Book Description: Gotz Aly, Europe Against the Jews: 1880-1945
Summary
Dr. Gotz Aly presents a sober study of the German Occupation’s success in generating local cooperation with the project of annihilating the Jews. He shows the social tensions drawn from a plethora of sources: traditional antisemitic ideas; contemporary economic dislocations due to the impact of economic modernization; highly charged romantic ideas of nationalism in the newly independent states of Central and Eastern Europe; fear of Bolshevism; and the human constants in history of greed and envy – in this case of the Jews’ early adaptation to modernity and relative success in meeting its challenges – came together to generate collaboration in carrying out the Holocaust.
Context
Gotz Aly is that unusual phenomenon, an original thinker. His exceptional talent lies in reexamining historical situations and often finding as yet unexamined deep causes. This analytic talent comes combined with a fantastic scope and depth of research and an unrelenting moral voice that is all the more effective for being understated.
Style
Dr. Aly combines the thoroughness of a trained academic with the literary talent we usually associate with journalists to break down complex ideas to make them accessible to a broader public.
Classroom
This book has great potential as an educational tool. Teachers of antisemitism and Shoah studies will certainly find broad application for Europe Against the Jews 1880-1945. At the very least, his book illustrates the often frustrating problems human progress generates. Much evil, he says, come not necessarily from evil projects but also from good ones (like growing literacy, broader education, social mobility) that characterized the occupied nations of Europe in the period under discussion. Eductors may want to apply this book to any course taking as its theme the insight articulated by Irish statesman John Philpot Curran: “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”
Bibliographic Information
Aly, Götz, and Jefferson S. Chase, Europe against the Jews: 1880-1945, First edition (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt, and Company, 2020)
ISBN: 9781250170170