Sir, - I find it hard to agree with any of Frank McLynn's review of Daniel Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners (May 11th) which, it seems to me, uses superficial general knowledge about the Holocaust to try to refute a cogently argued thesis.
For example, Mr McLynn writes: "It is well known that the gas chamber was introduced as an agency of mass murder precisely to depersonalise and bureaucratise the final solution." Surely it is at least equally "well known" that the gas chamber was introduced to increase the capacity (or bandwith, as we might have said these days) of the killing operations?
Goldhagen's central proposition is that anti Semitism in Germany before the second World War was as taken for granted as say, democracy is today in the West. Anti Semitism was a familiar piece of the social landscape. Had we lived in Germany at that time, the "Jewish Problem" would have been an integral part of our world view. Since it is impossible to recreate that society, and since its members have always been eager to deny it, such a claim is impossible to prove now. However, Goldhagen shows that the German's actions during the Holocaust can all be explained against this background, and cannot be rationally explained any other way.
I have no particular axe to grind here, but I believe that I have yet to see in any review - this one included - a reasoned refutation of Goldhagen's central thesis. - Yours, etc.,
Moatstown House,
Athy,
Co Kildare.