- Götz Aly
Götz Aly (born
May 3 1947 inHeidelberg ,Germany ) is a Germanjournalist ,historian andsocial scientist .Biography
After attending the
German School of Journalists , Aly studiedhistory andpolitical science inBerlin . As a journalist, he worked for the taz, theBerliner Zeitung and the FAZ.Presently, from 2004 to 2005, he is a visiting
professor for interdisciplinaryHolocaust research at theFritz Bauer Institut inFrankfurt am Main .Work
Aly researches the history of the
Holocaust and the participation of social elites in Nazi destruction policies. In 2005 he gained public attention in Germany for the popular success of his book "Hitlers Volksstaat " ("Hitler's People's State"). In it, Aly characterisesNazi Germany as a "convenience dictatorship" that until late in the war retained broad public support, in particular by making possible an unprecedentedsocial mobility for the lower classes, by introducing redistributive fiscal policies and by greatly extending the Germanwelfare state . Aly also recounts how all this was paid for in large part by confiscation of Jewish property in Germany and later the plunder of the conquered countries, and espcially their Jewish populations. He maintains that the reason for the massive support the Nazi regime enjoyed among the German population was not that much a consequence of their violent anti-Semitism as their enjoying the fruits of the loot perpetrated by the Nazis in the occupied territories. He also shows how the Wehrmacht was directly involved in this mass plunder of the conquered populations and how in many cases it was the initiator of policies which led to confiscation and eventual extermination.His other point is that the conservative, non-Nazi financial state bureaucracy and the leading banks were crucial in formulating this policy of mass plunder and murder.Aly's views have not remained without criticism from the mainstream of historical research.Fact|date=February 2007 In the German print media, particularlyAdam Tooze rejected Aly's argumentation in detailed analyses. He received awards for his work such as theMarion-Samuel-Preis and theHeinrich-Mann-Preis both in 2003.Publications
"For an extensive list of Aly's publications and related web links in German, please refer to the [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tz_Aly German version of this article] ".
In English:
*co-written with Peter Chroust & Christian Pross: "Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi medicine and racial hygiene", Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
*"'Final Solution' Nazi population policy and the murder of the European Jews", London: Arnold; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
*co-written with Susanne Heim: "Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the logic of destruction", Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002
*co-written with Karl Heinz Roth: "The Nazi Census: identification and control in the Third Reich" Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.
*translated by Jefferson Chase from the German "Hitlers Volksstaat" (see above): "Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State", New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005.
*"Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State" Metropolitan Books. January, 2007 ISBN 0805079262, ISBN 978-0805079265External links
* [http://service.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html "How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer"] , book review by Jody K. Biehl in "Spiegel Online" of March 22, 2005
* [http://www.signandsight.com/features/800.html/ "The logic of horror"] , an article by Götz Aly on the German "Historikerstreit" or historians' dispute
* [http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staff/further_details/tooze-aly.pdf Adam Tooze's critical analysis of "Hitlers Volksstaat"]
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