Anonymous wrote:Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's hypothesis was that there was something different about Germany that made antisemitism flourish there in as murderous way. I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, as a lot of historians have criticized his methodology. However, he asks whether one can envision everyday Danes or Italians participating in the Holocaust the way Germans did. The fact that I can't envision that makes me want to do more research on this topic.

Huh, you are focused too narrowly on one group targeted for annihilation. The Hutus slaughtered the Tutsis in great number and the Turks the Armenians. In the 16th and 17 th centuries the English came close to succeeding in annihilating the Irish totally, and the Soviets starved 10 million Ukrainians in the early 30s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's hypothesis was that there was something different about Germany that made antisemitism flourish there in as murderous way. I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, as a lot of historians have criticized his methodology. However, he asks whether one can envision everyday Danes or Italians participating in the Holocaust the way Germans did. The fact that I can't envision that makes me want to do more research on this topic.

Under the right conditions, any majority group will participate in the type of behavior the Germans engaged in. Stanley Milgram's research and Phillip Zimbardo's research show this pretty convincingly. Even Americans, who have a highly individualistic culture, will do things like that. (Just look at what happened at the prisons on Iraq for more evidence.)

Germans weren't special. They were humans. They were in desperate political and economic straights and they turned to political leaders who were charismatic, evil men. It can happen anywhere. The identity of the scapegoat will be different, but it could happen here.

Uhhhhh.. No comparison

The impulse and behavior are the same of those prison guards is the same as the behavior of SS guards at Nazi camps, even if the scale isn't. Germans aren't any different than Americans when given power over a scape-goated enemy.

This is a human impulse and one that Americans are currently caught up in. In the wake of 911, Americans as a people have embraced a number of fascist political strategies. We support the use of torture (waterboarding, stress positions, etc.) against our "enemies." We support the use of indefinite detention at Gitmo by a majority. We support the extrajudicial murder of American citizens by drones by a majority. We support the use of extraordinary rendition so that our allies can torture people for us. We support the use of widespread domestic spying to ensure domestic security. We supported the invasion of Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, including children, on the basis of a manufactured excuse by our leaders.

Americans who stand up against these actions by our government are called "un-American" and "commies" and "enemies of the state."

All we needed was a few leaders who were willling to send Muslims to camps and we would have been right there with the Nazis, shipping them off.

We held Africans in slavery, we engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing with Indian Removal policies, we practice Jim Crow and segregation, and we sent Japanese Americans to detention camps.

There is nothing special about Germans. It's the dark side of human nature to lean towards facism when threatened and desperate.

Anonymous wrote:Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's hypothesis was that there was something different about Germany that made antisemitism flourish there in as murderous way. I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, as a lot of historians have criticized his methodology. However, he asks whether one can envision everyday Danes or Italians participating in the Holocaust the way Germans did. The fact that I can't envision that makes me want to do more research on this topic.

As to your last sentence, you're forgetting the centuries of anti semitism that conditioned Germans prior to the rise of Nazism. Add in a lost war, a horrible economic depression that puts ours to shame, Hitler's scapegoating of the Jews and success in building up the economy, and the fact that the Nazi regime mostly kept the final solution top secret until the war started to go very badly against them, and it starts to make a bit more sense in terms of sheer logistics. Of course that doesn't excuse it.

But you know, our own hands aren't entirely clean either. The US (as well as GB) was very anti Semitic at that time as well. Our government turned boats of German Jewish refuges away. We also made winning the war our top priority over shutting down the camps. Pretty disgusting when you think about it. We could have done both.

Anonymous wrote:Pop-quiz: Do you geniuses all know that Germany as a unified state is much younger than the U.S.? Also, that there are plenty of Ethnic Germans in Europe, like my great-great grandmother, who never lived within the borders of what became Germany? Finally, where do our history books cover the ethnic cleansing of between 2 - 2.5 million ethnic Germans, many of whom were never citizens of Germany, from their historic communities in Eastern Europe and the former USSR between 1945 -1950?

I used to teach history. Fwiw, all of these things are routinely covered.

Anonymous wrote:I'm AA. and I grew up in a city where people still had the numbers. What exactly do you want to know?
I think a comedian said it best years ago. Nothing good comes from a unified Germany.

Wow, pretty nasty way to continue the hate. Maybe someone should say to you, "Nothing good came from desegregation."

This whole idea of punishing people for the sins of their fathers is the bullshit that starts wars.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So strange to judge a current population for the sins of their past. I understand that the Holocaust was horrific. But, there are many people now that had no role in that. Germany is also far from the only country who has committed atrocities (we don't have to look much further than the U.S. where we all reside? Do you have the same views about the U.S.?)

One of my very best friends is Jewish. We've talked about this and she won't go to Germany, won't buy German cars, etc. I just think this is odd. One thing to harbor such feelings toward an actual nazi/nazi sympathizer. This is something I just don't get.

I live in a very Jewish enclave and have Jewish friends. This has come up before and many have shared similar sentiments. Although I understand and sympathize with why they feel that way, I wonder if such perceptions will generally fade away as the actual participants die out just from old age. The war ended 68 years ago. Soon enough even the children involved will pass away from old age. At some point it will be more like how Americans view slavery no?

maybe it has to do with the fact that many german companies were complicit in the holocaust? i would not want to buy a product and support a company built on that history.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's hypothesis was that there was something different about Germany that made antisemitism flourish there in as murderous way. I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, as a lot of historians have criticized his methodology. However, he asks whether one can envision everyday Danes or Italians participating in the Holocaust the way Germans did. The fact that I can't envision that makes me want to do more research on this topic.

Under the right conditions, any majority group will participate in the type of behavior the Germans engaged in. Stanley Milgram's research and Phillip Zimbardo's research show this pretty convincingly. Even Americans, who have a highly individualistic culture, will do things like that. (Just look at what happened at the prisons on Iraq for more evidence.)

Germans weren't special. They were humans. They were in desperate political and economic straights and they turned to political leaders who were charismatic, evil men. It can happen anywhere. The identity of the scapegoat will be different, but it could happen here.

Uhhhhh.. No comparison

Anonymous wrote:I'm Jewish and have several friends who are at least part German.

Interesting and strange tidbit-I remember my parents saying the German Jews consider themselves classier and smarter than the Jews from other parts and they sometimes snub other Jews or something like that. There was this ranking of sorts-German Jews considered themselves at the top then Russian Jews, etc then Sephardic from various places. I know, it's inane and senseless. My parents werr of Russian Jewish decent.

I learned this in US history class, that the more established German Jews in the United States were not all necessarily thrilled by the influx of Eastern European Jews in the late nineteenth and early 20th century.

I was once part of a bizarre conversation or rather the observer to a conversation, while living in Spain: I had just met several people who all considered themselves German. They switched to English so that I could be included in the conversation, which was nice of them. One girl had grown up in South America, but her family relocated Germany when she was around 10 or so. They had lived in South America since after World War II, so you kind of have to wonder if they were ex Nazis. She was pretty brown, so clearly at some point someone who was Latino had married into the family. Another had been born in North Africa, and had some sort of darker coloring from somewhere, but her mother was German, and when her parents got divorced, her mother remarried a German and a moved her back to Germany. These two women were very insistent they were German and nothing else. No hyphenation of ethnicity. The third person came from a family of Russian Jews who moved to Germany in the 1970s. Apparently West Germany had some sort of "we're sorry about the Holocaust" Repatriation program for Russian Jews.

Anyway, the girl who have been born in South America started going off on this rant about how she hated Frankfurt Jews. I was shocked. I would think that if you were German, you might want to be extra careful about saying antisemitic things, esp if front of someone who was Jewish. The Jewish guy did not react really, just continued the conversation. I could not tell if he agreed with her, and did not consider her offensive because he did not consider himself a Frankfurt Jew since he is of Russian descent, or just did not want to get into it with her, or what. I was not sure what to do. Part of me felt like I needed to speak up and call her out, but I just met them and needed to be on good terms with them for professional reasons. And also felt like she probably would just call me out and say you've never been to Frankfurt so how do you know? So I change the topic to ask her why her Spanish was so good, as that point I did not know she had grown up in South America. She told me she had grown up in Bolivia, and I said tryingt o make conversation oh, you're Bolivian, and she snapped back, "no, I am German! I am not Bolivian!" At which point the Russian Jew non German said snidely, "yes, she is proper German. Do not ask her why she is brown" and she glared at him. At which point I started talking about the weather.

It was bizarre. I felt like there were all sorts of nuances and twist interns that I was not quite clued into.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's hypothesis was that there was something different about Germany that made antisemitism flourish there in as murderous way. I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, as a lot of historians have criticized his methodology. However, he asks whether one can envision everyday Danes or Italians participating in the Holocaust the way Germans did. The fact that I can't envision that makes me want to do more research on this topic.

Under the right conditions, any majority group will participate in the type of behavior the Germans engaged in. Stanley Milgram's research and Phillip Zimbardo's research show this pretty convincingly. Even Americans, who have a highly individualistic culture, will do things like that. (Just look at what happened at the prisons on Iraq for more evidence.)

Germans weren't special. They were humans. They were in desperate political and economic straights and they turned to political leaders who were charismatic, evil men. It can happen anywhere. The identity of the scapegoat will be different, but it could happen here.

I completely agree with this. People forget about the dark sides of American history. We systematically treated African Americans like subhumans in this country. We recently went to see 12 Years a Slave and so many people left the movie theatre saying things like, "I never knew quite how barbaric slavery was". I found it shocking how little people know about our own history.

Anonymous wrote:Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's hypothesis was that there was something different about Germany that made antisemitism flourish there in as murderous way. I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, as a lot of historians have criticized his methodology. However, he asks whether one can envision everyday Danes or Italians participating in the Holocaust the way Germans did. The fact that I can't envision that makes me want to do more research on this topic.

Under the right conditions, any majority group will participate in the type of behavior the Germans engaged in. Stanley Milgram's research and Phillip Zimbardo's research show this pretty convincingly. Even Americans, who have a highly individualistic culture, will do things like that. (Just look at what happened at the prisons on Iraq for more evidence.)

Germans weren't special. They were humans. They were in desperate political and economic straights and they turned to political leaders who were charismatic, evil men. It can happen anywhere. The identity of the scapegoat will be different, but it could happen here.

Anonymous wrote:Can we move on to current events, perhaps?

Like this: http://deadspin.com/5889159/german-soccer-fans-serenade-israeli-player-with-racist-insults-and-nazi-salutes
This:http://www.dw.de/foreigners-not-welcome-racism-in-germanys-housing-market/a-17223748

And this: http://www.dw.de/victim-of-racist-arson-attack-solingen-is-our-home/a-16834570

Anonymous wrote:Pop-quiz: Do you geniuses all know that Germany as a unified state is much younger than the U.S.? Also, that there are plenty of Ethnic Germans in Europe, like my great-great grandmother, who never lived within the borders of what became Germany? Finally, where do our history books cover the ethnic cleansing of between 2 - 2.5 million ethnic Germans, many of whom were never citizens of Germany, from their historic communities in Eastern Europe and the former USSR between 1945 -1950?

And that is why we don't trust y'all
- love the AA poster

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's hypothesis was that there was something different about Germany that made antisemitism flourish there in as murderous way. I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, as a lot of historians have criticized his methodology. However, he asks whether one can envision everyday Danes or Italians participating in the Holocaust the way Germans did. The fact that I can't envision that makes me want to do more research on this topic.

Can we move on to current events, perhaps?

Pop-quiz: Do you geniuses all know that Germany as a unified state is much younger than the U.S.? Also, that there are plenty of Ethnic Germans in Europe, like my great-great grandmother, who never lived within the borders of what became Germany? Finally, where do our history books cover the ethnic cleansing of between 2 - 2.5 million ethnic Germans, many of whom were never citizens of Germany, from their historic communities in Eastern Europe and the former USSR between 1945 -1950?