,Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuaniansin significant

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 724 Raul Hilberg TheGoldhagen Phenomenon numbers.The Romanianand Croatformations implemented policies of theirown governments. The greatOdessa massacre of October1941 was Romanian,and it was RomanianMarshal Ion Antonescuwho askedon 16 December1941, "Are we waitingfor a decisionto be takenin Berlin?" just before70,000 Jews were killedby his men in the Goltaprefecture. Thousandsof thoseJews were burned alive. As to the Croats,there are photographsof whatwent on in thatsatellite state. Baltic auxiliaries were absolutelyessential to the Germans,as in the case of Latvianstreet and harberpolice who participated heavily in the massiveshooting ofJews in Riga.Of the Lithuanianpolice battalions that were pressed into service, the secondis of specialinterest. In Octoberof that year,it was ordered to go from Kaunasto Byelorussiaas a componentof the German11th ReservePolice Battalion. The missionwas to killJews. Facing the victims, a youngLithuanian declared that he couldnot shoot men, women,and children,whereupon the companycommander, Juozas Kristaponis, in- vited any of his men with similarobjections to move to the side. Some did, most did not. Later,this unit was involvedin more killing,and in Slutsk,there were occurrences that prompted a Germanpolice officer to callthe Lithuanians"pigs." It wouldbe difficultto ascribeto all of thesemen, who had not been a partof Germansociety, the kindof Germananti-Semitism that in Gold- hagen'sview harbored an "exterminationistpotential." It wouldbe mani- festly impossibleto connectany anti-Semitismwith the originationof killingoperations directed at non-Jewishpeople. Such operations, however,did take place.Approximately a fourthof Germany'sown mental patientswere gassed. These individuals,selected in asylums,were in no senseregarded as a threatto the Germannation. Subsequently, personnel and techniqueswere literally transferred from the euthanasiastations in Germanyto campsin Poland,so that the Jews died, albeiton a much largerscale, like thoseinstitutionalized Germans. This sequencewas re- versedin the case of the Gypsiesand Jews when, notwithstandingthe verydifferent Nazi conceptions of the twogroups, Gypsies were going to be treatedlikeJews. Thus thousands of Gypsieswere shipped to the Lodz and Warsawghettos. They were shot at the sametime or somewhatlater than the Jews in Serbia,Latvia, and Crimea,among other places,and theywere gassed in the samechambers that snuffed out the livesof Jews in Kulmhof,Treblinka, and Auschwitz. What,then, is left to be takenseriously in Goldhagen'sbook? The perpetratorshave been studiedfor morethan fifty years. Valuable works have been writtenabout them in severallanguages. Given that visible progress,why does thisbook, so lackingin factualcontent and logical rigor,demand so muchattention? Goldhagen'sAmerican publisher, Alfred A. Knopf,Inc., assertedon the dustjacket of the volumethat the work"demands a fundamental

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CriticalInquiry Summer1997 725 revisionof our thinkingabout the years1933-1945." Book review editors and foreignpublishers were told by Knopfthat the book was not to be overlooked.Shortly after its publication,highly laudatory discussions ap- pearedin dailyAmerican and Britishnewspapers. The reviewers,mainly journalistsand novelists,greeted the book as a milestoneand showered it with praisein wordslike these:"overthrows decades of conventional wisdomby eminentscholars," "the only plausible explanation," "a monu- mentalachievement," "masterly," "a tremendous contribution." Soon Hit- ler's Willing Executionerstook its placein the middleof the New YorkTimes weeklybestseller list of the fifteenmost popular nonfiction works in the nation.Goldhagen remained on thatlist for twomonths. The publisheralso arrangedwith the directorof the ResearchInsti- tute of the UnitedStates Holocaust Memorial Museum for a colloquium devotedto Goldhagen'swork. The gatheringwas attendedby reporters and televisedby a networkwatched by intellectuals.Of the fouracademic commentators,two were senior fellows in residenceat the instituteat the time:Christopher Browning, whom Goldhagen had attacked,and Kon- rad Kwiet,a researcherfrom Australia whose knowledge of archivalre- sourcesin the fieldof Holocauststudies is unsurpassed.Since both were expectedto speakagainst Goldhagen, two discussantswere broughtin whowere thought to be sympatheticwith the author:Hans-Heinrich Wil- helm, from Berlin,who had writtena monographabout Einsatzgruppe A, a battalion-sizedunit of the SecurityPolice in the northernsector of the occupiedUSSR where it shot morethan 200,000Jews, and Yehuda Bauer,who for manyyears had been the principalHolocaust scholar at the HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem.3Wilhelm's and Bauer'sreactions werecompletely negative, and Bauerwent so far as to questionthe judg- mentof those HarvardUniversity professors who had acceptedGoldha- gen'sdoctoral dissertation in the firstplace. The colloquiumwas a precursorof otheracademic responses to fol- low.Knowledgeable specialists like HenryFriedlander, who had written an illuminatingbook about the men of the euthanasiaprogram, or Peter Hayes,author of the definitivehistory of the IG Farbencompany who went on to studythe prewaracquisitions of Jewishenterprises, exposed Goldhagen'swork as flimsy.4So did expertsin Germany.By the end of 1996,it wasclear that in sharpdistinction from lay readers,much of the academicworld had wipedGoldhagen off the map. In attemptingto comprehendGoldhagen's popularity in the com- mercialmarket, one shouldnot, of course,lose sight of the imprimatur

3. See Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die EinsatzgruppeA der Sicherheitspolizeiund des SD 1941-42 (Frankfurt am Main, 1996). 4. See Henry Friedlander, The Originsof Nazi Genocide:From Euthanasia to the Final Solu- tion (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), and Peter Hayes, Industryand Ideology:IG Farbenin the Nazi Era (Cambridge, 1987).

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 726 RaulHilberg TheGoldhagen Phenomenon accordedto himby HarvardUniversity or the intensivepromotional cam- paignby Knopf.This backing,however, could not haveignited any en- thusiasmwithout something that the publiccould take from the pagesof the bookitself. WhatGoldhagen promised his readerswas first and foremostan ex- planationof the Holocaust.He addressedhimself heedlessly to the dis- turbingquestion of"why" and, avoidingany caveats, chose one and only one answer.He repeatedit in chaptersand footnotesto the pointof ex- haustion.Boldly exclaiming that he wasthe onlyone whohad foundthe solution,he told everyonethat the matterwas now settled. Of course,for specialistswho had preoccupiedthemselves with the problem,his "explanation"settled nothing at all. It didShowever, appeal to a largenumber of bookbuyers, who cannotdo researchbut who have wantedan explanatorystatement for a long time,one thatappears to be sufficient,and for that reasonsatisfying as well. It was not factualevi- dencethat convinced them, for he hadnone, but a simplechain, the links of whichthey had alreadyheard before: Germans anti-Semitism hatred brutality.It was not even any originalityin this formulationthat carriedthem along, but its familiarring. To makeit even morefamiliar, Goldhagenmentioned these wordsoften in his six hundredpages, and addedothers like "unspeakable,""murderous," "horrific," "demonologi- cal,""vitriolic," and "gruesome."The adjectivesare accusatory;they are takenfrom the domainof politicsand not politicalscience, but with them Goldhagenbroke a dam of reticencein a public that had wantedto say thembut had not said them aloudabout the Germanpeople of the Naziera. Not surprisingly,the first reactionto Goldhagen'streatise in Ger- manywas outrage.Even before the translationappeared in print, the Germanpress was filled with reviews condemning the book. The German weeklyDer Spiegel assembledan entire team of writersto answerhim. In all these discussions,which did not differ much from one another, Goldhagen'sthesis was called a "provocation"replete with vocabulary of the 1950s and allusionsto collectiveguilt, or a "demonization"of the Germansin the genre of"pulp fiction"disguised as sociology.He was called a "hangman,"or one of the "littlehistorians" writing about the "littleHitlers." But only six monthslater, Josef Joffe, a columnistfor a Germannewspaper and an associateat a HarvardUniversity institute, wrotea long essayin The New YorkReview of Booksadvertised as "Goldha- gen ConquersGermany." By then,Joffe reported,Goldhagen had filled a hall in Munich,with 2,500 seats sold for $10 apiece,and more than 130,000copies of his book in Germantranslation had been shippedto stores.5What had happenedin thatshort time? Ordinarily,negative judgments that are almostunanimous should

5. SeeJosefJoffe, "Goldhagenin Germany,"New YorkReview of Books, p. 18.

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CriticalInquiry Summer1997 727 not elevatesales. When the historianEberhard Jackel, writing in DieZeit, characterizedthe book as "simplybad" (einfach schlecht), that judgment aloneshould have had a depressingeffect.6 Nor is this a case of aroused curiosityor seeingfor oneself,if onlybecause the Germancritics had said withoutdissent that Goldhagendid not uncovernew factsor offer new insights.One cannot,therefore, escape the conclusionthat something in this book served ordinaryGermans in the concludingdecade of this century. Germanyhad long suppressedthe Holocaustin mostof its particu- larsand implications.To the extentthat it wasviewed at all, it was seen as a deed mainlyof fanaticalNazis or SS-men.A son could not ask his father:what have you done?Only after the oldergeneration had passed fromthe scenedid sonsand daughters,grandsons and granddaughters, begin to ask questionsin earnest.It was almosta matterof genealogy now,of self-examinationand identity.At times,these younger people sus- pectedthe worst.The fewestof them could obtainthe preciseinforma- tion they sought,but if they resentedor rejectedtheir forebears,they could clutchDaniel Goldhagen's book preciselybecause it is so strident in tone. At the very least, they could use it as a confirmationof their feelingsand waveit with its seven hundredpages in the Germanlan- guagethrough the air. Goldhagenhas left us with an imageof a medieval-likeincubus, a demonlatent in the Germanmind, which had been waiting for an oppor- tunityto strikeout. Weare asked to believethat when it emerged,it took on the configurationof a super-pogromin the hands of shootersand guards.In thisdepiction, the Holocaustbecomes orgiastic, and its princi- pal attributesare the degradationand tormentof the victims.All else, includingthe gas chambersin whichtwo and a half millionJews died unobservedby the perpetrators,is secondary,a mere "backdrop"of the slaughterunder the open sky.Goldhagen does not preoccupyhimself withthe countlesslaws, decrees, and decisionsthat the perpetratorsfash- ioned,or the obstacleswith which they constantly struggled. He does not observethe routines,those everydayingredients of the whole develop- ment.They do not concernhim. He does not delveinto administrative structureor the bureaucraticpulsations that coursedthrough this ma- chineSwhich grew in potencyas the processreached the height of its enormity.Instead, he shrankthe Holocaust,replacing its intricateappa- ratuswith rifles, whips, and fists. Dismayed,specialists on both sidesof the Atlanticasked themselves andeach other privately whether Goldhagen's book was a transitoryevent or a lastingaddition to the literature.They know,however, that sheer momentumwill guaranteethe presenceof the volumeon the shelvesof bookstoresin hardcoversor paperbackfor yearsto come.They realize

6. EberhardJackel,"Einfach ein schlechtesBuch," Die Zeit, 31 May 1997, p. 4.

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 728 Raul Hilberg TheGoldhagen Phenomenon thatthe growthof knowledgeis slowand painful,and thatit takestime, often decades,before detailed information is absorbedby a community of historians,let alonethe widerpublic. In the meantime,Goldhagen will be quotedby ignorantgeneralists who are not evenaware of the progress madewith the openingof archivesand the opportunitiesnow beckoning to interestedresearchers. Thus the cloud that Goldhagencreated will hoverover the academiclandscape. It willnot soon disperse.

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 10:20:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions