REVIEWS | EXCERPT | CONTENTS | AUTHOR BIO | SUBJECT CATEGORIESThe historyand legacyof the Nazi Census System The Nazi CensusIdentification and Control in the Third ReichSearch the full text of this bookGötz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth, foreword by Edwin Black, translated by Assenka Oksiloff
A controversial book when originally published in Germany, The Nazi Census documents the origins of the census in modern Germany, along with the parallel development of machines that helped first collect data on Germans, then specifically on Jews and other minorities. Götz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth begin by examining the history of statistical technology in Germany, from the Hollerith machine in the 1890s through the development and licensing of IBM punch-card technology. Aly and Roth explain that census data was collected on non-Germans in order to satisfy the state's desire to track racial groups for alleged security reasons. Later this information led to disastrous results for those groups and others that were tracked in similar ways. Ultimately, as Götz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth point out in this short, rigorously researched book, the techniques the Nazis employed to track, gather information, and control populations initiated the modern system of citizen registration. Aly and Roth argue that what led to the devastating effects of the Nazi census was the ends to which they used their data, not their means. It is the employment of "normal" methods of collection that the authors examine historically as it applies to the Nazi regime, and also the way contemporary methods of classification and control still affect the modern world. ExcerptRead the Forewords, Introduction, and an excerpt from Chapter 1 (pdf). Reviews"Originally published in 1984, this controversial study challenges census-taking by examining how the Hitlerian regime pioneered both the concepts and the processes of modern statistics-gathering about populations. No reader of this fascinating study can fail to be moved by the coldly bureaucratic thoroughness and mechanical efficiency with which the Nazis went about their business of targeting Jews, Gypsies, and other socially or biologically unwanted segments of German society."
"[T]here can be few complaints about The Nazi Census as a history of the Nazi period. It is regularly cited in published works for facts about dates of registration programs and change in citizenship policy. As part of Aly's attempt to augment the complicity of silence with the complicity of science, it is also an important work in an evolving historiography on Nazi world-making and -unmaking. The book is also fascinating as a revelation of the recent pedigree of many everyday practices of the state."
ContentsForeword Edwin Black
About the Author(s)Götz Aly is an independent historian of Nazi Germany.
Subject CategoriesHistory
In the seriesPolitics, History, and Social Change, edited by John C. Torpey. This series will disseminate serious works that analyze the social changes that have transformed our world during the twentieth century and beyond. The main topics to be addressed include international migration; human rights; the political uses of history; the past and future of the nation-state; decolonization and the legacy of imperialism; and global inequality. The series will also translate into English outstanding works by scholars writing in other languages. |