Holocaust and Human Behavior uses readings, primary source material, and short documentary films to examine the challenging history of the Holocaust and prompt reflection on our world today

A psycho-historical survey of the Holocaust, focusing on the behavior of both the German perpetrators and the victims. Regards the Holocaust as a historically unique mass destruction, in terms of its motivation (the Jews posed no physical challenge to Nazi rule), its methods (industrialized killing), its emotional aspect, as well as its totality. It can be conceptualized as a historical crisis which disrupted the apparent continuity of Western history and shattered Western thought and culture. Approaches the question why it was in Germany that the unparalleled genocide program against the Jews was implemented. Sees the answer in the formation of German culture since the 16th century, which made its people culturally vulnerable to authoritarian and anti-intellectual leadership; in the deprivations and humiliation brought about by World War I; and in Hitler's personality. Proposes a psycho-history of the SS and its increasing involvement with the Holocaust. Distinguishes between the roles of victims and resisters among the Jews. For most of the Jews, their fallacy of innocence, their confidence that there was no cause to kill them, caused them to ignore their victim status and diminished their chances to survive. Contends that for the Jews of the Holocaust, resistance and anti-Nazi violence had a therapeutic value rather than being a tactic of rescue. Reviews existing interpretations of the Holocaust: liberal ones, Freudian, Marxist and neo-Marxist, as well as philosophical-religious, and finds them unsatisfactory. The Holocaust cannot be assimilated in terms of normative Western thought structures.

When and why do groups target each other for extermination? How do seemingly normal people become participants in genocide? In these essays, social psychologists use the principles derived from contemporary research in their field to try to shed light on the behaviour of perpetrators of genocide.

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. "Hitler's Willing Executioner's is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer