This is the third book on democide as a phenomenon that I have read, after [b:Death by Government|998056|Death by Government Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900|R.J. Rummel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1416177351s/998056.jpg|983549] and [b:Atrocitology|12814567|Atrocitology Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements|Matthew White|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485705377s/12814567.jpg|15872709]. Democides are a pet topic of mine, I even have a separate shelf for them. Upfront, this book gets three stars from me because, after comparing it to the other two, I figured it would be a decent introduction to the topic for an intelligent reader. If you're already familiar with democides, you can still learn from it, but I cannot recommend it. Why, I will explain later on.

Goldhagen explores democides in the broader context of "eliminationist" practices. Democides - he calls them genocides, despite being aware of [a:Rummel|16274283|Rudolph J. Rummel|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] and his objection to the common use of that term - are in his view only the peak of eliminationism, such practices that aim at eliminating a certain group, like forced evictions or sterilizations. This is a good insight, but was not enough to carry this hefty book. It would've been good in a book of a hundred pages, or maybe two hundred pages. Not in one with several hundred pages. There are more valuable insights in there, but those also aren't sufficient. Goldhagen criticizes the idea of the "banality of evil", and he does a great job at it, showing on several cases that the participants of democides are often enthusiastic about it and always know what they're doing. He shows that the Nazis weren't special in their use of industrial means of killing, because they simply didn't make such great use of them but rather shot or stabbed most of their victims to death. These kinds of insights could have filled a book half the size of this one. As valuable as they are, they do not carry this book.

What could've carried it would've been historical background to the atrocities Goldhagen is talking about, the way the other two books I mentioned above have them. Goldhagen consciously decided against this style, however, leaving us with a lot of anecdotes, interviews, and reports of various atrocities in Rwanda, Guatemala, Germany, Turkey and so on. Godlhagen does not establish the perpetrators, their ideology, or the goal of their eliminationism. What he throws out are unsystematic bits which are meant to be relevant to whatever is the topic at hand. Had he swallowed his ego, decided against trying to invent the wheel anew and throwing all researchers before him under the bus (including Rummel, who practically invented the comparative study of democides), and written the narratives, we could've had a decent history book, and a worthwhile introduction for those interested in the topic of democide.

His style appealed to me in the beginning, to the point where I compared him favorably to [a:Ludwig von Mises|46766|Ludwig von Mises|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1209485450p2/46766.jpg], who was dry, but always exact and as concise as his topic allowed, without ever sounding like he suspended all his emotion and his moral judgement. Later on, Goldhagen let on that he didn't achieve this synthesis at all. Very dry and academic passage are interrupted by overly emotional ones. Goldhagen insists on calling suicide bombers "genocide bombers", although I do not see what is genocidal about blowing up the convoy of an invading force along with yourself. He insists on calling the massacre of Jews in foreign countries by the Nazis "madness abroad", as if they had invented the intended slaughter of a hated group of people abroad, not domestically. Then what did the Soviets have on their mind with the whole international workers revolution? They didn't treat the bosses in their satellite states very well, and had they conquered the rest of the world - which they intended to - they would've massacred the bourgeoisie worldwide. Those are just the two most glaring examples of Goldhagen being

Another big problem was that I just couldn't trust Goldshagens information, and his interpretations even less. I know Rummel and [a:White|13537532|Matthew White|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] committed major blunders, but Rummel had to research for over ten years to assemble the information necessary for his books, and he was a pioneer in his field. That he missed a few atrocities (like the Hunger Blockade or the Bengal Famine) and overblew some (like what the Tzars did) is understandable, and no reason for me to doubt his scholarship. White, while not a pioneer, covered an insane amount of history in his book, and is largely self-taught. His mistakes, which were surprisingly few, are excusable, like his ignorance of economics. Both also weaved their facts into a narrative, making it quite easy to detect errors, easier than with Goldhagens approach of forgoing the narrative altogether before you draw conclusions from it. When Goldhagen gives a number of those killed by the USSR of 8 to 20 million, while [b:The Great Terror: A Reassessment|52137|The Great Terror A Reassessment|Robert Conquest|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924223s/52137.jpg|50869] is nowhere to be seen in his bibliography, then I get very skeptical of how thorough his research was. Same when he claims that everyone in Germany knew of the death camps, when talking about Auschwitz carried the death sentence and when [a:Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn|394144|Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1297611194p2/394144.jpg], a far better scholar than him and a native Austrian, said that none of his relatives or friends knew of them. Or, when he says that leaders tend to "boast about their camps", and names the fact that the opening of Dachau was proudly announced in 1933 as evidence. Yes, the opening of the first concentration camps was announced, their existence was no secret, and the Nazis openly boasted about them, but those were concentration camps and not death camps. Lumping these two institutions together is careless, especially when you make strong statements about how all Germans knew about the death camps. Then there is him saying that collective guilt is not a thing, then going on to talk about "the Turks", "the Serbs" and "the Germans" as the perpetrators of genocide for the rest of the book. He also denies that the Holocaust was a "unique" event (any more unique than other genocides), but then goes on to say that only the Nazis committed "madness abroad". Goldhagen simply does not strike me as a trustworthy, thorough or critical scholar, and his attitude, especially his demeaning of his predecessors, doesn't help with that.

All in all, a book with some good thoughts, but too long for me to really recommend. The benefits of reading this just don't justify the investment in time, if you ask me. Especially because the best ideas of Goldhagen are also the most commonsensical, and you can arrive at them yourself. So not an essential read. As an introduction to the topic, it is fine if you remain critical, but it's also "only" fine. If you can get your hands on Rummels or Whites books instead, use one of them.

Biased. Had to put this one down.

I like Hannah Arendt too much to fully agree with this book. At the idea of democracy as the preventative of all genocide is simplistic at best. This is an exhaustive, significant book, and I appreciated Goldhagen's care and commitment, and particularly his analysis of what he defines as the five major types of cruelty (I think there are more than he lists, but it's certainly a start), yet this book felt needlessly obtuse and lacking in larger historical perspective. Good, but flawed.