 Goldhagen asserts that this mentality grew out of medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized.The book challenges several common ideas about the Holocaust that Goldhagen believes to be myths.These "myths" include the idea that most Germans did not know about the Holocaust; that only the SS, and not average members of the Wehrmacht, participated in murdering Jews; and that "genocidal" antisemitism was a uniquely Nazi ideology without historical antecedents.