21 Facts About Daniel Goldhagen

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen was born on June 30,1959 and is an American author, and former associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University.

Daniel Goldhagen is the author of Worse Than War, which examines the phenomenon of genocide, and The Devil That Never Dies, in which he traces a worldwide rise in virulent antisemitism.

Daniel Goldhagen was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Erich and Norma Goldhagen.

Daniel Goldhagen's wife Sarah is an architectural historian, and critic for The New Republic magazine.

Daniel Goldhagen has written that his "understanding of Nazism and of the Holocaust is firmly indebted" to his father's influence.

In 1977, Daniel Goldhagen entered Harvard, and remained there for some twenty years - first as an undergraduate and graduate student, then as an assistant professor in the Government and Social Studies Department.

Daniel Goldhagen wanted to investigate who the German men and women who killed the Jews were, and their reasons for killing.

Daniel Goldhagen's first notable work was a book review titled "False Witness" published by The New Republic magazine on April 17,1989.

Daniel Goldhagen accused him of misrepresenting the facts about the Wannsee Conference, which was meant for plotting the genocide of European Jews, not merely the resettlement of the Jews.

In 2003, Daniel Goldhagen resigned from Harvard to focus on writing.

Daniel Goldhagen argued that this form of antisemitism was widespread in Germany, that it was unique to Germany, and that because of it, ordinary Germans willingly killed Jews.

Daniel Goldhagen asserted that this mentality grew out of medieval attitudes with a religious basis, but was eventually secularized.

Daniel Goldhagen's book was meant to be a "thick description" in the manner of Clifford Geertz.

Much of Daniel Goldhagen's book was concerned with the same Order Police battalion, but with very different conclusions.

In 2002, Daniel Goldhagen published A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, his account of the role of the Catholic Church before, during and after World War II.

Daniel Goldhagen noted in an interview with The Atlantic, as well as in the book's introduction, that the title and the first page of the book reveal its purpose as a moral, rather than historical analysis, asserting that he has invited European Church representatives to present their own historical account in discussing morality and reparation.

In Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, Daniel Goldhagen described Nazism and the Holocaust as "eliminationist assaults".

Daniel Goldhagen worked on the book intermittently for a decade, interviewing atrocity perpetrators and victims in Rwanda, Bosnia, Guatemala, Cambodia, Kenya, and the USSR, and politicians, government officers, and private humanitarian organization officers.

Daniel Goldhagen concludes that eliminationist assaults are preventable because "the world's non-mass-murdering countries are wealthy and powerful, having prodigious military capabilities ", whereas the perpetrator countries "are overwhelmingly poor and weak".

Daniel Goldhagen has been a vegetarian since the age of 10.

Since 1999, Daniel Goldhagen has been married to Sarah Williams Daniel Goldhagen.