Comparing War And Genocide By Christopher Browning And Daniel J. Goldhagen

In Doris Bergen’s book, “War and Genocide,” she explains how the Holocaust happened in terms of how a house burns down. “Three things are required,” she writes; kindling, a spark to start the fire, and complying weather. In terms of the Holocaust, deeply seeded antisemitism, Nazism, and a public of bystanders and followers respectively. Most historians agree on these three implementing factors, however historians still tend to have differing opinions about the individuals who caused the Holocaust. Christopher Browning and Daniel J. Goldhagen are an example of this: Two historians, each of whom studied and used the same sources to form differing opinions on the mentality of the men who killed innocent people. Where Browning favors that the killers …show more content…
Browning goes on to explain that the two do disagree on the “motivation behind the participation and voluntarism of these Germans.” In short, Browning feels that many Germans were pressured into it, fearing they would be outcasted or not seen as true men- it was a chance to prove masculinity from a group of people who tended to be working class citizens with little education. It was an opportunity for these men to have power and be like the strong, successful men of the actual German …show more content…
For instance, he emphasizes that it was not all Germans, that had the craze to murder Jews. He states, “the vast majority-- not all, but the vast majority-- of ordinary Germans during the Nazi period were prepared to kill Jews.” I admire his efforts to note that not all Germans were ready to kill Jews because there were also a handful of ordinary Germans who chose to risk their lives to save Jewish people. It would be hypocritical and wrong to categorize all Germans as evil, especially when dealing with the Holocaust which stemmed from the belief that all Jews are