Hitler's Willing Executioners

Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a 1996 work of historical polemic by American political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. It argues that ordinary Germans enthusiastically supported and participated in the Holocaust because German culture before the Second World War was uniquely and virulently anti-Semitic. Goldhagen’s theory runs counter to the most widely-accepted theories of the Holocaust, which hold that ordinary Germans were merely indifferent to the suffering of Jews under Nazi rule. Goldhagen framed his book as a direct response to American historian Christopher Browning’s 1992 book Ordinary Men, which makes this argument.

Goldhagen opens his book by setting out the cornerstone of his argument. He asserts that over centuries, German culture incubated a particularly extreme and genocidal form of anti-Semitism, which he calls “eliminationist anti-Semitism.” Due to the prevalence of this ideology in German culture during the Third Reich, the majority of ordinary Germans actively wished to eliminate Jews from German life. Consequently, they chose to participate in the Holocaust, believing that their actions were “right and necessary.” Goldhagen holds that without the unique conditions provided by German anti-Semitism, the Holocaust would not have taken place.

Goldhagen asks why this theory has never been advanced before. In a sense, he argues, his version of events is simply common sense: the Holocaust happened because the German people wanted it. He suggests that previous historians have been blinded by the assumption that Germans during the Nazi era were “more or less like us.” He points out that this is an unusual assumption amongst academic historians. Why not treat the Germans of the Third Reich like the Aztecs, who believed that human sacrifice caused the sun to rise?



Goldhagen proposes to take an anthropological approach, allowing him to study German society in the thirties in the way that anthropologists study traditional societies whose values were not shaped by the Enlightenment. Drawing on the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, Goldhagen attempts a “thick description” of German culture. He traces the development of a uniquely German anti-Semitism from Martin Luther’s 1543 publication On the Jews and Their Lies to the speeches and writings of Adolf Hitler. He concludes that Hitler said nothing that was not already familiar and welcome to his German public. He simply tapped a culture which had been “pregnant with murder” for centuries.

Further evidence of Germany’s widespread anti-Semitism is found in the pronouncements of Cardinal Adolf Bertram. Goldhagen sees Bertram’s anti-Semitism as evidence of general support for “eliminationist anti-Semitism” amongst the German clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.

Turning again to the work of other historians, including Sir Ian Kershaw, Otto Dov Kulka, David Bankier, and Aron Rodrigue, Goldhagen issues a challenge to the prevailing opinion. Ordinary Germans, he argues, were neither “indifferent” to the Holocaust nor merely “complicit” in it. Instead, they were enthusiastic participants.



Goldhagen zeroes in on Christopher Browning’s 1992 book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Browning’s study concerns the men of a German police battalion who found themselves, without warning or preparation, ordered to execute Jews. Browning argues that the men of this battalion were completely “ordinary” Germans. They were middle-aged, working-class men who had no particular commitment to the Nazi party or its ideology. In other respects, they represented a cross-section of German society. Browning argues, by examining evidence of the men’s actions (such as field reports) and their feelings (letters and journals), that their willingness to participate in genocide was the result of peer pressure and fear.

Goldhagen accepts that the men of Police Battalion 101 were “ordinary” Germans. However, he denies that they were motivated primarily by peer pressure or fear. Re-examining Browning’s evidence, he finds that these “ordinary” Germans were contaminated by the ideology of “eliminationist anti-Semitism.” For example, Goldhagen notes that given orders to shoot two hundred Polish Catholics, the battalion executed fewer than eighty Catholics and nearly two hundred Polish Jews. On the other hand, Goldhagen asserts, Browning offers no conclusive evidence that the men of Battalion 101 felt “peer pressure” rather than enthusiasm for genocide. While Browning argues that the men of Battalion 101 may have feared retribution for refusing to participate, Goldhagen finds evidence that Germans routinely opted out of genocidal activity without suffering any repercussions. He suggests that Browning’s policemen probably knew that they could opt out and remain unharmed.

Finally, Goldhagen turns Browning’s thesis on his head. Where Browning effectively absolved the men of Battalion 101, arguing that anyone might have acted similarly under the same circumstances, Goldhagen indicts them. He writes that the policemen were fervent believers in “eliminationist anti-Semitism” who felt “joy and triumph” when they murdered Polish Jews.



Hitler’s Willing Executioners proved extremely controversial amongst historians. Prominent Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg called Goldhagen’s book “worthless.” However, Goldhagen’s thesis has been enthusiastically embraced by the German reading public, and his book remains an important reference point in debates about the Holocaust.