hitlers willing executioners :: essays research papers

     Daniel Jonah Goldhagen born in 1959 is an American political scientist most famous for his book, Hitlers automatic Executioners Ordinary Germans and the final solution, which hypothesizes that alone ordinary Germans were actively in favor of the holocaust because of the supposedly curious and virulent "eliminationist" anti-Semitism that was a part of the common consciousness in Germ both end-to-end history. He claims that this special mentality cannot be fully understand by non-Germans and that it was unique to Germany eliminationist anti-Semitism grew out of medieval attitudes that were religiously based. subsequent they became more secularly based, but the anti-Semitism remained the same. Goldhagen holds a Ph.D. in Political scientific discipline from Harvard University and was a professor at Harvard for many years. He is the winner of Germanys highly prestigious triennial Democracy Prize and currently a member of Harvards Minda de Gunzburg C enter for European Studies.      In the book Hitlers Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen uses primary and secondary sources. Goldhagen traces origin & scrutinizes essence of anti-Semitism from its origins oer 1,000 years ago, manifest in non-Jewish Christian civilization at line of the Crusades (Jews characterized as non-Christian Christ killers) throughout the Middle Ages into early modern Europe. He gives a clear insight of how Jews were tortured describing every gruesome detail. though Goldhagen utilizes many original sources, some sources seem to come from his head. For example The antecedent titled the book Hitlers Willing Executioners assuming that all national socialists were enthusiastic to kill Jews. It seems as though he guardedly gathered all the information he could find about the Holocaust to make this piece of art into such a great novel. He allows the determineer to comprehend how he fells personally about different situations mentioned t hroughout the book. Though he states his opinion on several occurrences throughout the book, he backs them up with credible facts.     Hitlers Willing Executioners is well written, undemanding to read and clearly defined. The issue is not the fact that the Germans were anti-semitic, but rather that any human or conference of humans could turn against a group of people so vehemently and so horribly. The vocabulary is somewhat easy to comprehend. Goldhagens thesis, which he rides awfully hard, is that ordinary Germans were quite likely to be anti-Semitic because anti-Semitism, abetted by the Nazi high command, so thoroughly pervaded German culture. Goldhagens eyeshade is centered on events in World War II and does not, bring out his thesis.