Goldhagen Tries To Quash Critic, Seeks Retraction

When it was published nearly two years ago by Associate Professor of Government Daniel J. Goldhagen '81, Hitler's Willing Executioners inspired a heated exchange of fire in academia and beyond.

The final salvo of that battle has yet to be launched.

Goldhagen's book made international headlines in 1996 with its thesis that the "Germans' anti-Semitic beliefs about Jews were the central causal agent of the Holocaust."

The book also said that the Holocaust was not the work of isolated or sadistic elements of German society.

Due to be published in April by Henry Holt & Co., A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and National truth is the culmination of the latest round of heated intellectual debate over Goldhagen's book. It critiques his thesis as being oversimplified and of unfairly characterizing the German people.

A Nation on Trial evolved from two articles published in British journals earlier this year. The first was written by Ruth Bettina Birn, the chief historian of the Canadian Justice Department's War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section. The second was the work of Norman G. Finkelstein, a professor of general studies at New York University and adjunct associate professor of political science at Hunter College.

Birn and Finkelstein could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Birn's article "Revising the Holocaust," published last March in the Cambridge Historical Journal, alleges that Goldhagen's book "only caters to those who want simplistic answers to difficult questions, [and] to those who seek the security of prejudices."

After the article appeared, a Londonbased law firm acting on Goldhagen's behalf sent a letter to the journal's publisher demanding a retraction and a halt to any further publication of Birn's allegations.

According to The New York Times, Holt president Michael Naumann believes this could possibly lead to a lawsuit against Birn.

Martin A. Soames, a litigator for the law firm, said that Goldhagen "was defamed in that piece, which claimed to be a review of his book but was a personal attack on him."

Soames said a suit has not been filed.

Raul Hilberg, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont, and author of The Destruction of the European Jews, noted that in debates such as these, "one does not as a rule hire lawyers."

Goldhagen emphatically denied that he is planning any lawsuit, and has instead written several pieces attacking the quality of both Birn's and Finkelstein's scholarship.

Though he has declined to speak on the record about the upcoming book, Goldhagen's public response to Birn's article was in a written form.

In the fall 1997 edition of the journal German Politics and Society, Goldhagen accused Birn of resorting to "wholesale invention" in a 47-page rebuttal of her article, bringing into question her scholarly methods.

Goldhagen writes that in Birn's piece, "Words, turns of phrases, are wrested from their contexts," accusing her of removing quotation marks from her citations of his work to distort their meaning.

Finkelstein's 50 page piece, which appeared in the July-August issue of New Left Review, another British publication, alleges that Goldhagen's book "is not scholarship at all," and is rife with "glaring internal contradictions."

"A broad range of solid scholarly research has concluded that popular German anti-Semitism neither accounted for Hitler's triumph nor was it the impetus behind the Final Solution," writes Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.

Finkelstein, who is known as an ardent critic of Israel, also wrote in the article that the Holocaust was "seized upon and methodically marketed because it was politically expedient," by Zionists.

In a German newspaper, Goldhagen called Finkelstein's piece a "gross misinterpretation" of his book that "has little to do with any knowledge of and concern for scholarship on the Holocaust and everything to do with his burning political agenda."

Hilberg said he believes that Birn "did a credible job," but conceded that in citing Goldhagen, it is possible that Birn may have inadvertently omitted some quotation marks or ellipses.

Rather than an intentional defamation, Hilberg said that such mistakes may lie "in the realm of sloppiness," but that "this is a misdemeanor rather than a felony." He said he expects the revised version, which he has not yet seen, to be considerably improved.

Ruth R. Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature and comparative literature, said she had not read either of the articles, but added that criticism of this nature is inevitable.

"Professor Goldhagen has written a very important book and I think that it has certainly received the serious attention that it merits," she said. "It has also elicited the kind of reaction that is unfortunately predictable when it concerns a subject that is still surrounded with so much denial and pain."

-Jenny E. Heller '01, London bureau chief, contributed to the reporting of this story.

Soames said a suit has not been filed.

Raul Hilberg, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont, and author of The Destruction of the European Jews, noted that in debates such as these, "one does not as a rule hire lawyers."

Goldhagen emphatically denied that he is planning any lawsuit, and has instead written several pieces attacking the quality of both Birn's and Finkelstein's scholarship.

Though he has declined to speak on the record about the upcoming book, Goldhagen's public response to Birn's article was in a written form.

In the fall 1997 edition of the journal German Politics and Society, Goldhagen accused Birn of resorting to "wholesale invention" in a 47-page rebuttal of her article, bringing into question her scholarly methods.

Goldhagen writes that in Birn's piece, "Words, turns of phrases, are wrested from their contexts," accusing her of removing quotation marks from her citations of his work to distort their meaning.

Finkelstein's 50 page piece, which appeared in the July-August issue of New Left Review, another British publication, alleges that Goldhagen's book "is not scholarship at all," and is rife with "glaring internal contradictions."

"A broad range of solid scholarly research has concluded that popular German anti-Semitism neither accounted for Hitler's triumph nor was it the impetus behind the Final Solution," writes Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.

Finkelstein, who is known as an ardent critic of Israel, also wrote in the article that the Holocaust was "seized upon and methodically marketed because it was politically expedient," by Zionists.

In a German newspaper, Goldhagen called Finkelstein's piece a "gross misinterpretation" of his book that "has little to do with any knowledge of and concern for scholarship on the Holocaust and everything to do with his burning political agenda."

Hilberg said he believes that Birn "did a credible job," but conceded that in citing Goldhagen, it is possible that Birn may have inadvertently omitted some quotation marks or ellipses.

Rather than an intentional defamation, Hilberg said that such mistakes may lie "in the realm of sloppiness," but that "this is a misdemeanor rather than a felony." He said he expects the revised version, which he has not yet seen, to be considerably improved.

Ruth R. Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature and comparative literature, said she had not read either of the articles, but added that criticism of this nature is inevitable.

"Professor Goldhagen has written a very important book and I think that it has certainly received the serious attention that it merits," she said. "It has also elicited the kind of reaction that is unfortunately predictable when it concerns a subject that is still surrounded with so much denial and pain."

-Jenny E. Heller '01, London bureau chief, contributed to the reporting of this story.