None the less I shall battle on and answer those challenges where there is a shred of logic.
I wish you would! Once again, you describe anyone who sees the Waffen-SS as a branch of the Wehrmacht as "Waffen-SS apologists" so how do you reconcile this viewpoint with Konrad Adenauer's 1953 description of the Waffen-SS as "soldiers like any other"? Do you think Adenauer was "a Waffen-SS apologist?"
Moving onto Sid's contribution: several people here have read the thesis on which the book is based, Sid. Dr Goldsworthy claims that his book differs from his doctoral thesis. Yet the book extracts chosen by his publishers for several of their website pages match the relevant parts of the thesis word for word. Dr Goldsworthy says:
Sorry, this is so inaccurate. Most publisher's in fact consider these topics done to death. And the specialist publishers generally won't touch you for fear of upsetting the adoring hordes who think that the relevant subjects were just poor innocents who happened to commit a few crimes here and there. The proof is in the pudding I say. You can see from the attacks I have had on this forum alone how defensive people are of this topic. However, I stand by my conclusions and whilst I really do admire the Waffen-SS as a military force, without doubt the committed systemic genocide.
OK. You want some "constructive feedback"?
Mainstream publishers with military history book departments are usually looking for writers of the calibre of Trevor-Roper, Carrell, Beevor and Hastings, to name a few. They tend to prefer balanced historical reportage. A doctoral thesis, although it has a certain merit in its own right, really falls more into the category of editorialising than reportage. Gitta Sereny was able to write about "evil" - the "banality of evil" - because she invested the time and effort in spending time with men like Franz Stangl and because she brought something new to the bookshelves at the time.
You have to see this from the viewpoint of the average editor at a publishing house, who doesn't have enough hours in the day to read all the manuscripts thrown at him. Put another way, you have to understand the rules of the arena and to pitch yourself accordingly. When you send in a manuscript about the Waffen-SS and war crimes or "evil", the editor's eyes are glazing over before he gets to the end of your covering note. Yes, it's all been done before and, what is more, by people who can actually write. Apart from anything else, Terry, someone whose business is the English language is going to take one look at, for instance, your misuse of apostrophes and hurl your manuscript or your CD-ROM towards the bin just for that alone. I'm not saying this to be cruel. I'm just trying to tell another publishing virgin the facts of life.
There is nothing new in your thesis. Telling us that the Waffen-SS was an evil organisation is a non-revelation. Well, no, let me be more precise: it tells us, in fact, that your knowledge of the subject is not sufficiently profound to justify buying your book. Vanity publishers aside, publishers in general will reject a proposal if they suspect that the author doesn't know enough about his or her subject. This is for various reasons, not least of which is a desire to avoid embarrassment and perhaps even legal problems should the book be exposed as a duffer. They are in it to make money, after all. Telling us that ordinary men commit terrible crimes if ordered to do so is not a revelation either.
Coming back to the thorny question of establishing your credentials with publishers and editors, let's look at this statement:
...and whilst I really do admire the Waffen-SS as a military force, without doubt the committed systemic genocide.
This smacks of the kind of simplistic, sweepingly general approach to the subject that would discourage any serious publisher or editor. Were you to say, on the other hand, that
whilst the fighting spirit of some Waffen-SS units is admirable, there is no doubt that various Waffen-SS units were deeply involved in implementing genocidal policies, followed by, perhaps,
one of the aims of my book is to remind people that perfectly ordinary, decent men can be persuaded to commit the most terrible crimes on behalf of a regime, you might get a better hearing.
There is some truth in what you say about specialist publishers. Some of them are committed revisionists, apologists, deniers and extremists. The ones who fall into that category are well-known and quite readily identifiable. However, there are also some very serious-minded specialist publishers whose presence fills the gap between commercially-focused mainstream publishers and the lunatic fringe. However, these publishers and their editors tend to be quite well-versed in the topics covered by their lists and they have no shortage of good, professional writers to provide them with material. As you seem to have discovered for yourself, you are not really the kind of author in whom they would be inclined to invest.
This is not because of any "fear of upsetting the adoring hordes who think that the relevant subjects were just poor innocents who happened to commit a few crimes here and there." Just that statement alone indicates your inability to face up to the demonstrable fact that you simply do not know enough about the subject in question to be elevated to the level of some of the writers and historians you yourself quote and cite. The shortcomings of your prose style could be overlooked if, to put it bluntly, you knew what you were talking about and you were bringing some kind of fresh perspective to things.
You can scream and stamp your foot at me all you like, Terry, and you can tell me that I don't know what I am talking about, but you are merely sidestepping my counterpoints. There is nothing wrong with the basic premise of your thesis, that it is usually very ordinary men who commit the worst crimes against humanity as opposed [my qualification] the drooling comic book monsters of Hollywood lore. It's not an original opinion. But why go the lazy route and fall back on the Nazis when you could, for instance, focused more on the Balkans in the 1990s, where white people once again demonstrated that they are capable of bestial savagery? The Australian Army was, and is, in the Balkans so you could have interviewed veterans. You could also have interviewed Yugoslav veterans: there are quite a few in Oz, some of whom are in criminal gangs, which is quite relevant to your job, isn't it? And then there is also the unpleasant situation involving Howard's government and refugees.
If you're so concerned by white collar crime, you could have written a thesis on the Alan Bond affair. White collar crime at that level involves the kind of sociopathic detachment displayed by people like Eichmann. These white collar criminals cause untold misery for people, misery that lasts a long time. At least the victims of genocidal maniacs are not condemned to long-lasting misery. It is usually over for them quite quickly. But then, as I said, Bond University might have balked at such a thesis. But you might at least have been able to sell it for development as an airport paperback to a mainstream publisher. People may be suffering from "compassion fatigue" when it comes to the Holocaust and other appalling crimes but they love reading about the dodgy businessmen who lead us all a merry dance.
Anyway, if I give you any more advice, I will have to start invoicing you. Good luck, Dr Goldsworthy. But do try to develop a thicker skin if you are going to hold yourself up to the slings and arrows of critical attention.
PK