Götz Aly

Making extensive use of archives, Aly provides a detailed reconstruction of the Final Solution. He illustrated the lunacy of Nazi race policy and the variety of agencies that went into the gradual shaping of a policy of all-out genocide.

Study of the ideological and social aspects of census taking under the National Socialist regime in Germany from 1933 to World War II.

"A provocative and insightful analysis that sheds new light on one of the most puzzling and historically unsettling conundrums Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Countless historians have grappled with these questions, but few have come up with answers as original and insightful as those of maverick German historian Gotz Aly. Tracing the prehistory of the Holocaust from the 1800s to the Nazis' assumption of power in 1933, Aly shows that German anti-Semitism was--to a previously overlooked extent--driven in large part by material concerns, not racist ideology or religious animosity. As Germany made its way through the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, the difficulties of the lethargic, economically backward German majority stood in marked contrast to the social and economic success of the agile Jewish minority. This success aroused envy and fear among the Gentile population, creating fertile ground for murderous Nazi politics.Surprisingly, and controversially, Aly shows that the roots of the Holocaust are deeply intertwined with German efforts to create greater social equality. Redistributing wealth from the well-off to the less fortunate was in many respects a laudable goal, particularly at a time when many lived in poverty. But as the notion of material equality took over the public imagination, the skilled, well-educated Jewish population came to be seen as having more than its fair share. Aly's account of this fatal social dynamic opens up a new vantage point on the greatest crime in history and is sure to prompt heated debate for years to come"--

Die »Euthanasie-Morde« und wie wir damit umgehen. 200.000 Deutsche wurden zwischen 1939 und 1945 ermordet, weil sie psychisch krank waren, als aufsässig, erblich belastet oder einfach verrückt galten. Nicht wenige Angehörige nahmen den Mord an ihren behinderten Kindern, Geschwistern, Vätern und Müttern als Befreiung von einer Last stillschweigend hin. Die meisten Familien schämen sich bis heute, die Namen der Opfer zu nennen. Beklemmend aktuell lesen sich die Rechtfertigungen der vielen Beteiligten: Erlösung, Gnadentod, Lebensunterbrechung, Sterbehilfe oder Euthanasie. Götz Aly bringt mit seinem neuen Buch Licht in ein düsteres Kapitel der deutschen Gesellschaftsgeschichte.

"From the award-winning historian of the Holocaust, the first book to move beyond Germany's singular crime to the collaboration of Europe as a whole. The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans, but it would not have been possible without the assistance of thousands of helpers in other countries: state officials, police, and civilians who eagerly supported the genocide. If we are to fully understand how and why the Holocaust happened, Götz Aly argues in this groundbreaking study, we must examine its prehistory throughout Europe. We must look at countries as far-flung as Romania and France, Russia and Greece, where, decades before the Nazis came to power, a deadly combination of envy, competition, nationalism, and social upheaval fueled a surge of anti-Semitism, creating the preconditions for the deportations and murder to come. In the late nineteenth century, new opportunities for education and social advancement were opening up, and Jewish minorities took particular advantage of them, leading to widespread resentment. At the same time, newly created nation-states, especially in the east, were striving for ethnic homogeneity and national renewal, goals which they saw as inextricably linked. Drawing upon a wide range of previously unpublished sources, Aly traces the sequence of events that made persecution of Jews an increasingly acceptable European practice. Ultimately, the German architects of genocide found support for the Final Solution in nearly all the countries they occupied or were allied with. Without diminishing the guilt of German perpetrators, Aly documents the involvement of all of Europe in the destruction of the Jews, once again deepening our understanding of this most tormented history"--

In this groundbreaking book, distinguished historian Gotz Aly addresses one of modern history's greatest conundrums: How did Adolf Hitler win the allegiance of ordinary Germans for his program of mass murder and military conquest? The answer Aly provides is as shocking as it is persuasive. By engaging in a campaign of theft on an almost unimaginable scale, and by channeling the proceeds into a succession of generous social programs, Hitler literally bought the consent of the German people. Drawing on secret Nazi files and unexamined financial records, Aly shows that while Jews and citizens of occupied lands suffered crippling taxation, mass looting, enslavement, and destruction, most Germans enjoyed a marked improvement in their standard of living. He documents the many millions of packages soldiers sent from the front stuffed with valuables and provisions; the systematic plunder of conquered territory for raw materials, industrial goods, and food supplies; and the disappearance of Jewish property and fortunes into German homes and pockets across the Reich. Whatever moral qualms Germans may have felt toward Nazi policies were swept away by waves of government handouts, tax breaks, and preferential legislation Aly depicts a Nazi leadership addicted to the spoils of invasion, annexation and dispossession. He shows that the pace and timing of Nazi conquests-from the Anschluss of Austria to the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland-were dictated by the rapidly escalating financial needs of the German war machine. Time and again, warnings of an imminent financial collapse spurred the Third Reich to ever more desperate and brazen acts of thievery and destruction. A gripping work of scrupulous erudition and great historical importance, Hitleralʾs Beneficiaries explains the inexplicable, making a radically new contribution to our understanding of Nazi aggression, the Holocaust and the complicity of a people. From the book jacket Includes information on anti-Semitism, atonement payments, Banque de France Bank of Greece, Belgium, consumer goods, currency, debt and credit, Eastern Europe (Front), forced labor, France, Joseph Goebbels, gold, Hermann Goring, government bonds, Greece, Adolf Hitler, Holland (Netherlands), responsibility for Holocaust, Hungary, inflation, Italy, Jewish assets, Jews, deportation of Jews, National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party), occupation costs, Poland, Reich Credit Banks (Rreichkreditkasse), Reichsbank, Romania, Schwerin von Krosigk (Count Lutz), social welfare system, Soldiers, Soviet Union, taxes and tax policy, Vichy France, Wehrmacht, working classes, World War I, World War II, etc

If you wanted to buy a top-quality condom in prewar Germany, you bought Fromms Act, the first brand name condom and still a leading brand in the German market. The man behind this "pure German quality product" was Julius Fromm, a Jewish entrepreneur who had immigrated from Russia as a child. Fromm was in the right place at the right time: he patented Fromms Act in 1916, when the combination of changing sexual mores, awareness of sexual health, and the lack of reliable prophylactics meant a market primed for his product. In 1922 he began mass production and opened international branches. Sixteen years later, after building the brand into a best seller and the company into a model business, he was forced to sell Fromms Act for a fraction of its worth to a German baroness. In 1939 he emigrated to London.Aly and Sontheimer trace Fromm's rise and fall, illuminating the ways Jewish businesses like his were Aryanized under the Nazis. Through the biography of this businessman and the story of his unusual and fabulously successful company, we learn the fascinating history of the first branded condoms in Germany and the sexual culture that allowed them to thrive, the heretofore undocumented machinations by which the Nazis robbed German-Jewish families of their businesses, and the tragedy of a man whose great love for the adopted country that first allowed him to succeed was betrayed by its government and his fellow citizens. This captivating account offers a wealth of detail and a fresh array of photographic documentation, and adds a striking new dimension to our understanding of this dark period in German history.From the Hardcover edition.

Die Erforschung der nationalsozialisischen Vernichtungspolitik ist in Bewegung geraten. Nicht so sehr Theorien und Interpretationen stehen dabei im Vordergrund als vielmehr Untersuchungen auf dichter empirischer Grundlage, die die bisherigen Kenntnisse über den „Holocaust“ erheblich erweitern und in vielen Punkten revidieren. Dies gilt insbesondere für das konkrete Vorgehen der Deutschen in den einzelnen Regionen Mittel- und Osteuropas. In diesem Band werden wichtige Ergebnisse solcher Forschungen vorgestellt. Die Autoren befassen sich mit der Entwicklung in Polen, der Sowjetunion, in Serbien und in Frankreich. Sie untersuchen vornehmlich die verschiedenen Antriebskräfte des deutschen Vorgehens in den einzelnen Besatzungsregionen. Dabei erweist sich die seit langem mit großem Aufwand geführte Diskussion, ob der Holocaust als „Vollzug einer Weltanschauung“ zu verstehen sei oder als Prozeß der allmählichen Radikalisierung, als nurmehr wenig hilfreich. Es ergibt sich vielmehr ein Gesamtbild, in welchem situative Elemente und allmähliche Radikalisierungsprozesse vielfältig mit sich verändernden politischen, wirtschaftlichen und militärischen Zielsetzungen und ideologischen Überzeugungen verknüpft sind. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik erweist sich dabei nicht als geheimes Geschehen, sondern als Teil der deutschen Eroberungs- und Besatzungspolitik in Europa. Die Beiträge sind mit einer Ausnahme aus einer aufsehenerregenden Vortragsreihe am Historischen Seminar der Universität Freiburg im Winterse mester 1996/97 hervorgegangen.

When the German Remembrance Foundation established a prize to commemorate the million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust, it was deliberately named after a victim about whom nothing was known except her age and the date of her deportation: Marion Samuel, an eleven-year-old girl killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Sixty years after her death, when Götz Aly received the award, he was moved to find out whatever he could about Marion's short life and restore this child to history. In what is as much a detective story as a historical reconstruction, Aly, praised for his "formidable research skills" (Christopher Browning), traces the Samuel family's agonizing decline from shop owners to forced laborers to deportees. Against all odds, Aly manages to recover expropriation records, family photographs, and even a trace of Marion's voice in the premonition she confided to a school friend: "People disappear," she said, "into the tunnel." A gripping account of a family caught in the tightening grip of persecution, Into the Tunnel is a powerful reminder that the millions of Nazi victims were also, each one, an individual life. (Source: [Macmillan](

A collection of 320 documents, including official directives and reports, protocols of meetings, speeches, newspaper articles, propaganda, and personal letters and diaries, from both Jewish and Nazi sources. The introduction (p. 13-50) traces the changing position of the Jews within German society and waves of antisemitism from the Enlightenment to the Weimar period, and describes Nazi anti-Jewish measures and Jewish and non-Jewish reactions to them until 1937. A collection of 329 documents, from both Jewish and Nazi sources, concerning Jews in Germany and Austria in 1938-39, including the "Anschluss", the "Kristallnacht" pogrom, and the draconian anti-Jewish measures following the pogrom. The introduction (p. 13-63) chronicles the discrimination against and persecution of the Jews in the context of Nazi policy in general and the Nazi bureaucracy. Presents, also, a brief history of the Jews of Austria and of Austrian antisemitism. A collection of 321 documents, from both Jewish and Nazi sources, dealing with the persecution of Jews in Poland between September 1939-July 1941. The introduction (p. 13-56) traces the history of the Jews in Poland before World War I, their situation during the Second Polish Republic, the events that led to the war, the German attack on Poland, Jewish deliberations regarding whether to stay or flee, the administration of the occupied territories, the explusion of the Jews, their identification and dispossession, Jewish Councils and Jewish self-help, forced labor, ghettoization, everyday life and reactions of the Jewish population, and non-Jewish reactions. A collection of 320 documents dealing with the persecution of Jews in Germany (p. 83-563) and in the Protectorate, Bohemia and Moravia (p. 565-745), between September 1939-September 1941, from Jewish, non-Jewish, and Nazi sources. The introduction (p. 13-64) traces the history of that persecution. The war served as an excuse for Nazi authorities to toughen measures against "internal enemies", first and foremost the Jews. Discusses the first deportations, restrictions against the Jews, forced labor, "Jewish houses", plans to settle the Jews in Madagascar, their reactions to the persecution, the Jews' increasingly desperate attempts to leave Germany, and the Nazi preparations and implementation of Operation Barbarossa. Argues that a turning point was reached in fall 1941, when German units began to massacre Jews in eastern Poland and the Wartheland. In the Reich and the Protectorate, preparations for the deportation of Jews were going on full speed.

A study of the numerous academics and technocrats whose ideas and patterns of thinking culminated in proposals for the state-directed mass extermination of part of the human race as an entirely necessary and logical component of a long-term programme of social modernisation.