Götz Aly

From an eminent and provocative historian, a wrenching parable of the ravages of colonialism in the South Pacific. Countless museums in the West have been criticized for their looted treasures, but few as trenchantly as the Humboldt Forum, which displays predominantly non-Western art and artifacts in a modern reconstruction of the former Royal Palace in Berlin. The Forum’s premier attraction, an ornately decorated fifteen-meter boat from the island of Luf in modern-day Papua New Guinea, was acquired under the most dubious circumstances by Max Thiel, a German trader, in 1902 after two decades of bloody German colonial expeditions in Oceania. Götz Aly tells the story of the German pillaging of Luf and surrounding islands, a campaign of violence in which Berlin ethnologists were brazenly complicit. In the aftermath, the majestic vessel was sold to the Ethnological Museum in the imperial capital, where it has remained ever since. In Aly’s vivid telling, the looted boat is a portal to a forgotten chapter in the history of empire—the conquest of the Bismarck Archipelago. One of these islands was even called Aly, in honor of the author’s great-granduncle, Gottlob Johannes Aly, a naval chaplain who served aboard ships that helped subjugate the South Sea islands Germany colonized. While acknowledging the complexity of cultural ownership debates, Götz Aly boldly questions the legitimacy of allowing so many treasures from faraway, conquered places to remain located in the West. Through the story of one emblematic object, The Magnificent Boat artfully illuminates a sphere of colonial brutality of which too few are aware today.

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

Den tyske historiken Götz Alys bok "Europa mot judarna" handlar om Förintelsens europeiska förhistorier och de förfärande konsekvenser vardaglig pragmatism, gruppegoism och självrättfärdighet kan få. Det var, menar Aly, decennier av tilltagande antisemitism runt om i Europa som gjorde det möjligt för de nazistiska mördarna att finna stöd för sitt projekt – ”den slutliga lösningen” – i nästan alla europiska länder. Denna antisemitism var inte någon medeltida kvarleva från kontinentens efterblivna avkrokar utan en modern företeelse som från 1880-talet och framåt underblåstes av en rad sociala omvälvningar och politiska omständigheter, inte minst nationalistiska politikers vilja att isolera och stigmatisera misshagliga grupper. Men antisemitismen tog sig olika uttryck i olika länder och grep olika djupt, vilket Aly visar med exempel från hela Europa – från Ryssland i norr till Grekland i söder. "Europa mot judarna" är också en bok av starka berättelser. Skildringen av de vedermödor som drabbade de judar som återvände – eller i varje fall försökte återvända – till Österrike efter krigsslutet kan föra tankarna till en Franz Kafka eller en Thomas Bernhard. Men boken reser därtill en rad principiellt viktiga frågor om historiska orsakssamband och antisemitismen som ett modernt fenomen. Frågor med en hög grad av relevans i en ny främlingsfientlig och gruppegoistisk tid. Götz Aly, född 1947, utbildade sig till journalist och studerade sedan historia och statsvetenskap i Berlin. Aly har publicerat en rad uppmärksammade böcker om den nationalsocialistiska regimen och Förintelsen för vilka han belönats med gästprofessurer och en rad priser. Daidalos har tidigare publicerat hans "Hitlers folkstat. Rån, raskrig och nationell socialism" (2009).

How did Hitler win the allegiance of ordinary Germans? The answer is as shocking as it is persuasive. By engaging in a campaign of theft on an almost unimaginable scale-and by channelling the proceeds into generous social programmes-Hitler bought his people's consent. Drawing on secret files and financial records, Götz Aly shows that while Jews and people of occupied lands suffered crippling taxation, mass looting, enslavement, and destruction, most Germans enjoyed a much-improved standard of living. Buoyed by the millions of packages soldiers sent from the front, Germans also benefited from the systematic plunder of conquered territory and the transfer of Jewish possessions into their homes and pockets. Any qualms were swept away by waves of government handouts, tax breaks, and preferential legislation. Gripping and significant, Hitler's Beneficiaries makes a radically new contribution to our understanding of Nazi aggression, the Holocaust, and the complicity of a people.

Countless people have grappled with these questions, but few have come up with answers as original and perceptive as those of 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 did not originate with racist ideology or religious animosity, as is often supposed. Instead, through striking statistics and economic analysis, he demonstrates that it was rooted in a more basic emotion: material envy. Resenting the success of the urban, well-educated Jewish minority in the rapidly modernizing world, Germans embraced compensatory theories of Jewish racial inferiority. And the growing resentment, pervading society, provided fertile ground for Hitler and his genocidal politics.

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.

Götz Aly gehörte 1968 zu den aktiven Kämpfern in Berlin. Er tritt nun in der Rolle als Zeitzeuge auf und als Historiker. Er liefert daher einen Rückblick der besonderen Artt. Seine Thesen lautet: Die 68er waren ihren Vätern näher, als ihnen heute lieb ist. Aly sieht in der 68er-"Bewegung" einen Spätausläufer des Totalitarismus mit einer gewissen Nähe zum Nationalsozialismus. Der Utopismus, die Revolutionsseligkeit, die individuelle Veränderungs- und Aufstiegswut, die Lust an der tabula rasa - all dies fand seine Anknüpfungspunkte in den Aktivitäten und in der "Weltanschauung" der "Generation Kübelwagen". So gerät Alys Rückblick zu einem irritierten - weit entfernt zu Renegatentum und nachträglicher Beschönigung. Wegen seines besonderen Ansatzes wird das Buch großes Aufsehen erregen, ja Bestürzung verursachen - besonders bei den damaligen Mitstreitern, von denen sich viele 2008 mit ihren Erinnerungen zu Wort melden werden.

A generous feat of biographical sleuthing by an acclaimed historian rescues one child victim of the Holocaust from oblivionWhen 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 Gotz 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."

Addressing the issue of how Hitler won the allegiance of ordinary Germans, a historian argues that, through a campaign of organized theft--crippling taxes on citizens of occupied nations, mass looting, enslavement, and systematic plunder--the proceeds of which were channeled into generous social programs at home, the Nazis bought peoples consent. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

Während des Zweiten Weltkrieges verwandelte die Regierung Hitler den Staat in eine Raubmaschine ohne Beispiel. Die große Mehrheit der Deutschen stellte sie mit einer Mischung aus sozialpolitischen Wohltaten, guter Versorgung und kleinen Steuergeschenken ruhig. Die Kosten dieser Gefälligkeitsdiktatur hatten Millionen von Europäern zu tragen, deren Besitz und Existenzgrundlagen zum Vorteil der deutschen Volks- und Raubgemeinschaft enteignet wurden. Der Autor zeigt, wie die Erlöse aus dem Verkauf von jüdischen Vermögen überall in Europa in die deutsche Kriegskasse flossen und damit auch in die Taschen der Soldaten. Wer von den vielen Vorteilen für Millionen einfacher Deutscher nicht reden will, der sollte vom Nationalsozialismus und vom Holocaust schweigen.