Hitler’s Willing Executioners Term Papers

Daniel Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners gives the readers insight into the possible motivations of the Germans who are responsible for the execution of six million Jews. The main idea the writer tries to convey is that the Germans who participated in the genocide were not the highly trained professionals of the overzealous German army but rather a representative sampling of German population. Egged on by a long period of eliminationist antisemitism, ordinary Germans participated in one of the worlds most tragic cases of atrocity towards their fellow man. The overzealous Nazis and the suggestible youth that make up the traditional view of the genocide is an erroneous image of the reality of concentration camps and Nazi death squads during World War II. The writer of Hitler’s Willing Executioners seems to be convinced that practically all Germans engaged in the actual extermination of Jews were from police battalions and were willing and intelligent participants in murder. The writer puts forth his arguments against the five most commonly given explanations for why common people killed. It is not true that the Germans were forced to kill by the authorities since there are numerous testimonies recalling that the men of the battalions could choose not to kill and only a small number objected, and what is more, their objection was taken as normal, they were not punished for it. In addition, the theory which suggests that people, Germans in particular, instinctively obey orders is incorrect. There were the German officers who refused to steal from the Jews because they perceived it as “wrong”, however, they killed Jews in mass.