"Final Solution" Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jew

by Aly, Götz; Cooper, Belinda; Brown, Allison

• ISBN13: 9780340677575
• ISBN10: 0340677570
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-18
• Publisher: Hodder Education Publishers

Summary

How did it come about that a modern European state in the middle of the twentieth century planned and carried out the industrially organized mass murder of six million Jews, male and female, adults and children? Making extensive use of Russian, German, and Polish archives, Aly has provided the most exact and detailed reconstruction of the "Final Solution" yet achieved. As well as looking at the ideological imperative in the Nazi state to "solve the Jewish question" and at Hitler's own role, Aly investigates the actions of those running the Reich Security Headquarters in Berlin and of those numerous lesser figures on the ground who were in the eye of the storm, grappling with the planning failures inherent in Nazi resettlement plans and experiencing mounting difficulties in trying to be rid of "their" Jews. Aly illustrates, through the evidence he builds into an overall mosaic, the lunacy of Nazi race policy, and the variety of agencies that went into the gradual shaping of a policy of all-out genocide.

Author Biography

Gotz Aly was born in Heidelberg and got his degree from the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University. He is the author, with Susanne Heim, of Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die Plane fur eine neue europaische Orndung (1991).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(13)
1 Policy towards the Jews, war, and resettlement	14	(19)
2 `Making room' for ethnic Germans, chronology: September 1939-April 1940	33	(26)
3 `Himmler is shifting populations ... not always successfully'	59	(29)
4 `The Madagascar Plan', chronology: May-September 1940	88	(17)
5 `Home to the Reich' -- and into a camp	105	(29)
6 A major plan fails, chronology: 15 November 1940-15 March 1941	134	(15)
7 Ghetto, work, `The Move Eastward'	149	(36)
8 War of extermination and Lebensraum, chronology: 1 May-31 July 1941	185	(10)
9 Frustrated expectations of victory	195	(19)
10 `The Jews have got to go'	214	(29)
11 Elements of the decision to carry out the Holocaust	243	(21)
12 The murderers' postscripts	264	(9)
Glossary	273	(4)
List of abbreviations	277	(4)
Bibliography	281	(16)
Index of names	297	(6)
Index of places	303