Talk:Daniel Goldhagen/Archive 1

message: I removed changes by an anonymous user at 83.109.158.129. I claim that it can only be a matter of opinion whether anyone is "belonging to the extreme Jewish ethnic nationalist right-wing" (in the same way that being the author of Hitler's Willing Executioners is not a matter of opinion). Hoziron 04:27, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purported affiliation 

message: This article is biased and needs NPOV correction.  See, e.g., Goldhagen’s reply to his critics . —Cesar Tort 04:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I propose the NPOV tag be removed from this article.  --GHcool 01:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You have to argue your case. —Cesar Tort 02:26, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  biased 

message: Hi guys.  john k’s 00:37, 21 August suggestions above look interesting.  What do you think?  For the moment I’m removing this —:
:Basic factual errors Goldhagen makes include his belief about the favourable attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward the Nazi party.
—for the simple reason that no single German bishop, Catholic or Protestant, complained about the Holocaust (though they complained bitterly about the slaughter of retarded Aryans by the Nazis).  There was even a bishop who welcomed the burning of a synagogue during the Kristallnacht pogrom.  —Cesar Tort 01:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, but they weren't very happy with Nazism. They were certainly quiet about the holocaust, but they were deeply suspicious of Nazism's pagan mythology and ideology. Now I'm speaking a bit from the haze of time, but I seem to recall that Goldhagen overstates the sympathy of the Catholic CHurch with Nazism, despite the definite ambiguities in their attitude. I remember this being pointed out as a basic factual error. I can't remember exactly where, but I think it deserves to stand. See Nazism and religion .Peregrine981 05:02, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don’t claim to have read Goldhagen’s book on Pope Pius XII.  If he did overstated his case this should be mentioned in a new section about that book, not in the section of Hitler’s Willing Executioners (the book of our discussion).  —Cesar Tort 05:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If I recall correctly he does make an exagerated claim about the German catholic church's sympathy toward Nazism in Hitler's WIlling Executioners. I can't remember precisely though, so if you want to leave it out for now, I'll agree. Peregrine981 05:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It’s 1:00 AM here in Mexico City and I’m going to bed... If you want to modify the article just go ahead.  I’ll catch up once I wake up this Sunday. —Cesar Tort 06:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

text:  In 1935 Karl Barth wrote referring to the Jews: “For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not have a heart”.  And historian Werner Jochmann wrote: “The fearless statements and deeds of individuals [on behalf of the Jews] should not obscure the fact that the Church became a compliant helper of Nazi Jewish Policy” (quoted in Wolfgang Gerlach’s When the Witnesses Were Silent, p. 437). —Cesar Tort 04:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Er, the Confessing Church was a protestant church, surely? john k 22:29, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess Barth was referring to both the Catholic and Protestant churches. —Cesar Tort 00:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See Confessing Church.  I'm not sure, though, that I understand Barth's criticism, since the Confessing Church was an anti-Nazi protestant movement. john k 15:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Work to do 

message: The paragraph —:
:  [...] a long period of potentially determinative events, including Germany's defeat in WWI, the devaluation of the Mark, the Great Depression, Hitler, Himmler, the T-4 Euthanasia Program, and activities surrounding the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union are excluded from consideration as decisive to the emergence of the Holocaust. 
—is erroneous and POV.  It should be modified or deleted.  Firstly, Goldhagen does not exclude Hitler and Himmler.  In fact, he agrees with Milton Himmelfarb’s dictum: “No Hitler, no Holocaust”.  Also, Goldhagen did mention the T-4 program.  Secondly, the belief that Germany's defeat in WWI, the devaluation of the German mark and the Great Depression are contributing factors is POV.  The revisionist interpretation is that research should focus on the people who were the executors, placing the persecution and extermination of the Jews at its center. —Cesar Tort 00:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Already removed. —Cesar Tort 00:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed removal #1

message: This statement —:
: Goldhagen's research quality has been excoriated by many contemporary prominent Holocaust historians, among them Raul Hilberg, Yehuda Bauer, and Ruth Bettina Birn. Setting aside criticism of specific claims from Goldhagen, the three historians just mentioned have independently claimed that Goldhagen lacked adequate familiarity with primary source research and secondary literature in the field, and therefore frequently misrepresented sources, often polemically.
—is POV and should be either deleted or totally rewritten to show both sides of the controversy. Cesar Tort 00:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What's POV about saying that these three all said that three prominent scholars said that Goldhagen lacked these qualifications? They did in fact say this. What's the other side? In case of POV, are not the editing guidelines to provide balance from other sources rather than to make deletions, where the claims are themselves verifiably made by credible sources? Buffyg 21:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right: balancing is preferably than moving. However, it was a pov statement: it omits Goldhagen’s reply to his colleagues. —Cesar Tort 21:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could you please provide a cite or edit as to that reply? Buffyg 22:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Goldhagen wrote “Motives, Causes, and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics”. I could do the editing job now – if I had time!  I’m just hoping that another editor, who said he’d fix the article next month, finally returns to his country (where he has his personal library). ―Cesar Tort 22:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed removal #2 

message: This statements —:
* Goldhagen's research quality has been excoriated by many contemporary prominent Holocaust historians, among them Raul Hilberg, Yehuda Bauer, and Ruth Bettina Birn. Setting aside criticism of specific claims from Goldhagen, the three historians just mentioned have independently claimed that Goldhagen lacked adequate familiarity with primary source research and secondary literature in the field, and therefore frequently misrepresented sources, often polemically. Broadly speaking, whatever assessment scholars with primary research experience and broad familiarity with secondary works may make of Goldhagen's thesis, criticisms of the level of his research, methodology, and accompanying analysis have been at least as pointed as those of his conclusions. 
* Bauer has further observed that Goldhagen lacked familiarity with sources not in English or German, which thereby excluded research from Polish and Israeli sources writing in Hebrew, among others, all of whom had produced important research in the subject that would require a more subtle analysis. Bauer also argued that these linguistic limitations substantially impaired Goldhagen from undertaking broader comparative research into European antisemitism, which would have demanded further refinements to his analysis.
—are POV and should be either moved or rewritten. Cesar Tort 06:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no problem whatever with the second statement. It presents Bauer's POV as such, not claiming it  to be "the truth" or anything similar. The first could be reworded. Peregrine981 04:42, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed removal #3 

message: Lance6968 has written in edit summary―:
: This article reeks of hostility towards Goldhagen from beginning till end. There are several cogent historians whose work supports Goldhagen: Why are they absent from the article?
 
―and I wholly agree with him.  While my previous steps in NPOVing the article were not exactly the right steps, I hope the right ones will be taken by other editors more familiar with history than me. ―Cesar Tort 18:16, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Totally disputed 

message: The problem with Goldhagen's work is fundamental: He posits a monolithic universal thesis that virtually all Germans--and Germans alone--developed over the centuries a unique version of anti-Semitism: "eliminationist" anti-Semitism. Anyone who has studied European Jewish history ought to know that anti-Semitism was found in almost all countries, and was indeed greater in many countries than in Germany. Examples are Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine, and Austria itself. After the Anschluss, Jews suffered far more in Austria than in Germany from cruelty, humiliation, physical attacks, and all these by the very ordinary people on whom Goldhagen focuses. I have studied the Holocaust over twenty-five years, and still grapple with the questions with which Goldhagen attempts to deal. Yet, I personally cannot understand how a simplistic, conversational-level point of view managed to garner so much attention. Christopher Browning's work offers a more realistic more nuanced analysis of the central question in understanding the Holocaust: Why did so many people engage in terrible acts of cruelty and brutality to other human beings, and only a few resist the tide of mass action? The fact is that some few people--in all countries: Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, etc.--did indeed risk their lives and their loved ones to save people whom they did not even know. This fact flies in the face of Goldhagen's simplistic "analysis." That, and the existence of anti-Semitism even more virulent in countries other than Germany, are what renders Goldhagen's work unacceptable in the scholarly world of historical research. 207.237.240.221 04:47, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Perspective and Nuance