Goldhagen argued antisemitic belief, not social pressure or conformity, drove perpetrator behavior.

Evidence

Goldhagen’s central claim is that “Germans’ anti-Semitic beliefs about Jews were the central causal agent of the Holocaust” (p. 11). Thus, he asserts that obedience, social pressure, conformity, and personality character­ istics were not the forces driving the “perpetrators’” behavior, but rather their anti-Semitic beliefs and attitudes were. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 896

Categorization

• QUESTION: The chapter grants this claim only to show that attitudes are themselves socially produced — worth chasing whether Goldhagen’s causal model survives that rejoinder.
• XREF: Contrasts directly with Milgram/Asch/Adorno authority-and-conformity explanations named in the prior paragraph. — connects to: Goldhagen’s theory reduces genocide to individual anti-Semitic attitudes driving behavior — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 312; Goldhagen rejected conformity explanations of Nazi perpetrators as illogical — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 324; Goldhagen claims anti-Semitism alone explains individual perpetrator motives, not the Holocaust’s occurrence. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 380 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Goldhagen claimed anti-Semitism alone but sufficiently explains the Holocaust at every level #expands (0.95) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 314
• Antisemitism explains victim selection, not the crime’s nature #contradicts (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 703
• Antisemitism history explains the victims, not the Holocaust’s criminal nature. #contradicts (0.90)
• Antisemitic beliefs did not predict who would refuse to participate in the Holocaust #corroborates (0.85)