Our National Socialism

• Götz Aly is a well-known speaker in political and cultural circles, and in the media, particularly on the subjects of National Socialism and anti-Semitism.
• Recently he made a radical contribution to the debate on colonial looted art with his book Das Prachtboot.
  

With inimitable accuracy, the historian Götz Aly examines the not always "exemplary" fashion in which Germans deal with their National Socialist past: often people speak of "the perpetrators" when it comes to Nazi crimes, of "the SS", or "the National Socialists". But hundreds of thousands of Germans actively committed horrendous crimes against humanity, and many millions approved of this, or at least let it happen.

In past speeches, many of which are collected in this volume, Götz Aly repeatedly addressed the manifold ways in which guilt is placed on as few groups and scapegoats as possible. But even if some might baulk at the suggestion, Götz Aly shows that it remains Our National Socialism. His dictum is: not to "overcome" the past, but to render it contemporary. This is the only way we can learn from it.

"Götz Aly (has) shown us that no German citizen today can absolve themselves from the fact that they have possibly profited from the Holocaust. What remains is the guilt that must be acquitted by all." — Patrick Bahners at the presentation of the Geschwister Scholl Prize to Götz Aly in 2018