Bernard von Bothmer - Understanding the Holocaust

8/6/2019 Bernard von Bothmer - Understanding the Holocaust

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Bernard von Bothmer

Understanding the Holocaust:

Hannah Arendt, Christopher Browning, and Daniel Goldhagen

I. Introduction

The debate over the essential shape, character, and origins of the Holocaust has been

one of the most contentious scholarly disagreements of the past half-century. It is one that

continues to produce enormously innovative scholarship.

How is one to explain the Holocaust? Among the many questions one need to ask are:

Did the atrocities result from decisions made by Hitler, or did they stem from beliefs held among

Germans? Would there have been a Holocaust if Hitler were not Germanys leader. Was his goal

extermination or emigration? Were the death camps uniquely German? Was the murder of six

million Jews part of a policy that was planned before the start of the World War II, or did the

rationale behind these murders evolve only as the war progressed? As Ian Kerhsaw has

eloquently asked:

Was the systematic extermination of European Jewry the direct realization of Hitlers

ideologically motivated design for destruction, which, after various stages in an

exorable process of development, he set into operation through a written or, more

likely, verbal Fuhrer Order sometime in 1941? Or did the Final Solution emerge

piecemeal, and without any command of Hitler, as an imperative result of the system

of cumulative radicalization in the Third Reich?1

Two formulations have been used to explain the Holocaust. One, which can be loosely

called the intentionalist approach, focuses on Hitlers policy towards the Jews, specifically his

goals and his ability to achieve his intentions. Oftentimes called the Hitlerism approach, these

scholars argue that the Holocaust occurred because of a specific and long-planned out program.


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Intentionalists see a consistent direction in Hitlers policies and contend that Hitlers plan for

these atrocities pre-dates the war. The Final Solution, this school hypothesizes, was the primary

element of Hitlers entire policy, from the very beginning of his life in politics. Thus, they

believe, there is a direct connection between anti-Semitism, Nazism, and the Holocaust. As

Milton Himmelfarb succinctly summarized: No Hitler, No Holocaust.2

Others believe in what scholars refer to as the functionalist or structuralist

approach to explaining the Holocaust. Disparaged by detractors as revisionist, these historians

stress structures and elements that affected the policy of the Third Reich. According to this

school of thought, the Holocaust emerged from a disorganized bureaucracy and from a general

sense of confusion towards the Jews, and that Hitler basically made up the plan to exterminate

the Jews as he went along. Unlike the intentionalists, the functionalists do not see a

systematic plan. Instead, they portray the Nazi leadership as split into different factions. Mass

genocide was not considered or planned out before 1941, they contend, and the policy of

exterminating the Jews only came about as the war was proceeding.

Another approach has attempted to transcend these two interpretations. Recently, a

more radical theory has emerged, that the Holocaust occurred because of the virulent anti-

Semitism of the German people. The historian of the Holocaust must thus struggle with a variety

of explanatory theories.

These differences are important ones, as they help understand the nature of Nazi policy.

The problem of explaining the Holocaust is part of the wider problem of how the Nazi regime

functioned, in particular of how decisions were arrived at and implemented in the Nazi state,

writes Kershaw. The central issue remains, therefore, how Nazi hatred of the Jews became

translated into the process of government, and what precise role Hitler played in this process.3

1Ian Kershaw, The Nazi DictatorshipProblems and Perspectives of Interpretation (New York, Oxford University

Press, 2000), p. 102.2Milton Himmelfarb, No Hitler, No Holocaust. Commentary (March, 1984), p. 37.

3Ian Kershaw, The Nazi DictatorshipProblems and Perspectives of Interpretation (New York, Oxford University

Press, 2000), p. 94.


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Eminent scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Christopher Browning, and Daniel Goldhagen have

addressed Kershaws central issue. The debates among them, especially the heated exchange

that took place between Browning and Goldhagen during the 1990s, help put the policies of

Hitlers Third Reich into clearer focus.

It can be concluded from an analysis of each of these historians that there is no single

explanation of exactly why the Holocaust occurred. Neither scholar alone offers a complete

answer, as each of their approaches has their respective strengths and weaknesses. Rather, the

interplay of a variety of factors, especially the nature of the totalitarian regime under Hitler as

described by Arendt and the psychological pressures of conformity as argued by Browning,

worked together in conjunction with Germanys history of anti-Semitism as portrayed by

Goldhagen to produce the horror that was the Holocaust. To attribute the Holocaust to either

purely intentionalist or functionalist causes is deny the complexity of the conditions that led

to the murder of six million European Jews.

II. Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil

Much of the recent scholarship on the Holocaust was ignited by the firestorm set off by

Hannah Arendts 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Until

recently there was little interest in the Holocaust, a term that itself, as opposed to genocide,

only began to be widely used (at first by Jewish scholars) during the 1960s. The Eichmann trial,

and Arendts controversial book on it, produced a torrent of interest in the Holocaust,

inaugurating a steady flow of scholarship on the period that shows little signs of abating.

Arendts work is thus a logical starting point by which to examine how scholars have treated the

Holocaust.

Arendt, a German-Jewish political philosopher and World War II refugee most noted

for her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, which described the nightmare societies

created by Hitler and Stalin, was sent to Jerusalem as a reporter for the New Yorkerto cover the


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trial. Her account was initially published in a series of five articles that appeared in the magazine

in February and March of 1963. In 1961, Israeli Special Forces had captured Eichmann in

Argentina. In April of that year, his trial began in Jerusalem. After 14 weeks, he was convicted of

crimes against both the Jewish people and against humanity, as well as of war crimes and of

membership in criminal organizations. He was tried under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators

(Punishment) Law of 1950, which gave the death penalty to a person found guilty of these

crimes. He was hanged in May of 1962, after an unsuccessful appeal attempt.

For the prosecution, Eichmann became a symbol of a problem larger than any single

man. As Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said on the eve of the trial, It is not an

individual that is in the dock at this historic trial, and not the Nazi regime alone, but anti-

Semitism throughout history.4 The prosecution wished to expose the world to the horrors that

could occur when an ideology such as anti-Semitism was given legitimacy by the state. This

case was built upon what the Jews had suffered, Arendt writes, not on what Eichmann had

done.5

The trial was highly controversial, but all agreed that Eichmann was directly involved

in transporting Jews to the death camps. Eichmann himself did not kill a single person. With the

killing of Jews I had nothing to do, he said on the stand. I never killed a Jew, or a non-Jew, for

that matterI never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill either a Jew or a non-

Jew; I just did not do it.6 But in following orders he aided the process by which Jews were

killed.

Who then was ultimately responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, Eichmann or

the German state? Arendts text is most concerned with providing a portrait of Eichmann, and in

so doing she arrives at the most unsettling conclusion that ordinary people can contribute to acts

of extraordinary evil. To her Eichmann is, above all, a man without any conscience. He

4Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, Viking Press, 1963), p. 19.

5Ibid., p. 6.

6 Ibid., p. 22.


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remembered perfectly well that he would have had a bad conscience only if he had not done what

he had been ordered to do to ship millions of men, women, and children to their death with

great zeal and with the most meticulous care.7

Throughout the book, Arendt is critical of both Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion as

well as Gideon Hausner, the chief prosecutor. Eichmann, she emphasizes, was not insane, noting

that he was declared by a psychiatrist to be quite normal. Though pointing out that under the

conditions of the Third Reich only exceptions could be expected to react normally, one of

Arendts central theses is that the judges were reluctant to admit that an average, normal

person, neither feeble minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of

telling right from wrong.8

Eichmann is also portrayed as a man completely void of the powers of introspection.

He had no ideas of his own, and only wanted to advance his career. To Arendt, Eichmann was a

company man, a typical bureaucrat especially eager to be promoted, decidedly not a fanatic

eager to kill Jews. He held no firm ideology of his own, and, according to Arendt, did not share

the scientific racism of his superiors. Eichmann is described as a man who thrived on order and

on membership in organizations. For example, the end of the war was significant to him because,

as he recounted, I now sensed I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I

would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued

to me, no pertinent ordinances would be there to consultin brief, a life never known before lay

before me.9

Eichmann said on the stand that Officialese is my only language, and Arendt

concludes that officialese became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a

single sentence that was not a clich.10 Noting his penchant for using trite expressions, the

same stock phrases and self-invented clichs, Arendt writes that the longer one listened to him,

7Ibid., p. 25.

8Ibid., p. 26.

9 Ibid., p. 32.


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the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to

think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else.11

After hearing Eichmanns final

statement, Arendt observes that This horrible gift for consoling himself with clichs did not

leave him on the hour of his death.12

What is most haunting is the sheer indifference of Eichmann. When Eichmann joined

the Nazi Party, he did not know the Party doctrine, nor had he ever read Mein Kampf. What most

concerned him was his profound dissatisfaction with his life as a traveling salesman for the

Vacuum Oil Company. From a humdrum life without significance and consequence the wind

had blown him into History, as he understood it, Arendt explains, namely, into a Movement

that always kept moving and in which somebody like him already a failure in the eyes of his

social class, of his family, and hence in his own eyes as well could start from scratch and still

make a career.13

Eichmann is presented in a far more subdued fashion by Arendt than he was by the

prosecution. Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, she notes, everybody could see that this

man was not a monster, but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was not a clown.14

Eichmann emphasized with great drama that the one thing he had learned in life was that one

should not take an oath and then declared that he would like to testify under oath. He said that

the worst thing he could do would be to plead for mercy,15 and then, after consulting his

counsel, proceeded to submit a handwritten account that pleaded for mercy. Arendt also recounts

numerous examples of Eichmanns poor memory. Though he failed to remember being sent to

Bratislava to discuss the program to deport Jews from Slovakia, he remembers clearly that Sano

Mach, the Minister of the interior in the German-established Slovakian puppet government, had

invited Eichmann to go bowling.

10Ibid., p. 48.

11Ibid., p. 49.

12Ibid., p. 55.

13Ibid., p. 33.

14Ibid., p. 54.

15 Ibid., p. 55.


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What is most frightening to Arendt is the idea that people would cooperate so willingly

with the Nazi regime, and she is struck by the eagerness with which Eichmann gave up the use of

his own faculties of criticism and self-thought. Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking

out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all, she writes. And this diligence was

in no way criminal; he certainly never would have murdered his superior in order to inherit his

post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.16

Eichmann represents something new, an ordinary man under the command of a regime

that practiced genocide. Were the Holocaust the work of evil men, the tragedy might be

understandable. But Arendt attempts to show that the prosecution against Eichmann was

incorrect, as Eichmann was not the monster he was portrayed to be. To her this makes the

Holocaust even more frightening:

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the

many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and

terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral

standards of justice, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put

together, for it implied as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the

defendants and their counsels that this new type of criminalcommits his crimes

under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that

he is doing wrong.17

Arendts work sparked enormous controversy, in part because of the way she portrayed

Jewish involvement in the Holocaust. Were Jews themselves responsible for much of the

organization of the Final Solution? Many accused her of blaming the victim. Arendt was

influenced by Raul Hilbergs thesis that Hitler depended on Jewish cooperation with the Nazis,

which he believes came from a tradition of passivity. Arendt emphasizes Jewish compliance in

16 Ibid., p. 287.


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much of the atrocities that the Nazis committed. Without Jewish help in administrative and

police workthe final rounding up of Jews in Berlin was, as I have mentioned, done entirely by

Jewish police there would have been either complete chaos or an impossibly severe drain on

German manpower,18 she writes.

Though recognizing the fact Jews did not have any territory, weapons, government,

army or even government in exile to help them, Arendt remarks that the whole truth was that

there existed Jewish community organizations and Jewish party and welfare organizations on

both the local and the international level. Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish

leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one

reason or another, with the Nazis.19

Arendts work suggests that anti-Semitism alone does not

account for the horrors of the Holocaust. A variety of other factors, including bureaucratic ones,

she implies, were also responsible. As a result, Arendts portrayal makes one realize how easily

another Holocaust could occur. The lesson here is that this could happen again and that the

victims could be other groups as well.

Eichmann in Jerusalem is a brilliant and haunting examination of the Holocaust, but it

also contains shortcomings that serve to raise several questions about the overall quality of

Arendts scholarship. For one, she does not always cite her sources. The absence of footnotes

adds an element of confusion for the reader. Furthermore, the text leaves important questions

unanswered. For example, much of Arendts book is concerned with comparing the treatment of

Jews across different countries. For example, she discusses how Danes were able to save their

Jews by shipping them to Sweden. But why exactly was the Final Solution more successful in

some countries than in others? Arendt never gives a completely satisfactory answer to this

question. Questions could also be raised about the nature of the legal proceedings themselves.

Was Eichmanns trial really a trial, or just a show to justify Israels actions? One comes away

17Ibid., p. 276.

18Ibid., p. 117.

19 Ibid., p. 125.


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from her account with tremendous insight into Eichmanns character as well as the devastating

nature of the psychological impact of the Third Reich, but there is little discussion of the issues

concerning the legality of the trial itself.

Most important are the questions raised by Arendts portrait of Eichmann. Was Arendt

taking the side of the defendant, as some critics accused her of doing? Did Eichmann dupe

Arendt? Could not one make the argument that Eichmann really knew what he was doing all

along? Could it not be demonstrated that Eichmann chose not to make choices? Were these

proven to be true, it would severely put into question one of the texts central theses.

In the end, it is rather unclear whether Arendt is an intentionalist or a structuralist.

Regarding the former, central to her analysis is the role of the state in the Holocaust and how it

influenced individuals minds. Her text demonstrates that Eichmann was the distorted person he

was because of the pervasive influence of the state. A society of virtuous citizens could easily

recreate another Holocaust were the state to gain the same level of power and influence as did the

Third Reich. Clearly, without Hitler, one would not have had the totalitarian state that produced

the climate of such uncritical thinking in which Eichmann functioned. Here one sees the central

importance of Hitler.

But her analysis also demonstrates that decisions were made during the course of the

war that accelerated the program to murder European Jews. Here one sees an evolving plan, one

that could not have been said to exist during the 1930s despite the creation of a totalitarian state

under Hitlers ruthless leadership. Furthermore, to Arendt, the Holocaust could only have

occurred if the German people had consented to the Third Reichs demands. To Arendt,

Eichmann is clearly guilty, but he also could only have done what he did with the help of other

people. Eichmanns own actions show how easily regular Germans went about the task of killing

Jews. Eichmann, after all, though non-ideological and clearly not an ardent Nazi willingly went

about organizing the transport of Jews to their deaths. Arendts work thus establishes a


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framework by which to examine two other interpretations of the Holocaust.

III. Brownings Ordinary Men

What about all the other Eichmanns in Germany? Were all Germans who participated

in the killing of Jews Nazis? What exactly transformed Germans into killers? These questions are

central to the work of Christopher Browning, a professor of history at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill. His 1992 book Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the

Final Solution in Poland, examined 500 German men recruited into police battalions to clear the

ghettos of Jews in 1942 and 1943.

During this time, under the direction of their commander, Major Trapp, they shot at

least 38,000 Poles and deported over 45,000 Poles to the death camps at Treblinka. In the 1960s,

investigators interviewed 210 of these soldiers. Brownings work is derived from the testimonies

of 125 of them. As a result of these testimonies, several were indicted on crimes against

humanity, serving prison sentences. This proved to be one of the few times that former German

soldiers were indicted following the war.

Thus instead of examining the victims of the Holocaust, Brownings work studies the

outlook of the killers. But unlike Eichmann, who was high up in the Nazi bureaucracy, Browning

looks at the actions of lower level soldiers, simple ordinary men. Who were they? About 25

percent were members of the Nazi party, and less than 4 percent members of the SS. They tended

to be older than the average German soldier, were from the lower-middle class, came mostly

from Hamburg, and had little education. They did not know what they would be asked to do once

they joined the battalion. Many joined because they would not have to join the army and could

thus be near their wives and children.

Noting that in March 1942 some 75 to 80 percent of all the victims of the Holocaust

were alive, while 30 to 25 percent had perished, but that by February 1943 the percentages

were exactly the reverse, Browning concludes that The German attack on the Jews in Poland


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was not a gradual or incremental program stretched over a long period of time, but a veritable

blitzkrieg, a massive offensive requiring the mobilization of large numbers of shock troops.20

Unlike Eichmann, and unlike Nazis who worked at desk jobs, these ordinary troops pulled the

trigger themselves. These men were not desk murderers who could take refuge in distance,

routine, and bureaucratic euphemisms that veiled the reality of mass murder, he writes. These

men saw their victims face to face.21

The question that guides Browning is How did these men

first become mass murderers?22

Brownings book investigates, and dismisses, a variety of possible answers. One

obvious explanation is the battalions war experiences. But Browning stresses that the battalion

never saw combat in the war, which discredits the hypothesis that the men became hardened

killers as a result of the war. Wartime brutalization through prior combat was not an immediate

experience directly influencing the policemans behavior at Jozefow, he argues. Once the

killing began, however, the men became increasingly brutalized. (B)rutalization was not the

cause but the effect of these mens actions.23

Another area to explore is the battalions background. But Browning quickly discredits

this explanation, too. After investigating their pasts, he concludes that These men would not

seem to have been a very promising group from which to recruit mass murderers on behalf of the

Nazi vision of a racial utopia free of Jews.24 He returns to this point when he later writes that

by age, geographical origin, and social background, the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101

were least likely to be considered apt material out of which to mold future mass killers.25

This is

a constant theme that runs throughout the book. Reserve Police Battalion was not sent to Lublin

to murder Jews because it was composed of men specially selected or deemed particularly suited

for the task, he points out. On the contrary, the battalion was the dregs of the manpower pool

20Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland(New

York, HarperCollins, 1992), p. xv.21

Ibid., p. 36.22

Ibid., p. 37.23

Ibid., p. 161.

24 Ibid., p. 48.


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available at that stage of the war.26

Might there be the explanation that men inclined to

participate in such violence were the same men that chose to join the battalion? After a lengthy

analysis, Browning concludes that Self-selection on the basis of personality traits, in short,

offers little to explain the behavior of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101.27

The battalions men were in a far different situation than Eichmann. Browning

describes in vivid detail how the killings were anything but remote and distant. As one member

recalled, through the point-blank shot that was thus required, the bullet struck the head of the

victim at such a trajectory that often the entire skull or at least the entire rear skullcap was torn

off, and blood, bone splinters, and brains sprayed everywhere and besmirched the shooters.28

Physical memories of the atrocities they had committed literally stuck to them. And the

acknowledgement of this reality greatly influenced how the commanders organized the work,

Browning notes. The psychological alleviation necessary to integrate Reserve Police Battalion

101 into the killing process was to be achieved through a twofold division of labor, he writes.

The bulk of the killing was to be removed to the extermination camp, and the worst of the on-

the-spot dirty work was to be assigned to the Trawnikis.29 Clearly, Major Trapp was worried

about the effect such brutality would have on his men.

Were the men free to make their own decisions? Trapp, at first, told the soldiers that

they did not have to participate, and between 10 and 20% chose not to. After explaining the

battalions murderous assignment, he (Trapp) made his extraordinary offer: any of the older men

who did not feel up to the task that lay before them could step out.30

Major Trapp was troubled

by the brutality he was witnessing, as he later confided to his driver that If this Jewish business

25Ibid., p. 164.

26Ibid., p. 165.

27Ibid., p. 169.

28Ibid., p. 64.

29Ibid., p. 77.

30 Ibid., p. 57.


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is ever avenged on earth, then have mercy on us Germans.31

Perhaps because of Trapps doubts

about the validity of such an exercise, the choice to participate was soon rescinded.

Can one then claim that the men were forced to obey orders? Browning dismisses this

explanation as well. Regarding the theory that their behavior was the result of the authoritarian

political culture of the Nazis, which among other things created a climate where orders had to be

obeyed, Browning concludes that in the past forty-five years no defense attorney or defendant in

any of the hundreds of postwar trials has been able to document a single case in which refusal to

obey an order to kill unarmed civilians resulted in the allegedly inevitable dire punishment.32

Browning also challenges other explanations. Regarding the effect of Nazi educational

materials, namely propaganda and indoctrinating material, Browning contends that the material

was too dull and pedantic to inspire killings, writing that the prose may have put readers to

sleep; it certainly did not turn them into killers.33 Browning argues that ideological

indoctrination alone did not cause the men to do what they did, and that the killing of Jews

cannot be explained by brutal exhortations to kill partisans and suspects.34

Though Browning

admits that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, like the rest of German society, were

immersed in a deluge of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda, he stresses, in contrast to

Goldhagens thesis (discussed later) that much of the indoctrination material was clearly not

targeted at older reservists and in some cases was highly inappropriate or irrelevant to them.35

And directly contradicting Arendt, Browning goes on to say that one would have to be quite

convinced of the manipulative powers of indoctrination to believe that any of this material could

have deprived the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of independent thought.36

How, then, were these men transformed into cold-hearted killers? According to

Browning, it was because of pressures to conform to the group and because of the mens

31Ibid., p. 58.

32Ibid., p. 170.

33Ibid., p. 179.

34Ibid., p. 183.

35Ibid., p. 184.

36 Ibid., p. 184.


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tendency to obey authority. Here Browning uses results from two famous psychology

experiments. In the Zimbardo study men were placed in a fabricated prison setting as both guards

and prisoners. This experiment showed that people begin to believe in their powers and tend to

cruelly exploit others who they control. The guards soon began abusing the prisoners.

Browning concludes that Zimbardos spectrum of guard behavior bears an uncanny resemblance

to the groupings that emerged within Reserve Police Battalion 101.37

In the Milgram study, subjects were asked under orders from a doctor to shock a

patient in an adjoining room. Soon, subjects become oblivious to the patients pain.

Browning concludes that many of Milgrams insights find graphic confirmation in the behavior

and testimony of Reserve Police Battalion 101.38

For example, during the so-called Jew Hunt,

he points out how only a minority of nonconformists managed to preserve a beleaguered sphere

of moral autonomy that emboldened them to employ patterns of behavior and stratagems of

evasion that kept them from becoming killers at all.39

In both experiments individuals were reluctant to deviate from group behavior. Thus

the vital factor for Browning that most accounted for their behavior was conformity to the

group, as they faced a situation where to break ranks and step out, to adopt overtly

nonconformist behavior, was simply beyond most of the men. It was easier for them to shoot .40

Browning does not imply that group conformity excuses what took place in Poland. Those who

killed cannot be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done as

they did, he writes. Human responsibility is ultimately an individual matter. But he stresses

that these men could have been any group of 500 men.

Rather than expressing some inherent form of particularly German sentiment,

Browning emphasizes that these soldiers were not much different from him. Brownings main

lesson is that people anywhere could become just as horrific and cruel as the members of Reserve

37Ibid., p. 168.

38Ibid., p. 174.

39 Ibid., p. 127.


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Police Battalion 101. Everywhere society conditions people to accept authority, he writes in the

texts final pages, Everywhere people seek career advancement. As a result, Within

virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets

moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such

circumstances, what group of men cannot?41

How do Brownings conclusions contrast with those of Arendt? Both share many

common concerns. For one, both are indebted to Raul Hilbergs The Destruction of the European

Jews. Browning read Arendt while in graduate school, and, while recovering from hepatitis, also

read Hilbergs monumental work in its entirety. His book is dedicated to Hilberg, and Arendt has

also been quite open about her admiration for Hilberg. But Arendt and Browning differ in an

important way, too. Are these battalion members really ordinary men? As Arendts book

emphasizes, it was almost impossible to be normal when one lived under the conditions of the

Third Reich.

Though Ordinary Men is an extremely powerful and gripping text, one gets a sense of

incompleteness from Brownings account. How exactly could these men have become such

killers? Brownings work begs the obvious question: what role exactly did virulent anti-Semitism

play in the mens behavior? His text appears to ascribe causes other than anti-Semitism for their

actions. Often, anti-Semitism was noticeably absent from any analysis of the mens crimes, he

notes. Regarding the interviews from the 1960s, for example, Browning writes that In terms of

motivation and consciousness, the most glaring omission in the interrogations is any discussion

of anti-Semitism.42

Furthermore, in Brownings formulation anti-Semitism is a sentiment that

deals more with race than with religion.

However, in his conclusion, Browning also argues that The dichotomy of racially

superior Germans and racially inferior Jews, central to Nazi ideology, could easily merge with

40Ibid., p. 184.

41Ibid., p. 189.

42 Ibid., p. 73.


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the image of a beleaguered Germany surrounded by warring enemies. As a result, Nothing

helped the Nazis to wage a race war so much as the war itself.43

But where specifically did this

notion of German racial superiority come from? Can it be traced to a certain period in German

history? Browning clearly favors the functionalist approach, arguing that the Holocaust

emerged as the war proceeded rather than being planned out well in advance. But would other

men have become such killers if they were placed in the same situation as Reserve Police

Battalion 101?

IV. Goldhagens Ordinary Germans

One way to answer this question is to look at Daniel Goldhagens 1996 Hitlers Willing

Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. One of the most controversial books in

European history in the past decade, as well as one of the most heavily publicized books in the

mass media by its publisher, Goldhagens text is a tour de force that boldly challenges almost all

of the existing literature on the Holocaust. Explaining why the Holocaust occurred requires a

radical revision of what has until now been written, he writes in his introduction. This book is

that revision.44 Goldhagen examines nearly every aspect of German society and looks at not

only police battalions, as Browning did, but also the death camps and the death marches. He

concludes that, given the inherent anti-Semitic nature of the German people, the Holocaust was

inevitable.

Goldhagens analysis stresses the concept of eliminationist antisemitism, which he

argues developed in Germany since the mid 19th

century. Hitlers message of virulent anti-

Semitism resonated with the German people, he contends, precisely because of their long-

standing belief in such ideas. These feeling were not produced by Hitler but were instead deeply

meshed into the German psyche. Hitlers role is important to Goldhagen, not because he shaped

43Ibid., p. 186.

44Daniel Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust . (New York, Alfred A.

Knopf, 1996), p. 9.


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public opinion, but because he was able to bring to the surface sentiments already shared by the

German public. As Goldhagen states in his introduction:

Germans antisemitic beliefs about Jews were the central causal agent of the Holocaust.

They were the central causal agent not only of Hitlers decision to annihilate European

Jewry (which is accepted by many) but also of the perpetrators willingness to kill and

brutalize Jews(A)ntisemitism moved many thousands of ordinary Germans and

would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positionedto slaughter

Jews.45

Goldhagen discounts almost every single excuse imaginable for the behavior of

Germans towards the Jews. These killings were not due, he suggests, to either economic

conditions, to the influence of totalitarianism, or to social psychology. The attacks upon Jews

during these first years of Nazi governance of Germany was so widespread and broad-based

that it would be grievously wrong to attribute them solely to the toughs of the SA, as if the wider

German public had no influence over, or part in, the violence.46

Nor were Germanys leaders the cause of the horrors inflicted upon the Jews, according

to Goldhagen. The notion that Germany during the Nazi period was an ordinary, normal

society which had the misfortune to have been governed by evil and ruthless rulers who, using

the institutions of modern societies, moved people to commit acts that they abhorred, is in its

essence false.47

German anti-Semitism, rather than Nazi anti-Semitism, he suggests, caused the

Holocaust.

Goldhagen is particularly critical of the psychological argument for why the Holocaust

occurred. Because it is indisputable that not all people in similar structural situations either as

guards in a camp or as executors of other genocidal orders did act or would have acted as the

45Ibid., p. 9.

46Ibid., p. 95.

47 Ibid., p. 460.


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Germans did, universal psychological and social factors could not possibly have moved the

perpetrators to act as they did.48

These were not merely Nazi policies, he argues, but uniquely

German attitudes. The eliminationist antisemitism, with its hurricane-force potential, resided

ultimately in the heart of German political culture, in German society itself.49 Goldhagens

Germany did not have a dramatic break with the past in 1933. Germany was different from other

countries, he emphasizes, as antisemitism in Germany was, for many, like mothers milk, part of

the Durkheimian collective unconscious.50

Goldhagen concludes that Germans were not forced to do the killing that they did, as

there would have been a Holocaust even without Hitler. The road to Auschwitz was not

twisted, he writes. Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich easily enlisted ordinary Germans by the tens

of thousands, who built and paved it with an immense dedication born of great hatred for the

Jews whom they drove down that road.51 The Germans did not merely take orders, he argues,

but eagerly participated in the killings. At no point during the Nazi period, he concludes, did

significant portions, or even identifiable minorities, of the German people express either dissent

from the dominant elaboration of the nature of Jews or principled disapproval of the

eliminationist goals and measures that the German government and so many Germans

pursued.52

Nor were they simply brainwashed. When it came to Jews, Germans from the

lowest of ranks to Hitler himself understood what they with their actions were seeking to

accomplish, he concludes. And they did so willingly. To the very end, he writes, the ordinary

Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust willfully, faithfully, and zealously slaughtered Jews.53

Goldhagen is quite critical of Hilbergs interpretation of the Holocaust,54

and his

analysis also differs from Arendts in a number of crucial ways. Arendt stresses how

totalitarianism destroys the private as well as the public realm, creating a society of robots. But

48Ibid., p. 390.

49Ibid., p. 428.

50Ibid., p. 89.

51Ibid., p. 425.

52Ibid., p. 430.

53 Ibid., p. 371.


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Goldhagen emphasizes that Contrary to Arendts assertions, the perpetrators [of the Holocaust]

were not such lonely, atomized beings.55

Goldhagen stresses this throughout, writing later in the

text that Even the routine orders that were circulated by the various institutional

commandersconvey that these genocidal executioners were not the clichd, atomized

individuals that they are often asserted to have beenand that virtually all people today probably

conceive them to have been.56

Most important, whereas in Arendts analysis it is bureaucrats

such as Eichmann who were responsible for the Holocaust, in Goldhagens it is a movement that

began at the bottom and moved to the top of the Nazi hierarchy.

Above all, Goldhagens ordinary Germans are portrayed much differently than

Brownings ordinary men. Goldhagen devotes an entire chapter to the men of Reserve Police

Battalion 101. Whereas Browning suggests that they could have been any soldiers, Goldhagen

says that they could only have been German soldiers. Browning tries to be understanding of the

soldiers, but Goldhagen clearly does not. Brownings scholarship is detached, non-judgmental,

and reads more like a lawyers brief, but Goldhagens prose is emotional, highly charged, and

accusatory. While Browning seeks to understand, Goldhagen attempts to indict an entire nation.

He argues that the members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could be said to be representative of

the German population as a whole, as the group were not an unusually Nazified lot of German

society. Overwhelmingly (they) consisted of ordinary Germansof both kindsthose that were

in the Party, and especially, those that were not.57 Goldhagen sees the members of Reserve

Police Battalion 101 as representing the anti-Semitism of the entire German nation.

Whereas Browning uses psychological explanations such as conformity to explain the

mens behavior, Goldhagen argues that the men killed so freely because they did not see Jews as

members of the human race. To Goldhagen, photographs of the battalion reveal that It is

difficult to see in the photographs men who viewed the killing to be a crime, while their poetry

54Ibid., p. 385, p. 581n27, and p. 582n35.

55Ibid., p. 580n23.

56 Ibid., p. 264.


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shows that these Germans were celebrating, not curing, the names of the men who repeatedly

sent them to kill Jews.58

He views the battalion as assenting mass executioners, men and

women who, true to their own eliminationist anti-Semitic beliefs, faithful to their cultural anti-

Semitic credo, considered the slaughter to be just.59

Goldhagen argues that Browning relies too much on the soldiers own account of their

actions and that his desire to understand the members of the battalion causes him, from a moral

standpoint, to excuse their actions. By relying on the perpetrators testimony, he claims,

Browning ignores the victims views. Thus, the unsubstantiated, self-exculpating claims of the

battalion men to opposition, reluctance, and refusalpermeate Ordinary Men and, since

Browning appears to have generally accepted them uncritically, they inform and therefore

substantially impair his understanding of the battalion.60

ThoughHitlers Willing Executioners is a provocative book, one sure to provoke debate

for years to come, it is also deeply flawed. First, there is first the issue of literary style. Whereas

Arendt and Brownings works are compact and tightly woven, Goldhagens suffers from needless

repetition and, quite surprisingly, poor editing. How many times must the author insist upon

using the term ordinary Germans? Often it reads like the Ph.D. dissertation that it originally

was. Furthermore, Goldhagens essential thesis contains several major problems. His argument is

frequently too narrow. The book does not cover the range of German feelings towards the Jews

before the Nazis took power. Furthermore, his reliance upon anti-Semitism as his principle

explanatory variable ignores the fact that the Nazis also killed others besides Jews, such as

Russians, gypsies, and the mentally handicapped.

Yet in other areas Goldhagen paints with too broad brush, as it is almost impossible to

come to a single conclusion about an entire country. Thus Goldhagens conclusion that Germans

were all inherently violently anti-Semitic is itself quite suspect. For example, how often did

57Ibid., p. 208.

58Ibid., p. 247.

59 Ibid., p. 393.


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German civilians who were not part of the Nazis kill Jews before the war? Was the killing of

Jews a part of Nazi policy in 1933? Exporting Jews from Germany is much different than

annihilating them. And if one to draw all-encompassing conclusions from a single group could

not one also make the argument that resisters to the Nazis, rather than supporters of them, were

representative of the German people as a whole? Goldhagens work also frequently makes broad

assumptions. Is silence the same as complicity? Goldhagen believes that it is. He also underplays

the role that totalitarianism played in Germany, as he does not give enough emphasis, as Arendt

does, to the political environment that the Nazis created, and the punishment that would come

upon those who questioned their policies, and on the sheer political, social, and economic power

of the Nazi regime.

Too often, his argument is simply illogical. If there were rising anti-Semitism in

Germany, why then did the Jews remain attached to German society? And could not anti-

Semitism also flourish in an environment where many people were notanti-Semitic? And how

could Germans have had choices, if so many of them believed so strongly in the tenets of anti -

Semitism? And if Germans were all anti-Semitic, how does one explain the rapid decline on anti-

Semitism once the war was over? If these feelings were so imbedded in the German psyche,

stretching back well over a century, it is completely implausible to suggest that these sentiments

could be immediately contained, despite the best intentions of the American denazification and

reeducation programs of the late 1940s.

Most important why did Hitler keep his plans about the Jews so secret? If anti-

Semitism existed to the extent that Goldhagen says it did, one would have assumed that Hitler

would have more openly exploited such sentiments, for no other reason than political gain. Why,

then, was the killing done so clandestinely? Goldhagens text also tends to downplay the crucial

role that Hitler played in the Final Solution. Would there have been a Holocaust without Hitler?

One could argue that anti-Semitism was at the very core of Hitlers outlook towards the world. In

60 Ibid., p. 534n.


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many ways Goldhagens argument excuses Hitler and his regime, because it implies that there

could have been a Holocaust even without him.

Finally, and most glaringly, Goldhagens book is flawed because it does not undertake a

deep comparison with other Western societies at the time. Goldhagen shows no little regard for

the complexities of European society. What about anti-Semitism in other countries? The

Dreyfuss affair clearly demonstrated prejudice equal to if not surpassing that seen in Germany.

And the Russian pogroms were as violent as much of German behavior. Furthermore, Goldhagen

gives little attention to anti-Semitism in either Poland or Austria. After all, many other European

countries also killed Jews.

But despite these flaws, Goldhagen does raise several interesting observations. First, he

is most perceptive to question both the accuracy and Brownings interpretation of the battalion

members testimony from the 1960s. How much can we trust not only the accuracy of their

recollections but also the honesty of their testimony? After all, it was a crime in West Germany

in the 1960s to commit violence because of racism. And second, despite the many problems with

Goldhagens analysis, the fact remains that the Nazis grandiose plans could not have succeeded

without some measure of deep popular support. This is an important conclusion that deserves

wider attention.

Furthermore, there is the obvious question: if the men of the battalion were from

another country, would they have necessarily acted exactly the same way towards the Jews? The

answer is clearly no. Italians, for example, did not treat Jews with such cruelty, despite

Mussolinis urging, and the Danes saved their Jews. Then what conditions made the Germans act

as they did? As Goldhagen wrote, after the books publication in response to a very critical

review by Browning, The refusal or the unwillingness of others to [deport and kill Jews]


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demonstrates that the Germans were not ordinary men, but that there was something particular

about them, which is what must be investigated and specified.61

And perhaps Goldhagen is not even purely an intentionalist, as in the texts final

pages he stresses the interaction between these two schools of thought, writing that The

symbiosis between Hitlers passionately held and pursued aim of extinguishing Jewish power by

whatever means and the German peoples racial eliminationalist view of Jews together produced

the conditions and the drive to undertake the eliminationist policies of the 1930s and 1940s.62

Goldhagens thesis is not as clear-cut as both his supporters and detractors make it out to be.

V.Conclusion

All three of these works indirectly address the question of whether we need to fear the

possibility of another Holocaust. In the end, Goldhagens conclusions are strangely less

disturbing than those of either Arendt or Browning, for he clearly views the actions of Reserve

Police Battalion 101 as unique to Germans. Arendt and Browning, however, suggest that another

Holocaust could easily occur again, due to either men losing their capacity to think for

themselves, as demonstrated by Eichmann, or through men succumbing to the enormous

pressures of conformity, as suggested by Brownings interpretation of the actions of the men of

Reserve Police Battalion 101. Yet if a nation as refined, sophisticated, and technologically

advanced as Germany could have within it the seeds of such horror, as Goldhagen infers, there

will thus also exist the possibility for barbarity in every modern nation-state. The conclusions of

all three of these historians - Arendts lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying

banality of evil,63

how Brownings ordinary men and Goldhagens ordinary Germans

became ruthless killers - are most sobering.

61Daniel Goldhagen, Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans, in Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, eds., The

Holocaust and HistoryThe Known, the Disputed, and the Reexamined(Bloomington, Indiana University Press,

1998), p. 305.62

Daniel Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, Alfred A.

Knopf, 1996), p. 447.63

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, Viking Press, 1963), p.

252.


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Why did the Holocaust happen? All three viewpoints, the intentionalist one,

attributing the Holocaust solely to Hitler; the functionalist approach, arguing that the decision

to exterminate the Jews only evolved as the war was being fought; or the Goldhagen thesis,

that the German people willingly embraced the Holocaust, are by themselves limiting. What is

needed is a balance between all three. Perhaps the best interpretation is Brownings moderate

functionalism, which argues that Hitler had not decided on the Final Solution as the

culmination of any long-held or premeditated plan, but that he had indeed made a series of key

decisions in 1941 that ordained the mass murder of European Jews.64

History is never as black and white as historians make it out to be. Arendt perceptively

points out that Eichmann was far from the monster he was portrayed as by the prosecution, yet

one can never know the extent to which his own feelings towards sending Jews to their deaths

played a role in his actions. And while Browning is correct to stress the role of conformity in

explaining the battalions actions, one must also take into account the exte nsive history of

German anti-Semitism. And though Goldhagen emphasizes the role that everyday Germans

played in creating the conditions that lead to the Holocaust, one must also continue to keep in

mind the indisputable fact that virulent anti-Semitism was at the very core of Hitlers world view

and colored almost every political and military decision he made. As the leader of the Third

Reich, one cannot dispute that Hitler exerted enormous influence on the direction of the country.

As Michael Marrus has noted, Hitler had an intense hatred of Jews, and Hitler was the

principle driving force of antisemitism in the Nazi movement from the earliest period. Thus, in

the Third Reich, antisemitism was central because Hitler determined that it should be so.65

The debate over the Holocaust has produced much thought-provoking scholarship.

Highly emotional, it is an area of European history that is bound to become even more

controversial in the years ahead. And sadly, the 20th

century has given humankind ample horrors

64Christopher Browning, The Path to GenocideEssays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 1992), p. 88.

65 Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust in History (New York, Penguin Group, 1987), p. 17-18.


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by which to test the theories of Arendt, Browning, and Goldhagen. The Turkish Armenian

genocide, Stalins liquidation programs and purges, Vietnams My Lai Massacre, Pol Pots

Cambodian genocide, the Hutus violence towards the Tutsis in Rwanda, and recent events in

the former Yugoslavia have all contributed to the notion that the last century has been one of

horror. Let us hope that this new century makes the need for such scholarship unnecessary.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah.Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. (New York,

Viking Press, 1963)

Berenbaum, Michael, and Peck, Abraham J., eds. The Holocaust and History The

Known, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998)


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Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final

Solution in Poland. (New York, HarperCollins, 1992)

__________________. The Path to Genocide Essays on Launching the Final

Solution. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the

Holocaust. (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)

Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation.

(New York, Oxford University Press, 2000)

Marrus, Michael R. The Holocaust in History. (New York, Penguin Group, 1987)

Bernard von Bothmer - Understanding the Holocaust

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Transcript of Bernard von Bothmer - Understanding the Holocaust