Götz Aly

Götz Aly , born the May 3rd 1947 with Heidelberg (in Germany), is a journalist, writer and German historian.

Biography

After studies at the German School of journalism, Götz Aly studies the Histoire and political sciences with Berlin. It takes part in the student movement of 68 in Germany

He works as journalist with the Taz, the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

In 2004-2006, he is professor invited for the interdisciplinary studies on the Holocauste with the Institut Fritz Bauer of Francfort-sur-le-Main.

Work

The searchs for Götz Aly are turned towards the Holocauste and the participation of the elites in the policy of extermination Nazi. It starts to be known general public as from 2002 with its best-seller, Hitlers Volkstaat (translatable by the State popular of Hitler , but published in 2005 by Flammarion under another title). It defines in it the Nazi Germany like a dictatorship of tacit agreement (between the German people and its dictator) until the end of the Second world war. This popular support is explained by a policy of tax redistribution, a Social mobility without precedent for the poor classes of the company, and the increase in German Welfare state. It also shows how this policy was largely financed by the plundering of the conquered countries and the spoliation of the Jews and the minorities. War is unrolled without the tax pressure not increasing on the people, which continued to profit from the welfare benefits acquired in the Thirties, and even saw his standard of living progressing.

The publications of Götz Aly caused strong reactions in the German academic world, but were also rewarded. Its thesis (contrary to that of Daniel Goldhagen, founded on a major ideological complicity between Nazis and German population) is innovative, and presents a multi-field approach of this subject: the possibility of Shoah made by people having reached very an high degree of civilization. It rejects remote causalities. According to him, “ the party national-Socialist of the German workers (NSDAP) owes the conquest and the consolidation of its capacity only with one whole of circumstances, and the most important factors are apprus after 1914, nonfront. ”

Publications

Götz Aly & Susanne Heim, architects of the extermination: Auschwitz and the logic of the destruction , Calmann-Levy, 2005.

Götz Aly, How Hitler bought the Germans: IIIe Reich, a dictatorship with the service of the people , Flammarion, Paris, 2005,380 pages, ISBN 2-08-210517-2.

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