Hitler's Willing Executioners, p230

[skull_bearer]

Yes I am going to keep making these posts. They make me feel better, ok?

Somewhat calmer now, and if nothing else reading this rubbish this is a good exercise. Like a spot the difference game, only it's 'spot all the abysmal so-called research' game. It's slightly better now, as I've gotten into the bulk of his book which is mostly loving described atrocities which run along in any order and make the book come across as anti-german propaganda more than anything (why was this book so popular in Germany? It's like Der Sturmer being popular in Israel). There's not much evidence, but then there's not much of a point being made. Did note how Goldhagen skimmed hurridly over the Ukrainian killing squads, and hasn't as yet mentioned the happy enthusiasm of the various occupied communities in handing their Jewish neighbours over to the Germans. Some decents points being made here and there, but they're swamped by the bull and torture-porn padding, and I've seen them done better elsewhere.

There's also one thing which sticks in my mind. I saw a post-war cartoon some time ago, it showed a well dressed man (I think he was supposed to be English) reading a newspaper about the liberation of Belsen. The man is saying "This is disgraceful! These Germans ought to be shot!" and across from him is a starved camp survivor, who's saying "Some of us are German, friend."

And I think this is what I most hate about this book. It buys into the very ideals it claims to denounce. Goldhagen's constant use of the term 'German' to describe those committing the atrocities (not SS, Nazi, or anything else) actually justifies the very exclusion of Jewish people from Germany which he is arguing against. The nazis said 'You are Jews, you cannot be Germans' that this sod is agreeing with them! Okay, he's doing it from the exact opposite direction, but again he describes the Jewish population of Germany in the exact same way as the Nazis: as Jews first, and Germans second (if at all).

One of the very first things the Nazis did was forbid the Jewish people from being considered as German, and Goldhagen agrees.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think it's popular in Germany to some extent *because* it allows for the myth that the Nazis somehow swindled the entire German people into going along with it. Acknowledging the collaborators in the rest of Europe and anti-Nazi Germans tends to make for a more complicated and actually more unsettling picture. To some level Goldhagen's book is less history than it is a kind of fairy tale.

I agree with everything in your OP, BTW.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that myth. Goldhagen's book makes it sound as if anti-semitism was something innate in the Germany population and only the German population, and that Hitler's actions only brought it to the fore.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

While forgetting that the first German genocide done by Imperial Germany targeted people in present-day Namibia no less. Someone looking at 19th Century Europe would have predicted a Holocaust done not by the Germans, but by the Russians.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I mentioned the Czarist pogroms of the 19th century in the last post and you're certainly onto something with the thought that the 'Black Hundreds' may have headed down that road if history had turned out a little differently.

There's some evidence of anti semitic attitudes and violence in pre unity Germany- places like Prussia (why does this not surprise me?) but as to tending towards a holocaust-? Perhaps not.

France had equallly anti semitic attitudes prior to WW1 as the most cursory glance at l'affaire Dreyfuss' would confirm.

The Jewish part of my own family left Riga, Latvia in the late 19th century and what that may mean about how things were for the Jewish community there I leave to your own conclusions.......

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, White Russia would be much more likely to do this than the Soviet Union, for the good reason that the Soviets weren't genocidal toward Jews. Jew-hatred did exist in the USSR, but the Soviet leaders were far too pragmatic to turn it into full-fledged genocide. Someone like Denikin or (gulp) Ungern-Sternberg? I could easily see that kind of person a Slavic Hitler analogue.

Pre-Unification Germany of course did have both Jew-hatred and there were several medieval pogroms in that time, while Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies is essentially a blueprint for Kristallnacht. And in pre-WWI German culture there was Lueger and his brand of Jew-hatred that likely influenced Hitler's. However the Dual Monarchy was so prone to Jew-hatred that it had a Jewish Lieutenant General, Johann Friedlander, one of the ones who was executed in the death camps. Lueger's brand of politics did exist but had relatively shallow pools of support.

By the end of the war, however, Jews made a convenient scapegoat for the defeat of the Central Powers on the battlfield which is where the problem came in.

This also overlooks that Poland, where the Poles themselves suffered horribly at the hands of the Wehrmacht, had a powerful, effective Jew-hating element itself. There was even the Kielce Pogrom right after WWII.....

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Although had Uncle Joe not died when he did, I suspect you may have seen a fully fledged pogrom in the wake of the so called 'Doctors' Plot' given Stalin's total paranoia by the end of his life. Lavrenti Beria thought he might be able to present himself as a reformer (!) so called off the wolves.......it didn't help him as he was quickly shot to clear Kruschev's path to power anyway.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

He was also shot to death because Beria was the architect of much of Stalin's bloodshed to the degree he couldn't blame it on someone else. Khrushchev very much did. Despite the blood of the Holodomor being entirely on his hands.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

This book is short sighted to the point of being myopic. There is NOTHING outside Germany, and Germany didn't exist before 1933.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

IKR? Nobody in these comment threads denies Germany was responsible for the Holocaust. Least of all you. Goldhagen's book would run into problems with the Herero-Namaqua Genocide at the very least. The Rosewood Massacre I referenced below in 1921 here in the USA was at least on par with Tsar Alexander's Pogroms, and we had our own commissar order done by the Confederacy.

There's examples like this from all over the world, the main difference in the Holocaust was the Germans turned the entire energy of a state to genocide when in control of the better part of an entire continent.

[totenkopf6.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. I find these days many people can't tell the difference between a German and a Nazi, as though the two terms are interchageable. Some are confused at the idea of resistance within Germany, and like to hold onto the idea that *all* Germans were willing Nazis, including the army, luftwaffe, everything, and that nobody saw it was wrong. Its even sadder when it comes from so-called professional historians, like one on the radio the other day who claimed that the Soviet mass-murders in Russia and China were "nowhere near as bad as the Nazis" because they were less efficiant. WTF? Its still millions of corpses left at the end of the day...

There does seem to generally be a bit of a gloss over the non-Germans who helped with the exterminations, the Ukranians and so on. But it is known about and you can find out about it of course, but it doesn't quite fit with the idea of the Germans being the only people to think how the nazis did and act like it...

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

why was this book so popular in Germany?

Because children, during the (frequently recurring) Holocaust chapters in school history textbooks, are still being guilt-tripped for the nazi atrocities, and there are three ways of dealing with it: a) become a neo-nazi, b) not give a fuck, and c) wallow in guilt masochistically with books like the one you mention. Oh, and d) actual scientific analysis of the topic, but honestly, who does that.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Interesting. It's something I find hard to imagine willingly doing, but then I hated Avatar.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

I haven't finished the book, but I don't see anything specifically anti-German. It discusses that anti-semitism was innate in ALL European culture, but there are certain elements in Austro-Hungarian culture (racism, nationalism, blind obedience to authority) that made genocide as an industry possible. Had the Austro-Hungarian empire existed under the Nazis, we would name the empire, not just the Germans.

The fact is that the policies which made the Holocaust an efficient industry arose in Germany. Yes, there have been other genocides, and there's little difference in racism and nationalism between the Germans, the French, Polish, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and other collaborators. BUT THIS DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT THE POLICIES THAT MADE GENOCIDE AN INDUSTRY CAME FROM GERMANY.

One of the great ironies of the Holocaust is that Jews under the Austro-Hungarian empire were the most assimilated Jews in all of Europe. Many were not practicing Jews, and many served with distinction in the first World War. Others converted to Christianity. But the fact that they were more German than Jewish made no difference to the Nazis. Oh, there was for a time an exemption for disabled veterans of the Great War. But they were also eventually deported to their deaths.

Should German children of today be kept aware of their history? Yes, just as American children need to be made aware of our genocide of Native Americans. Holding onto a little guilt for past atrocities is not a bad thing. After all, we haven't seen another war out of Germany, have we? While we Americans, who don't spend nearly as much time as we should studying our genocide, get into one war after another, all with genocidal atrocities.

There's a growing trend to turn the cultural and political responsibility for the Holocaust away from Germany and onto every country that participated. There's also a trend to point fingers at the atrocities committed by both the pre-Soviet and Soviet Union, but their policies didn't come close to targeting a particular group for wholescale extermination the way the Germans' did.

Shoah is being screened again for its 25th anniversary. That's the documentary EVERYONE needs to see, because it not only shows the complicity of the local peoples but also makes it very clear that an entire culture in Eastern Europe and the Ukraine was wiped out FOREVER by German policies. That's the biggest difference between this genocide and others. The Hutus and the Tutsis still exist, the Poles still exist, but the Eastern European Jewish culture that thrived for 600 years is gone forever, due to policies that came from Germany under the Nazis, who had many happy supporters and virtually no organized resistance.

In addition to being a Jew and Holocaust scholar, I have an unrepentant Nazi fetish and a fatal attraction to German and Austrian men. I liken this to a Stockholm Syndrome in which I've come to identify with the persecutors due to the fact that first learning about the Holocaust when I saw Bergen-Belsen at age 8 also made me aware that everyone is as capable of evil as they are of good.

There's another growing trend to excuse the Germans as a people and ascribe the genocide to Europeans as a whole. But Iknow which government arising out of what particular culture was ultimately responsible for wiping out all Eastern European Jewish culture. The fact is that the government and culture responsible was German. The Nazis did not arise or exist within a vacuum; certain aspects of German culture played a very important role.

I have to finish reading the book to truly pass judgment. But so far I do not see it as blaming the Germans and not taking into account the local collaborators. I believe it's unfair to call the book rubbish. But I wonder if the fact that it's written by a Jew might make some people question it, as though Jews are somehow incapable of unbiased analysis. This bothers me because I have consciously devoted my 35 years of scholarship to learning as honestly and objectively about the Germans as a people as I have about the events and the Nazis.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

There are no comparisons made in this book. None. I don't know where you got the idea that Goldhagen was talking about anti-semitism in Europe as a whole because when it comes to anti-semitism no country outside Germany is mentioned. It gives the sense that German anti-semitism developed in a vacum and where Goldhagen does mentioned other nationalities acting againstt he Jews it is either a) skimmed over, or b) tagged with a caveat that they were 'pushed to it' by the Germans.
Entire parts of this book are blatently untrue, others are gross generalisations (The Nazis was the most radical governing force in Europe in mid 1930? Really? I mean, you could make an argument for this, but not a statement of fact. Italy. Spain. Russia), and more just compeletly skim over vitally important parts of the subject. The extermination facilities are barely mentioned, there is nothing said fo the workers movement in Weimar Germany which was friendly to Jews, that fact that Hitler was not German is conveniently skimmed over.

This is also not the first time you've mentioned us dismissing something because a Jew said/wrote it. Firstly, a) I didn't even know he was, which might be daft considering yeah, Goldhagen, but it was beside the point, and b) seriously, stop. This book is dreadful. It's research is barely present, its chronology is all over the place, it completely dismisses the Miligram experiment without so much as an explanation. It has no context, half of it is lovingly described torture porn, and the point it tries to make is so vague as to be non-existant. I've just about finished it, and I still am not sure what point he was making, but it seems as though he is arguing that the Holocaust was something that could only happen in Germany, which i don't need to tell you is a dangerous, false and above all entirely USELESS statement. Like he arguments of a creationist, Goldhagen's points are worthless when it comes to evaluating the motivations of the perpetrators and putting the Holocaust into context with other genocides.

I am not saying that Germany was not resposible for the Holocaust. No one here is saying that, and you have to be braindead to think it was true. I am saying that this book is awful as a piece of research, and only created controversy in the same way creationism created controversy. You are welcome to disagree to these points but if your only argument is that we are being anti-semitic in dismissing Goldhagen then I'm sorry but there is nothing to say.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Out of nine paragraphs the only thing you took from my comment was my expressing concern that some people might think that Jews were incapable of presenting unbiased information. Then you turned that statement into an accusation on my part of anti-semitism on your part.

Please. You're missing the point of the book, which was to examine what it was in GERMAN culture specifically that led to the Holocaust. The book is an examination of Germans and Germany. What you see as a "vacuum" is simply its focus, and the introduction and first two chapters make this very clear.

I don't see how this particular focus somehow adds up to ignoring every other genocide ever committed or every other anti-semitic or fascist culture. He never claims that his goal is to put the Holocaust in context with other genocides, because that wasn't his goal. His goal was simply to examine what it is in German culture that brought about not just the mass complicity of the Germans in the Holocaust but also the active participation of so many. Where his book truly makes a difference in Holocaust studies is that it presents clear evidence that, contrary to what has been proposed over and over again, no one was forced to follow orders at risk of death, and that the majority of the men who asked not to be assigned to the killing squads were willingly reassigned with no retribution whatsoever.

That is the major revelation of this book. Goldhagen's intent was to examine why so many would choose to obey such heinous orders when it was made clear to them that they didn't have to. And much of that willingness comes from the German culture of abject obedience to authority.

What you call "torture porn" is actual testimony on behalf of the perpetrators. This book was the first to provide such comprehensive testimony from the perpetrators. Almost every other book about the Holocaust focuses on the victims or Nazi leadership and policies.

I don't see Goldhagen claiming that the Germans "pushed" other nationalities into participating in the Holocaust. On the contrary, it's made quite clear that most of the locals were happy to participate, a fact that's well-documented. Everyone knows that nationalist feelings and anti-Soviet resentment on the part of the Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Eastern Poles played a large part in the participation of those peoples. If Goldhagen doesn't spend a lot of time on this fact, well, that's because again, his focus is on what motivated the GERMANS. That hardly adds up to portraying the Germans' actions as existing in a vacuum.

Please re-read the paragraph on page 383 where Goldhagen discusses Millgram. He doesn't dismiss the experiment but rather points out the inherent flaws in Millgram's (and others') presumption that all humans are blindly obedient to authority, regardless of the context. Time and again it's been demonstrated that this isn't true, even in the Millgram experiment itself.

The argument that Hitler wasn't German so he couldn't have been affected by German culture is facetious. Most of the high-level Nazis were originally from either Austria or Bavaria. Germany, Bavaria and Austria were all part of Germania as early as 100 AD. The territorial changes that took place over the successive centuries never changed the fact that all three share the same cultural origins.

It seems odd that, because the book's focus is on Germans and German culture and complicity in the Holocaust, anyone should assume that it's therefore flawed because it doesn't examine other cultures or other genocides or other governments to make comparisons. The purpose of the book is NOT to make such comparisons, but to focus on Germany alone. I agree with Raul Hillberg that it's far less revealing to look at the big picture when examining the Holocaust because it's too easy to miss the subtle details, and it's in those details where the real answers can be found. In focusing only on Germany in his book, Goldhagen is trying to do just that, to find what it is in Germans and Germany that made this event take place, not examine the larger context of the event.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Then you turned that statement into an accusation on my part of anti-semitism on your part.

Than I misunderstood, sorry. Unfortunately I couldn't see anything in the post that related to the book I had read, or to the issues being discussed.

You're missing the point of the book, which was to examine what it was in GERMAN culture specifically that led to the Holocaust

While at the same time ignoring any information that contradicted the point he was trying to make, not what I'd call reliable.

Where his book truly makes a difference in Holocaust studies is that it presents clear evidence that, contrary to what has been proposed over and over again, no one was forced to follow orders at risk of death, and that the majority of the men who asked not to be assigned to the killing squads were willingly reassigned with no retribution whatsoever.


I have never seen this argued anywhere but here. It is pretty obvious that yes, people were acting of their own free will and were not coerced. While I can imagine it migth have been argued otherwise previously. I find it hard to imagine this would have continued as late as 1996, when this book was published.

And much of that willingness comes from the German culture of abject obedience to authority.


Actually Goldhagen argues against this on p381, pointing out that Germans were prefectly capable of rebelling against authority in other circumstances.

What you call "torture porn" is actual testimony on behalf of the perpetrators.

No, what I call torture porn is when Goldhagen goes off an a tangent and completely makes something up, for no other reason than to horrify his readers.

I don't see Goldhagen claiming that the Germans "pushed" other nationalities into participating in the Holocaust.

p256 "... when the Hiwis, obviously ifluenced by the German's own brutality..." p387 "They incited displaced Poles to loot Jewish homes."

In a piece exploring people's willignness to commit atrocities, he only mentions Millgram once, and then only to off handledly dismiss him. He doesn't point out the individual flaws, just a sweeping generalisation.

Comparisons are important, because Germans are members of the human race, and when trying to discover how the Holocaust could have happened its vital to see how similar events have happened in human history, and notice the trends and similarities. I'm not saying dedicate the entire book on other genocides but a mention would have been nice.

I am not arguing against Goldhagen's argument. I'm not sure I agree with it, but that's mostly because I am not sure what it is any more. I am saying that no matter what the subjct matter is, this is an atrocious research piece that aims to sensationalism and very little to making valid points. His idea may have been valid but the result is a confused mess of strawman arguments, paucity of research, unwillingness to consider how his point may be challenged by others (which is was. Oh dear it was.).

I started reading this thinking I would read a flawed book which nevertheless made good points. While Goldhagen does occasionally point out a valid flaw in Holocaust research, his argument is no better than the commonly understood view.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

It is pretty obvious that yes, people were acting of their own free will and were not coerced. While I can imagine it migth have been argued otherwise previously, I find it hard to imagine this would have continued as late as 1996, when this book was published.
It seems obvious now, but the premise of "we were following orders in fear of death" was indeed the accepted one before this book was published. As an amateur Holocaust scholar since 1973, I can attest to this. That's why it was greeted so enthusiastically. It was the very first book to reveal that if a soldier asked not to participate in the killings, he was not forced to do so or punished. Remember that before this book there had been no other work based on statements by the perpetrators. The reason was the lack of access due to the lack of a statute of limitations for the prosecution of war crimes. By the 1990s, the aging and deaths of many perpetrators made access to testimony much easier.

Actually Goldhagen argues against this on p381, pointing out that Germans were perfectly capable of rebelling against authority in other circumstances.
I definitely need to finish reading the book so I can understand what his final premise is.

No, what I call torture porn is when Goldhagen goes off an a tangent and completely makes something up, for no other reason than to horrify his readers.
I need to know what, specifically, he's making up to comment.

p256 "... when the Hiwis, obviously influenced by the German's own brutality..." p387 "They incited displaced Poles to loot Jewish homes."
Being "influenced" or "incited" is not the same as being "pushed", as you stated, which implies force. There's significant evidence that, seeing the Germans abuse their Jewish neighbors, the Hiwis and displaced Poles felt free to do the same. There are also victim testimonies of neighbors and former friends turning on the Jews when the Germans did.

In a piece exploring people's willignness to commit atrocities, he only mentions Millgram once, and then only to off handledly dismiss him. He doesn't point out the individual flaws, just a sweeping generalisation.
He doesn't point out the individual flaws of the study itself, but of the flaw in the study's conclusion of blind obedience, which he describes beginning on page 381, as you pointed out.

Comparisons are important, because Germans are members of the human race, and when trying to discover how the Holocaust could have happened its vital to see how similar events have happened in human history, and notice the trends and similarities.
Comparisons are VERY important, and I believe they are vitally so at this point since "Never Again" has long since become "over and over again." But I still believe that just because the comparisons aren't made and the book's focus is solely on German society doesn't mean the scholarship is fundamentally flawed. What is REALLY needed is a scholarly work that examines and compares all the genocides in history, right up to Darfur, to find trends and similarities. As a more professional scholar than I, maybe you should write that book. I'd be happy to help you do so. :-)

His idea may have been valid but the result is a confused mess of strawman arguments, paucity of research, unwillingness to consider how his point may be challenged by others (which is was. Oh dear it was.)
I haven't finished the book, but I'd love it if you could send me links to those who argued against it.

his argument is no better than the commonly understood view.
If, by his argument you mean the fact that Germans were able to refrain from participating in the killing without fear of punishment, again, until this book was published, this was not the "commonly understood view."

I shall keep reading the book, but welcome the opportunity to read arguments against it.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent critique here: http://www.wsws.org/articles/1997/apr1997/fasc-a17.shtml
It does take a socialist stance, but it explains a lot of the problems I had with the book.

As an amateur Holocaust scholar since 1973, I can attest to this. That's why it was greeted so enthusiastically.

Have you read Yehuda Bauer? I read his 'History of the Holocaust' and found it made a lot of the points Goldhagen was making (although with a distinctive pro-religion stance), yet it was published in 1982.

I need to know what, specifically, he's making up to comment.

Perhaps making up was the wrong word, but definitely putting his own spin on it, particularly lingering on the killing of women. It did occasionally skirt the edges of what I would call 'Holocaust porn'.

There are also victim testimonies of neighbors and former friends turning on the Jews when the Germans did.

Where? The actions of the Ukrainians and Poles tend to go unmentioned except for the few examples I found above. Not to mention there is no mention AT all of the actions of the Romanians. I know we disagree about the importannce of comparisons, btu for me it is vital to put the actions of the Nazis in some kind of context. They were not operating in a vacum, they were being affected by the actions of those around them. Focusing on the Holocaust and only on the Holocaust robs the study of any sense of context and, thus, any real ability to understand the motivations of the perpetrators.

Something else which bothered me was the lack of attention paid to the anti-Jewish propaganda of the time. A great deal more time was spent on historical anti-semitism (again a very lop-sided view, with Goldhagen flat out denying that any political group was not anti-semitic), and much less on the constant images the German people would have been bombarded with through their radio, newspapers, and on the streets.

What is REALLY needed is a scholarly work that examines and compares all the genocides in history, right up to Darfur, to find trends and similarities. As a more professional scholar than I, maybe you should write that book. I'd be happy to help you do so. :-)

Thank you, but I suspect such a work has already been written. I'm fairly sure it's on my booklist, in fact. I'll get back to you on that.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent critique here: http://www.wsws.org/articles/1997/apr1997/fasc-a17.shtml
It does take a socialist stance, but it explains a lot of the problems I had with the book.
Thank you for the link. I'll take a look at it.

"As an amateur Holocaust scholar since 1973, I can attest to this. That's why it was greeted so enthusiastically."

Have you read Yehuda Bauer? I read his 'History of the Holocaust' and found it made a lot of the points Goldhagen was making (although with a distinctive pro-religion stance), yet it was published in 1982.
I haven't read it, no. But did it feature testimonies made by the perpetrators? That was the supporting evidence that made the real difference in terms of the impact of Goldhagen's book. Without the perpetrators' testimonies, it was at that point theoretical only.

" There are also victim testimonies of neighbors and former friends turning on the Jews when the Germans did."

Where? The actions of the Ukrainians and Poles tend to go unmentioned except for the few examples I found above. Not to mention there is no mention AT all of the actions of the Romanians. I know we disagree about the importannce of comparisons, btu for me it is vital to put the actions of the Nazis in some kind of context. They were not operating in a vacum, they were being affected by the actions of those around them. Focusing on the Holocaust and only on the Holocaust robs the study of any sense of context and, thus, any real ability to understand the motivations of the perpetrators.
Sorry, I didn't mean those testimonies were in the book, just that there have been many testimonies by survivors over the years regarding how they were treated by their neighbors.

I do understand your point of view regarding contextual studies of the Holocaust, and I do believe they are important. But I don't believe that every study needs to take that point of view. This one didn't, and I'm evaluating what I've read of the book so far based on what it is, not on what I believe it should be. I take the same approach in reviewing a work of fiction or non-fiction that I do in reviewing a work of art or music or film. I review it based on what it is, not on what I believe it should be. It's just a different approach than yours.

Something else which bothered me was the lack of attention paid to the anti-Jewish propaganda of the time. A great deal more time was spent on historical anti-semitism (again a very lop-sided view, with Goldhagen flat out denying that any political group was not anti-semitic), and much less on the constant images the German people would have been bombarded with through their radio, newspapers, and on the streets.
This is a very good point. Regarding propaganda, it's interesting that to this day Germany will not allow screenings of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of The Will, one of the greatest propaganda films of all time and historically a key work of Nazi propaganda. It's almost as though they're afraid people will be swept away by it again. I recently purchased another study of propaganda during the Third Reich. I should dig it out and take a look at it. Unfortunately, I can't at this moment remember the title!

I suspect such a work has already been written. I'm fairly sure it's on my booklist, in fact. I'll get back to you on that.
Thank you, I'd appreciate that! :-)

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

(sorry, I accidentally posted this early)

"Without the perpetrators' testimonies, it was at that point theoretical only."

Ah, I see. No, it did not have perpetrator testimonies.

" I didn't mean those testimonies were in the book, just that there have been many testimonies by survivors over the years regarding how they were treated by their neighbors."

My point being that they should have been in the book if Goldhagen wanted people to find his work in any way reliable. I agree that it is important to understand what motivated the perpetrators to carry out the killing, but to do so it vital to be able to contrast it with something else, otherwise it might as well be guesswork. They could have been motivated by centuries of anti-semitism, by the previous decade or so of non-stop propaganda, by religious anti-semitism, or hell, by blue bunnies from Mars. My point is that we test what motivaed them without looking at the actions of other groups at the same time. The Poles, the Ukrainians and (particularly) the Romanians, whose anti-semitism was so extreme that Heydrich sent them a memo to 'calm down, you're making us look bad'.

I review it based on what it is, not on what I believe it should be. It's just a different approach than yours.

The problem with this is that it's not a piece of art or fiction. It's not a self-contained work. It's a piece commenting on a particularly facet of a very complicated event, and it's doing so in an incredibly simplistic fashion. It is also undermining its own importance because when we then go and look at the Holocaust through the lens of this book, it tells us little more than 'The Germans had something which made them want to kill Jews (and I'm not sure I can really trust this because it was so badly argued).'

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

My point being that they should have been in the book if Goldhagen wanted people to find his work in any way reliable.

That's fine. What I was pointing out was that you seemed to be implying that the locals were somehow forced into their participation, whereas there is more than enough survivor testimony to dispute this. Once the Germans made it obvious that there would be no holds barred in torturing and killing Jews, former friends and neighbors willingly did so.

it tells us little more than 'The Germans had something which made them want to kill Jews (and I'm not sure I can really trust this because it was so badly argued).
Then why did they? Why did this happen in this country at this time, and to the extent that it did? I understand there have been numerous other genocides, but few completely encompassed the entire financial and technological capabilities of the perpetrators the way the Holocaust did. I'm fine with acknowledging that there have been more, bigger, better and more successful genocides throughout history, but I am not willing to say that because of this the Germans as a people should somehow be exonerated for the Holocaust. There were a number of factors that contributed to the Holocaust, and whatever aspects of German society and culture that made it possible need to be examined. To completely exonerate that society and culture because others have committed genocide is simply unimaginable to me. I don't see anyone claiming that there was nothing in the Hutu and Tutsi cultures that made the Rwandan genocide possible and that recognizing there might be somehow places that genocide in a vacuum. But for some reason, there is all this tremendous defensiveness regarding Germany. I don't understand it.

Incidentally, you claimed that Goldhagen made it seem as though Germany's antisemitism existed in a vacuum because he gave no quarter to the existence of anti-semitism in other European countries. On the contrary, a good part of the second chapter of the book is devoted solely to the historical development of antisemitism in Europe. So I can't see how you can claim that Goldhagen made it seem as though antisemitism was unique to Germany.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

What I was pointing out was that you seemed to be implying that the locals were somehow forced into their participation,

Which is what Goldhagen was implaying in the book, and why I saw it as untrustworthy.

Then why did they? Why did this happen in this country at this time, and to the extent that it did?

It was due to a lot of factors, some of them I freely admit Goldhagen does write about. But there are so many other factors, particularly the constant anti-Jewish propaganda, that had an equal if not greater impact on the minds of the German people, which made it possible for them to take part, even enthusiastically, in the Holocaust. No one is trying to exonerate the German people! A great part of studying the Holocaust is understanding why it happened so it doesn't happen again, and Goldhagen's 'well it was just part of German culture as a whole', is not only limited but outright dangerous as a mindset because it exonerates everyone else. We don't have to worry, because the Holocaust was something so utterly German that we (non-Germans) couldn't possibly do it.

On the contrary, a good part of the second chapter of the book is devoted solely to the historical development of antisemitism in Europe.

Only in the sense of religious anti-semitism, which is not the focus of the book at all. He makes no mention that racial anti-semitism was common throughout Europe at the time.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And that it was racial Jew-hatred that made Hitler kill a lot of people who considered themselves assimilated Christians and patriots of their various countries but had had one Jews grandparent. The religious kind would have been satisfied by things like what that one bishop in Russia did, mass baptisms thinking the Nazis *were* Christianity-motivated Jew-haters. All that got him was a bullet in the head and the Jews he'd tried to save died all the same.

And before Deborakhla objects to use of the term Jew-hatred, antisemitism was a term created to get around the fact that Jews were always the targets of that mentality. I don't feel any obligation to honor that intention of the word and prefer to get to the point.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Only in the sense of religious anti-semitism, which is not the focus of the book at all. He makes no mention that racial anti-semitism was common throughout Europe at the time.
He does so because all antisemitism has its roots in religion, and there is no Jewish race. There is no semitic race, either. There are semitic peoples - and they include Arabs and other middle-eastern peoples. But there are also blonde, blue-eyed Jews (and Muslims, for that matter), who are not semitic in any way, shape or form. There are also negroid Jews and Muslims. So to consider antisemitism a racial prejudice is to support a lie. The roots of antisemitism have always been in religion, and to examine it in any other way is to support the lie that there is a Jewish "race." This is something we Jews fight against all the time. We are not a race, so antisemitism is not a racial prejudice, no matter what some people may believe. Goldhagen is entirely justified in examining antisemitism as religion-based, because it was. Antisemitism does extend beyond religion to encompass ethnic background and culture, but that is not the same as a racial distinction. It wasn't until the term antisemitism was developed in late 19th century Germany that it took on a racial connotation.

Yes, the term antisemitism comes from late 19th Century Germany, where it was coined to serve as a more "scientifically-based" term for Judenhass (Jew-hatred). The term originated in Germany and was developed to place anti-semitism into an anthropologically racial context, whereas up until that time it was purely based on religion, ethnic background and culture. So it's entirely justified to say that antisemitism originated in Germany, because it did. The very term and the concept of antisemitism as a racial connotation began in Germany.

That said, it's also entirely justified to examine what in German culture and society would have led the Germans to give that prejudice a racial connotation after 1,870 years. No else ever had in the past. To really find this out involves examining everything from ancient German folklore to Martin Luther and the influence of the Lutheran church and the tremendous impact Wagner had on German culture. I'm sorry, but antisemitism in and of itself was indeed a German invention.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that Ethiopian and Indian Jews would be interested in this assertion that race does not matter in Judaism. And bullshit that nobody ever had in the past, this same mentality was what led to the Alhambra Decree. But again this goes right back to the "rest of Europe loved the Jews and it was big bad Germany alone who hated them." It's like the Tsarist Pogroms and the Dreyfus incident never happened.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

What is your major malfunction? I never said race didn't matter in Judaism or elsewwhere. Go back and read my post. What I said was that Jews are not a race, they are a religion, so antisemitism cannot be rightly considered a racial prejudice. I never said that race didn't matter. Believe me, I know plenty of dark-skinned Jews who are well aware that they exist under a double-whammy of prejudice, both racial and religious.

You're a complete idiot if you think the Alhambra Decree had nothing to do with religion. The decree was issued by the joint CATHOLIC monarchs of Spain. I know this because my ancestors were among the Jews driven out at that time. They were driven out for religious and ethnic reasons, not because they were believed to be a race. Prior to the ascension of Catholic rule, Spain was governed by Muslim moors, where Jews were given special status, and they thrived under Muslim rule. It wasn't until the CATHOLICS took over that the Jews were expelled. They were expelled for religious reasons, NOT racial reasons.

And you can deny it all you want, but the fact remains: the GERMANS coined the term antisemitism because they wanted a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass (Jew-hatred). he term originated in Germany and was developed to place anti-semitism into an anthropologically racial context, whereas up until that time it was purely based on religion, ethnic background and culture. So it's entirely justified to say that antisemitism originated in Germany, because it did. The very term and the concept of antisemitism as a racial connotation BEGAN IN GERMANY.

Once again, it's entirely justified to examine what in German culture and society would have led the Germans to give that prejudice a racial connotation after roughly 1,870 years. No else ever had in the past, including the CATHOLIC monarchs who issued the Alhambra Decree. This is a fact. Antisemitism in and of itself was indeed a German invention.

Unless you post another completely stupid comment that demonstrates that you clearly haven't read my post, I'm no longer going to respond to your comments, because you obviously have some huge need to come to the defense of the Germans while insulting the Jews.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Again, tell that to the Ashkenazim who run Israel, particularly the Ultra-Orthodox. I'll be waiting.

If that were the only reason for it, the Spanish would have just done a pogrom aimed at converting Jews, gotten enough converts, and that would be that. The Alhambra Decree was aimed at Conversos. The ones who were supposedly Christian but were really "Jewish." Just like a good deal of Hitler's victims would not meet the Halachic definition of Jew advocated by Israel's ultra-orthodox.

Congratulations. You said something I already know. *slow clap.*

And I'm saying "bullshit" because nobody would have expelled the Conversos if that was a religious decree. Only the practicing Jews would have been targeted, when in fact the entire focus was on Conversos, a category often determined by what were proto-racial categorizations.

I don't want to defend Hitler's incompetent war that went from one bumbling to another and put half of Europe under Stalinism. If Hitler had stopped a machine gun bullet on the Western Front....some other dipshit would have taken his place and we'dve had this conversation griping about that other person and wishing *he'd* been shot. And frankly I'm not insulting the Jews. The ones who resisted were true heroes, especially in Birkenau and Sobibor. I am, however, pointing out that it could easily have been that Birkenau and Sobibor were run by Baron Ungern-Sternberg's Black Hundreds instead of Hitler's National Socialists.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Tell what to the Ashkenazin? Now you're not even making sense.

Once again you've proved my point, because you're dead wrong about the Alhambra Decree. The Alhambra Decree was NOT aimed solely at Conversos, because the Conversos were Jews who converted to Christianity in an attempt to avoid being expelled by the decree. They were NOT the only ones expelled, believe me. My ancestors never converted to Christianity and they were expelled. It was always a religious issue, and the Halachic definition played only a very minor part in terms of determining the origins of the Conversos. The entire focus was NOT just on the Conversos but on ALL the Jews of Spain. Both practicing and non-practicing Jews were targeted and expelled.

Birkenau and Sobibor could have been run by Baron Ungern-Sternberg's Black Hundreds instead of Hitler's National Socialists? Please. That's utter, utter bullshit. The motivations of the actions of each man were so profoundly, fundamentally different that there's no authentic comparison to be made. You're really drawing at straws now, aren't you?

That's it. I'm not wasting any more time on you, since you continue to make one incorrect assertion after another, and I simply don't have the time to continue correcting you. I have much more important and worthwhile things to do. This conversation is at an end, NOW.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That Falasha are just as much Jews as they are, even though they're dark-skinned and don't have the Talmud, that's what. Try doing that and most of them will sound like Southern whites talking about blacks.

Obviously you've never studied *why* they passed the decree. They knew the practicing Jews were there. They bothered them less than the possibility of Jews who didn't act like Jews, just like segregationists worried more about blacks who could pass than ones who could not.

And if you didn't know which side in the Russian Civil War killed more Jews (it wasn't the Bolsheviks) then frankly there is no point to this discussion. Because you believe alone of Europe's peoples the Germans have hated Jews above all others and there was never a Kielce Pogrom and that the Jews of Kaunas were not exterminated by Lithuanians before the Wehrmacht even got there. It was all big, bad, evil Sauron-Hitler I mean who manipulated them all into it. Hitler made a science of it, but he was the conclusion of what Alexander III had begun.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Yet at the same time Germany was one of the most Jew-riedly countries in Europe. In fact, I've seen it stated over and over again, that if before Hitler's rise to power there was a list done of the European countries most likely to commit genocide against the Jewish people, Germany would have come rather low, and the most common choice would have been France.

I'm not sure why you started alking about how the Jews are not a race.We know that, thanks. The point still stands that wherever it originated, anti-semitism as a racil construct (true or false) was prevalent throughout Europe and America, and if anything less prevalent in Germany than other places.

The simple point is, as Goldhagen completely fails to mention, that you could have looked at the histories of almost every European country and decided they were capable of committing the Holocaust. What set Germany off in particular? Nothing in Goldhagen's thesis even approaches this. Goldhagen simply offers the easy answers, that it was something unique to Germany, and now the Germans have gotten over it, we have nothign to worry about. It's a boot to the face to 'Never Again'.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Oops, I forgot to respond to the following:
"What I was pointing out was that you seemed to be implying that the locals were somehow forced into their participation,"

Which is what Goldhagen was implying in the book, and why I saw it as untrustworthy.

Let’s look once again at what you said originally: “where Goldhagen does mention other nationalities acting against the Jews it is either a) skimmed over, or b) tagged with a caveat that they were 'pushed to it' by the Germans.”

I responded to your statement by saying, “I don't see Goldhagen claiming that the Germans "pushed" other nationalities into participating in the Holocaust.”

To this you replied, “p256 ‘... when the Hiwis, obviously influenced by the Germans' own brutality...’ p387 ‘They incited displaced Poles to loot Jewish homes.’"

I then correctly pointed out the following: “Being ‘influenced’ or ‘incited’ is not the same as being ‘pushed’, as you stated, which implies force.”

Here is the definition of influence, according to the Oxford English Dictionary:

influence(in·flu·ence)
Pronunciation:/ˈinflo͝oəns, ˈɪnflʊəns/
noun

the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself:
the influence of television violence
I was still under the influence of my parents
their friends are having a bad influence on them

verb
[with object]

have an influence on:
social forces influencing criminal behavior


incite(in·cite)
Pronunciation:/inˈsīt, ɪnˈsaɪt/

verb
[with object]

encourage or stir up (violent or unlawful behavior):
the offense of inciting racial hatred
urge or persuade (someone) to act in a violent or unlawful way:
he incited loyal subjects to rebellion

As you can see, to influence or incite someone is in no way the same thing as “pushing” or “forcing” them, as you accuse Goldhagen of implying.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

A very good critique: http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books_added2009-4/nationontrial.pdf If you can find any good essays defending Goldhagen I'd like to read them (please, scholarly only, not a review by the local paper of arse-end-on-sea).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yet he makes no mention of the first German genocide of the Herero and Namaqua. Which might go to proving his point in one sense but it didn't target white Europeans, so it was ignored. Despite being the first German genocide of the 20th Century. I guess black African genocides when done by Germans of the 1900s are less relevant than pogroms done by Medieval religious fanatics of the 1500s for Golhagen's thesis. For that matter, the Holocaust killed 6,000,000 Jews and the Pojaramos 200,000 or so Romani....but the two were different in degree of organization, not in kind from the rest of Generalplan Ost. Discuss the Holocaust without Hitler's twisted manifest Destiny in Europe and his conflation of Jews with the Soviet government (which was very disingenuous given that Stalin was a Jew-hater, too, and purged his Jewish officials more than the others) and you miss a huge part of it.

And no, they were not part of "Germania" at that point. What we term Austria now was part of the Roman Empire in the era of the Five Good Emperors. Bavaria was part of it, but those tribes then have nothing to do with the German Empire forged by the victory in the Franco-Prussian War. Maroboduus is not Reinhard Heydrich in embryo.

In fact if the Classical Ages are taken to define culture, why is it that Italians did not massacre Jews on the wide scale when Germans did? I mean the Germanics were savages at that point, the Romans in the AD 70 and Bar Kochba Wars bordered on genocide in a Classical-Age context. If that argument has any validity Mussolini should have been immediately prone to Jew-hatred and pogroms before Hitler was anything but a local rabble-rouser in Munich.

In any case, please address the point about Tsar Alexander III's Pogroms. Did they or did they not vastly overshadow anything done by the Imperial German regime to Jews? Which side in WWI had more pogroms of Jews on the Eastern Front? Hitler's rise to power as leader of a genocidal regime and the industrial engine of death he created is certainly true.

However he was an extreme form of a common type of racist politics, not in any sense typical of his precursors.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

You're right about Herero and Namaqua, and it IS indeed VERY shameful that little attention has been paid in general to what was rightly the first genocide of the 20th century, but, as you said, unfortunately, people in general are less interested in genocide against people of color than they are against white people. But this genocide was waged in retaliation for the revolts waged by both peoples against German rule. That doesn't justify it by any means, but it that isn't the same as targeting a non-combatant group of people specifically for genocide based solely on their ethnicity, so there's no reason to make a comparison. There is no comparison to be made because motivation for of circumstances of each genocide differ markedly from each other. Goldhagen is focusing on the Holocaust on its own terms, not in comparison with any other genocide. You may or may not agree with that approach, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

As I understand it, Germania was the name given by the Roman Empire to that part of Europe that encompassed what we now know as Austria, Bavaria and Germany. Obviously the Franco-Prussian war came much, much later. Reviewing the numerous territorial changes that took place over history is perhaps not as relevant as reviewing the earliest tribal religions and rituals that governed the peoples before even the Roman Empire came into the picture.

The relationship between Italians and Jews goes back a great deal farther than that between Germans and Jews, and that has made a significant difference in the relationship each country has had with Jews. The Jews had been a part of Roman society since well before the birth of Christ. And while there was some suppression against the Jews, it was primarily for territorial rather than religious reasons. It wasn't until Constantine the Great that Christianity began to be truly widespread, but Jews in general were well assimilated into Roman and then Italian society. My ex-husband was a second-generation Italian whose father was born in the USA but returned to Italy during the Depression. He subsequently deserted from the Italian Navy and fought with the Italian partisans. He met and married my late mother-in-law before returning to the US after the war. Neither he nor my late mother-in-law could recall any anti-semitism in the areas where they lived. It's also important to point out the role that Martin Luther played in the genesis of antisemitism in Germany. There was never any equivalent of Luther in Italian society.

The Imperial German regime marked a time of greater tolerance (although never full acceptance) of Jews, so it cannot be compared with Tsar Alexander's pogroms either before, after or during WW I. But Goldhagen isn't comparing the two, and I wouldn't either. If you asked me to compare the pogroms to the Holocaust, I can tell you with great certainty that the Holocaust was far worse.

Now I must ask you if you might please address the point you are trying to make in finding fault with Goldhagen's basic premise, which is that something within the German people in particular made it possible for them to not only remain silent be become complicit with and even willingly participate in the Holocaust. Again, Goldhagen's book was the first to feature actual testimony on behalf of the perpetrators that proved that those who asked not to participate in the killings were not punished but accommodated. That revelation is the major accomplishment of Goldhagen's book, because prior to this we had always been told that everyone had to obey orders under the threat of death. Since that wasn't the case, how else do you explain the complicity with and the willingness to kill noncombatant, civilian men, women and children on a mass scale?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Especially when it's used by people who claim Germans above all other peoples in the history of the world were prone to genocide via an oddly nationalistic conceit that Germans are *more* prone to obey evil orders than people in other countries were. Nobody gripes about Unit 731 or Japan's simultaneous butchering of 30,000,000 East Asians when Japan was an equally ultra-modern country.

You understand incorrectly. Germania referred to an attempted Roman colonization of what today would be Luxemburg, Alsace-Lorraine, the Rhineland, and Belgium and the Netherlands. Roman geography was not good enough to encompass Germany past points where Proto-Slavs lived.

Those would be rituals of human sacrifice to war gods like Tyr who stuffed his hand into a giant wolf's mouth that bit it off. Those would be religious rituals dedicated to Thor and Odin succeeded by conquering hordes of Arian Christians. The idea of a connection between Germany of today and the Germanic tribes is a ludicrous conceit akin to seeing Berlusconi as a living heir of Caesar Augustus.

Nonsense. Caesar and the Romans tolerated Jews, yes. Those were Romans who were polytheists who invented the first version of the blood libel, considered Jews self-mutilating atheists, and who also had phalli outside their homes that they stroked for luck. Medieval Italy after the Ostrogothic Wars split into multiple states and invented the ghetto. And sure, it's easy not to recall that because Mussolini was racist against blacks and Slavs, not Jews. Italian fascism didn't give a damn about Jews. Hitler's Luegerite Pan-Germanism did. If course when Mussolini was leader of the Salo Republic......

Nobody fully accepted Jews then. Even in the USA where it was as good as it got, that by modern standards was entirely not appropriate.

I explain it as Manifest Destiny in Europe with better tools than Jefferson and Lincoln had. There were 16,000,000 other Untermenschen slain by the Nazis. What was done by the Jews was very obviously genocide as it was only Jews who for instance were all at once taken out of Hungary in cattle cars to be exterminated. However the total of Hitler's murders was not 6,000,000 but 22,000,000 which puts him fully on par with Josef Stalin as far as death tolls are concerned. Yet of those 22,000,000 only 6,000,000 get documentaries and memorials. There was nothing that made the remaining 16,000,000 being murdered any less terrifying, saddening, or worthy of commemoration.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

You know what? I disagree with you in so many ways that I can't even begin to state with them. As for your final paragraph, I've addressed that in a response to another response of yours.

You haven't in any way addressed my final paragraph, which was "Now I must ask you if you might please address the point you are trying to make in finding fault with Goldhagen's basic premise, which is that something within the German people in particular made it possible for them to not only remain silent be become complicit with and even willingly participate in the Holocaust. Again, Goldhagen's book was the first to feature actual testimony on behalf of the perpetrators that proved that those who asked not to participate in the killings were not punished but accommodated. That revelation is the major accomplishment of Goldhagen's book, because prior to this we had always been told that everyone had to obey orders under the threat of death. Since that wasn't the case, how else do you explain the complicity with and the willingness to kill noncombatant, civilian men, women and children on a mass scale?"

But you know what? Don't bother doing so. I'm not interesting in continuing two discussions in two different threads. I haven't the time to do so.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, because this: The farther back you go in history the less relevant the comparisons to the Holocaust become because of the historical, cultural and societal differences. does not gel with this: The argument that Hitler wasn't German so he couldn't have been affected by German culture is facetious. Most of the high-level Nazis were originally from either Austria or Bavaria. Germany, Bavaria and Austria were all part of Germania as early as 100 AD. The territorial changes that took place over the successive centuries never changed the fact that all three share the same cultural origins.

Especially if we factor in German particularism.

You ask why they were re-assigned instead of being required to go shoot people when they didn't want to be? The reason's pretty simple: the Nazi dictatorship *always* had an element of seeking popular approval about it. It was mostly a veneer, but it was there. That German soldiers were shooting people, however, is no great surprise. It's not like they were entirely shy about that method in WWI, and their vandalism in France in 1918 also shows that Nazism was a continuation to some degree of an existing trend but took Jew-hatred to a level not seen since Luther.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Austro-Hungarian culture? Huh? That would be the Austria-Hungary with two different political cultures, both of them repressive and not intent in the least of sincerely giving rights to the Slavs? While Lueger did get elected mayor of Vienna it was Tsar Alexander III who presided over the most massive pogroms in world history until Ha Shoah itself.

Goldhagen's statements on the Nazis being the most radical movement comes to a screeching halt just among the fascists, where the Ustase and the Legion of the Archangel St. Michael were even worse than the norm for fascists.

And for that matter people in the US need to know a lot more than the atrocities directed at the Indians. The Confederacy had a precursor to the Commissar Order, and massacred white Unionist Southerners with impunity while its refusal to alter the massacres of USCT units was why its parole arrangement with the Union broke down. After the war this turned into things like the Colfax, Liberty Place, and Hamburg Massacres and in the 1920s went so far as the Rosewood Massacre.

Indians were subjected to genocide, but blacks were subjected first to slavery and then to periodic pogroms and regular lynching. That comment itself is myopic.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

It was not myopic by any means, and I take great issue with that comment. I was comparing the genocide of the Native Americans to that of the genocide of the Jews, both being attempts to exterminate a whole people. That's slightly different from what African Americans experienced, which was not an organized policy of extermination. And believe me, as an American, I know damn well that we need to be aware of our history towards all people of color, not to mention Sherman's policy of total war that targeted civilians as much as it did the confederacy. Unfortunately, it's the treatment of native Americans that usually gets the least attention, whereas children as young as 7 learn about the history of African Americans. And most of our primary school textbooks come from Texas, a state notorious for censoring the worst policies of the US Government in general, not to mention their intent to remove Thomas Jefferson from U.S. History because he was an atheist.

You also don't need to tell me about the Tsar's pogroms. My grandfather woke up screaming every night of his life from the nightmares he had about the pogroms he witnessed as a child. You can do all the comparing you like. The fact of the matter is the Germans had the largest, most efficient policy of extermination of one particular group of people the world has ever seen. What other countries did simply doesn't change that fact.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Nonsense. Sherman was not Bomber Harris or Curtis LeMay. The March to the Sea and in the Carolinas was made by an army that even by Civil War standards was a bunch of choir boys. He targeted infrastructure and wished to show the Confederate "government" was a house of cards, expecting Hood to do the logical thing and go after him instead of chasing the Kentucky dream. Hood did not do this, and thus the Confederacy was lost.

I disagree. That followed by the British in Tasmania was far more "efficient" if by efficient we define as pure extermination. Aside from some of the descendants of Palawa raped by Australian men there are *no* survivors. That's much more "efficient" than any European genocide. For that matter, the policy in the Caribbean was even more efficient as there are still Palawa. Nowadays instead of being Amerindian islands the Caribbean islands are inhabited by the descendant of the slaves who replaced them on the plantations and they survive solely in terms of names like "Haiti" and in the Garifuna people.

The Germans had the most efficient one *in Europe.* Europe is no more the entirety of the world than the United States is.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Yes, Sherman was not either Bomber Harris or Curtis LeMay, but he certainly pioneered the modern interpretation Total War which they then followed, by using a scorched earth approach to conquering Georgia and the Carolinas. These were no choir boys who simply marched in and took over. They burned Atlanta after all, and destroyed numerous civilian homes and plantations in the process, regardless of whether or not they were sheltering confederate soldiers.

The Holocaust may not have been the most efficient in terms of the totality of the genocide, but in terms of using modern technology and setting up a nearly seamless process of extermination of enormous groups of people over a short period, it still outranks the rest. It's the sheer efficiency of the organization and carrying out of a group of policies that made the Holocaust possible which makes it stand out from the others.

Why is there such a need to prove that other Holocausts were bigger or better than the one committed by the Germans? That Tsar and his family, for example, were stupid people, very much removed from the reality of the people they ruled. The British were in the habit of conquering and slaughtering since Elizabeth I. What's still incomprehensible about the Holocaust is that the people who designed it were highly cultivated, educated people from a country that at that time arguably was the best educated and most highly cultivated country in Europe based on the great music, philosophy and science it had produced. These were not savage men; most of them had doctorates.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No he didn't. He pioneered the modern concept that you don't attack the enemy by defeating his armies, but by destroying his logistics. That's the key to both Blitzkrieg and Deep Operations. Where Grant had the approach that really worked, namely destroy the enemy army, war's over, we all go home.

That would be Tsar Alexander III, who signed the alliance with France, and who performed the supposedly impossible feat of preserving a multiethnic empire in an age of nationalism. He's hardly removed from reality, certainly less so than the Italians who got stomped at Adwa. And the Holocaust does stand out....as the most organized of the broader Generalplan Ost. Are Slavic lives not equally important? Does it not magnify Nazi evil to point out that Hitler killed a total of 22,000,000 but singled Jews and Gypsies out for immediate extermination in ways never applied to Poles, Ukrainians, or Belarusians?

The Belgian Congo says "Hi" to the assumption that a cultured society could never be capable of a horrific atrocity on the widescale. The Belgian Congo, in fact, was the full size of Western Europe.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Although I've studied, it, I'm not well-versed on battle strategy, so I bow to your knowledge.

Sorry, my error, I was mistakenly not referring to Tsar Alexander III but to Tsar Nicholas II, whose pogroms were far more extensive, and were the ones my grandfather survived. The farther back you go in history the less relevant the comparisons to the Holocaust become because of the historical, cultural and societal differences.

Slavic lives lost in WW II were just as important, and the numbers of lives lost does indeed magnify evil. I do find it interesting that you left out the Russians among the millions of slavic peoples killed, preferring to mention only the Poles, Ukrainians and Belorussians. One out of every two people died in Russia. Were their lives not as important because they were horrible communists? Please. Those horrible communist Russians were the ones who drove back the Germans and did most of the fighting while the US sat on its hands until D-Day and the British blundered about. Those horrible communists in fact won the war in Western Europe. And don't start in on me about the horrible way they treated the German civilians. I don't in any way excuse the more than 1 million civilian women raped, but I don't think what they did (as horrible as it was) in any way matches what the Germans accomplished in number of deaths.

Incidentally, both the Eastern Poles and the Ukrainians were on the side of the Germans, and collaborated with them in the killings, because they hated the Russians. I'd say that their situation was a bit different from those of the Jews they helped kill.

The Belgian Congo? A cultured society on the level of Germany? Please. They weren't savages by any means, but please name me one great scientist, composer and philosopher that came from the Belgian Congo.

It was the way in which the system of extermination of the Jews was established, developed and operated, to the extent that it consumed huge resources that might have otherwise won the Germans the war that makes the Holocaust stand out from the other groups of people killed.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

The Belgian Congo? A cultured society on the level of Germany? Please. They weren't savages by any means, but please name me one great scientist, composer and philosopher that came from the Belgian Congo.

I think he was talking about the actions of the Belgians in the Congo. A cultured society (ie, Belgium) carrying out atrocities that make me udnerstand why people want to ban 'Tintin in the Congo'. And I loathe banning books.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

^This.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Says the person who brings up Germania WRT Nazi Germany as though one has anything to do with the other.

I do consider the Russian lives very important, especially given that had Hitler's little Manifest Destiny in Europe succeeded we'd speak of Russians the way we do of the Cherokees now. Yet you ask most people which Germans killed how many people in WWII and you'll hear that the SS killed 6,000,000 Jews and the role of the Wehrmacht and the other 16,000,000 might as well be the far side of the moon.

Well, yes. That part of Poland and what became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had been grabbed from Russia in 1920. No doubt Stalin brought his usual fuzzy-wuzzy lovey-dovey methods to bringing back that part of Ukraine into his workers' paradise. And given the WWI Germans were the *nicer* army.

I was referring to Belgium. I mean the German colony in what became Namibia arguably reflects on Imperial German culture, as does their real atrocities in Belgium. Similarily the Belgians themselves slaughtered black people on the wide scale but prefer instead to remember the WWI invasion by the German armies.

And frankly there was no way in Hell Germany was going to win that war. Not after it invaded the Soviet Union and went into an Unwinnable war.