Recommended for readers interested in the psychological forces that lead to genocide. This book challenges the myth that only a few Nazi leaders were responsible for the Holocaust and lays out the evidence that a large number of ordinary Germans enthusiastically participated in the genocide of Jews. Goldhagen's book is a comprehensive study that draws on archives and the testimony of the killers themselves. It's a well-researched and impassioned work that examines the psychology of genocide and provides a sobering reminder of how dangerous it is to believe in the inherent evil of any group of people.

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• National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1996)

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival material, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units to the camps to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion."Hitler's Willing Executioners is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books"The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer

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