Goldhagen und die deutsche Linke : oder, die Gegenwart des Holocaust

A book written by eight authors, some of them affiliated with various left-wing organizations before 1989, which emerged from discussions held by them following the publication of Goldhagen's book. States that the left-wing press in Germany reacted to Goldhagen's book and its supposed allegation of collective guilt with similar arguments as the moderate and right-wing press, though it defended the working class rather than all the Germans: Nazism was a capitalist plot against labor, and labor solidly opposed it. Shows that in fact the workers and their parties were also antisemitic and pro-Nazi. Goldhagen's chief merit was to show that the individual was free to decide how to act despite social pressure. However, he did not recognize the vital role of biological antisemitism as the basis of German identity and unity; and though he correctly linked forced labor with the Nazis' image of Jews as unproductive parasites, he did not see that they were wiping out the Jews as the representatives of "abstract" capital in favor of a utopia of "blood, soil, and labor": Nazism was an anti-capitalist, not a capitalist, revolution. Antisemitism is still rife on both the Right and the Left. German liberals' appreciation for Goldhagen and their willingness to deal with the memory of the Holocaust is due to a feeling of discontinuity between then and now: the blacker Germany's past crimes, the brighter the "new Germany". Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-185). 192 pages ; 20 cm