About the AuthorGötz Aly is the author of Hitler’s Beneficiaries and Why the Germans? Why the Jews?, among other books. One of the most respected historians of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, he has received the National Jewish Book Award, as well as Germany’s prestigious Heinrich Mann Prize, the Ludwig Börne Prize, and the Geschwister Scholl Prize, among numerous other honors. His books have been translated into 13 languages. He lives in Berlin.A "provocative" account of great "intellectual significance," illuminating the economic workings of the Third Reich―and the reasons ordinary Germans supported the Nazi state (The New York Times Book Review)In this groundbreaking book, historian Götz Aly addresses one of modern history's greatest conundrums: 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 channeling the proceeds into generous social programs―Hitler literally "bought" his people's consent.Drawing on secret files and financial records, Aly shows that while Jews and citizens of occupied lands suffered crippling taxation, mass looting, enslavement, and destruction, most Germans enjoyed an improved standard of living. Buoyed by millions of packages soldiers sent from the front, Germans also benefited from the systematic plunder of Jewish possessions. Any qualms were swept away by waves of tax breaks and government handouts.Hitler's Beneficiaries has been hailed as "startling" by Richard Evans, and as "fascinating and important" by Christopher Browning. Above all, as Omer Bartov testifies, this remarkable book "irreversibly transforms our understanding of the Third Reich."Review“This remarkable book tackles in an entirely original manner one of the greatest paradoxes of the Nazi state: why did the German people increasingly support Hitler's rule even after it unleashed a world war that ultimately led to its own destruction? The answer, based on massive evidence and convincingly argued, is that the Nazi regime won the support of middle and working class Germans by creating greater social and economic equality at home and ensuring that its own "racial comrades" would be well fed and clothed, all with the proceeds of mass murder and unprecedented continent-wide robbery. This rewriting of history, which dismantles the conventional distinction between fanatical Nazis and sober civil servants, will irreversibly transform our understanding of the Third Reich, revealing it as a consensual dictatorship whose popularity was rooted in grand larceny and the profits of crimes against humanity on an unimaginable scale.” ―Omer Bartov, author of Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories“A pathbreaking work.” ―Amos Elon, author of The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany“In this book Aly once again brings to bear his formidable research skills, his knack for pursuing original lines of inquiry, and his incredible capacity to uncover neglected and seemingly innocuous documents. While I do not share Aly's views about the underlying economic causes of the Holocaust, I nonetheless consider this a fascinating and important book about the Nazi economic policies that facilitated the regime's capacity to implement the Final Solution.” ―Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland“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. Enough with ideology, sociology and psychology: it was mostly about profit.” ―Tom Segev, author of The Seventh Million: Israel Confronts the Holocaust“Hitler's Beneficiaries recalls the nightmare of older classical liberals like
