Götz Aly > Quotes

“Even in the early nineteenth century, people like Goethe had little good to say about grumbling, coarsely behaved nationalist romantics of the Arndt or Jahn variety. By contrast, Germany’s greatest author enjoyed the witty company of intelligent Jews. “As a rule they are more keenly curious and apt to contribute than any German nationalist,” Goethe wrote. “Their ability to understand things quickly and analyze them in depth, as well as their native wit, makes them a much more receptive audience than you can find among the real and true Germans with their slow and dull minds.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“they put their faith in their intellectual assets and attained material success with admirable speed. To speak in everyday language: they got somewhere in life.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“Parents stress the importance of learning to their children and carefully monitor their progress. Not infrequently, those children are well ahead of their Christian schoolmates in terms of intellectual curiosity and persistent diligence.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“In 1894, historian Theodor Mommsen wrote that the root cause of the anti-Semitic “affliction” was “envy and the basest instincts,… a barbaric hatred for education, freedom, and humanism.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“To understand anti-Semitism within Germany’s Gentile majority, one has to talk about the skills, educational fervor, and rapid social rise of striking numbers of German Jews. Only then will the contrast emerge between them and the relatively lethargic German majority, revealing why anti-Semitism could gain so large a foothold in German society. Only then can we see anti-Semites as people motivated in large part by jealousy and resentment.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“Around the same time, it was reported from Odessa: “All the schools are full, bottom to top, with Jewish pupils, and to be honest, the Jews are always the best in their class.”20 Thinking back on his”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“Jew hatred was overwhelmingly religious in nature and began to wane only in the age of enlightened absolutism in Western and Central Europe. Still, Gentiles and Jews had extremely limited contact in society. Jews had to live in ghettos in some cities and were entirely forbidden from even entering certain others.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“Until well into the modern age, Christians had spread legends about Jews poisoning town wells, intentionally spreading the plague, and murdering Christian babies. Now, in the twentieth century, anti-Semites asserted that, wherever Jews were active, they stirred up popular unrest and sowed discord. This flexible stereotype could be used to interpret a variety of unsettling events—major conflicts of interest, market competition, bank failures, inflation, foreign and civil wars, and revolutions—as Jewish machinations.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“From the perspective of Bismarck, conditioned as he was by power politics, all that the new empire required was “the biggest possible army, a military commander, a guiding hand, enough money, and that’s it.”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust

“dortigen”
― Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust