Holocaust Memorial Day, TV discussions, new monuments – not a single day passes without Germans commemorating and debating their darkest chapter. Not all Germans, of course. But authors like Götz Aly mobilize the crowds – the gallery of the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn was packed. The historian gave a lively off-the-cuff talk on his most recent book ‘Europa gegen die Juden, 1880-1945’ [‘Europe against the Jews, 1880-1945’], proving to be a bit of a maverick even if he has surpassed the age of seventy.
Aly participated in the student revolt in 1968 and supported Marxist views in his early career. He remains in rebel mode and challenges conventional narratives. Right from the start, he emphasized that nothing in his remarks should be construed as minimizing German responsibility. During the years in which they organized the killing of more than 6 million people, the Nazis controlled the intensity of the violence and terror. But the Berlin elite was by no means able to control the execution of the Holocaust alone. The Nazis bribed ordinary people by shrewdly turning them into accomplices; what their racial propaganda could not achieve, greed and envy managed to accomplish. In his book, Aly focused on ‘Bildungs- und Sozialneid’ (envy of social status and better education).
Aly dismisses racism as the main force behind the Holocaust: Based on a lifetime of studying the documents of the perpetrators of the ‘Final Solution’, Aly concluded that jealousy of Jewish success in society, business and education turned into hate. ‘Ordinary Germans’ resented the speed in which Jews climbed the ladder to power and status. Nazis tapped into people’s secret wish to deprive successful Jews of prominence and property. For Aly, this was the true motivation behind the violence – and the reason for silence. Because the Nazis succeeded in turning millions of ‘ordinary people’ across Europe (not only Germans!) into accomplices of theft and humiliation, many societies chose to stay silent after the war – a powerful mixture of guilt and shame.
In 1945, when the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, only 2,000 inmates were still alive, and many died from exhaustion and disease shortly afterwards. Aly pointedly remarked that it took the Allies to open the camp gates – the Soviets at Auschwitz and Maidanek, the British at Belsen, the Americans at Buchenwald and Dachau. Most Germans considered May 1945 a defeat, not a liberation.
Aly’s main thesis centers around the significance of anti-Semitic and racist feelings among German, and indeed European society in the 19th and 20th century. He is not convinced that racism is the key to understanding. ‘My grandfather was a small anti-Semite,’ Aly remarked. ‘He also was a very nice man’. Aly claims that racial anti-Semitism, emerging in the late 1800s, did not catch on in modern European societies. Only a few fringe demagogues peddled this brand of hateful propaganda, and only a few isolated groups signed on.
Racism, Anti-Semitism, or Greed?
There were other emotions involved, Aly claims. Since the Prussian reforms of the early 1800s, Jews in Germany enjoyed civil rights unheard of in other parts of the continent. There were no pogroms In Germany. There was no wave of anti-Semitic outrage like in France during the Dreyfus affair. German Jews could send their kids to excellent schools and universities. They could establish businesses, and the legal system protected their property. Although they represented a small minority, they were quite visible in the major urban centers: Department stores, banks, businesses demonstrated the arrival of Jews in the heart of Herman society. It is not wrong to say that Jews made their mark in the legal and cultural spheres: Attorneys, doctors, writers, journalists – there were few areas where Jews did not contribute to the flourishing of German society. Historians have recently pointed to the significant role of Jews in establishing Fussball as Germany’s favorite sport.
Jews took advantage of the opportunities presented by urbanization and industrialization. As a group, they were perfectly suited for the modern age: Practically all Jewish kids could read and write. Many of them were multi-lingual. Education proved significant for public health: Jewish families had a much lower rate of infant mortality than Christian families, up to 25% less. Jews were ‘upwardly mobile’ in Prussia and Imperial Germany.
Aly described the growing ‘small hatred’ (‘kleiner Hass’): Not racial or religious fears, but social jealousy. Christians witnessed Jews making swift progress through the ranks of society. Moving up the ladder to significant social status took regular families several generations. Jews had accomplished this transformation in record time.
Hatemongers regularly pointed out Jewish successes as warning signs. These resentments, Aly claimed, had little to do with racist categories. Envy, he stated, is an emotion that requires social proximity. We are not envious of the super-rich with their mansions and private airplanes. But if we witness someone whose parents started out on a level below our family, and they suddenly become wealthy, envy creeps into our heart. Now conspiracy theories can take hold.
Aly outlined that the outbreak of the war remained crucial for understanding the Holocaust. War undermined moral standards. Fear and survival instincts took over. Locals witnessed the plight of their Jewish neighbors with a jaundiced eye, more concerned for their own family’s well-being. In many areas of Eastern Europe, Soviet terror had preceded Nazi occupation policies, and therefore aided the steady erosion of humanitarian values.
Seizing Property
To strengthen his argument, Aly examined several case studies of occupied countries. These are complex issues, with no easy answers. Some governments protected Jewish citizens they regarded as fully integrated but eagerly handed over Jews considered foreigners or those encountered in annexed territories. In Budapest, authorities also refused to deliver the city’s Jews to Eichmann, albeit at a time when the Allied success already seemed inevitable. The same government had no problems delivering rural Jews to the Nazi butchers. We can find similar circumstances in Bulgaria and Romania. In some cases, annexed territories or resettlement issues provided the cover for large-scale expropriations. Greek authorities razed the Jewish quarter of Salonika to resettle refugees from Asia Minor. When they crossed the Soviet border, Romanian troops massacred 250,000 Jews on their march to Odessa, Aly writes. How many history books cover this chapter?
Few government institutions and legal systems protected Jews, for example in Belgium. 70% of Jews in Flemish-speaking Belgium were deported, but only 30% of Jews living in the Walloon part of the country. Why? The mayors of the Brussels region refused to order their police to round up Jews. In their simple but bold statement to the German occupiers, they protested this violation of the dignity of man and declared they would not participate. Nothing happened to the mayors, and the German occupation forces found themselves unable to round up the Jews themselves. Consequently, more than half of the country’s 90,000 Jews survived. Belgium was one of the few countries which prohibited banks to seize Jewish assets, and to confiscate property without the owner present. But Belgium was an exception.
In several countries, governments seized Jewish property eagerly. In France, the assets of the country’s 350,000 Jews were swiftly confiscated, without the German occupation authorities putting any pressure on their French counterparts.
For Aly, the property component is the key to understanding the Holocaust. For him, the Nazis enabled the largest mass theft of history. Several reviewers disliked this focus and accused him of carrying some baggage from his student days as a radical Marxist. Does he still cling to a materialist explanation of history? Aly certainly dismisses the significance of anti-Semitic notions among European societies. Is this a relic of the Marxist opinions of his twenties? Critics have pointed out that Aly’s analysis sounds more convincing at first glance.
But he seems to have a point. In Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Lithuania and other countries, people envied Jews and snapped up jobs, real estate, even down to personal effects. Hungarian documents list clothing from Jewish families distributed to Christian families. When Germans deported Jews, their neighbors saw an opportunity. Grabbing what they could, regular citizens, banks, corporations and governments benefitted from the Holocaust. Jealous of the Jews, societies participated in a massive redistribution of property. For Aly, protecting the loot after the war constituted the main reason why Europeans kept quiet about the mass murder in the postwar period.
A Difficult Debate
But what do we make of this terrible chapter? Aly pointed out that evil can spring from good policies. He cautioned against underestimating the potential challenges of investing in education. Emancipation and liberal immigration policies allowed Jews to quickly succeed in European societies. Many felt left behind. Democratic activists, often invoking the example of Jews, called for supporting the majority population. Learn from the Jews, so you can eventually replace them, the slogans went. Aly called these activists ‘christliche Gleichstellungsbeauftragte’ (‘Christian affirmative action advocates’).
Governments began legislative action to support the majority population. Starting in Russia, quotas restricted Jewish enrolment in universities. The Tsars also banned Jews from certain occupations. After 1918, several new independent states followed suit. Quotas reduced the percentage of Jews at Kaunas university in Lithuania from 30% to 15%, all in the name of helping Lithuanian peasant children ‘catch up’ with the more advanced Jewish students. Aly found similar arguments in Hungary, Poland and Romania. Regular people, conscious of their own flaws, resented Jews, begrudging them the speedy social climb they themselves were incapable of. When the Nazis opened the floodgates to violence, this resentment turned into action. Jews were aware of these emotions. In one case, a mother told her boy: ‘Pretend to be stupid, then nobody will identify you as Jewish!’
Did the success of Jewish emancipation, a worthy and ‘good’ policy, cause jealousy among the majority that ended in hatred, greed and violence? Hitler and Goebbels certainly believed that distributing Jewish property was very helpful. In a conversation, they agreed that handing out Jewish goods demonstrated one of the material ‘advantages of anti-Semitism’.
Aly’s key emphasis has found its critics. They lament that Aly’s book lacks a discussion of counter-arguments. Some reviewers also dislike the categorical style. His ‘social jealousy thesis’ has not been integrated into Holocaust historiography. It is even less accepted in popular narratives as it Aly’s analysis touches a nerve. If greed constituted a major motivation to participate in the physical destruction of fellow citizens, what does this mean for societies today?