IT was a book that unsurprisingly invited controversy when it was published in 1996. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust created a furore in the intellectual circle as much as it was discussed in popular publications. His contention was that ordinary Germans were all complicit to the atrocities against the Jews.
The perpetrators were not just a small group of Nazi sympathisers and zealots but ordinary Germans with the acquiescence of millions more.
They were not forced by German authorities alone, but driven by “a widespread, profound, accepted and virulent anti-Semitism” within German society. The idea of “eliminationist anti-Semitism” according to Goldhagen came into play.
Simply put, the Holocaust can’t happen with Adolf Hitler’s ideology alone, but ordinary men and women, willingly participating in the massacre of Jews and others. It was a culmination of a century old hatred towards the Jews, unleashed by Hitler and the ideology of Nazism.
That was a massive accusation. Little wonder Goldhagen had many detractors. Some historians accused him of promoting revisionist history while others rubbished it as “totally wrong” and “worthless”.
Goldhagen’s idea about the Final Solution questioned the prevailing orthodoxy that a handful of leaders and generals giving instructions to the men in uniforms were responsible for the pogroms.
Naturally, many historians have their reservations about such generalised contention. Even if there is such a thing as “a murderous anti-Semitism culture” within the German society, to paint the entire people as culpable is a bit overstretched.
Some accused him of being biased against the German people resulting in his conclusion that the murderous intent of some within the Nazi party can be wholly blamed on the entire German people.
There were many instances in history where death and destruction are the results of some despots or perverted views of certain leaders or groups. Pogroms and ethnic cleansing are such cases. More often than not, the murderous intent was part of the herd mentality. Neighbours suddenly became sworn enemies — killing, raping and inflicting incredible injustices to neighbours.
That leads us to the current situation in Gaza. I wonder what is in the mind of Goldhagen about the atrocities inflicted to the citizens of Gaza by the Israeli army.
Of course, Gaza is not the Holocaust, though there are some who are looking for the similarities. What happened to the Jews in the Second World War was different in context and historical background to the current situation in Palestine. The Jews learned from the Holocaust, they needed a homeland to survive and Israel came into being in 1948.
But Israel’s right to exist should not be at the expense of the Palestinians. History will judge the cost of Palestinians’ suffering for the sake of Israel’s existence. True, Israel was surrounded by a sea of hostile Arabs. It survived, among others, by the support of its powerful ally, its army and its bickering neighbours. And the misery of the Palestinians.
The Palestinians are like the Jews before 1948 — homeless, displaced and marginalised. And they suffered tremendously over the last 66 years. They did not acquire nor grab any land. In fact what is now called Palestine is shrinking. A few million Palestinians can’t fight an army equipped by the most powerful nation on Earth. But Palestinians are humans too, they want to live and they need to survive. Most of them have never seen peace in the last six decades.
Why should they continue to suffer? Why would the women and children be killed? Why would their homes be bombed? Why were their schools obliterated? Are these collateral damage? All in the name of the right of Israel to exist? How about the right of Palestinians to live in peace.
Goldhagen pictured the entire population of Germany during the Holocaust as culpable for the crime against humanity. All told six million Jews perished. It was a barbaric act on the perpetrators. But that was then.
Israelis have a lot to learn from history. Nazism is not about all Germans. Zionism, too, is not about all Israelis. The Jews went through horrendous times in Nazi Germany. The Palestinians are going through the same hellish conditions — this time with the world’s opinion on their side.
Goldhagen was not entirely wrong in blaming the entire German people for what happened in Germany. Or for the banality of silence.
Will he blame the entire people of Israel for what happened to the Palestinians over the last 66 years? Would he revisit his contention that an entire nation was complicit to the death and devastation of another race as he did in his thought-provoking book?