Hitler s Willing Executioners And Christopher Browning s...

in this paper i argue the opposing views of Daniel Goldhagen s book Hitler s Willing Executioners and Christopher Browning s book ordinary Men. These books deal with the question of whether or not the average German soldiers and civilians were responsible for the holocaust. My research paper argues in favor of Goldhagen s book, the average German was responsible for the participation of he holocaust. At the end of world war ll the Jewish community and the the rest of the world were crying for justice because of the devastation of there homes. The crimes committed by the Germans were cruel and someone had to pay. Several Nazi leaders were held accountable for the actions of the Germans. Were the Nazi leaders the ones responsible for†¦show more content†¦Browning believes that the anti-Semitic propaganda started by the Nazi’s in 1933 coerced the Germans into killing the Jews. I agree with the fact that propaganda was used to spread the Nazi’s message of hate an d may have caused some Germans to detest the Jews. But was it strong enough to have lead them into a killing frenzy? I don’t think that the propaganda was a cause for the killing of Jews. â€Å"Goldhagen believes that the German brutality was motivated primarily by ‘racial, eliminationist anti-Semitism †(Weinstein 2). So it’s not that the Nazis brain washed thousands of Germans, but they just added fuel to the hatred already present in the German society and gave them a way to justify their actions. People argue against Goldhagen’s claim, that the German society was anti-Semitic, by pointing out that after World War II, the Germans no longer hated the Jews and made laws to protect them. Goldhagen rebuts this argument by stating, â€Å"Germans, after the war, were castigated by the world for committing the greatest crime in history†¦The Allies denuded Germany’s institutional structures, replaced the dictatorship with democracy and revamped the education system† (Weinstein 2). So after the war, they realized their fallacies and had to change their views. Browning claims that the Germans were blindly following orders. Thus the responsibility for the crimes falls on those who gave the orders. This in and of