--- product_id: 52304660 title: "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" price: "€ 30.62" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.pt/products/52304660-hitlers-willing-executioners-ordinary-germans-and-the-holocaust store_origin: PT region: Portugal --- # Deep historical analysis Critical revision of Holocaust narratives Primary perpetrator testimonies Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust **Price:** € 30.62 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 📖 Dive deep into history’s most unsettling truths — don’t miss the book shaping today’s discourse! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust - **How much does it cost?** € 30.62 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pt](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/52304660-hitlers-willing-executioners-ordinary-germans-and-the-holocaust) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Highly Acclaimed:** 4.5-star rating with over 500 reviews, a definitive Holocaust study. - • **Uncover Hidden Truths:** Daniel Goldhagen challenges settled history with fresh primary evidence. - • **Critical and Controversial:** A must-read for understanding the complex roots of genocide. - • **Insight into Ordinary Minds:** Reveals how everyday Germans willingly participated in the Holocaust. - • **Comprehensive Cultural Context:** Explores ingrained anti-Semitism shaping German society pre-1945. ## Overview Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen offers a groundbreaking re-examination of the Holocaust, using extensive primary testimonies to argue that ordinary Germans willingly participated in genocide, driven by deep-rooted anti-Semitism. This critically acclaimed book challenges conventional narratives and provides essential insights into the cultural and political forces behind one of history’s darkest chapters. ## Description Daniel Goldhagen re-visits a question which history has treated as settled, and his research leads him to the inescapble conclusion that none of the answers holds true. That question is: How could the Holocaust happen? His response is an exploration of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism that demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945. The author marshals fresh, primary evidence - including extensive testimony from the actual perpetrators - to show that the killers were ordinary Germans who were not compelled to act as they did (they knew they could refuse without retribution) yet they killed willingly and zealously. Review: A much needed book - A brilliant and damning exposure of anti-Semitism in Germany even before the rise of the Nazis. It is also a damning indictment of the German churches that failed to speak up. However, it is important to set the record straight regarding the origins of anti-Semitism. The Early Church started life as a (persecuted) sect within Judaism. It was only in the second half of the first century that Messianic Jews were excluded from the synagogue and placed under an anathema in the formal synagogue liturgy. From the second century onwards during persecutions Jews frequently denounced Christians to the Roman authorities thus leading to their deaths. The Jews became the bitter enemies of Christianity and not the other way round, at least at that stage. This was the beginning of anti-Semitism which eventually, during the Middle Ages, grew into a hysterical and irrational phenomenon actively encouraged by popular Catholic teaching. At the Reformation, things were not helped by Luther’s anti-Semitic outbursts. Then in the 19th century it was Hegelianism (a revival of pagan aristotelianism) and its outgrowth, Darwinism, which gave the movement a racial flavour, which coincided with the rise of German nationalism. The author well summarizes the situation at the end of the 19th century, when he says that: “It is thus incontestable that the fundamentals of Nazi anti-Semitism which had deep roots in Germany,…..were integral to German political culture.” From then on it was but a short step to the horrors of the holocaust, which the author documents in such damning detail. However, the author further reveals that “Anti-Semitism was endemic even to Weimar Germany, so widespread that nearly every political group in the country shunned the Jews”, and that “The centrality of anti-Semitism to the (Nazi) Party’s world view …..mirrored the sentiments of German culture.” The remaining two thirds of the book are really about how the killing machine worked and which excuses the Germans appealed to in trials after the war. This section contains much original material on the execution squads, the camps and the death marches. What transpires is that many of those involved were not Nazis but “ordinary” Germans and that in many cases, they did not have to kill, were given the option of opting out, and could easily have got away with disobeying orders. They were often aided in their gruesome tasks by “Catholic” Poles or Lithuanians who were equally anti-Semitic. Investigations indicate that “no one was ever executed or sent to a concentration camp for refusing to kill Jews.” Some say that the Germans were conditioned by their culture to blindly obey orders, but this is not so as there were many cases in the 20th century of Germans disobeying orders. Germans were wantonly cruel because they perceived Jews to be subhuman. Killing the Jews was for many a deed done not for Nazism but for Germany. The book wisely ends, in the foreword to the German edition, with the observation that a new generation has now grown up in Germany with a democratic mindset. However, the book needs to be slightly updated as in the Eastern part of Germany, where the problem of the holocaust was never honestly faced during the period of communist rule, there have been disquieting revivals of anti-Semitism. Review: Highly recommended - One of the best books on the Holocaust. While I normally read different nonfiction books to swap the topics, couldn’t put this one down. Very well researched. Useful to everyone who is asking how could someone get so many institutions and ordinary citizens involved in a genocidal slaughter from getting them to carry out hostilities against Jews to committing genocide. It’s great that the crucial years leading to the war are briefly covered as well. Highly recommend. ## Features - New Store Stock ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | 29,178 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) | | Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 527 Reviews | ## Images ![Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81OxkUbcHwL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A much needed book *by I***N on 19 November 2015* A brilliant and damning exposure of anti-Semitism in Germany even before the rise of the Nazis. It is also a damning indictment of the German churches that failed to speak up. However, it is important to set the record straight regarding the origins of anti-Semitism. The Early Church started life as a (persecuted) sect within Judaism. It was only in the second half of the first century that Messianic Jews were excluded from the synagogue and placed under an anathema in the formal synagogue liturgy. From the second century onwards during persecutions Jews frequently denounced Christians to the Roman authorities thus leading to their deaths. The Jews became the bitter enemies of Christianity and not the other way round, at least at that stage. This was the beginning of anti-Semitism which eventually, during the Middle Ages, grew into a hysterical and irrational phenomenon actively encouraged by popular Catholic teaching. At the Reformation, things were not helped by Luther’s anti-Semitic outbursts. Then in the 19th century it was Hegelianism (a revival of pagan aristotelianism) and its outgrowth, Darwinism, which gave the movement a racial flavour, which coincided with the rise of German nationalism. The author well summarizes the situation at the end of the 19th century, when he says that: “It is thus incontestable that the fundamentals of Nazi anti-Semitism which had deep roots in Germany,…..were integral to German political culture.” From then on it was but a short step to the horrors of the holocaust, which the author documents in such damning detail. However, the author further reveals that “Anti-Semitism was endemic even to Weimar Germany, so widespread that nearly every political group in the country shunned the Jews”, and that “The centrality of anti-Semitism to the (Nazi) Party’s world view …..mirrored the sentiments of German culture.” The remaining two thirds of the book are really about how the killing machine worked and which excuses the Germans appealed to in trials after the war. This section contains much original material on the execution squads, the camps and the death marches. What transpires is that many of those involved were not Nazis but “ordinary” Germans and that in many cases, they did not have to kill, were given the option of opting out, and could easily have got away with disobeying orders. They were often aided in their gruesome tasks by “Catholic” Poles or Lithuanians who were equally anti-Semitic. Investigations indicate that “no one was ever executed or sent to a concentration camp for refusing to kill Jews.” Some say that the Germans were conditioned by their culture to blindly obey orders, but this is not so as there were many cases in the 20th century of Germans disobeying orders. Germans were wantonly cruel because they perceived Jews to be subhuman. Killing the Jews was for many a deed done not for Nazism but for Germany. The book wisely ends, in the foreword to the German edition, with the observation that a new generation has now grown up in Germany with a democratic mindset. However, the book needs to be slightly updated as in the Eastern part of Germany, where the problem of the holocaust was never honestly faced during the period of communist rule, there have been disquieting revivals of anti-Semitism. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Highly recommended *by K***E on 28 August 2025* One of the best books on the Holocaust. While I normally read different nonfiction books to swap the topics, couldn’t put this one down. Very well researched. Useful to everyone who is asking how could someone get so many institutions and ordinary citizens involved in a genocidal slaughter from getting them to carry out hostilities against Jews to committing genocide. It’s great that the crucial years leading to the war are briefly covered as well. Highly recommend. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Worthy but flawed... *by C***L on 3 October 2010* This book has been described as one of the most important books ever written on the Holocaust, and I'd have to agree with that statement, but not necessarily because I agree with everything written here, more for that debate it has ignited. Goldhagen basically sets out to defuse the myth that the majority of Germans had no culpability as regards the Holocaust, did not know about it, did not participate in it and could not have stopped it. He argues, in many places quite convincingly, that it was impossible for the majority of Germans not to have had at the very least a vague idea of what was going on; that German society had been for many years before the Nazis came to power permeated by an 'eliminationist antisemitism' that advocated exterminating the Jews; that had Germans shown any disgust or opposition to the initial treatment the Jews received, after Kristellnacht, for example, before the Holocaust began properly, it could have been stopped, just as the Nazis backed down over the Euthanasia program or the hostility to the Church. He also argues against the idea that there would have been repercussions for refusing to participate, and highlights the fact that there was almost no instances of anyone being sent to a concentration camp or suffering in any way for refusing to kill. However, I must point out this is analytical history, theoretical history - if one if looking for a narrative history, this is not the book. You can tell this book began as a PhD thesis - it very much reads like one. Many reviewers have complained about the dry and excessively academic style - but perhaps that is a failing of publicity, not the book. You cannot expect academic theses to read like popular history, and if this book has been marketed at the 'average reader', ie. not historians, that's hardly a failing of the author. It's a worthy book, and worth persevering with, if only for the very interesting questions it raises about just how much one can extend the 'guilt' of the Holocaust to Germany as a whole, and not just the Nazis. After all, there were only somewhere in the region of 8 million Nazi Party members, and many millions more 'ordinary Germans'. This is definitely not the final word in this debate, but it must receive praise for igniting it and highlighting it, if nothing else. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.pt/products/52304660-hitlers-willing-executioners-ordinary-germans-and-the-holocaust](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/52304660-hitlers-willing-executioners-ordinary-germans-and-the-holocaust) --- *Product available on Desertcart Portugal* *Store origin: PT* *Last updated: 2026-10-03*