From: "Jeff Sparrow" <jeffs-AT-werple.mira.net.au>
Subject: Re: M-I: re: Hitler's Willing Executioners
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 13:39:17 +1000



AA WROTE:
Comrades,

I'm not trying do a tit-for-tat here, but I need to make a couple of
corrections to Jeff Sparrow's argument. I disagree with his argument
entirely; his argument is really awful, anyway; so I don't want to respond
to the whole thing. I just want to hit some his main points because they
are really echoes of what is becoming conventional piety about DG's book
by people who haven't read the book. You can tell immediately, btw, who
has not read DG's book. Where his argument does rise to the level where
correction is warranted, it sounds as if these points are drawn entirely
from Yehuda Bauer's criticisms of Goldhagen, which however cogent these
arguments were rendered by Bauer's passion and force of personality, they
were nevertheless strawmen of Goldhagen's book. Sources should be cited in
any event because one cannot always rely on the audience to know where
these threads are coming from. In this case I happen to know where Sparrow
is getting his arguments. 

JS WRITES:
A particularly snaky response ('knee jerk crap' – a rather fascinating
image!) to what I thought was a fairly reasoned post.
For the record, I have read Goldhagen (admittedly, some time ago – when I
wrote the article that last post was based upon), and I haven't plagiarised
Yehuda Bauer. In fact, my argument is a rather unexceptionally orthodox
Marxist one. Most of the left papers I know have run articles along similar
lines (I think the Healyites have a piece on Goldhagen available on line).
We could all be ripping off Mr(?) Bauer – or alternatively, it could just
be that we employ more or less the same methodology.
I don't really want to respond to Andy's claims that I've misrepresented
Goldhagen. I suggest people read the damn book and make up their own mind. 
Part of the problem is that Goldhagen says he's doing one thing, while
doing something altogether different. For instance, he naturally denies
that he's blaming Germans qua Germans for the Holocaust – but that's the
substance of his argument, nonetheless. 
He makes a point of writing about 'Germans' (rather than 'Nazis) killing
Jews and argues that German culture as a whole was saturated with this
mysterious 'elminationist anti-Semitism' in a way that no other culture
was.
Andy's defence of Goldhagen's methodology brings out rather well exactly
what's wrong with it. An attempt to separate the Holocaust from fascism is
just silly. Talking about how 'ordinary' Germans behaved towards without
discussing the extraordinary political conflicts through which the Nazis
came to power is just plain wrong headed.
It's most clear in the parts of his book that are strongest – namely, the
discussion of  the killing operations of the 'police battalions'. As
Goldhagen points out, the men who took part in these were not hardened
ideological Nazis - they were civilian recruits from a variety of
backgrounds. In many cases they were told that they would not be punished
if they chose not to kill.  For the most part, though, they
enthusiastically joined in the slaughter, even sending back photographs of
the killing fields to their loved ones.
However, the crucial point of such incidents is precisely that they took
place in situations that were not normal.
There is a fundamental difference between recognising that murderous
behaviour took place amongst some Germans in  police battalions or guard
units several years after the trade unions had been smashed, political
organisations criminalised and a vicious dictatorship established, and
arguing, as Goldhagen does, that the majority of the German population
before 1933 - including a labour movement that was heavily unionised and 
extremely politically conscious - actively desired policies of genocide. 
This, then, is the strangest thing in Andy's reply: his justification of
Goldhagen entirely ignoring the working class movement. You write a six
hundred page book about the willingness of 'ordinary' Germans to obey
Hitler and you entirely neglect to discuss the two mass political parties
that opposed Hitler and were subsequently smashed by him!
As for the rest of my critique of Goldhagen's methodology, I stand by it.
There is an inevitability in his argument - he at no point gives any
coherent explanation as to how the Holocaust could have been avoided.
Goldhagen's analysis doesn't involve other countries, yet he argues as if
it did: that German anti-Semitism was somehow different. His theories about
the socialisation of racism aren't able to provide an explanation of the
change in Germans from homocidal anti-Semites to valued Nato partners, as
Andy's own tortuous exposition of the structures within the latent
structures (whatever that means) demonstrates. 
It's weird. There is a strong Marxist tradition of historical research into
the Holocaust, which Goldhagen is clearly opposed to. I didn't  realise
people would get so worked up in his defence.
Regards, 
Jeff

PS I just realised the last two times I've posted to the list have been in
response to Any Austin. This is a pure coincidence. It just happened that
he was writing on topics that interest me. I've got no particular vendetta
against the man.






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