La Shoah, les historiens et l'usage public de l'Histoire. À propos de l'affaire Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

Abstract

Enzo Traverso, The Holocaust, Historians and the Public Use of History : on the Daniel Jonah Goldhagen Affair ; Daniel Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, presents the Nazis as representing a modern Germany totally impregnated with eliminationist antisemitism and in favor of genocide. This, however, is an abusive simplification which neglects strong resistance to antisemitism on the part of a large part of the German population. Beyond the thesis defended in the book, what is interesting in the controversy over it is how it has revealed a new phase in how Germany has come to grips with its own past.