ABSTRACT
The academic attitude toward Hitler's Willing Executioners has remained consistently critical. Contemporary debate about the Holocaust has moved on from the psychological questions of motivation and intentionality raised by the work. It now focuses on larger issues, such as how the mass murder of the Jews might fit into broader instances of genocide. The British academic Mark Mazower is among several leading historians who have pointed out that the Nazis were trying to carve out an empire of their own in Eastern Europe. In Germany, Goldhagen's work has been seen as an important tool for introducing the next generation to the terrible lessons of the past. When Goldhagen was awarded the Democracy Prize in 1997, the Journal for German and International Politics praised him for reminding Germans that they must not abandon the "founding principles of the Federal Republic of Germany".
