Document Type
Article
Article Version
Publisher's PDF
Publication Date
1999
Abstract
This article attempts to explain the heated controversy sparked by Daniel Goldhagen's bestselling book Hitler's Willing Executioners, by comparing it with its most obvious precedent: the international furor in 1960–62 over William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Through such a comparison, the Goldhagen controversy emerges as a relatively shallow event, largely driven by the book's own weaknesses and by media hype, that provides little of value for a deeper historical understanding of the Holocaust. At the same time, however, Goldhagen's surprising popularity in Germany does, in fact, signal a possible shift in the Germans' long postwar struggle to ‘come to terms' with the Nazi past.
Publication Title
Contemporary European History
Repository Citation
Rosenfeld, Gavriel D., "The Controversy that Isn't: The Debate over Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners in Comparative Perspective" (1999). History Faculty Publications. 57.
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/history-facultypubs/57
Published Citation
Rosenfeld, G. (1999) "The Controversy that Isn't: The Debate over Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners in Comparative Perspective," Contemporary European History, Volume 8, Nr. 2, 1999, pp. 249-273.
Peer Reviewed
Comments
Copyright 1999 Cambridge University Press.