Executioners was published in March 1996, numerous German reviews ensued. In April 1996, before the book had appeared in German translation, Der Spiegel ran a cover story on Hitler's Willing Executioners under the title "Ein Volk von Dämonen?". The phrase ein Volk von Dämonen (translated "a people/nation of demons") was often used by the Nazis to describe Jews, and the title of the cover story was meant by Rudolf Augstein and the editors of Der Spiegel to suggest a moral equivalence between the Nazi view of Jews and Goldhagen's view of Germans. The most widely read German weekly newspaper Die Zeit published an eight-part series of opinions of the book before its German publication in August 1996. Goldhagen arrived in Germany in September 1996 for a book tour, and appeared on several television talk shows, as well as a number of sold-out panel discussions. "The reception in the country of Goldhagen's book ... whose German translation appeared in August 1996, was unparalleled". The book had a "mostly scathing" reception among historians,Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship : Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation London: Arnold 2000, pp. 254–56."The Goldhagen Controversy: Agonising Problems, Scholarly Failure, and the Political Dimension," in German History, vol. 15, 1997, pp. 80–91. who were vocal in condemning it as ahistorical. "[W]hy does this book, so lacking in factual content and logical rigour, demand so much attention?" Raul Hilberg wondered. The pre-eminent Jewish-American historian Fritz Stern denounced the book as unscholarly and full of racist Germanophobia. Hilberg summarised the debates: "by the end of 1996, it was clear that in sharp distinction from lay readers, much of the academic world had wiped Goldhagen off the map." Steve Crawshaw writes that although the German readership was keenly aware of certain "professional failings" in Goldhagen's book, Crawshaw further asserts that the book's critics were partly historians "weary" of Goldhagen's "methodological flaws", but also those who were reluctant to concede that ordinary Germans bore responsibility for the crimes of Nazi Germany. In Germany, the leftist general public's insistence on further penitence prevailed, according to most observers. American historian Gordon A. Craig and Der Spiegel have argued that whatever the book's flaws, it should be welcomed because it will reinvigorate the debate on the Holocaust and stimulate new scholarship. Journalism In May 1996, Goldhagen was interviewed about Hitler's Willing Executioners by the American journalist Ron Rosenbaum. When Rosenbaum asked Goldhagen about scholarly literature