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Goldhagen improvises a three-pronged damage control strategy: tacit admission,
minimization, and misrepresentation. I shall only sample his procedures here (see
Table).
Table
TACIT ADMISSION
Goldhagen acknowledges the evidence but not its devastating implications for his
thesis. For example:
'The law excluding Jews from the civil service, being unaccompanied by
public displays of brutality, was, not surprisingly, widely unpopular in
Germany.' (HWE, p. 91)
Recalling the 'uncoordinated and often wild attacks upon Jews' during the first
years of Nazi rule, Goldhagen observes that 'many Germans' felt 'unsettled.'
(HWE, p. 97)
'The reaction of the populace at large' to Nazi initiatives 'was one of general
approval... , though it was accompanied by significant disapproval of the
licentious brutality.' (HWE, p. 99)
To document that 'workers ... were, on the issue of the Jews, in general accord
with the Nazis', Goldhagen cites an SPD report stating that 'The general anti-
Semitic psychosis affects ... our comrades' but 'All are decided opponents of
violence.' (HWE, pp. 106-7)
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MINIMIZATION
Goldhagen acknowledges the evidence but denies that it undermines his thesis. For
example:
'The criticism of Kristallnacht 's licentious violence and wasteful destruction
that could be heard around Germany should be understood as the limited
criticism of an eliminationist path that the overwhelming majority of Germans
considered to be fundamentally sound, but which, in this case, had taken a
momentary wrong turn.' (HWE, p. 102; See also pp. 101, 103, 120-1, 123)
(Weren't 'licentious violence' and 'wasteful destruction' the hallmarks of the
Nazi genocide?)
'Episodic distemper with aspects of the regime's assault on the Jews should not
be understood as being indicative of a widespread, general rejection of the
eliminationist ideal and program... the character and overwhelming plenitude
of the counter-evidence... is vastly greater than Germans' numerically paltry
expressions of disapproval of what... can be seen to have been generally only
specific aspects of the larger eliminationist program and not its governing
principles.' (HWE, p. 120; see also p. 91)
Conceding that 'Ordinary Germans did not leap to mass extermination on their
own, or generally even urge it', Goldhagen explains that 'Hitler was already
working towards this goal with heart and soul, so many Germans sat by,
satisfied that their government was doing the best that any government
conceivably could.' (HWE, p. 445-6) (Weren't Germans anxiously awaiting
Hitler to 'unleash' and 'unshackle' their 'pent up anti-Semitic passion'? Seizing
every opportunity, didn't Germans leap 'with alacrity' to kill Jews during the
Nazi genocide?)
'No evidence suggests that any but an insignificant scattering of Germans
harboured opposition to the eliminationist program save for its most brutally
wanton aspects.' (HWE, pp. 438-9; see also pp. 509-10 n. 165)
MISREPRESENTATION
Goldhagen mangles the evidence. For example:
spontaneous ones from ordinary Germans and ones orchestrated by
government and party institutions', Goldhagen adds: 'the vast majority of the
German people... were aware of what their government and their countrymen
were doing to the Jews, assented to the measures, and, when the opportunity
presented itself, lent their active support to them.' (HWE, pp. 89-90) (Didn't
Goldhagen's main empirical source state that Germans overwhelmingly
opposed Nazi violence?)
'The attacks upon Jews during the first years of Nazi governance of Germany
were so widespread and broad-based that it would be grievously wrong to
attribute them solely to the coughs of the SA, as if the wider German public
21
had no influence over, Recalling inter alia the 'Physical and increased verbal
attacks upon Jews, both or part in, the violence.' (HWE, p. 95)
'In light of the widespread persecution and violence that occurred throughout
... Germany, Kristallnacht was, in one sense, but the crowning moment in the
wild domestic terror that Germans perpetrated upon Jews.' (HWE, p. 99; see
also pp. 100-1)
'The perpetrators [of the Nazi genocide], from Hitler to the lowliest officials,
were openly proud of their actions, of their achievements; during the 1930s,
they proclaimed and carried them out in full view and with the general
approval of the Volk.' (HWE, p.429; see also p. 430)
Left without a shred of scholarly evidence that Germans overwhelmingly savoured
the prospect of massacring Jewry, Goldhagen devises more ingenious methods of
proof. Thus, to document the 'whiff of genocide' in the 'anti-Semitic German
atmosphere', Goldhagen quotes an American journalist's murderous conversations
with 'Nazi circles', and 'at a luncheon or dinner with Nazis.' (HWE, p. 595 n. 68) 'It is
oxymoronic', according to Goldhagen, 'to suggest that those who stood with curiosity
gazing upon the annihilative inferno of Kristallnacht' did not relish the violence and
destruction. Apparently never having witnessed a crowd mill about a burning edifice,
Goldhagen writes: 'People generally flee scenes and events that they consider to be
horrific, criminal, or dangerous.'(HWE, p. 440)
Although there was no palpable evidence in the 1930s of Americans' intent to kill
Japanese, Goldhagen finally analogizes, they did so 'willingly... and fully believing in
the justice of their cause' during World War II. (HWE, p. 446) The comparison is
instructive. The merciless war in the Pacific, John Dower has argued, was the
culmination of a plurality of factors: pervasive anti-Asian prejudice, furore over the
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