Why the Germans? Why the Jews? (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781250062642)

A provocative and insightful analysis that sheds new light on one of the most puzzling and historically unsettling conundrums

Why did the Holocaust happen in Germany, of all places? How did a country known for its culture and refinement turn so rabidly anti-Semitic? Why did a nation where Jews had full civil rights and many opportunities--a place that Jews had eagerly flocked to in the early twentieth century to escape racist persecution in Poland and Russia--turn upon them so violently just a few decades later? Countless people have grappled with these questions, but few have come up with answers as original and perceptive as those of German historian Gz Aly. Tracing the prehistory of the Holocaust--from the 1800s to the Nazis' assumption of power in 1933--Aly shows that German anti-Semitism did not originate with racist ideology or religious animosity, as is often supposed. Instead, through striking statistics and economic analysis, he demonstrates that it was rooted in a more basic emotion: material envy.

Aly's groundbreaking account of this fatal social dynamic opens up a new vantage point on the greatest crime in history and is sure to prompt heated debate for years to come.

Author: Gz Aly
ISBN-10: 1250062640
ISBN-13: 9781250062642
Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
Language: English
Published: 04/07/2015
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.40w x 0.90d