Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 17:11:14 EET+200
Subject: MT: Goldhagen in news?


Ciao! 

Has anyone heard of the "case Goldhagen" recently? I did: 

This morning I saw part of an interview of historian Hans-Ulrich 
Wehler in "Kulturzeit" (a culture program of "3Sat", satellite/cable 
channel). Neo-racist Daniel Goldhagen, author of "Hitler's Willing 
Executioners", had sued his critic! She had apparently showed some 
inconsistensies in DG's book. Wehler was stunned; after over 50 
scientific critiques Goldhagen decides to sue this particular critic. 

Wehler also wondered that Goldhagen's book was somehow alien piece of 
publicity right from the start: it's a dissertation in politology, 
examined by two politologists and one political economist, none of 
them had done research on nazi period; original university publisher 
gave up of publishing the book which finally was approved by 
commercial publisher; book got wide publicity before it appeared into 
bookstores, and it finally became a commercial success both in North 
America and Europe. All that despite that book was, according to 
Wehler, full of errors. He called the situation scandalous, 'minimal 
scientific standards should be fulfilled'. And now Goldhagen tries to 
deny the criticism by using the law - that has happened never before 
in US or Germany, according to Wehler. 

How this all should be understood? Has anyone more info on that? 

Yours, Jukka L