The Goldhagen Debate: Reflections on the merits of historical revisionism |
A PARADIGM CHALLENGED
In the spring of 1996, Daniel Goldhagen openly challenged the prevailing scholarly interpretation of the Holocaust. The political scientist from Harvard had burst onto the American literary scene in a most unusual fashion. He published a book that was an extension of his doctoral dissertation, something that normally doesn’t attract the attention of anyone without a phD. But in writing Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Goldhagen ignited an international controversy that brought into question the objectivity of scholarly interpretation and the legitimacy of historical unanimity. His desire to take on the academic establishment would have impressed the British writer Christopher Hitchens, who once said, “Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus.”
In Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Goldhagen argued that the Holocaust was the natural outcome of a longstanding “eliminationist anti-Semitism” against the Jews that became “exterminationist” in nature under the Nazi regime. Unlike many of the intentionalists that came before him, Goldhagen had confidently asserted that Adolf Hitler had not forced the Holocaust onto Germany. Instead, over the course of nearly 500 pages of narrative, the Harvard scholar claimed that Hitler was able to “unshackle” the “pre-existing, pent up” anti-Semitism of the German people, who were “of one mind” with the Fuhrer about the pressing need to solve the Jewish question once and for all.
In making his contentious case, Goldhagen cited the centuries-long history of anti-Semitism in Germany. In particular, he highlighted the lasting influence of Martin Luther, a Christian theologian who argued passionately for the persecution of Jews during the German Reformation. Goldhagen wasn’t the first author to make the connection, as a number of scholars documented the link between Lutheran theology and Nazism during and immediately after the war. While the ultimate impact of Luther’s anti-Semitic views on 20th century Germans continues to be debated, contemporary historians have tended to paint a more nuanced picture of the country during the Nazi period.
As soon as Hitler’s Willing Executioners graced the shelves of American bookshops, journalists and scholars from across the country began publishing commentaries refuting Goldhagen’s thesis. Even in Germany, where the book had yet to be published, many academics were scathing in their repudiation of what they considered to be shoddy scholarship on Goldhagen’s part. He was also accused of moralizing and ethnic parochialism. The general consensus at the time was that the Harvard professor had erroneously and conveniently identified a single cause for the Holocaust – deeply-ingrained German anti-Semitism – while ignoring a multitude of other possible explanations and contributing factors.
Because Goldhagen accused ordinary, everyday Germans – not just dedicated Nazis – of harboring an eliminationist anti-Semitism that he claims laid the foundation for the Holocaust, he was denounced for imposing a sense of collective guilt on the country. It was a charge that Goldhagen denied vehemently. He took great pains to say that the actions of individual Germans in the Nazi death camps aren’t reflective of a “timeless German character” that requires its citizens to accept blame for atrocities they didn’t commit.
To his credit, Goldhagen didn’t dodge the naysayers. In April of 1996, he took part in a symposium at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he was taken to task by four respected Holocaust historians. In addition, when the book was published in Germany in the summer of 1996, he went on an extensive tour of the country, participating in six well-attended panel discussions with German historians and public intellectuals. Goldhagen was also quick to respond to his critics via newspaper columns and journal articles.
The criticism of Goldhagen went well beyond debates over scholarship and historical interpretation. In addition to his contentious thesis, Goldhagen was quite dismissive of the work of other Holocaust historians. He said that existing scholarship was “deficient” and that his book was “a radical revision of what has until now been written.” Specifically, Goldhagen claimed that believing that the Holocaust was the result of a variety of situational, organizational, and social-psychological factors – in other words, the traditional functionalist view – was “unrealistic,” “ahistorical,” and “laughable.”
Goldhagen also had a tendency to be quite combative in his interactions with other scholars. His adversarial approach to engaging with his interlocutors – mostly in print – was, and remains, extremely unusual in public intellectual debates. In a 2013 interview with public affairs television host Richard Heffner, Goldhagen didn’t deny – in fact, embraced – his propensity to clash with his........