| Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Worse than War | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 15 2010, 05:19 AM (272 Views) | |
| John Galt | Apr 15 2010, 05:19 AM Post #1 |
|
Fulla-Carp
|
I watched a new documentary on genocide called Worse than War on PBS last night. The documentary criss-crosses the world as Daniel Goldhagen examines the topic of genocide, asking the question "how can people arise en masse and kill other people simply for who they are?" Daniel Goldhagen is a political scientist who has studied the history and causes of genocide. He first became well-known when he wrote a book called Hitler's Willing Executioners. The book was certainly not without controversy in Germany, but it does seem that it triggered useful debate and discussion. Perhaps Klaus can comment on with observations from the German perspective. In Worse than War, Goldhagen travels to several places in the world where genocide has occurred, even interviewing the Hutus that murdered thousands of of Tutsis. He visits Guatemala (and interviews the former President under whose government thousands of Mayans were killed). And he talks about how international action seems to have, at least for now, stopped a possible genocide in Kenya. The interviews with the Hutus who are in prison for the genocide were fascinating. Even more interesting were Goldhagen's comments in the "making of" segment at the end. Talking about his emotional reaction to shaking hands with a self-admitted mass murderer of the Tutsis was chilling. Not an easy film to watch, but I thought it was well worth the time. More about Goldhagen: http://goldhagen.com/ |
| Let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness. | |
![]() |
|
| jon-nyc | Apr 15 2010, 05:43 AM Post #2 |
|
Cheers
|
I was not a fan of his book, I think he could learn from Julian Jackson's discussion of active vs. passive collaboration in 'France: The Dark Years'. As it is to him everyone who didn't actively resist was a collaborator. By the same logic most Americans in the 60s were Nixon's willing carpet bombers of peasants and modern Israelis are Lieberman's willing ethnic cleansers. In short, reading him is like reading Barbara Tuchman - their extreme dislike of Germans drips from the page and detracts from their scholarship. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
![]() |
|
| John Galt | Apr 15 2010, 06:03 AM Post #3 |
|
Fulla-Carp
|
You raise a good point. I've read the criticisms of Executioners and it certainly is not a book without controversy. Goldhagen is a calm, detached observer asking questions throughout the course of the film. He doesn't seem determined to ascribe blame as much as he just wants to ask "why?" and "how?". And his wonder (if you can call it that) when he talks to the people who did the killing about what they were thinking when they were doing it, is quite remarkable. The film is very first hand, more questions than answers, unlike the more academic, historical (and possibly faulty) analysis of Executioners. |
| Let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness. | |
![]() |
|
| Piano*Dad | Apr 15 2010, 07:08 AM Post #4 |
|
Bull-Carp
|
Claude Lanzmann's Shoah was perhaps a precursor. I have not read Hitler's Willing Executioners, so I won't comment on its particulars. But it's not completely bogus to think that relatively passive participants might bear some blame. Lanzmann interviews Poles, for instance, who moved into Jewish houses after the holocaust. His interviews with these people often were quite chilling because they revealed anti-semitic biases that did not much differentiate them from the German Nazis who operated Auschwitz or Belsen. Lanzmann's purpose in part was to stick a pin in Poland's self-narrative of victimhood, and I think he accomplished that task. |
![]() |
|
| jon-nyc | Apr 15 2010, 07:22 AM Post #5 |
|
Cheers
|
I agree they share some blame, but it needs to be put into context, and rightly contrasted against active collaboration. Jackson's analysis does that, Goldhagen's tagging of every German as a 'willing executioner' doesn't. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
![]() |
|
| Piano*Dad | Apr 15 2010, 07:32 AM Post #6 |
|
Bull-Carp
|
Indeed. Again, I haven't read that book so I won't comment directly on Goldhagen's approach. |
![]() |
|
| Renauda | Apr 15 2010, 07:45 AM Post #7 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
Never read any Goldhagen, but I have read Tuchman's Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14 Century. Moderately entertaining historical narrative yes, historiographical scholarship no. |
![]() |
|
| John Galt | Apr 15 2010, 07:53 AM Post #8 |
|
Fulla-Carp
|
I'm one of those people who sees thing as a continuum, rather than a two-state condition like active and passive. At what point does passive behavior cross over to active behavior? While a single story certainly doesn't qualify as an academic study, I'll share something I learned after I read Goldhagen's earlier book. My family, not Jewish, was in the middle of WWII in eastern Europe. After reading Executioners, I wondered what my family knew about the death camps. I asked someone I know well, "did you know what was going on?". They hemmed and hawed and then their eyes filled with tears as they told the story of their mother who watched soliders herding some of the town's Jews away. The mother sent her 7 year old son out with some potatoes to give to the Jews so they would have something to eat. She thought her son would go unnoticed and wouldn't be hurt by the soldiers. He came back safely. Then my friend said she couldn't talk about it any more. Did they know there was a mass extermination plan? Probably not. Did they know that something very wrong was happening? I believe they did. It also made me reflect upon how I might have reacted in that same situation. If I had a child, I'm not sure I would have sent him out. I probably wouldn't have had the courage to risk his life, or my own. The line between active and passive became even more blurred to me. Just something to consider. |
| Let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness. | |
![]() |
|
| JBryan | Apr 15 2010, 08:31 AM Post #9 |
![]()
I am the grey one
|
I always thought the characterization of the nazis as evil racist goons to be too cartoonish and that the truth was actually far more frightening. |
|
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it". Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore. From The Lion in Winter. | |
![]() |
|
| jon-nyc | Apr 15 2010, 08:37 AM Post #10 |
|
Cheers
|
Yeah, that was Arendt's point. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
![]() |
|
| JBryan | Apr 15 2010, 08:38 AM Post #11 |
![]()
I am the grey one
|
So I gathered. |
|
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it". Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore. From The Lion in Winter. | |
![]() |
|
| Kincaid | Apr 15 2010, 02:32 PM Post #12 |
|
HOLY CARP!!!
|
I'd like to hear Goldhagen's take on the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. |
| Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006. | |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic » |









4:54 PM Jul 10