Goldhagen claimed anti-Semitism alone but sufficiently explains the Holocaust at every level

Evidence

But Goldhagen said much more than that. First of all, as already described, he argued that the typical German person during the Nazi era had attitudes toward Jews that were not only unfavorable but so unfavorable as to allow for the killing of Jewish men, women, and children without the slightest degree of ambivalence. Even more provocative, though, is his claim that eliminationist anti-Semitism provides a necessary and sufficient explanation for perpetrator behavior. In other words, Goldhagen concluded that the horrors of the Holocaust could not have occurred without such attitudes and, in ad­ dition, that no other social or intrapsychic factors played a role in leading people to act on those attitudes. Finally, he argued that eliminationist anti- Semitism is a valid explanation at all relevant levels of analysis. Society, the leadership, institutions, individual people—all, he claimed, were driven by eliminationist anti-Semitism. All participated in the killing of Jews because doing so was consistent with their individual and collective attitudes. These radical conclusions do much to explain why the book has received so much attention and analysis. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 314

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the radical scope of Goldhagen’s eliminationist-attitudes thesis: necessary, sufficient, and valid at all analytic levels.
• XREF: Contrasts with ch5/bureaucratic-middlemen situational accounts and with the author’s broader multi-factor ch31 view of group violence. — connects to: Inferiority alone cannot justify genocide; danger claims are required — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 2160; The Goldhagen controversy actually debated German national self-concept — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 1216; Explaining the Holocaust via sadistic hatred obscures its most sinister truth (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Antisemitism alone cannot explain or produce genocide. #contradicts (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 455
• Explaining the Holocaust via sadistic hatred obscures its most sinister truth #contradicts (0.92)
• The Holocaust was not the logical culmination of prior antisemitism #contradicts (0.88)