ATROCITIES AND HUMAN NATURE

I save Book Review for Sunday morning dessert, so I read Louis Begley’s review of “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” (Book Review, March 24) depicting German atrocities after I had read in Opinion the comments of Ross Terrill on a report by Zheng Yi that depicted Chinese atrocities. Both works suggest the existence of traits especially evil in the natures of Germans and Chinese, but when I look further into history, I find more and more groups of people must be included with them until I run out of exceptions.

Reading those two stories on a sunny morning convinced me again that we are all truly one race with one set of genetic imperatives. Circumstances call them into action as needed. Victims become victimizers in an eye blink of time because both live in me.

WILLARD OLNEY, HESPERIA

****

Having grown up in World War II, I arrived in Germany in 1955. An intelligence officer working in the refugee program, I heard a thousand personal stories, many of them from Holocaust survivors. Surprised, I learned from Jews that “good Germans” did exist. The German obsession with anti-Semitism was a more complex issue than I had imagined.

Daniel Goldhagen’s book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” and the review of that book by Louis Begley revive the old cliche of collective guilt. They succumb to the mentality of a Louis Farrakhan or a Jesse Jackson (“Hollywood denies us”) that there is a conspiracy “out there to get us.”

A Jewish man once lectured me in Frankfurt. He had just returned, disillusioned, after immigrating to Israel. “I am more German than Jew,” he said. “Germany today is freer than Israel. You Americans must distinguish between Nazis and Germans, just as we in Europe must differentiate between the Ku Klux Klan and Americans.”

Germany had no shortage of racist beasts during the Third Reich, but most Germans were, and are, decent, tolerant people. Can you imagine a President Buchanan in the 1930s with police forces staffed with Mark Fuhrmans and no free press? Bad people often gain power.

JIM DOWNS, OCEANSIDE

****

There is one historical error in your March 24 review of “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.” Hitler was not democratically elected but was appointed Reichschancellor by the aged President Hindenburg.

The deep economic depression radicalized the German people into two extremist factions: the Communists and the Nazis. Hitler was heavily supported by the military, the armament industry and their bankers (Krupp, Bankhaus, Schroader et al). The fact is that at the last democratic prewar election, Hitler for the first time lost votes. This panicked Hitler’s backers, and they persuaded Hindenburg to appoint him as chancellor.

LOREN L. ZACHARY, BEVERLY HILLS