Götz Aly

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Götz Aly (born May 3, 1947 in Heidelberg, Germany) is a German journalist, historian and social scientist.

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[edit] Biography

After attending the German School of Journalists, Aly studied history and political science in Berlin. As a journalist, he worked for the taz, the Berliner Zeitung and the FAZ.

Presently, from 2004 to 2005, he is a visiting professor for interdisciplinary Holocaust research at the Fritz Bauer Institut in Frankfurt am Main.

[edit] 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 characterises Nazi Germany as a "convenience dictatorship" that until late in the war retained broad public support, in particular by making possible an unprecedented social mobility for the lower classes, by introducing redistributive fiscal policies and by greatly extending the German welfare state. Aly also recounts how all this was paid for in large part by the plunder of the conquered countries. He discounts the violent Anti-Semitism of Hitler and the National Socialists and depicts the Holocaust as purely materially motivated.

Aly's views have not remained without criticism from the mainstream of historical research.[citation needed] In the German print media, particularly Adam Tooze rejected Aly's argumentation in detailed analyses. He received awards for his work such as the Marion-Samuel-Preis and the Heinrich-Mann-Preis both in 2003.

[edit] Publications

For an extensive list of Aly's publications and related web links in German, please refer to the 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 978-0805079265

[edit] External links