HITLER WAS A SOCIALIST

ANOTHER BOOK ABOUT HITLER THE SOCIALIST:

Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (Hardcover)

by Gotz Aly (Author)

PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY:

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The publication of this book in Germany inspired a huge controversy. In an important, original contribution, Aly, the author of a number of major works on the Third Reich and the Holocaust, argues that the Nazi regime plundered the rest of Europe during WWII to the great material benefit of the German population. Germans lived quite nicely from the sausages, furniture, shoes and even Christmas geese that millions of German soldiers and SS men sent back home from all over Europe. Plunder by official state agencies also financed the war. These points hardly seem revelatory or controversial, but Aly, as is his style, pushes the argument to the nth degree, supporting it with a wealth of documentary detail. The crimes against humanity committed by the regime were not, he argues, the work of a few individuals or an evil external to the population and the course of German history in the 20th century. Rather, the Nazis met the population's overwhelming desire for material security and an improved standard of living. The Nazis redistributed wealth in favor of the lower classes and opened up avenues of social mobility for them.

AMAZON REVIEWER:

The term "Nazi" means National Socialist Workers' Party. That seeming innocuous phrase has been omitted from the consideration of its meaning, according to Aly. "National" and "Socialist" are the key terms. "National", meant just that - policies were aimed at benefitting Germany. "Socialist", of course, is a philosophy designed to benefit the most people - particularly those of the lower economic classes. Aly argues with detailed evidence that this is precisely what the Nazis achieved during the 1930s and through the war years. That it succeeded right up to the end of the Reich is testimony to the effectiveness of the Nazi economic methods. The average German began, and remained the "beneficiary" of a highly manipulated financial system.

HITLER WAS A SOCIALIST. (AS WAS MUSSOLINI). STALIN'S WAR AGAINST HITLER WAS LIKE HIS WAR AGAINST TROTSKY: INTERNECINE.