Daniel Goldhagen And Christopher Browning Research Paper

Why did the German perpetrators of the Holocaust commit such horrific acts? What were their motivations and reasons for murdering thousands of innocent Jewish people? Ordinary men, such as those of Police Battalion 101, greatly believed in the necessity of a judenfrei Europe. This unit alone, murdered more than 30,000 Jews and sent 45,000 to death camps between July 1942-May 1943. The historians Daniel Goldhagen and Christopher Browning have conflicting views over why these perpetrators committed these murders. Browning believes that this was caused by a mix of peer pressure and an obedience to authority figures. Goldhagen believes that this is the cause of a deeply ingrained German anti-Semitism leading those to actively wish to participate in the horrors of the genocide.These interpretations have received large

He received a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin college in 1968, a doctorate and a phD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975. He then became a distinguished professor after teaching at Pacific Lutheran University from 1974-1999. In 2006, he was elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Browning is an author of seven books on the Holocaust. He has written about Nazi decisions and policy making, the behaviour and motives of perpetrators and the use of survivor testimony of the Jewish people. Browning has been an expert witness in multiple trials of Nazi criminals in Canada, the UK, Australia, and the Irving v. Listadt case in London (2000). His best known work is the book, Ordinary Men: Police Battalion 101, which was made in 1992. This book has been praised and very popular but was denounced by Goldhagen for missing the Specifically-German political culture, characterised by ‘Eliminst anti-Semitism’. In 1992, Goldhagen reviewed Browning’s book and concluded that it failed in its central