How long does it take to read Hitler's Beneficiaries?
Götz Aly
Hitler's Beneficiaries by Götz Aly takes about 8 hours 8 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 8 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2005. 444 pages, about 122,100 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 34 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 8 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 5 minutes |
The page count is the median across 11 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
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…
Subjects: History, Jewish property, Aryanization, Confiscations and contributions, National socialism, Economic aspects
