Books like Vordenker der Vernichtung by Götz Aly

In this groundbreaking book, distinguished historian Gotz Aly addresses one of modern history's greatest conundrums: How did Adolf Hitler win the allegiance of ordinary Germans for his program of mass murder and military conquest? The answer Aly provides is as shocking as it is persuasive. By engaging in a campaign of theft on an almost unimaginable scale, and by channeling the proceeds into a succession of generous social programs, Hitler literally bought the consent of the German people. Drawing on secret Nazi files and unexamined financial records, Aly shows that while Jews and citizens of occupied lands suffered crippling taxation, mass looting, enslavement, and destruction, most Germans enjoyed a marked improvement in their standard of living. He documents the many millions of packages soldiers sent from the front stuffed with valuables and provisions; the systematic plunder of conquered territory for raw materials, industrial goods, and food supplies; and the disappearance of Jewish property and fortunes into German homes and pockets across the Reich. Whatever moral qualms Germans may have felt toward Nazi policies were swept away by waves of government handouts, tax breaks, and preferential legislation Aly depicts a Nazi leadership addicted to the spoils of invasion, annexation and dispossession. He shows that the pace and timing of Nazi conquests-from the Anschluss of Austria to the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland-were dictated by the rapidly escalating financial needs of the German war machine. Time and again, warnings of an imminent financial collapse spurred the Third Reich to ever more desperate and brazen acts of thievery and destruction. A gripping work of scrupulous erudition and great historical importance, Hitleralʾs Beneficiaries explains the inexplicable, making a radically new contribution to our understanding of Nazi aggression, the Holocaust and the complicity of a people. From the book jacket Includes information on anti-Semitism, atonement payments, Banque de France Bank of Greece, Belgium, consumer goods, currency, debt and credit, Eastern Europe (Front), forced labor, France, Joseph Goebbels, gold, Hermann Goring, government bonds, Greece, Adolf Hitler, Holland (Netherlands), responsibility for Holocaust, Hungary, inflation, Italy, Jewish assets, Jews, deportation of Jews, National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party), occupation costs, Poland, Reich Credit Banks (Rreichkreditkasse), Reichsbank, Romania, Schwerin von Krosigk (Count Lutz), social welfare system, Soldiers, Soviet Union, taxes and tax policy, Vichy France, Wehrmacht, working classes, World War I, World War II, etc

Radu Ioanid’s scholarship reveals the hidden archives of Romania’s Holocaust, detailing Ion Antonescu’s policies of racism, anti‑Semitism, and extermination against a once‑thrice‑largest Jewish community in Europe.

"Based on the three-volume revised and definitive edition." "The standard text in the field ... [by] the pre-eminent scholar of the Holocaust." David S. Wyman, N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. "Examines the history of persecution against European Jews, discusses the definition of a Jew according to the German regime, and describes the processes through which Jews were eliminated during the Holocaust years."

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. - Publisher.

Henry Friedlander details how the Nazi "euthanasia" program against handicapped and disabled people became the prototype for the systematic extermination of Jews and Roma during the Holocaust.

xx, 636 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm1640L Lexile

The writings are arranged in three sections—Hitler and the Final Solution, popular opinion and the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the Final Solution in historiography—and Kershaw provides an introduction and a closing section on the uniqueness of Nazism.

Firsthand accounts from Josef Zelkowicz, a chronicler of the Łódź Ghetto, detailing daily life, persecution, and his diary entries during the Holocaust.

Saul Friedländer’s definitive study of the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945, examining German extermination policies, the role of local authorities, and the experiences of Jews, based on extensive documents and personal testimony.

Alon Confino explores the roots of Nazi anti‑Jewish ideology, showing how the German conception of a "world without Jews" directed persecution and the Holocaust, linking state policy to cultural narratives and the 1938 burning of Hebrew books.