At a panel discussion of Hitler's Willing Executioners at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the moderator, Lawrence Langer, joked about "strangling" Goldhagen and later summed up various panelists' denunciations by saying that Goldhagen had received a "life sentence" rather than a "death sentence."

At times, Hitler Studies seem to be in the grip of a Stockholm Syndrome, with Hitler holding historians hostage from beyond the grave. The chief exhibit is David Irving, who once argued in his book Hitler's War that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust and who now denies the Holocaust really took place. "Hitler was negligent," he says. He justifies his lectures before crowds of neo-Nazis by saying, "As soon as I get back onto regular debating platforms I shall shake off this ill-fitting shoe which I'm standing on at present." This is Hitleresque right down to the cracked grammar.