Product Description

Argues that the Holocaust was a product of historical forces that are not necessarily unique to Germany.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2426330 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 532 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The release of Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners on the role of ordinary Germans in the Nazi extermination of the Jews stirred up a furious round of attacks and counterattacks. This book will probably not soothe the bitter wrangling, but it ought to. It is a detailed, well-written, sober and analytic study that deserves the widest possible circulation. Fischer starts not with Bismarck or with WWI, but with the 11th century, and his descriptions of the role of emancipation, the rise of nationalism and the so-called scientific racism in the late 19th century are thorough and cogent, showing the reader the steps by which the unspeakable was accomplished. Although the rise of Nazism has been told many times, Fischer makes a clearly reasoned, well-researched attempt to put a horrible crime and a horrid epoch into an appropriately complex historical context. As Fisher says of Goldhagen, "the dark logic of cruelty is not illuminated by a monocausal explanation that rejects all other cultural or psychological reasons.... Goldhagen reveals himself as one of Jakob Burckhardt's terrible simplificateurs by attributing 'eliminationist anti-Semitism' to the average German citizen, thus draining the real meaning out of both 'anti-Semitism' and 'ordinary German.'" The responses of Jews to the Nazi regime are detailed here, as are the responses of clergymen, industrialists, the military leaders, academics and civil servants. Now that eyewitnesses are passing from the scene, the field is being left to historians. Fischer's book should serve them as an indispensable guide.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In his follow-up to Nazi Germany: A New History (LJ 9/15/95), Fischer traces the long history of Judeophobia in German culture from the Middle Ages to the present, including its Christian, xenophobic, social, and biological-racial strains. Despite the country's authoritarian institutions, the author refuses to indict the German people as a whole, persuasively arguing that Nazism was not inevitable in Germany and that there was no direct chain from Luther to Hitler, a thesis contrary to that recently promoted by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (LJ 3/15/96) and John Weiss's Ideology of Death (Ivan R. Dee, 1996). Fischer writes with a clear mastery of both primary and secondary sources, synthesizing a wide spectrum of literature into a fine, scholarly work. Highly recommended for all libraries. [For another look at German anti-Semitism, see W. Michael Blumental's The Invisible Wall, reviewed above.?Ed.]?John A. Drobnicki, York Coll. Lib., CUN.
-?John A. Drobnicki, York Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Fischer defines judeophobia as an irrational fear of, prejudice against, and hatred toward Jews. He sets out to answer two apparently inexplicable questions: How could such evil have erupted in the midst of what many regarded as a progressive Western culture, and why did the Germans stoop to a level of bestiality no sane person could have predicted in 1900? Fischer discusses the relationship between Germans and Jews from 1700 to 1939, highlighting what he calls the rise of pathological judeophobia from 1918 to 1933 and the period from 1933 to 1939. He follows with an analysis of what he poignantly terms the harvest of judeophobia, the Holocaust. He submits that Hitler may have been the devil incarnate, but the German people gave him unconditional support to the very end. "All too many Germans lent a willing hand to mass murder." This is truly a significant work, for Fischer gives a balanced account of a complex subject, making it painfully clear just how Germany became capable of genocide. George Cohen

Customer Reviews

Intelligent & Provocative Look At Causes of The Holocaust
This is an interesting and quite diverting study of the Holocaust in terms of what the author describes as a pathological, irrational fear of and prejudice toward Jews which he argues quite convincingly characterized the German people in the decades leading up to the Second World War. Rather than refer to this syndrome as a virulent form of anti-Semitism, he calls it "Judeophobia", maintaining it constitutes a culturally unique psychodynamic form of such prejudice and fear found most profoundly affecting the worldview and general attitudes of the Germans of the early 20th century. Of course, no other phenomenon in this century had been so psychologized as the Holocaust, yet one finds much to learn from this latest effort to understand how an otherwise culturally advanced and civilized society such as Germany could have participated so willingly in the horrific torture and murder of the Jews.

He easily illustrates (long before Daniel Goldhagen, by the way) the logical fallacy involved in subscribing to the self-serving "I didn't know what was going on" excuses that attribute sole blame for the events in Germany to the National Socialists and the exclusive egregious excesses of the fabled Nazi organizations such as the SS or Gestapo. According to Fischer, there were far too many people involved in the activities collectively referred to as the Holocaust to take such protests of individual benign ignorance of the systematic collection, deportation, and murder of the Jews seriously. One would have had to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to recognize what was happening all around them. As others have argued since, the truth of the events seem to be a complex web of fear, cowardice and opportunism in a society in which all norms of civilized behavior had suddenly vanished in favor of terror, intimidation, and a feeling it was "every creep for himself". Under such circumstances, it is no surprise to see so many of these cretins then drift out of the woodwork and into public and political prominence. Fortunes were made and careers established at the expense of the Jews.

The author also covers a lot of historical ground in tracing the origins and promulgation of "Judeophobia", going back literally into antiquity to discover and analyze its roots in Christian doctrine as early as St. Paul, and ascribing early forms of virulent "Jew-hatred" in vestiges of the Crusades, and an element of such anti-Semitic attitudes in Torquemada and the first Grand Inquisition. Yet, while the fortunes of the European Jews rose and fell with some gravity over the centuries, nothing approaching the level of systematic persecution, displacement, and murder of the Third Reich can be found in history. He also argues quite eloquently that the ideological impetus for the Holocaust was located in the ordinary German's propensity for easy answers and convenient self-delusion. Associated with this, of course, are the wicked excesses resulting from such tendencies to project blame to innocent others who can subsequently be handily scapegoated. Also associated with such tendencies are a whole rafter of psychological constructs, such as fear, paranoia, and projection, which inevitably lead to aggression and violence.

Finally, in dealing with the issue of how wide the participation in the persecution, violence and murder of the Jews was in Nazi Germany, he believes that while this cannot be conclusively determined, it can be said with great certainty that in sowing the harvest of the crop of ritual Jew hatred and "Judeophobia" fomented so recklessly and fatefully by the Nazis in their rise to prominence and power, the final result was a quite calculated spilling of cauldrons of Jewish blood in which millions of willing hands were stained but for which no one was willing to take the blame. This is obviously a difficult book, but it is also a literate, well-written and painstakingly documented one, a book anyone seriously interested in trying to better understand what within the German culture made the Holocaust possible will be interested in reading. I strongly recommend it.

Insightful Inquiry into the Causes of the Holocaust
Klaus Fischer, the author of one of the most enlightening recent histories of Nazi Germany that I've encountered, tackles here the thorny question of the causes of the Holocaust from the perspective of German history and social psychology. He presents an intriguing multi-causal explanation, pointing (among other things) to the key role of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, and the ensuing instability of German society and politics; the separate, very visible identity of Jews in Germany despite widespread assimilation; a historic German inability to answer conclusively what it means to be a German; and a German unwillingness (that persists to the present) to foster a pluralistic, diverse society. Less satisfying are explanations that point to particular elements of the German character, such as blind obedience, orderliness, authoritarianism, militarism, etc.

This is a pithy book, not for those seeking snap answers to difficult historical questions, however. The author has mined the historiographic literature as well as contemporary sources to illustrate amply the points he makes.

One of the few criticisms I would register, however, is that Fischer seems excessively sanguine in his belief that the Holocaust could never happen again in the future in Germany. Certainly, people's unwillingness to believe that a progrom of this extent could happen in this enlightened "nation of Dichter und Denker" (poets and philosphers) in the first place was one of the reason that Hitler succeeded with relatively little interference from inside or outside Germany until it was too late. Even despite the fact of 50 years of strong democratic tradition in Germany since the war, continued incidents of xenophobic terrorism and the continued strength of racist right wing parties in the country indicate that continued vigilance is in order.

But the book offers a balanced, articulate analysis of German Judeophobia--the author rightly uses this term in place of anti-Semitism-- and the horrible results that it produced. It is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in this area.

Excellent Historical Perspective of the Holocaust
Having read some 39 books on the Holocaust, Mr. Fischer's is perhaps the best for gaining a general overview of what took place in the German psyche. His approach is much less spectacular than others who have been criticised for condemning the entire German populace for the murder of millions; however, there is little doubt in Mr. Fischer's mind that Hitler had grassroot support from the very beginning. Mr. Fischer does a creditble job of reviewing the historical make-up of the German Judeophobia, which began centuries ago.

The book is well-written, and illicits enough controversy to keep the reader on his toes. Again, a wonderful read for anyone seeking a general historical perspective on Nazi Germany.