Götz Aly - Hitlers Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State

A STUNNING ACCOUNT (DER SPIEGEL) OF THE ECONOMIC WORKINGS OF THE THIRD REICH THAT WILL FOREVER CHANGE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF WHY ORDINARY GERMANS SUPPORTED THE NAZI STATE

In this provocative and groundbreaking book, distinguished historian Gtz Aly addresses one of modern historys greatest conundrums: How did Adolf Hitler win the allegiance of ordinary Germans for his program of mass murder and military conquest? The answer Aly provides is as shocking as it is persuasive. By engaging in a campaign of theft on an almost unimaginable scale, and by channeling the proceeds into a succession of generous social programs, Hitler literally bought the consent of the German people.

Drawing on secret Nazi files and unexamined financial records, Aly shows that while Jews and citizens of occupied lands suffered crippling taxation, mass looting, enslavement, and destruction, most Germans enjoyed a marked improvement in their standard of living. He documents the many millions of packages soldiers sent from the front stuffed with valuables and provisions; the systematic plunder of conquered territory for raw materials, industrial goods, and food supplies; and the disappearance of Jewish property and fortunes into German homes and pockets across the Reich. Whatever moral qualms Germans may have felt toward Nazi policies were swept away by waves of government handouts, tax breaks, and preferential legislation.

Aly depicts a Nazi leadership addicted to the spoils of invasion, annexation, and dispossession. He shows that the pace and timing of Nazi conquestsfrom the Anschluss of Austria to the annexation of the Czech Sudetenlandwere dictated by the rapidly escalating financial needs of the German war machine. Time and again, warnings of an imminent financial collapse spurred the Third Reich to ever more desperate and brazen acts of thievery and destruction.

A gripping work of scrupulous erudition and great historical importance, Hitlers Beneficiaries explains the inexplicable, making a radically new contribution to our understanding of Nazi aggression, the Holocaust, and the complicity of a people.

Thoroughly researched and fluently written, this book offers a new, brilliant, gripping, and convincing dimension to the understanding of one of the most puzzling questions in the history of our times: Why did so many Germans, both Nazis and ordinary people support the persecution of the Jews? Weve heard much about ideology, sociology, and psychology: its time to pay attention to profit.

Tom Segev, author of The Seventh Million.-Israel Confronts the Holocaust

HITLERS
BENEFICIARIES

PLUNDER, RACIAL WAR, AND
THE NAZI WELFARE STATE

GTZ ALY

Translated by Jefferson Chase

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Copyright 2005 by S. Fischer Verlage GmbH, Frankfurt am Main

Translation copyright 2006 by Metropolitan Books

All rights reserved.

Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Originally published in Germany in 2005 under the title Hitlers Volksstaat by S. Fischer Verlage, Frankfurt.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aly, Gtz, 1947

[Hitlers Volksstaat. English]

Hitlers beneficiaries: plunder, racial war, and the Nazi welfare state / Gtz Aly; translated by Jefferson Chase.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7926-5

ISBN-10: 0-8050-7926-2

1. GermanyEconomic policy19331945. 2. GermanyPolitics and government19331945. 3. National socialismPhilosophy. 4. World War, 19391945Destruction and pillageEurope. 5. World War, 19391945Economic aspectsSwitzerland. 6. Jewish propertyEuropeHistory20th century. 7. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)Economic aspects. I. Title.

HC286.4.A613 2007

330.943086dc22

2006046672

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First U.S. Edition 2007

Designed by Meryl Sussman Levavi

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Part I
POLITICAL OPPORTUNISTS IN ACTION

Part II
SUBJUGATION AND EXPLOITATION

Part III
THE DISPOSSESSION OF THE JEWS

Part IV
CRIMES FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE

The J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Foundation Award of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum allowed me to work in archives and libraries in and around Washington, D.C. This book was also written with the help of grants from the Khler Foundationpart of the Association of German Research Foundationsand the S. Fischer Foundation. The assistance of all of the above was a mark of their support for the basic idea of this book, and for that I thank them. I am also grateful to the many individuals who offered constructive criticism and encouragement, helped to clear up specific questions, and intervened to prevent mistakes.em. Ieight="1em">

TRANSLATORS NOTE

In the interests of rendering an extraordinarily complex historical investigation more comprehensible to an American audience, this book occasionally deviates from the text of Gtz Alys German original. All changes have been made in consultation with the author.

HITLERS
BENEFICIARIES

One of the inspirations for this book was the series of negotiations carried out by Stuart E. Eizenstat to recover damages from the Swiss and German governments on behalf of victims of persecution during World War II. Eizenstat was, of course, entirely right to demand compensation for the stolen gold and confiscated bank accounts of those murdered in the Holocaust, as well as for the slave labor performed by survivors. Nonetheless, his highly public negotiations gave rise to a distorted picture of history. The fact that the names of large Swiss and German bankstogether with those of world-famous companies like Daimler-Benz, Volkswagen, Allianz Insurance, Krupp, the Bertelsmann publishing group, and BMWwere constantly in the news gave the impression that prominent German capitalists, occasionally in alliance with major Swiss banks, were the main culprits behind the terrible crimes of Nazi Germany.

There is no question that many leading German industrialists and financiers were complicit in Hitlers regime. But it would be wrong to conclude that primary responsibility for the Holocaust or other Nazi crimes lay with the elite of the German bourgeoisie. Eizenstats efforts, as well as those of the Jewish Claims Conference, indirectly, if unintentionally, encouraged such a conclusion. And indeed many Germans had a stake in seeing the publics attention focused on the captains of industry and finance, since it shifted the burden of blame for Nazi barbarism to a handful of individuals.