Finkelstein's background

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>  Goldhagen is trying to understand why it was the case during World
>>  War II if you took a random German adult or adolescent male, gave him
>>  a gun, and had an authority figure tell him to "shoot those jews,"
>>  the odds were better than nine out of ten that he would do so.
>
>And this (not counting the plain sloppy scholarship or lies Justin calls
>attention to) is Goldhagen's most serious offense. The implication 
>is that this
>is something that would not happen in *other* nations...

Well put. I think that is the biggest thing wrong with Goldhagen's 
book--its maximalization of the distance between Hitler's Willing 
Executioners and, well, us...

Brad DeLong