Norman J. W. Goda

Norman Goda
Born (1961-04-25) 25 April 1961
OccupationsHistorian, author, editor
Children2
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Academic work
Era20th century
InstitutionsUniversity of Florida
Ohio University
Main interestsModern European history
History of international relations
Intelligence operations

Norman J. W. Goda (born April 25, 1961)[1] is an American historian specialised in the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He is a professor of history at the University of Florida, where he is the Norman and Irma Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies.[2]

Goda is the author of several books on the international policy of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. He also serves as a historical consultant for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group of the United States National Security Archive, tasked with reviewing the previously-classified intelligence documents of World War II and its aftermath.[3]

Career

Goda is the co-author of the book U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, which was published in 2005 by Cambridge University Press and based on materials that were declassified under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.

Reviewing the book in the journal History, the historian Steven Casey called the book "remarkable" and noted that book "sheds new light on three controversial aspects of the war and post-war period:" how much US intelligence organisations knew about the Holocaust, the crimes of individual Nazi perpetrators, and the "extent to which US intelligence knowingly collaborated with war criminals during the cold war." Casey noted:[4]

Breitman et al. have used these [declassified documents] to write a series of measured case studies, which, unsurprisingly, confirm that many post-war exculpatory accounts by leading Nazis were highly misleading. Indeed, whereas figures such as SD Intelligence Chief Walter Schellenberg sought to depict themselves as reluctant Nazis who had tried their best to save the lives of concentration camp victims or to bring the war to a swift conclusion, the new documents confirm that they were actually ruthless individuals who not only had plenty of blood on their hands but also remained wedded if not to the Nazi cause then at least to their Nazi comrades long after May 1945.

Political views

In the Gaza War, Goda has challenged the notion that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and said accusers deploy elements of a "libel" in that they use "antisemitic tropes." Some NGO's, he says, have accused of deliberately targeting children. [5][6] Historian Omer Bartov criticized Goda for allegedly saying that it is antisemitic to show photos of dead Palestinian children.[7]

Goda also argued, in 2025, that mass starvation was not a problem in Gaza, and that Israel's control of the crossings into Gaza was "legitimate".[5] In an interview with The New Yorker, Goda did not deny that some Gazans had died of malnutrition related illnesses, but argued that certain images had been "staged" for propaganda purposes. [8]


Bibliography

  • Goda, Norman J. W. (1998). Tomorrow the world: Hitler, Northwest Africa, and the path toward America. Texas A & M University military history series (1st ed.). College Station: Texas A & M University Press. ISBN 978-0-89096-807-9.
  • Goda, Norman J. W.; Breitman, Richard; Wolfe, Robert; Naftali, Timothy, eds. (2005), "U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE NAZIS", U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–2, ISBN 978-0-521-85268-5, retrieved 2025-11-12{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  • Goda, Norman J. W. (2007). Tales from Spandau: Nazi criminals and the Cold War. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86720-7.
  • Kreike, Emmanuel; Jordan, William Chester (2004). Corrupt histories. Studies in comparative history. Rochester (N.Y.): University of Rochester Press. ISBN 978-1-58046-173-3.
  • Goda, Norman J. W.; Bartov, Omer, eds. (2014). Jewish histories of the Holocaust: new transnational approaches. Making sense of history. New York ; Oxford: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78238-441-0.
  • Goda, Norman J. W. (2022). The Holocaust: Europe, the world, and the Jews, 1918-1945 (Second ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-32154-0.

References

  1. ^ "WorldCat". entities.oclc.org. Retrieved 8 January 2026.
  2. ^ Profile, University of Florida website. Accessed April 16, 2024.
  3. ^ Interagency Working Group (IWG)
  4. ^ Casey 2006.
  5. ^ a b Goda, Norman. "The Genocide Libel: How the World Has Charged Israel with Genocide". isca.indiana.edu. Retrieved September 25, 2025.
  6. ^ "Column | Leading genocide scholars see a genocide happening in Gaza". The Washington Post. 2025-07-30. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2025-08-22. Norman Goda and Jeffrey Herf, historians of the Holocaust and Europe, wrote...that the genocide charge against Israel smacked of antisemitism...
  7. ^ Bartov, Omer (2025-07-15). "Opinion | I'm a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It". The New York Times. Retrieved 2025-08-22.
  8. ^ Chotiner, Isaac (2025-08-20). "The Holocaust Historian Defending Israel Against Charges of Genocide". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2025-08-22.

Sources

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