Home › Features › Responses › Germans vs. the Critics

Germans vs. the Critics

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
January/February 1997
Summary -- 

The author of HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS writes that he did not tone down his ideas for presentation in Germany. The German public, he attests, responded favorably to his notion of individuals' responsibility for their actions.

We're sorry, but Foreign Affairs does not have the copyright to display this article online.

Related

Review Essay, Nov/Dec 1996
The Goldhagen Controversy: One Nation, One People, One Theory?
Fritz Stern

Daniel Goldhagen's book on the Holocaust--condemning the German "eliminationist" mindset toward Jews--has become an international bestseller and a datum in German-American relations. Pity, because it is a simplistic, monocausal, and unhistorical explanation of one of the most complex horrors in history. For Goldhagen, as for the Nazis, Hitler is Germany.

Read
Essay, Fall 1989
The Nazi-Soviet Pacts: A Half-Century Later
Gerhard L. Weinberg

Early on August 22, 1939, the world was startled to learn from an announcement in the Soviet press that German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop would arrive in Moscow on the following day to sign a nonaggression pact. Equipped with instructions from Adolf Hitler authorizing him to sign both a treaty and a secret protocol that would enter into force as soon as signed by the two countries (rather than when ratified later), Ribbentrop left for Moscow that evening. At the airport, the German delegation was met by deputy commissar for foreign affairs, Vladimir P. Potemkin, who earlier that year had declined an invitation to meet with British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax.

Read
Essay, Fall 1989
The Coming of the Second World War
John Lukacs

The two world wars are the mountain ranges that dominate the historical landscape of the twentieth century. We still live in their shadows, in America as well as in Europe. Only with these wars did European and American history begin to coincide. The revolutions of 1820, 1830, 1848 and the wars leading to the unification of Italy and Germany marked the nineteenth century in European history, while the major events in American history were the westward movement, the Civil War and mass immigration. These events had certain transatlantic connections, yet not decisive ones. But in the twentieth century the two world wars have been the main events in the history of Europe and America as well.

Read
Cover image

In the Magazine

November/December 2009, 6, 88
Essay
The Dollar and the Deficits
C. Fred Bergsten

The global economic crisis has revealed the folly of large U.S. budget and trade deficits, as well as of the strong dollar that makes them possible. If it is serious about recovery, the United States must balance the budget, stimulate private saving, and embrace a declining dollar.
Read