Norman G. Finkelstein

Finkelstein's Response to Goldhagen. Comments on Daniel Goldhagen's "The New Discourse of Avoidance"

by Norman G. Finkelstein, April 9, 1998

In March 1998, Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt, collected two published essays by, respectively, Ruth Bettina Birn and myself, into a book entitled A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth [hereafter: ANOT]. (1) Scrutinizing Goldhagen's scholarship, Birn and I both concluded that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners [hereafter: HWE] (2) fell below the minimum standards of an academic study. In her essay, Birn, who is the recognized authority on the archives Goldhagen consulted for his book, documents that Goldhagen systematically distorted these primary source materials. In my essay, I document that Goldhagen's book is replete with gross misrepresentations of the secondary literature and internal contradictions.

In fall 1997, Goldhagen published a reply to Birn's original article in German Politics and Society. (3) Although fully twice the length of Birn's piece, it passes over in silence Birn's central criticisms bearing on the archives. (4) In March 1998, Goldhagen posted on his web site a reply to my essay entitled "The New Discourse of Avoidance." (5) My critique of Goldhagen's scholarship runs to 87 pages. Yet, the points he directly contests in his reply comprise altogether less than two pages of my text. Goldhagen told Newsweek that he had prepared a "point-by-point" rebuttal of my essay. (6) Even in the examples he cites, Goldhagen does not dispute but rather obfuscates my arguments. I will return to these evidentiary questions presently. The preponderance of Goldhagen's reply, however, consists of what one might call a new discourse of avoidance. Indeed, Goldhagen assembles a stupefying catalogue of allegations. Illuminating as they are of Goldhagen's (lack of) scholarly scruples, (7) I want first to consider them. My remarks will only address, however, topics pertinent to A Nation on Trial. Readers interested in my views on the Israel-Palestine conflict can consult my published works. (8)

(A) Goldhagen purports that I "deride the notion that Jews were 'innocent' in the Germans' genocidal assault on them." This remarkable claim merits pause. With endorsements from the world's leading authorities on the Nazi holocaust (including Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning), the son of survivors of the Nazi holocaust maintains -- according to Goldhagen -- that the Jews deserved to die. Stepping outside Goldhagen's fantasy world, we read in A Nation on Trial: "It should be clear that, in the context of the Nazi genocide, there can be no question of Jewish guilt or innocence" (ANOT: 95). (9)

(B) Goldhagen purports that I "would have people believe that the Germans who tortured, brutalized, and killed Jews were not anti-Semites." The relevant passage in A Nation on Trial reads: "It bears emphasis that Germany's anti-Semitic legacy did constitute a vital precondition for the genocide" (ANOT: 53).

(C) Goldhagen purports that I dismiss all "non-German scholars" on the Nazi holocaust as Jewish "propagandists" in the service of a "Zionist conspiracy." Yet in my essay, I distinguish between two bodies of work on the Nazi holocaust: "holocaust scholarship, which tends to be historical and multicausal, and Holocaust literature, which tends to be ahistorical and monocausal." (ANOT: 88) I reckon the former as "solid scholarly research," the latter as "largely devoid of scholarly interest." I also locate Holocaust literature in the Zionist paradigm which casts the Nazi genocide as the climax of a millennial Gentile hatred of Jews. Finally, I point to an apologetic dimension in this Zionist discourse. The respected Israeli writer, Boas Evron, similarly observes that it "condones in advance any inhuman treatment of non-Jews, for the prevailing mythology is that 'all peoples collaborated with the Nazis in the destruction of Jewry,' hence everything is permissible to Jews in their relationship to other peoples." (10) For the record, the Nazi holocaust scholars I specifically praise in my essay -- Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, Arno Mayer and Eva Reichmann -- are all Jewish. I rely much more heavily on the Anglo-American than the German contingent of historians. Among those I cite most frequently is Israeli scholar David Bankier. I rue this ethnic roll-call but Goldhagen's sinister accusation leaves me no choice. True, I place Goldhagen's study in the category of Holocaust literature. It seems that Goldhagen confounds my evaluation of his own book -- "worthless as scholarship" -- with my evaluation of all academic research on the Nazi holocaust.

(D) Goldhagen purports that my contribution to A Nation on Trial is a "sanitized," "excised," "cover up" version of my New Left Review article, which Henry Holt is now trying to "foist...on what it hopes remains an unsuspecting public." Goldhagen is apparently unaware of the normal scholarly practice of revising a journal article for publication in a book. The original New Left Review version of my essay did not benefit from extensive peer review. (11) In accordance with subsequent scholarly criticisms that I found valid, my initial formulations were variously modified, refined, sharpened, muted, and modulated. I remain grateful for this collegial input. The finished product is much improved. The overarching framework of my essay, however, is unchanged. I also bolstered the scholarly apparatus with additional documentation. Indeed, the allegedly "sanitized" Holt version contains controversial new material.

(E) Goldhagen purports that "Finkelstein's allegations, including that I think Germans are 'crazy' and 'deranged perverts' are wild inventions." In Hitler's Willing Executioners, Goldhagen depicts the typical German as "pathologically ill...struck with the illness of sadism...diseased, tyrannical, sadistic," "psychopathic" (HWE: 397, 450, quoting a "keen diarist of the Warsaw Ghetto"), in thrall to "absolutely fantastical...beliefs that ordinarily only madmen have of others...prone to wild, 'magical thinking'" (HWE: 412), and so on. The book's most evocative analogy compares the typical German to "crazy" Captain Ahab (HWE: 398-9). In Goldhagen's mind, these formulations "restore the humanity" of ordinary Germans.

(F) Goldhagen also dissents from my methodology. In fact, my approach is simply to scrutinize Goldhagen's text for internal consistency and verify his citations from the mostly English-language secondary literature he uses. (12) None of the many prominent scholars who endorsed the Holt book (e.g., Ian Kershaw) questioned its methodology. Goldhagen is the first and to date only one to do so. Leaving aside that Goldhagen is perhaps not the best placed to render judgment in matters of methodology, these disputes are best resolved in concrete analysis. Regrettably, Goldhagen devotes only a small fraction of his response to directly engaging my findings. I want now to consider this rebuttal.

1. To document his claim that homicidal anti-Semitism was pervasive in Germany and Austria even before Hitler's rise to power, Goldhagen cited historian Peter Pulzer's finding that there were 12 ritual murder trials between 1867 and 1914. However, Goldhagen reversed the import of Pulzer's finding. The remainder of Pulzer's original sentence read: "eleven of which collapsed although trials were by jury." In his reply, Goldhagen does not dispute that he suppressed the crucial caveat in the Pulzer finding that undermines his thesis. Rather, he complains that I "zoom in" on this one example. Yet, my essay documents not an isolated case but rather a pattern of systematic misrepresentations throughout his book.

2. In the body of his text, Goldhagen reports a scholarly claim that the anti-Semitic petition campaign in mid-19th-century Bavaria was spontaneous and broad-based. In the endnote, however, Goldhagen presents creditable evidence that the campaign was carefully orchestrated and that many German signatories did not harbor anti-Semitic animus. Goldhagen states in his reply that he did "openly discuss" the full gamut of evidence. Yet, I never contested this. My point was that Goldhagen's own critical evidence disputing his textual claim was buried in the book's back pages.

3. The central thesis of Goldhagen's book is that ordinary Germans were no less anti-Semitic than Nazi party members. Thus Goldhagen reports, for example, that, right after Hitler's seizure of power, "Germans posted signs" with anti-Semitic prohibitions. Turning to the cited source, we learn that this campaign was organized not by ordinary Germans but by "local hotheads in the Nazi movement." In his reply, Goldhagen doesn't dispute that he explicitly misrepresented his source. Rather, he claims that his general context implied Nazis. Yet his general context also implied ordinary Germans (cf. his allusions to "Germans inside and outside the government," and a "society-wide attack" on the Jews). His specific reference, however, isn't at all ambiguous: it is flat-out false. This example illustrates one of Goldhagen's techniques for "proving" the Nazification of ordinary Germans: where the source material states "Nazis," he reports "Germans."

4. According to Goldhagen, Hitler fully and incessantly apprised the German people of his genocidal plans. I document that none of the evidence through 1939 supports this claim. I then quote Max Domarus, the authoritative compiler of Hitler's speeches and public pronouncements, that Hitler did not explicitly proclaim a policy of genocide even during the war years. Rather, Domarus reports, Hitler "confined his remarks on a massacre of Jews to threats within the scope of his foreign policy." Contrariwise, Goldhagen maintains that Hitler "announced many times, emphatically," the genocidal killing of the Jews. Goldhagen thus dissents from what he himself calls in his reply Domarus's "different interpretation." Yet, the source material Goldhagen cites in support of his own interpretation, the Domarus collection, supports Domarus. Goldhagen's complementary claim is that ordinary Germans assented to the genocide. In his reply, Goldhagen himself explicitly conjoins the two claims, arguing that, if ordinary Germans opposed the Final Solution, why did Hitler "keep announcing and emphasizing it"? Yet Goldhagen's source, Domarus, documents that Hitler's public pronouncements were in fact contingent and indirect. Indeed, every schoolboy knows that the Final Solution was officially shrouded in secrecy. To sustain his argument, Goldhagen misrepresents Domarus's finding -- exactly as I suggested in my essay.

These four items exhaust Goldhagen's rebuttal. As noted above, the points he contests comprise altogether two percent of my textual critique. Significantly, Goldhagen quietly passes over the numerous internal contradictions that I document in his book. His silence is, if unfortunate, nonetheless understandable. Readers could then easily verify who is telling the truth. Goldhagen states that "nothing can be believed in Finkelstein's piece without first comparing his text against my original text." I strongly agree. Indeed, I would urge readers to do so.

Notes

1. Ruth Bettina Birn's essay, "Revising the Holocaust," originally appeared in a slightly shorter version in The Historical Journal, 40.1 (1997). A shorter version of my essay, "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis," originally appeared in New Left Review, July/August 1997.

2. New York: 1996.

3. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, "The Fictions of Ruth Bettina Birn," in German Politics and Society, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 1997.

4. See Birn's forthcoming rejoinder in German Politics and Society.

5. See www.Goldhagen.com.

6. Laura Shapiro, "A Battle Over the Holocaust," 23 March 1998, 66.

7. I will leave to one side Goldhagen's scholarly style which confuses invective -- he variously denounces me as "a notorious anti-Zionist ideologue," "the neophyte Finkelstein," "the anti-Zionist crusader and conspiracy theorist," etc. etc. -- with rational argument. I would be remiss, however, to ignore Goldhagen's recent insinuation that my co-author, Ruth Bettina Birn, is an anti-Semite (cf. "A Comment by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen on A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth," posted on Goldhagen's web site). Birn is not only an internationally recognized scholar but also commands unique moral authority. She is a German who has devoted her life's work to prosecuting Nazi war criminals in Canada. In electing to serve as chief historian for Canada's war crimes unit, Birn has displayed rare personal integrity. Unfortunately, Goldhagen's web site does not allow for dialogue. Epithets are hurled, but the elementary right of response is denied.

8. See Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Verso: 1995), and The Rise and Fall of Palestine (University of Minnesota: 1996). To discredit my scholarship, Goldhagen reports that "Finkelstein's published work has been in the 'field' of anti-Zionism," and reproduces an unsigned notice in a trade journal. Permit me, then, to quote a signed review by William Quandt, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former member of the National Security Council, that was published in Foreign Affairs: The prospects for war between Israel and the Arab nations may be fading, but the war of the historians rages on. For some years, revisionists have been dismantling Israeli and Arab myths created in the formative years of the conflict. Now, as in this book, the revisionists themselves are under attack for not going far enough. Finkelstein already has one victory to his credit. Along with a few other conscientious scholars, he demonstrated that Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial, which claimed that Palestinians arrived in Palestine only recently, was based on shoddy scholarship. That landmark essay is included in this collection and is the best of his offerings. More controversially, Finkelstein tackles Benny Morris, author of an important account of the origins of the Palestinian refugee exodus. Here he praises much of Morris' empirical research but rejects the conclusion that the exodus was born of war rather than a master plan. All this is bound to be a bit confusing to readers new to the historiography of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but for those well versed in the debates and the literature, this thoroughly documented book is guaranteed to stimulate and provoke. It will be required reading in the continuing war of the historians. (May/June 1996)

9. In the original New Left Review article -- the unsanitized version, according to Goldhagen -- I similarly state that "in the context of the Nazi holocaust the reality was, if not absolute Gentile guilt, at any rate absolute Jewish innocence" (85; emphasis in original).

10. Boas Evron, Jewish State or Israeli Nation? (Indiana University Press: 1995), 227.

11. Allow me to take this opportunity to thank New Left Review for publishing my original article. No mainstream publication would consider it.

12. In this respect, my lack of professional expertise in the field did not prove a liability. For the kind of analysis I underto ok, common sense quite sufficed.

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