Hitler's people's state

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Götz Aly at the presentation of this book on May 23, 2005 in Frankfurt am Main

Hitler's people's state. Robbery, Race War and National Socialism is a book by the historian Götz Aly that waspublished in spring 2005 and offers a controversial interpretation of the foundations of National Socialist rule. The theses represented by Aly sparked a debate about social policy under National Socialism , the German war economy and, more generally, about the reasons for the mass approval of National Socialism , the popularity of the regime and finally about the motivation of the Holocaustwas quarreled. The book received a lot of praise, but was also decisively criticized, above all because of the tendency towards a monocausal explanatory structure, which was described as a " historical-materialistically applied collective guilt thesis ".

Contents of the book

The book consists of four parts. In the first part, Politicians in Action , Aly describes as the starting point of his work the “ still unanswered question: How could this happen? ", Or more precisely:" How could an apparently fraudulent, megalomaniac and criminal company like National Socialism achieve such a high level of domestic political integration, which is difficult to explain today? “To answer the question, Aly characterizes the National Socialist regime as a“ dictatorship of convenience ”with a majority at any time : the government was extremely sensitive to general satisfaction and“ bought ” approval or at least indifference . The doctrine of racial inequality was linked to the promise of greater equality, or at least equal opportunities within. The “ social and national revolutionary utopia ” that the NSDAP made popular with the vast majority was the “ social people's state ”, whose benefits were financed at the expense of others, namely through robbery and racial war. Furthermore, the first part deals with the self-image of the National Socialist government and administration, the social policy measures before and during the war and the reaction of the population to it.

The second part, Subjugate and Exploit , deals in detail with the methods by which the war costs of the German Reich in World War II were passed on to the defeated countries in order to reduce the financial burden on the Germans. In addition to the direct payment of the occupation costs, according to Aly, it should be noted that German soldiers could literally buy empty the occupied countries using the Reichskreditkassenscheine system . The government tolerated or even encouraged the fact that masses of goods were also forwarded to the homeland. In this way, war profits had benefited the broad population. The confiscation of enemy assets and that of the Jews, as well as the use of forced labor, also benefited the German treasury and thus indirectly the German population. In the course of the war the complete destabilization of the economy in the occupied territories was accepted in order to keep the material hardship in the Reich within limits and thus to prevent the feared discontent. As early as the spring of 1941, before the start of the " Operation Barbarossa ", a hunger plan had been drawn up which, in order to secure food in the German Reich, provided for the decimation of the Slavic population in the areas of the Soviet Union to be occupied by many millions.

The subject of the third part is the expropriation of the Jews . According to Aly, “ any conception that focuses solely on the private profiteers [of so-called Aryanization ] is misleading ” and “misses the crux of the matter if the question is to be answered where the property of the expropriated and murdered Jews of Europe has gone is. In fact, Aly sees the “ principle of state robbery ” and in Aryanization a “ large-scale pan-European money laundering process for the benefit of Germany ”. In the following, expropriations by allies and in occupied territories are described as examples, which always served the German war chest, in particular to supply the Wehrmacht . In particular, Aly investigates the expropriation and murder of Greek Jews in great detail . These were used to support the inflation- prone drachma , which in turn helped to finance the occupation costs of the Wehrmacht.

The fourth part, Crimes for the Good of the People , sums up the investigations and wants to explain the motivations for the known crimes. Aly does not deny that the racist ideology was important, but adds material interests as a further and important reason for the robbery and murder of the Jews: “ The Holocaust remains misunderstood unless it is analyzed as the most consistent mass murder in modern history . “The beneficiaries were not only Nazi functionaries, banks and industrialists, but“ 95 percent of Germans ”. Aly also wants to prove this with her own calculations, according to which the financing of National Socialist politics and the war was “race and class conscious ”. At least two thirds of the ongoing war costs were paid by foreigners, foreigners, Jews and forced laborers; Among the Germans, on the other hand, the burden was shared in such a way that the wealthy paid more, while the middle and low income groups were burdened less. This is exactly what politics was aimed at: “ Concern for the well-being of the Germans was the decisive driving force behind the policy of terrorization, enslavement and extermination. “The“ dictatorship of convenience ”had fobbed off the vast majority of the population through small individual advantages and neutralized it politically. Aly concludes with the sentence: “ Anyone who does not want to talk about the advantages for the millions of ordinary Germans should keep silent about National Socialism and the Holocaust. "

Debate about Aly's theses

The book sparked a debate that at times even seemed to be a “ new historians ' dispute ”. Parallels were also drawn to the debate about Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executors . It was written that Aly put Goldhagen " upside down ", that is, he repeats Goldhagen's theses, but substantiates them materialistically and economically. Aly denied this, however, in particular he had no intention of “ reviving the stale thesis of collective guilt . "

Discussants at the book presentation on May 23, 2005 in Frankfurt am Main. From left to right: Gerhard Zwerenz, Florian Weis, Götz Aly (at the microphone), unknown

The reviews after the book was published were overwhelmingly positive, not only in journalism but also in academia. Hans Mommsen, for example, described Aly's theses in the SZ of March 10, 2005 as “ very provocative ”, but found them “ impressively documented ”. But there was also sharp criticism from the academic side, especially from the British economic historian Adam Tooze , who described Aly's calculation of the distribution of war costs as incorrect in the taz of March 12, 2005. Aly proceeded asymmetrically because he had not included the debt on the German side. In fact, the Germans had borne the greater part of the burden of the war and had a higher tax burden than the British, for example. Hitler had demanded a great deal from the Germans, and the mobilization of the German economy for the war was actually a remarkable achievement. According to Alys, Tooze repeated this criticism shortly afterwards and stated that Hitler's state had not been a " favoring regime [...] but a demanding and increasingly repressive dictatorship ": Although the Germans had been made rosy promises about the future during the war, but precisely in order to make the enormous burdens required of them in the war more bearable. In this dispute with Tooze - which he described as "rather marginal" - Aly opposed that the Germans were indifferent to the imperial debt in the war compared to the alternative, namely tax increases: the people and the leadership had jointly speculated on victory and the resulting profits . Tooze later took up the criticism of Hans-Ulrich Wehler (see below) and argued (in the “ ZEIT ” of April 28, 2005) that Aly underestimated the popularity of Hitler and militarism in Germany: “ a highly complex web of emotions and ideologies and material redistribution, formed the really supporting pillar of Hitler's regime. With Aly's misleading formula of the »dictatorship of convenience«, this connection cannot even come close. "

At the top of the criticism of Aly was the historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler , who on April 4th saw a “ narrow-minded materialism ” in the “ Spiegel ” in Aly's interpretation . Aly ignores the popularity of the “ charismatic leader ” as well as the spread of racist and anti-Semitic thinking in the German population of the 1930s and 1940s. Aly's approach to seeing the Holocaust as a result of materialistic interests falls far too short; Aly's attacks on historical research are also not justified. Many of Aly's results are also not new, but already known and have been placed in the right place by research, namely as a phenomenon of secondary importance, while Aly overestimates them. In addition, Aly had explained the murder of European Jewry differently in his earlier writings, for example in Vordenker der Vernichtung , without adequately justifying the revision of his position.

Aly replied in the "ZEIT" on April 6th. He wrote that Wehler himself had neglected in his works the analysis of the economic and political factors that led to the murder of the Jews. The " ideologically founded, voluntary loyalty " stated by Wehler cannot be proven in the sources any more than a terrorist-enforced allegiance. But " socio-tactical decisions " of the dictatorship of convenience, which were in the " permanent battle for the public mood ", were found there in large numbers. In addition, Aly admitted that he approached the topic from different perspectives and that he recognized that there were no mono causal explanations and that other and his earlier findings were justified in contemporary historical research.

Incidentally, Aly intensified his attacks against parts of the established historiography of the time of National Socialism , which he accuses of negligently overlooking the connections he presented. The quoted final sentence of the book is a modified quote from Max Horkheimer , who meant:

“ But if you don't want to talk about capitalism, you should keep silent about fascism. "

With this, Aly put his results provocatively against the fascism theories of critical theory .

In articles and interviews before the book was published, Aly had continued this provocation, especially on the political left. So he wrote on September 1, 2004 in the SZ :

" From dismissal to tenant protection to seizure protection, hundreds of finely balanced laws aimed at socio-political appeasement. Hitler ruled according to the principle “I am the people” and with it he sketched the political and mental contours of the later welfare state of the Federal Republic. The Schröder / Fischer government is facing the historic task of saying goodbye to the national community . "

Aly thereby asserted a continuity from National Socialist politics to the federal republican welfare state . In an interview with the taz on January 15, 2005, he remarked that he “ does not want to discredit the idea of ​​social justice ”. However, he brought protests against “social cutbacks” (see Agenda 2010 , Hartz IV ) in connection with the Germans' beneficial thinking under National Socialism: “ Hitler could not have afforded social cutbacks. "Aly also repeated his provocation against left theories:

“ The discomfort with my thesis may be related to the fact that I recognize a basic left-wing social democratic pattern in the structure of the National Socialist tax and social policy. "

Aly's line of reasoning had already been negatively mentioned in some reviews. Michael Wildt extensively criticized these theses and their alleged exploitation in the current discussion about the welfare state in the ZEIT on May 4, 2005. Wildt saw the intention to glorify social cuts as an act of coming to terms with the past ; He too saw a “ materialistic thesis of collective guilt ” and said that former “ 68ers ” like Aly would today “ flee to the unscrupulous neoliberalism ” as left converts .

See also

Literature and web links

Reviews:

Other:

  • Willi A. Boelcke: The Costs of Hitler's War. War financing and financial legacy in Germany 1933–1948 . Schöningh, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-506-77471-9 .
  • Peter Longerich : “We didn't know anything about it!” The Germans and the persecution of the Jews 1933–1945 . Siedler, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-88680-843-2 . (See the summary of reviews of this book at perlentaucher.de .)
  • J. Adam Tooze : Statistics and the German State, 1900-1945. The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (=  Cambridge Studies in Modern Economic History ). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-521-80318-7 .
  • J. Adam Tooze: Wages of Destruction. The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy . Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-7139-9566-1 (English). German Edition: JAT, Yvonne Badal (translator): Economy of Destruction . Siedler-Verlag, ISBN 3-88680-857-2 .
  • Christoph J. Bauer, Sven Ellmers, Niklas Hebing, Peter Kriegel, Holger Wendt (eds.): Fascism and social inequality . In: Studies of the Sociological Institute Bochum (GIB), Volume 1. Universitätsverlag Rhein-Ruhr, Duisburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-940251-01-5 .

Leading up to the debate

Criticism and counter-criticism

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wildt, Die Zeit 19/05.
  2. ↑ Aly, 2005, p. 35 f.
  3. ↑ Aly, 2005, passim, chapter heading, p. 49.
  4. ↑ a b Aly, 2005, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Aly, 2005, pp. 195-206.
  6. ↑ a b Aly, 2005, p. 209.
  7. ↑ Aly, 2005, p. 210.
  8. ↑ a b Aly, 2005, p. 318.
  9. ↑ Aly, 2005, chapter heading, p. 358.
  10. ↑ Aly, 2005, p. 345.
  11. ↑ Aly, 2005, p. 362.
  12. ↑ Volker Ullrich, ZEIT 19/05.
  13. ↑ Mark Spoerer, H-Soz-u-Kult
  14. ↑ Aly, TIME 15/05.
  15. ↑ Speech on the award of the Heinrich Mann Prize of the Academy of Arts in 2002.
  16. ↑ Zeit, 15/2005.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 27, 2006 .