Aly, Götz 1947-

PERSONAL:

Born May 3, 1947, in Heidelberg, Germany; son of Ernst and Ottilie Aly; married Monika Lehmann, July 10, 1970; children: four. Education: Free University, Berlin, diploma, 1971, Ph.D, 1978, habilitation, 1994.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Berlin, Germany. Office—Otto-Suhr Institute, Berlin Free University, Ihnestrasse 21, D-14195, Berlin, Germany.

CAREER:

Writer, historian, political scientist, editor. Die Tageszeitung, Berlin, Germany, editor, 1980-82, 1991-93; Society for the Investigation of National Socialistic Politics, cofounder, 1983; Institute for Social Research, Hamburg, Germany, project leader, 1984-87, publisher, editor of book series, 1991-95; Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute, Free University Berlin, scientific collaborator, 1994-96; Berliner Zetung, Berlin, editor, 1997.

WRITINGS:

(With Karl Heinz Roth) Die Restlose Erfassung: Volkszählen, Identifizieren, Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus, Rotbuch Verlag (Berlin, Germany), 1984, translation by Edwin Black published as The Nazi Census: Identification and Control in the Third Reich, Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2004.

(With others) Technik im Griff? Der Zwiespältige Charakter des Technischen Wandels, VSA-Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1985.

Aktion T4, 1939-1945: Die "Euthanasie"-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstrasse 4, Hentrich (Berlin, Germany), 1987.

(With others) Biedermann und Schreibtischtäter: Materialien zur Deutschen Täter-Biographie, Rotbuch Verlag (Berlin, Germany), 1987.

(With others) Sozialpolitik und Judenvernichtung: Gibt es eine Ökonomie der Endlösung?, Rotbuch (Berlin, Germany), 1987.

(With others) Volkszählung—verzählt: Eine Kritische Bilanz, Zweitausendeins (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1988.

Totgeschwiegen 1933-1945: Die Geschichte der Karl-Bonhoeffer-Nervenklinik, Hentrich (Berlin, Germany), 1988.

(Editor, with Christian Pross) Der Wert des Menschen: Medizin in Deutschland 1918-1945, Edition Hentrich (Berlin, Germany), 1989, published as The Value of the Human Being: Medicine in Germany, 1918-1945 (catalogue of exhibition), Arztekammer Berlin (Berlin, Germany), 1991.

(With Susanne Heim) Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die Deutschen Pläne für eine neue Europäische Ordnung, Hoffmann und Campe (Hamburg, Germany), 1991, published as Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2003.

(Editor, with Susanne Heim) Bevölkerungsstruktur und Massenmord: neue Dokumente zur Deutschen Politik der Jahre 1938-1945, Rotbuch (Berlin, Germany), 1991.

(With others) Menschenverachtung und Opportunismus: zur Medizin im Dritten Reich, Attempto (Tübingen, Germany), 1992.

(With Susanne Heim) Das Zentrale Staatsarchiv in Moskau ("Sonderarchiv"): Rekonstruktion und Bestandsverzeichnis Verschollen Geglaubten Schriftguts aus der NS-Zeit, Hans-Böckler-Stiftung (Düsseldorf, Germany), 1993.

(With Peter Chroust and Christian Pross) Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene, translated by Belinda Cooper, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1994.

Endlösung: Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den Europäischen Juden, S. Fischer (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1995, translation by Belinda Cooper and Allison Brown published as "Final Solution": Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews, Arnold (New York, NY), 1999.

Macht-Geist-Wahn: Kontinuitäten Deutschen Denkens, Argon (Berlin, Germany), 1997.

(With others) Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik, 1939-1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, Fisher (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1998.

(With Christian Gerlach) Das Letzte Kapitel: Realpolitik, Ideologie und der Mord an den Ungarischen Juden 1944-1945, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (Stuttgart, Germany), 2002.

Rasse und Klasse: Nachforschungen zum Deutschen Wesen, S. Fischer (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 2003.

Im Tunnel: Das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel 1931-1943, Fischer Taschenbuch (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 2004, translation by Ann Millin published as The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931-1943, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2007.

Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und Nationaler Sozialismus, S. Fischer (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 2005, 2nd edition published as Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und Nationaler Sozialismus; Mit einem Nachwort: Antwort auf die Kritik, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag (Frankfurt am Main), 2006, translation by Jefferson Chase published as Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, Metropolitan (New York, NY), 2007.

(With others) Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Wendepunkt der Deutschen Geschichte, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (Munich, Germany), 2005.

(Editor) Volkes Stimme: Skepsis und Führervertrauen im Nationalsozialismus, S. Fischer (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 2006.

(With Michael Sontheimer) Fromms: Wie der Jüdische Kondomfabrikant Julius F. unter die Deutschen Räuber Fiel, S. Fischer (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Götz Aly is a German historian and political scientist who has written widely on Germany's Third Reich and the holocaust. Several of his works have been translated into English, including the 1994 Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene, "Final Solution": Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews, from 1999, Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction, from 2003, and Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, published in 2007.

Writing with Susanne Heim in the 1991 Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und Die Deutschen Pläne für eine neue Europäische Ordnung, Aly challenged conventional wisdom regarding the origins of the holocaust, placing it within the context of a much larger Nazi policy to reshape the ethnic face of Europe, placing Germany at the heart of the European economy. The English translation of that work, Architects of Annihilation, appeared a dozen years later. According to Hilary Earl, writing in the Canadian Journal of History, "Aly and Heim's argument challenged more traditional interpretations of the origins of the Nazi murder of the Jews, in that it was one of the first studies to draw attention away from Nazi elites and their irrational hatred and focus it also on the role of technocrats."

Aly carries that argument and investigation further in "Final Solution," which examines "the relationship between Nazi resettlement policies and the extermination of European Jews," according to Historian reviewer Johnpeter Horst Grill. The same reviewer further observed, "The author contends that scholars have failed to examine the connection between the Holocaust and the resettlement of ethnic Germans." Doris L. Bergen, writing in Shofar, called the same work "one of the most significant works on the Holocaust published in the past decade." For W.D. Rubinstein, writing in the English Historical Review, Aly's book was "the most thorough and painstaking account of this process [of resettlement and genocide], making use of newly released sources from eastern Europe."

Cleansing the Fatherland is a study of euthanasia in Nazi Germany, contending that such a policy was an open secret in Germany at the time. Aly also argues that the doctors tried at Nuremberg for such crimes were only a small part of a much larger conspiracy of doctors, bureaucrats, and scientists in Germany during the Nazi era who participated in a policy of euthanasia.

In Hitler's Beneficiaries, Aly uncovers more of the hidden history of World War II and the Nazi era, showing that the theft of Jewish property at home and in occupied territories played an essential part in elevating the standard of living in Germany. As a Publishers Weekly reviewer observed, Aly makes the assertion that the holocaust and the policies that led to it resulted not only from endemic anti-Semitism; in fact, "the vast majority" of ordinary Germans supported the regime's "policies of plunder" because they were direct beneficiaries of the crimes. They were acting in their own self-interest. Jay Freeman, writing in Booklist, found the work "a useful contribution to an ongoing historical debate," but also thought there were "flaws in [Aly's] conclusions." For a Kirkus Reviews critic the book "presents one intriguing piece of a much larger puzzle." Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Dagmar Herzog also thought Aly's argument was focused too narrowly. "The Holocaust was unquestionably accompanied by outrageous greed," Herzog wrote. "Yet this fact cannot make us conclude that greed alone drove the Holocaust." However, Herzog also commented, "That [Aly's argument] is not wholly successful does not diminish its intellectual significance as a fresh model for grasping how the Nazis gained such broad support from so many Germans for as long as they did."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2006, Jay Freeman, review of Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, p. 7.

Canadian Journal of History, December 1995, Robert Gellately, review of Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene, p. 522; August 2004, Hilary Earl, review of Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction, p. 377.

English Historical Review, February 2000, W.D. Rubinstein, review of "Final Solution": Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews, p. 257.

Historian, winter, 2001, Johnpeter Horst Grill, review of "Final Solution," p. 441.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2006, review of Hitler's Beneficiaries, p. 1107.

New York Times Book Review, February 18, 2007, Dagmar Herzog, "Handouts from Hitler," p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, August 15, 1994, review of Cleansing the Fatherland, p. 92; November 6, 2006, review of Hitler's Beneficiaries, p. 49.

Reference & Research Book News, May 2007, review of Hitler's Beneficiaries.

Shofar, summer, 2001, Doris L. Bergen, review of "Final Solution," p. 147.