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 materials 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 Executioner's 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
