Nazism or National Socialism refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party, German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) under Adolf Hitler. Nazism was the main form of National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus) that emerged after World War I, and is generally considered a form of Fascism. Nazism also refers to the policies adopted by the government of Germany from 1933 to 1945, a period in German history known as Nazi Germany or the "Third Reich".
On January 5, 1919, the party was founded as the German Workers' Party (DAP) by Anton Drexler along with six other members.[ Hitler, a corporal, was sent to investigate the party by German intelligence and was invited to join after impressing them with his speaking ability after getting into an argument with party members. Hitler later accepted the invitation and joined the party in September 1919,[ and he became propaganda boss. The party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party on April 1, 1920, against Hitler's choice of Social Revolutionary Party.[ Hitler ousted Drexler and became the party leader on July 29, 1921.
Nazism was not a monolithic movement, but rather a (mainly German) combination of various ideologies and groups, sparked by anger at the Treaty of Versailles and what was considered to have been a Jewish/Communist conspiracy to humiliate Germany at the end of the First World War. The National Socialist party described itself as socialist, and at the time, conservative opponents such as the Industrial Employers Association described it as "totalitarian, terrorist, conspiratorial, and socialist."
Among the key elements of Nazism were anti-parliamentarism, ethnic nationalism, racism, collectivism, eugenics, antisemitism, opposition to economic and political liberalism, a racially-defined and conspiratorial view of finance capitalism,, anti-communism, and totalitarianism
Thursday, 15 November 2007
Terminology
The term Nazi is derived from the first two syllables of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the official German language name of the National Socialist German Workers Party (commonly known in English as the Nazi Party). Party members rarely referred to themselves as Nazis, and instead used the official term, Nationalsozialisten (National Socialists). Nazi was a pejorative term used by opponents of the movement, especially in southern Germany. The word mirrors the term Sozi, a common and slightly derogatory term for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands). When Adolf Hitler took power, the use of the term Nazi almost disappeared from Germany, although it was still used by opponents in Austria.
History
National Socialist philosophy came together at a critical time for Germany; the nation had lost World War I in 1918, but had also been forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, an intentionally devastating capitulation, and was in the midst of a period of great economic depression and instability. The Dolchstosslegende, or "stab in the back" described by the National Socialists featured a claim that the war effort was sabotaged internally, in large part by Germany's Jews. The National Socialists suggested that a lack of patriotism had led to Germany's defeat (for one, the front line was off of German soil at the time of the armistice). In politics, criticism was directed at the Social Democrats and the Weimar government (Deutsches Reich 1919-1933), which the National Socialists accused of selling out the country. The concept of Dolchstosslegende led many to look at Jews and other so-called "non-Germans" living in Germany as having extra-national loyalties, thereby raising antisemitic sentiments and the Judenfrage (German for the "Jewish Question"), at a time when the Völkisch movement and a desire to create a Greater Germany were strong.
Although Adolf Hitler had joined the Nazi Party in September 1919, and published Mein Kampf in 1925 and 1926, the seminal ideas of National Socialism had their roots in groups and individuals of decades past. These include the Völkisch movement and its religious-occult counterpart, Ariosophy. Among the various Ariosophic lodge-like groups, only the Thule Society is directly related to the origins of the Nazi party.
The term Nazism refers to the ideology of the National Socialist German Workers Party and its Weltanschauung, which permeated German society (and to some degree European and American society) during the party's years as the German government (1933 to 1945). Free elections in 1932 under Germany's Weimar Republic made the NSDAP the largest parliamentary faction; no similar party in any country at that time had achieved comparable electoral success. Hitler's January 30, 1933 appointment as Chancellor of Germany and his subsequent consolidation of dictatorial power, marked the beginning of Nazi Germany. During its first year in power, the NSDAP announced the Tausendjähriges Reich ("Thousand Years' Empire") or Drittes Reich ("Third Reich", a putative successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire).
Post-1933 developments
The British Conservative party and the right-wing parties in France appeased the Nazi regime in the mid- and late-1930s, even though they had begun to criticise its totalitarianism and in Britain especially, Nazi Germany's policies towards the Jews; however, Britain (from 1931 onwards under an overwhelmingly Conservative government) had appeased pre-Nazi Germany. Important reasons behind this appeasement included, first, the erroneous assumption that Hitler had no desire to precipitate another world war, even though in Mein Kampf Hitler explained the party's program to the voters in detail, describing World War I very much as he actually fought it, overtly and explicitly committing himself to World War II in precise detail, and second, when the rebirth of the German military could no longer be ignored, a concern that neither Britain nor France was yet ready to fight an all-out war against Germany.
The second excuse, that the West was not ready for war with Germany is, as Churchill pointed out, unsatisfactory, for the appeasement program worsened that problem, for example by removing Czechoslovakia's resources from the anti Nazi side, and adding them to the Nazi side. As Churchill said of appeasement:
"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds are against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."
In 1936, Nazi Germany and Japan entered into the Anti-Comintern Pact, aimed directly at countering Soviet foreign policy. This alliance later became the basis for the Tripartite Pact with Italy, the foundation of the Axis Powers. The three nations united in their rabid opposition to communism, as well as their militaristic, racist regimes, but they failed to coordinate their military efforts effectively.
In his early years, Hitler also greatly admired the United States of America. In Mein Kampf, he praised the United States for its race-based anti-immigration laws and for the subordination of the "inferior" black population. According to Hitler, America was a successful nation because it kept itself "pure" of "lesser races". Nevertheless, his view of the United States became more negative as time passed.
The Nazi regime in Germany ended with World War II in 1945, when the party was declared a criminal organisation by the victorious Allied Powers. Since 1945, Nazism has been outlawed as a political ideology in Germany, as are forms of iconography and propaganda from the Nazi era. Nevertheless, neo-Nazis continue to operate in Germany and several other countries. Following World War II and the Holocaust, the term Nazi and symbols associated with Nazism (such as the Swastika) acquired extremely negative connotations in Europe and North America.
Although Adolf Hitler had joined the Nazi Party in September 1919, and published Mein Kampf in 1925 and 1926, the seminal ideas of National Socialism had their roots in groups and individuals of decades past. These include the Völkisch movement and its religious-occult counterpart, Ariosophy. Among the various Ariosophic lodge-like groups, only the Thule Society is directly related to the origins of the Nazi party.
The term Nazism refers to the ideology of the National Socialist German Workers Party and its Weltanschauung, which permeated German society (and to some degree European and American society) during the party's years as the German government (1933 to 1945). Free elections in 1932 under Germany's Weimar Republic made the NSDAP the largest parliamentary faction; no similar party in any country at that time had achieved comparable electoral success. Hitler's January 30, 1933 appointment as Chancellor of Germany and his subsequent consolidation of dictatorial power, marked the beginning of Nazi Germany. During its first year in power, the NSDAP announced the Tausendjähriges Reich ("Thousand Years' Empire") or Drittes Reich ("Third Reich", a putative successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire).
Post-1933 developments
The British Conservative party and the right-wing parties in France appeased the Nazi regime in the mid- and late-1930s, even though they had begun to criticise its totalitarianism and in Britain especially, Nazi Germany's policies towards the Jews; however, Britain (from 1931 onwards under an overwhelmingly Conservative government) had appeased pre-Nazi Germany. Important reasons behind this appeasement included, first, the erroneous assumption that Hitler had no desire to precipitate another world war, even though in Mein Kampf Hitler explained the party's program to the voters in detail, describing World War I very much as he actually fought it, overtly and explicitly committing himself to World War II in precise detail, and second, when the rebirth of the German military could no longer be ignored, a concern that neither Britain nor France was yet ready to fight an all-out war against Germany.
The second excuse, that the West was not ready for war with Germany is, as Churchill pointed out, unsatisfactory, for the appeasement program worsened that problem, for example by removing Czechoslovakia's resources from the anti Nazi side, and adding them to the Nazi side. As Churchill said of appeasement:
"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds are against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."
In 1936, Nazi Germany and Japan entered into the Anti-Comintern Pact, aimed directly at countering Soviet foreign policy. This alliance later became the basis for the Tripartite Pact with Italy, the foundation of the Axis Powers. The three nations united in their rabid opposition to communism, as well as their militaristic, racist regimes, but they failed to coordinate their military efforts effectively.
In his early years, Hitler also greatly admired the United States of America. In Mein Kampf, he praised the United States for its race-based anti-immigration laws and for the subordination of the "inferior" black population. According to Hitler, America was a successful nation because it kept itself "pure" of "lesser races". Nevertheless, his view of the United States became more negative as time passed.
The Nazi regime in Germany ended with World War II in 1945, when the party was declared a criminal organisation by the victorious Allied Powers. Since 1945, Nazism has been outlawed as a political ideology in Germany, as are forms of iconography and propaganda from the Nazi era. Nevertheless, neo-Nazis continue to operate in Germany and several other countries. Following World War II and the Holocaust, the term Nazi and symbols associated with Nazism (such as the Swastika) acquired extremely negative connotations in Europe and North America.
Ideology
Nazism has come to stand for a belief in the superiority of an Aryan race, an abstraction of the Germanic peoples. During the time of Hitler, the Nazis advocated a strong, centralized government under the Führer and claimed to defend Germany and the German people (including those of German ethnicity abroad) against Communism and so-called Jewish subversion. Ultimately, the Nazis sought to create a largely homogeneous and autarchic ethnic state, absorbing the ideas of Pan-Germanism.
Historians often disagree on the principal interests of the Nazi Party and whether Nazism can be considered a coherent ideology. The original National Socialists claimed that there would be no program that would bind them, and that they wanted to reject any established world view. Still, as Hitler played a major role in the development of the Nazi Party from its early stages and rose to become the movement's indisputable iconographic figurehead, much of what is thought to be "Nazism" is in line with Hitler's own political beliefs - the ideology and the man continue to remain largely interchangeable in the public eye. Some dispute whether Hitler's views relate directly to those surrounding the movement; the problem is furthered by the inability of various self-proclaimed Nazis and Nazi groups to decide on a universal ideology. But if Nazism is the world view promulgated in Mein Kampf, that world view is consistent and coherent, being characterized essentially by a conception of history as a "race struggle"; the Führerprinzip; anti-Semitism; the stigmatization of "Judeo-bolshevism" and the need to acquire a Lebensraum at the expenses of the Soviet Union . The core concept of Nazism is that the German Volk is under attack, and must become united, disciplined and self sacrificing (must submit to Nazi leadership) in order to win against this nefarious "Jewish plot" to subjugate the German nation.
Hitler's political beliefs were formulated in Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1925). His views were composed of three main axes: a conception of history as a "race struggle" influenced by social darwinism; antisemitism and the idea that Germany needed to conquer a "Lebensraum" ("living space") from Russia. His antisemitism, coupled with his anti-Communism, gave the grounds of his conspiracy theory of "judeo-bolshevism." Hitler first began to develop his views through observations he made while living in Vienna from 1907 to 1913. He concluded that a racial, religious, and cultural hierarchy existed, and he placed "Aryans" at the top as the ultimate superior race, while Jews and "Gypsies" were people at the bottom. He vaguely examined and questioned the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where as a citizen by birth, Hitler lived during the Empire's last throes of life. He believed that its ethnic and linguistic diversity had weakened the Empire and helped to create dissension. Further, he saw democracy as a destabilizing force because it placed power in the hands of ethnic minorities who, he claimed, "weakened and destabilized" the Empire by dividing it against itself. Hitler's political beliefs were then affected by World War I and the 1917 October Revolution, and saw some modifications between 1920 and 1923. He then definitively formulated them in Mein Kampf.
Fascism
In both popular thought and academic scholarship, Nazism is generally considered a form of fascism - a term whose definition is itself contentious. The debate focuses mainly on comparisons of fascist movements in general with the Italian prototype, including the fascists in Germany. The idea mentioned above to reject all former ideas and ideologies like democracy, liberalism, and especially marxism (as in Ernst Nolte) make it difficult to track down a perfect definition of these two terms; however, Italian Fascists tended to believe that all elements in society should be unified through corporatism to form an "Organic State"; this meant that these Fascists often had no strong opinion on the question of race, since it was only the state and nation that mattered.
German Nazism, on the other hand, emphasized the Aryan race or "Volk" principle to the point where the state simply seemed a means through which the Aryan race could realize its "true destiny." Since a debate among historians (especially Zeev Sternhell) to see each movement, or at least the German, as unique, the issue has been settled in most parts showing that there is a stronger family resemblance between the Italian and the German fascist movement than there is between democracies in Europe or the communist states of the Cold War; additionally, the crimes of the fascist movement can be compared, not only in numbers of casualties, but also in common developments: the March on Rome of Mussolini to Hitler's response shortly after to attempt a coup d'etat himself in Munich.
Also, Aryanism was not an attractive idea for Italians who were a non-Nordic race, but still there was a strong racism and also genocide in concentration camps long before either was in place in Germany. The philosophy that had seemed to be separating both fascisms was shown to be a result of happening in two different countries: since the king of Italy had not died, unlike the Reichspräsident, the leader in Italy (Duce) was not able to gain the absolute power the leader in Germany (Führer) did, leading to Mussolini's fall. The academic challenge to separate all fascist movements has since the 1980s and early 1990s been ground for a new attempt to see even more similarities.
Nationalism
Hitler founded The Nazi state upon a racially defined "German people" and principally rejected the idea of being bound by the limits of nationalism. That was only a means for attempting unlimited supremacy. In that sense, its hyper-nationalism was tolerated to reach a world-dominating Germanic-Aryan Volksgemeinschaft. This idea is a central concept of Mein Kampf, symbolized by the motto Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (one people, one empire, one leader). The Nazi relationship between the Volk and the state was called the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), a late nineteenth or early twentieth century neologism that defined a communal duty of citizens in service to the Reich (as opposed to a simple society). The term "National Socialism" derives from this citizen-nation relationship, whereby the term socialism is invoked and is meant to be realized through the common duty of the individuals to the German people; all actions are to be in service of the Reich. The Nazis stated that their goal was to bring forth a nation-state as the locus and embodiment of the people's collective will, bound by the Volksgemeinschaft, as both an ideal and an operating instrument. In comparison, traditional socialist ideologies oppose the idea of nations.
Militarism
Nazi rationale invested heavily in the militarist belief that great nations grow from military power and maintained order, which in turn grow "naturally" from "rational, civilized cultures". The Nazi Party appealed to German nationalists and national pride, capitalizing on irredentist and revanchist sentiments as well as aversions to various aspects of modernist thinking (although at the same time embracing other modernist ideas, such as admiration for engine power). Many ethnic Germans felt deeply committed to the goal of creating the Greater Germany (the old dream to include German-speaking Austria), which some believe required the use of military force to achieve.
Racism and discrimination
The Nazi racial philosophy was influenced by the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Madison Grant, and wholly embraced Alfred Rosenberg's Aryan Invasion Theory. The theory traced Aryan peoples in ancient Iran invading the Indus Valley Civilization, and carrying with them great knowledge and science that had been preserved from the antediluvian world. This "antediluvian world" referred to Thule, the speculative pre-Flood/Ice Age origin of the Aryan race, and is often tied to ideas of Atlantis. Most of the leadership and the founders of the Nazi Party were made up of members of the "Thule-Gesellschaft (the Thule Society)", which romanticized the Aryan race through theology and ritual.
Hitler also claimed that a nation was the highest creation of a "race", and "great nations" (literally large nations) were the creation of homogeneous populations of "great races", working together. These nations developed cultures that naturally grew from "races" with "natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits". The "weakest nations", Hitler said, were those of "impure" or "mongrel races", because they had divided, quarreling, and therefore weak cultures. Worst of all were seen to be the parasitic "Untermensch" (Subhumans), mainly Jews, but also Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the disabled and so called anti-socials, all of whom were considered "lebensunwertes Leben" ("Life-unworthy life") owing to their perceived deficiency and inferiority, as well as their wandering, nationless invasions ("the International Jew"). The persecution of homosexuals as part of the Holocaust has seen increasing scholarly attention since the 1990s, even though many homosexuals served in the Sturmabteilungen.
According to Nazism, it is an obvious mistake to permit or encourage plurality within a nation. Fundamental to the Nazi goal was the unification of all German-speaking peoples, "unjustly" divided into different Nation States. The Nazis tried to recruit Dutch and Scandinavian men into the SS, considering them of superior "Germanic" stock, with only limited success.
Hitler claimed that nations that could not defend their territory did not deserve it. He thought "slave races", like the Slavic peoples, to be less worthy to exist than "leader races". In particular, if a master race should require room to live ("Lebensraum"), he thought such a race should have the right to displace the inferior indigenous races.
"Races without homelands", Hitler proclaimed, were "parasitic races", and the richer the members of a parasitic race were, the more virulent the parasitism was thought to be. A master race could therefore, according to the Nazi doctrine, easily strengthen itself by eliminating parasitic races from its homeland. This idea was the given rationalization for the Nazis' later oppression and elimination of Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, Poles, the mentally and physically handicapped, homosexuals and others not belonging to these groups or categories that were part of the Holocaust. The Waffen-SS and other German soldiers (including parts of the Wehrmacht), as well as civilian paramilitary groups in occupied territories, were responsible for the deaths of an estimated eleven million men, women, and children in concentration camps, prisoner-of-war camps, labor camps, and death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.
Eugenics
The belief in the need to purify the German race led them to eugenics; this effort culminated in the involuntary euthanasia of disabled people and the compulsory sterilization of people with mental deficiencies or illnesses perceived as hereditary. Adolf Hitler considered Sparta to be the first "Völkisch State," and praised its early eugenics treatment of deformed children.[
Antisemitism
According to Nazi propaganda, the Jews thrived on fomenting division amongst Germans and amongst states. Nazi antisemitism was primarily racial: "the Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race;" however, the Jews were also described as plutocrats exploiting the worker: "As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods."
Homosexuality
Main article: History of homosexual people in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
An estimated 100,000 homosexuals were arrested after Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s. Of those, 50,000 were suspected to be incarcerated in concentration camps, making for 5,000 to 15,000 deaths. According to Harry Oosterhuis, the Nazis' view towards homosexuality was ambiguous at least, with homosexuality common in the Sturmabteilung. Thus, the eventual arrests of homosexuals should not be viewed in the context of "race hygiene" or eugenics. Völkisch-nationalist youth movements attracted homosexuals because of the preaching of Männerbund (male bonding); in practice, Oosterhuis says, this meant that the persecution of homosexuals was more politically motivated than anything else. For example, the homosexuality of Ernst Röhm was well known at the time and basis for satire and jokes. Röhm was killed chiefly because he was perceived as a political threat, not for his sexuality.
Religion
Hitler extended his rationalizations into a religious doctrine, underpinned by his criticism of traditional Catholicism. In particular, and closely related to Positive Christianity, Hitler objected to Catholicism's ungrounded and international character — that is, it did not pertain to an exclusive race and national culture. At the same time, and somewhat contradictorily, the Nazis combined elements of Germany's Lutheran community tradition with its northern European, organic pagan past. Elements of militarism found their way into Hitler's own theology; he preached that his was a "true" or "master" religion, because it would "create mastery" and avoid comforting lies. Those who preached love and tolerance, "in contravention to the facts", were said to be "slave" or "false" religions. The man who recognized these "truths", Hitler continued, was said to be a "natural leader", and those who denied it were said to be "natural slaves". "Slaves" — especially intelligent ones, he claimed — were always attempting to hinder their masters by promoting false religious and political doctrines.
Anti-clericalism can also be interpreted as part of Nazi ideology, simply because the new Nazi hierarchy did not allow itself to be overridden by the power that the Church traditionally held. In Austria, clerics had a powerful role in politics and ultimately responded to the Vatican. Although a few exceptions exist, Christian persecution was primarily limited to those who refused to accommodate the new regime and yield to its power. A particularly poignant exemplar is the seen in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, the Nazis often used the church to justify their stance and included many Christian symbols in the Third Reich.
Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an “anti-godless” movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: “We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis’ complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith.
The prevailing scholarly view since the Second World War is that Martin Luther's 1543 treatise On the Jews and their Lies exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust . The National Socialists displayed On the Jews and their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published. Against the majority view, theologian Johannes Wallmann writes that the treatise had no continuity of influence in Germany, and was in fact largely ignored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
According to Daniel Goldhagen, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after the Kristallnacht; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." Diarmaid MacCulloch argued that On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht.
Anti-capitalist rhetoric
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Nazi publications and speeches included anti-capitalist (especially anti-finance capitalist) rhetoric. Hitler attacked what he called "pluto-democracy," which he claimed to be a Jewish conspiracy to favor democratic parties in order to keep capitalism intact. The Nazi Party's 1920 "Twenty-Five Point Programme" demanded:
that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens... the abolition of all incomes unearned by work... the ruthless confiscation of all war profits... the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations... profit-sharing in large enterprises... extensive development of insurance for old-age... land reform suitable to our national requirements...
Nazi Party officials made several attempts in the 1920s to change some of the program or replace it entirely. In 1924, Gottfried Feder proposed a new 39-point program that kept some of the old planks, replaced others and added many completely new ones. Hitler did not mention any of the planks of the programme in his book, Mein Kampf, and he only mentioned it in passing as "the so-called programme of the movement".
Party spokesman Joseph Goebbels claimed in 1932 that the Nazi Party was a "workers' party" and "on the side of labor and against finance". Hitler said of the Nazis: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance." However, Hitler stated that Nazism "has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism... Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not." He stated "I absolutely insist on protecting private property... we must encourage private initiative".Nevertheless, he wanted property to be regulated to make sure "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual".
Ideological roots
The ideological roots that became German National Socialism were based on numerous sources in European history, drawing especially from Romantic nineteenth century idealism, and from a biological reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on "breeding upwards" toward the goal of an Übermensch (Superhuman). Hitler was an avid reader and received ideas that later influenced Nazism from traceable publications, such as those of the Germanenorden or the Thule society. He also adopted many populist ideas such as limiting profits, abolishing rents and generously increasing social benefits—but only for Germans.
The Nordic Myth has often been attributed to the reaction to an inferiority complex. Phillip Wayne Powell, in is book, Tree of Hate (1985), claimed that the Nordic Myth began to arise in fifteenth century Germany, when Germans resented the fact that Italians looked down on them as an inferior and unsophisticated people. On page 48, he states:
"In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a powerful surge of German patriotism was stimulated by the disdain of Italians for German cultural inferiority and barbarism, which lead to a counterattempt by Geman humanists to aud German qualities."
Fodor, M. W. claimed in "The Nation" (1936): "No race has suffered such from an inferiority complex as has the German. National Socialism was a kind of Coué method of converting the inferiority complex, at least temporarily, into a feeling of superiority".
Romanticism
According to Bertrand Russell, Nazism would come from a different tradition than that of either Liberalism or Marxism. Thus, to understand values of Nazism, it would be necessary to explore this connection, without trivializing the movement as it was in its peak years in the 1930s and dismissing it as little more than racism.
Antisemitism was shown to be a handy tool for Nazis to gain support, mainly because of the popular Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Personal accounts by August Kubizek, Hitler's childhood friend, have varied, offering ambiguous claims that antisemitism did and did not date back to Hitler's youth. One reason is the higher Jewish community in Austria and Germany because Germany had been a haven for many Jews over the years, including influential families such as the Rothschilds, although World War I and the Dolchstosslegende ended that legacy. Anti-Judaism had already been widely transformed into antisemitism before 1914 because of the new Europe-wide post-Darwin theory of racism. Historians universally accept that Nazism's mass acceptance depended upon nationalistic appeals and fear against "unnormal people" (which also could include xenophobia and antisemitism) and a patriotic flattery toward the wounded collective pride of defeated World War I veterans.
Many see strong connections to the values of Nazism and the anti-rationalist tradition of the romantic movement of the early nineteenth century in response to the Enlightenment. Strength, passion, frank declarations of feelings, and deep devotion to family and community were valued by the Nazis though first expressed by many Romantic artists, musicians, and writers. German romanticism in particular expressed these values. For instance, Hitler identified closely with the music of Richard Wagner, who harbored antisemitic views as the author of Das Judenthum in der Musik. Some claim that he was one of Hitler's role models, a comment of Kubizek's that is also disputed.
The idealization of tradition, folklore, classical thought, leadership (as exemplified by Frederick the Great), their rejection of the liberalism of the Weimar Republic, and calling the German state the "Third Reich" (which traces back to the medieval First Reich and the pre-Weimar Second Reich) has led many to regard the Nazis as reactionary.
Mysticism
Thule Society emblem
Nazi occultism is a term used to describe a philosophical undercurrent of Nazism that denotes the combination of Nazism with Germanic mysticism, cryptohistory, and/or the paranormal. The esoteric Thule Society and Germanenorden were secret societies that, while only a small part of the völkisch movement, led into the Nazi party.
Dietrich Eckart, a member of Thule Society, actually coached Hitler on his public speaking skills, and while Hitler has not been shown to have been a member of Thule, he received support from the group. Hitler later dedicated Mein Kampf to Eckart.
Heinrich Himmler showed a strong interest in such matters, although as Steigmann–Gall points out, Hitler and many of his key associates attended Christian services.
Ideological variants
Nazism as a doctrine is far from homogeneous, and can be divided into at least two sub-ideologies. During the 1920s and 1930s, there were two dominant Nazi factions; the followers of Otto Strasser and the followers of Adolf Hitler. The Strasserite faction eventually fell afoul of Hitler, when Otto Strasser was expelled from the party in 1930, and his attempt to create an oppositional left-block in the form of the Black Front failed. The remainder of the faction, which was to be found mainly in the ranks of the SA, was purged in the Night of the Long Knives, which included the murder of Gregor Strasser, Otto's brother. Afterwards, the Hitlerite faction became dominant. In the post-World War II era, Strasserism has enjoyed something of a revival among many neo-Nazi groups.
List of elements of the Nazi ideology
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The National Socialist Program
The rejection of democracy, and consequently abolishing political parties, labour unions, and free press.
Führerprinzip (Leader Principle) as a total belief in the leader (responsibility up the ranks, and authority down the ranks)
Extreme Nationalism
Anti-Bolshevism
Strong show of local culture
Social Darwinism
Defense of Blood and Soil (German: "Blut und Boden" - represented by the red and black colors in the Nazi flag)
The Lebensraum policy of creation of more living space for Germans in the east
Nazism and race, Racial policies of the Third Reich and Nazi eugenics:
Anti-Slavism
Antisemitism
The creation of a Herrenrasse (or Herrenvolk) (Master Race = by the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life; A department in the Third Reich)).
Aryan Supremacism; more specifically, ranking of individuals according to their race and racial purity, with the Nordic race favoured the most
Limited freedom of religion ( Point #24 in the National Socialist Program )
Rejection of the modern art movement and an embrace of classical art
Association with Fascism or Totalitarianism
Animal rights
Environmentalism: In June 1935, the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (Reich Nature Protection Law) was enacted. It was valid in West Germany till 1976. Some historians have either argued that this law was the symptom of an actual interest of the Nazi regime in the preservation of the natural world, or that it was not a Nazi law at all, but rather the nonideological expression of previous ideas. Others have contested these views, and claim that the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz reflected instead key elements of both progressive preservationism of the 1930s, such as the concepts of natural monuments and nature protection areas, and of Nazism, such as racialism and nationalism.
Kraft durch Freude The well-being of the working classes.
Public health (Anti smoking campaigns, asbestos restrictions, occupational health and safety standards)
Historians often disagree on the principal interests of the Nazi Party and whether Nazism can be considered a coherent ideology. The original National Socialists claimed that there would be no program that would bind them, and that they wanted to reject any established world view. Still, as Hitler played a major role in the development of the Nazi Party from its early stages and rose to become the movement's indisputable iconographic figurehead, much of what is thought to be "Nazism" is in line with Hitler's own political beliefs - the ideology and the man continue to remain largely interchangeable in the public eye. Some dispute whether Hitler's views relate directly to those surrounding the movement; the problem is furthered by the inability of various self-proclaimed Nazis and Nazi groups to decide on a universal ideology. But if Nazism is the world view promulgated in Mein Kampf, that world view is consistent and coherent, being characterized essentially by a conception of history as a "race struggle"; the Führerprinzip; anti-Semitism; the stigmatization of "Judeo-bolshevism" and the need to acquire a Lebensraum at the expenses of the Soviet Union . The core concept of Nazism is that the German Volk is under attack, and must become united, disciplined and self sacrificing (must submit to Nazi leadership) in order to win against this nefarious "Jewish plot" to subjugate the German nation.
Hitler's political beliefs were formulated in Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1925). His views were composed of three main axes: a conception of history as a "race struggle" influenced by social darwinism; antisemitism and the idea that Germany needed to conquer a "Lebensraum" ("living space") from Russia. His antisemitism, coupled with his anti-Communism, gave the grounds of his conspiracy theory of "judeo-bolshevism." Hitler first began to develop his views through observations he made while living in Vienna from 1907 to 1913. He concluded that a racial, religious, and cultural hierarchy existed, and he placed "Aryans" at the top as the ultimate superior race, while Jews and "Gypsies" were people at the bottom. He vaguely examined and questioned the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where as a citizen by birth, Hitler lived during the Empire's last throes of life. He believed that its ethnic and linguistic diversity had weakened the Empire and helped to create dissension. Further, he saw democracy as a destabilizing force because it placed power in the hands of ethnic minorities who, he claimed, "weakened and destabilized" the Empire by dividing it against itself. Hitler's political beliefs were then affected by World War I and the 1917 October Revolution, and saw some modifications between 1920 and 1923. He then definitively formulated them in Mein Kampf.
Fascism
In both popular thought and academic scholarship, Nazism is generally considered a form of fascism - a term whose definition is itself contentious. The debate focuses mainly on comparisons of fascist movements in general with the Italian prototype, including the fascists in Germany. The idea mentioned above to reject all former ideas and ideologies like democracy, liberalism, and especially marxism (as in Ernst Nolte) make it difficult to track down a perfect definition of these two terms; however, Italian Fascists tended to believe that all elements in society should be unified through corporatism to form an "Organic State"; this meant that these Fascists often had no strong opinion on the question of race, since it was only the state and nation that mattered.
German Nazism, on the other hand, emphasized the Aryan race or "Volk" principle to the point where the state simply seemed a means through which the Aryan race could realize its "true destiny." Since a debate among historians (especially Zeev Sternhell) to see each movement, or at least the German, as unique, the issue has been settled in most parts showing that there is a stronger family resemblance between the Italian and the German fascist movement than there is between democracies in Europe or the communist states of the Cold War; additionally, the crimes of the fascist movement can be compared, not only in numbers of casualties, but also in common developments: the March on Rome of Mussolini to Hitler's response shortly after to attempt a coup d'etat himself in Munich.
Also, Aryanism was not an attractive idea for Italians who were a non-Nordic race, but still there was a strong racism and also genocide in concentration camps long before either was in place in Germany. The philosophy that had seemed to be separating both fascisms was shown to be a result of happening in two different countries: since the king of Italy had not died, unlike the Reichspräsident, the leader in Italy (Duce) was not able to gain the absolute power the leader in Germany (Führer) did, leading to Mussolini's fall. The academic challenge to separate all fascist movements has since the 1980s and early 1990s been ground for a new attempt to see even more similarities.
Nationalism
Hitler founded The Nazi state upon a racially defined "German people" and principally rejected the idea of being bound by the limits of nationalism. That was only a means for attempting unlimited supremacy. In that sense, its hyper-nationalism was tolerated to reach a world-dominating Germanic-Aryan Volksgemeinschaft. This idea is a central concept of Mein Kampf, symbolized by the motto Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (one people, one empire, one leader). The Nazi relationship between the Volk and the state was called the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), a late nineteenth or early twentieth century neologism that defined a communal duty of citizens in service to the Reich (as opposed to a simple society). The term "National Socialism" derives from this citizen-nation relationship, whereby the term socialism is invoked and is meant to be realized through the common duty of the individuals to the German people; all actions are to be in service of the Reich. The Nazis stated that their goal was to bring forth a nation-state as the locus and embodiment of the people's collective will, bound by the Volksgemeinschaft, as both an ideal and an operating instrument. In comparison, traditional socialist ideologies oppose the idea of nations.
Militarism
Nazi rationale invested heavily in the militarist belief that great nations grow from military power and maintained order, which in turn grow "naturally" from "rational, civilized cultures". The Nazi Party appealed to German nationalists and national pride, capitalizing on irredentist and revanchist sentiments as well as aversions to various aspects of modernist thinking (although at the same time embracing other modernist ideas, such as admiration for engine power). Many ethnic Germans felt deeply committed to the goal of creating the Greater Germany (the old dream to include German-speaking Austria), which some believe required the use of military force to achieve.
Racism and discrimination
The Nazi racial philosophy was influenced by the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Madison Grant, and wholly embraced Alfred Rosenberg's Aryan Invasion Theory. The theory traced Aryan peoples in ancient Iran invading the Indus Valley Civilization, and carrying with them great knowledge and science that had been preserved from the antediluvian world. This "antediluvian world" referred to Thule, the speculative pre-Flood/Ice Age origin of the Aryan race, and is often tied to ideas of Atlantis. Most of the leadership and the founders of the Nazi Party were made up of members of the "Thule-Gesellschaft (the Thule Society)", which romanticized the Aryan race through theology and ritual.
Hitler also claimed that a nation was the highest creation of a "race", and "great nations" (literally large nations) were the creation of homogeneous populations of "great races", working together. These nations developed cultures that naturally grew from "races" with "natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits". The "weakest nations", Hitler said, were those of "impure" or "mongrel races", because they had divided, quarreling, and therefore weak cultures. Worst of all were seen to be the parasitic "Untermensch" (Subhumans), mainly Jews, but also Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the disabled and so called anti-socials, all of whom were considered "lebensunwertes Leben" ("Life-unworthy life") owing to their perceived deficiency and inferiority, as well as their wandering, nationless invasions ("the International Jew"). The persecution of homosexuals as part of the Holocaust has seen increasing scholarly attention since the 1990s, even though many homosexuals served in the Sturmabteilungen.
According to Nazism, it is an obvious mistake to permit or encourage plurality within a nation. Fundamental to the Nazi goal was the unification of all German-speaking peoples, "unjustly" divided into different Nation States. The Nazis tried to recruit Dutch and Scandinavian men into the SS, considering them of superior "Germanic" stock, with only limited success.
Hitler claimed that nations that could not defend their territory did not deserve it. He thought "slave races", like the Slavic peoples, to be less worthy to exist than "leader races". In particular, if a master race should require room to live ("Lebensraum"), he thought such a race should have the right to displace the inferior indigenous races.
"Races without homelands", Hitler proclaimed, were "parasitic races", and the richer the members of a parasitic race were, the more virulent the parasitism was thought to be. A master race could therefore, according to the Nazi doctrine, easily strengthen itself by eliminating parasitic races from its homeland. This idea was the given rationalization for the Nazis' later oppression and elimination of Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, Poles, the mentally and physically handicapped, homosexuals and others not belonging to these groups or categories that were part of the Holocaust. The Waffen-SS and other German soldiers (including parts of the Wehrmacht), as well as civilian paramilitary groups in occupied territories, were responsible for the deaths of an estimated eleven million men, women, and children in concentration camps, prisoner-of-war camps, labor camps, and death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.
Eugenics
The belief in the need to purify the German race led them to eugenics; this effort culminated in the involuntary euthanasia of disabled people and the compulsory sterilization of people with mental deficiencies or illnesses perceived as hereditary. Adolf Hitler considered Sparta to be the first "Völkisch State," and praised its early eugenics treatment of deformed children.[
Antisemitism
According to Nazi propaganda, the Jews thrived on fomenting division amongst Germans and amongst states. Nazi antisemitism was primarily racial: "the Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race;" however, the Jews were also described as plutocrats exploiting the worker: "As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods."
Homosexuality
Main article: History of homosexual people in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
An estimated 100,000 homosexuals were arrested after Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s. Of those, 50,000 were suspected to be incarcerated in concentration camps, making for 5,000 to 15,000 deaths. According to Harry Oosterhuis, the Nazis' view towards homosexuality was ambiguous at least, with homosexuality common in the Sturmabteilung. Thus, the eventual arrests of homosexuals should not be viewed in the context of "race hygiene" or eugenics. Völkisch-nationalist youth movements attracted homosexuals because of the preaching of Männerbund (male bonding); in practice, Oosterhuis says, this meant that the persecution of homosexuals was more politically motivated than anything else. For example, the homosexuality of Ernst Röhm was well known at the time and basis for satire and jokes. Röhm was killed chiefly because he was perceived as a political threat, not for his sexuality.
Religion
Hitler extended his rationalizations into a religious doctrine, underpinned by his criticism of traditional Catholicism. In particular, and closely related to Positive Christianity, Hitler objected to Catholicism's ungrounded and international character — that is, it did not pertain to an exclusive race and national culture. At the same time, and somewhat contradictorily, the Nazis combined elements of Germany's Lutheran community tradition with its northern European, organic pagan past. Elements of militarism found their way into Hitler's own theology; he preached that his was a "true" or "master" religion, because it would "create mastery" and avoid comforting lies. Those who preached love and tolerance, "in contravention to the facts", were said to be "slave" or "false" religions. The man who recognized these "truths", Hitler continued, was said to be a "natural leader", and those who denied it were said to be "natural slaves". "Slaves" — especially intelligent ones, he claimed — were always attempting to hinder their masters by promoting false religious and political doctrines.
Anti-clericalism can also be interpreted as part of Nazi ideology, simply because the new Nazi hierarchy did not allow itself to be overridden by the power that the Church traditionally held. In Austria, clerics had a powerful role in politics and ultimately responded to the Vatican. Although a few exceptions exist, Christian persecution was primarily limited to those who refused to accommodate the new regime and yield to its power. A particularly poignant exemplar is the seen in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, the Nazis often used the church to justify their stance and included many Christian symbols in the Third Reich.
Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an “anti-godless” movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: “We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis’ complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith.
The prevailing scholarly view since the Second World War is that Martin Luther's 1543 treatise On the Jews and their Lies exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust . The National Socialists displayed On the Jews and their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published. Against the majority view, theologian Johannes Wallmann writes that the treatise had no continuity of influence in Germany, and was in fact largely ignored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
According to Daniel Goldhagen, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after the Kristallnacht; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." Diarmaid MacCulloch argued that On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht.
Anti-capitalist rhetoric
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Nazi publications and speeches included anti-capitalist (especially anti-finance capitalist) rhetoric. Hitler attacked what he called "pluto-democracy," which he claimed to be a Jewish conspiracy to favor democratic parties in order to keep capitalism intact. The Nazi Party's 1920 "Twenty-Five Point Programme" demanded:
that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens... the abolition of all incomes unearned by work... the ruthless confiscation of all war profits... the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations... profit-sharing in large enterprises... extensive development of insurance for old-age... land reform suitable to our national requirements...
Nazi Party officials made several attempts in the 1920s to change some of the program or replace it entirely. In 1924, Gottfried Feder proposed a new 39-point program that kept some of the old planks, replaced others and added many completely new ones. Hitler did not mention any of the planks of the programme in his book, Mein Kampf, and he only mentioned it in passing as "the so-called programme of the movement".
Party spokesman Joseph Goebbels claimed in 1932 that the Nazi Party was a "workers' party" and "on the side of labor and against finance". Hitler said of the Nazis: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance." However, Hitler stated that Nazism "has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism... Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not." He stated "I absolutely insist on protecting private property... we must encourage private initiative".Nevertheless, he wanted property to be regulated to make sure "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual".
Ideological roots
The ideological roots that became German National Socialism were based on numerous sources in European history, drawing especially from Romantic nineteenth century idealism, and from a biological reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on "breeding upwards" toward the goal of an Übermensch (Superhuman). Hitler was an avid reader and received ideas that later influenced Nazism from traceable publications, such as those of the Germanenorden or the Thule society. He also adopted many populist ideas such as limiting profits, abolishing rents and generously increasing social benefits—but only for Germans.
The Nordic Myth has often been attributed to the reaction to an inferiority complex. Phillip Wayne Powell, in is book, Tree of Hate (1985), claimed that the Nordic Myth began to arise in fifteenth century Germany, when Germans resented the fact that Italians looked down on them as an inferior and unsophisticated people. On page 48, he states:
"In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a powerful surge of German patriotism was stimulated by the disdain of Italians for German cultural inferiority and barbarism, which lead to a counterattempt by Geman humanists to aud German qualities."
Fodor, M. W. claimed in "The Nation" (1936): "No race has suffered such from an inferiority complex as has the German. National Socialism was a kind of Coué method of converting the inferiority complex, at least temporarily, into a feeling of superiority".
Romanticism
According to Bertrand Russell, Nazism would come from a different tradition than that of either Liberalism or Marxism. Thus, to understand values of Nazism, it would be necessary to explore this connection, without trivializing the movement as it was in its peak years in the 1930s and dismissing it as little more than racism.
Antisemitism was shown to be a handy tool for Nazis to gain support, mainly because of the popular Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Personal accounts by August Kubizek, Hitler's childhood friend, have varied, offering ambiguous claims that antisemitism did and did not date back to Hitler's youth. One reason is the higher Jewish community in Austria and Germany because Germany had been a haven for many Jews over the years, including influential families such as the Rothschilds, although World War I and the Dolchstosslegende ended that legacy. Anti-Judaism had already been widely transformed into antisemitism before 1914 because of the new Europe-wide post-Darwin theory of racism. Historians universally accept that Nazism's mass acceptance depended upon nationalistic appeals and fear against "unnormal people" (which also could include xenophobia and antisemitism) and a patriotic flattery toward the wounded collective pride of defeated World War I veterans.
Many see strong connections to the values of Nazism and the anti-rationalist tradition of the romantic movement of the early nineteenth century in response to the Enlightenment. Strength, passion, frank declarations of feelings, and deep devotion to family and community were valued by the Nazis though first expressed by many Romantic artists, musicians, and writers. German romanticism in particular expressed these values. For instance, Hitler identified closely with the music of Richard Wagner, who harbored antisemitic views as the author of Das Judenthum in der Musik. Some claim that he was one of Hitler's role models, a comment of Kubizek's that is also disputed.
The idealization of tradition, folklore, classical thought, leadership (as exemplified by Frederick the Great), their rejection of the liberalism of the Weimar Republic, and calling the German state the "Third Reich" (which traces back to the medieval First Reich and the pre-Weimar Second Reich) has led many to regard the Nazis as reactionary.
Mysticism
Thule Society emblem
Nazi occultism is a term used to describe a philosophical undercurrent of Nazism that denotes the combination of Nazism with Germanic mysticism, cryptohistory, and/or the paranormal. The esoteric Thule Society and Germanenorden were secret societies that, while only a small part of the völkisch movement, led into the Nazi party.
Dietrich Eckart, a member of Thule Society, actually coached Hitler on his public speaking skills, and while Hitler has not been shown to have been a member of Thule, he received support from the group. Hitler later dedicated Mein Kampf to Eckart.
Heinrich Himmler showed a strong interest in such matters, although as Steigmann–Gall points out, Hitler and many of his key associates attended Christian services.
Ideological variants
Nazism as a doctrine is far from homogeneous, and can be divided into at least two sub-ideologies. During the 1920s and 1930s, there were two dominant Nazi factions; the followers of Otto Strasser and the followers of Adolf Hitler. The Strasserite faction eventually fell afoul of Hitler, when Otto Strasser was expelled from the party in 1930, and his attempt to create an oppositional left-block in the form of the Black Front failed. The remainder of the faction, which was to be found mainly in the ranks of the SA, was purged in the Night of the Long Knives, which included the murder of Gregor Strasser, Otto's brother. Afterwards, the Hitlerite faction became dominant. In the post-World War II era, Strasserism has enjoyed something of a revival among many neo-Nazi groups.
List of elements of the Nazi ideology
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The National Socialist Program
The rejection of democracy, and consequently abolishing political parties, labour unions, and free press.
Führerprinzip (Leader Principle) as a total belief in the leader (responsibility up the ranks, and authority down the ranks)
Extreme Nationalism
Anti-Bolshevism
Strong show of local culture
Social Darwinism
Defense of Blood and Soil (German: "Blut und Boden" - represented by the red and black colors in the Nazi flag)
The Lebensraum policy of creation of more living space for Germans in the east
Nazism and race, Racial policies of the Third Reich and Nazi eugenics:
Anti-Slavism
Antisemitism
The creation of a Herrenrasse (or Herrenvolk) (Master Race = by the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life; A department in the Third Reich)).
Aryan Supremacism; more specifically, ranking of individuals according to their race and racial purity, with the Nordic race favoured the most
Limited freedom of religion ( Point #24 in the National Socialist Program )
Rejection of the modern art movement and an embrace of classical art
Association with Fascism or Totalitarianism
Animal rights
Environmentalism: In June 1935, the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (Reich Nature Protection Law) was enacted. It was valid in West Germany till 1976. Some historians have either argued that this law was the symptom of an actual interest of the Nazi regime in the preservation of the natural world, or that it was not a Nazi law at all, but rather the nonideological expression of previous ideas. Others have contested these views, and claim that the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz reflected instead key elements of both progressive preservationism of the 1930s, such as the concepts of natural monuments and nature protection areas, and of Nazism, such as racialism and nationalism.
Kraft durch Freude The well-being of the working classes.
Public health (Anti smoking campaigns, asbestos restrictions, occupational health and safety standards)
Ideological competition
Nazism and communism emerged as two serious contenders for power in Germany after the First World War, particularly as the Weimar Republic became increasingly unstable. What became the Nazi movement arose out of resistance to the Bolshevik-inspired insurgencies that occurred in Germany in the aftermath of the First World War. The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused a great deal of excitement and interest in the Leninist version of Marxism and caused many socialists to adopt revolutionary principles. The Spartacist uprising in Berlin and the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 were both manifestations of this. The Freikorps, a loosely organized paramilitary group (essentially a militia of former World War I soldiers) was used to crush both these uprisings and many leaders of the Freikorps, including Ernst Röhm, later became leaders in the Nazi Party. After Mussolini's fascists took power in Italy in 1922, fascism presented itself as a realistic option for opposing communism, particularly given Mussolini's success in crushing the communist and anarchist movements that had destabilized Italy with a wave of strikes and factory occupations after the First World War. Fascist parties formed in numerous European countries.
Many historians, such as Ian Kershaw and Joachim Fest, argue that Hitler's Nazis were one of numerous nationalist and increasingly fascistic groups that existed in Germany and contended for leadership of the anti-communist movement and, eventually, of the German state. Further, they assert that fascism and its German variant, National Socialism, became the successful challengers to communism because they were able to both appeal to the establishment as a bulwark against Bolshevism and appeal to the working class base, particularly the growing underclass of unemployed and unemployable and growingly impoverished middle class elements who were becoming declassed (denounced as the lumpenproletariat). The Nazis' use of pro-labor rhetoric appealed to those disaffected with capitalism by promoting the limiting of profits, the abolishing of rents and the increasing of social benefits (only for Germans) while simultaneously presenting a political and economic model that divested "Soviet socialism" of elements that were dangerous to capitalism, such as the concept of class struggle, "the dictatorship of the proletariat" or worker control of the means of production. Thus, Nazism's populism, anti-communism and anti-capitalism helped it become more powerful and popular than traditional conservative parties, like the DNVP. For the above reasons, particularly the fact that Nazis and communists fought each other (often violently) during most of their existence, nazism and communism are commonly seen as opposite extremes on the political spectrum. Nevertheless, this view is not without its challengers. Several political theorists and economists, primarily those associated with the Austrian school, argue that nazism, Soviet communism and other totalitarian ideologies share a common underpinning in socialism and collectivism.
The simplicity of Nazi rhetoric, campaigns, and ideology also made its conservative allies underestimate its strength, and its ability to govern or even to last as a political party. Michael Mann defined fascism as a "transcendent and cleansing nation statism through paramilitarism", with "transcendent" meaning that the all classes were to be abolished in order for a new, organic and pure people: all classes are abolished by transition, all "others" (an estimated two-thirds of the German population alone).
Support of anti-communists for fascism and Nazism
Various far right politicians and political parties in Europe welcomed the rise of fascism and the Nazis, out of an intense aversion towards communism. They saw Hitler as the savior of Western civilization and of capitalism against Bolshevism. During the late 1930s and the 1940s, the Nazis were supported by the Falange movement in Spain, and by political and military figures who formed the government of Vichy France. The Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (LVF) and other anti-Soviet fighting formations formed.
Many historians, such as Ian Kershaw and Joachim Fest, argue that Hitler's Nazis were one of numerous nationalist and increasingly fascistic groups that existed in Germany and contended for leadership of the anti-communist movement and, eventually, of the German state. Further, they assert that fascism and its German variant, National Socialism, became the successful challengers to communism because they were able to both appeal to the establishment as a bulwark against Bolshevism and appeal to the working class base, particularly the growing underclass of unemployed and unemployable and growingly impoverished middle class elements who were becoming declassed (denounced as the lumpenproletariat). The Nazis' use of pro-labor rhetoric appealed to those disaffected with capitalism by promoting the limiting of profits, the abolishing of rents and the increasing of social benefits (only for Germans) while simultaneously presenting a political and economic model that divested "Soviet socialism" of elements that were dangerous to capitalism, such as the concept of class struggle, "the dictatorship of the proletariat" or worker control of the means of production. Thus, Nazism's populism, anti-communism and anti-capitalism helped it become more powerful and popular than traditional conservative parties, like the DNVP. For the above reasons, particularly the fact that Nazis and communists fought each other (often violently) during most of their existence, nazism and communism are commonly seen as opposite extremes on the political spectrum. Nevertheless, this view is not without its challengers. Several political theorists and economists, primarily those associated with the Austrian school, argue that nazism, Soviet communism and other totalitarian ideologies share a common underpinning in socialism and collectivism.
The simplicity of Nazi rhetoric, campaigns, and ideology also made its conservative allies underestimate its strength, and its ability to govern or even to last as a political party. Michael Mann defined fascism as a "transcendent and cleansing nation statism through paramilitarism", with "transcendent" meaning that the all classes were to be abolished in order for a new, organic and pure people: all classes are abolished by transition, all "others" (an estimated two-thirds of the German population alone).
Support of anti-communists for fascism and Nazism
Various far right politicians and political parties in Europe welcomed the rise of fascism and the Nazis, out of an intense aversion towards communism. They saw Hitler as the savior of Western civilization and of capitalism against Bolshevism. During the late 1930s and the 1940s, the Nazis were supported by the Falange movement in Spain, and by political and military figures who formed the government of Vichy France. The Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (LVF) and other anti-Soviet fighting formations formed.
Economic practice
Nazi economic practice concerned itself with immediate domestic issues and separately with ideological conceptions of international economics.
Domestic economic policy was narrowly concerned with four major goals to eliminate Germany's issues:
Elimination of unemployment.
Rapid and substantial rearmament.
Protection against the resurgence of hyper-inflation
Expansion of production of consumer goods to improve middle and lower-class living standards.
All of these policy goals were intended to address the perceived shortcomings of the Weimar Republic and to solidify domestic support for the party. In this, the party was successful. Between 1933 and 1936 the German Gross National Product (GNP) increased by an average annual rate of 9.5%, and the rate for industry alone rose by 17.2%.
This expansion propelled the German economy out of a deep depression and into full employment in less than four years. Public consumption during the same period increased by 18.7%, while private consumption increased by 3.6% annually. According to the historian Richard Evans, prior to the outbreak of war the German "economy had recovered from the Depression faster than its counterparts in other countries. Germany's foreign debt had been stabilized, interest rates had fallen to half their 1932 level, the stock exchange had recovered from the Depression, the gross national product had risen by 81 per cent over the same period.... Inflation and unemployment had been conquered."
German marriages increased from about 511,000 in 1932 to 611,000 in 1936, while births rose from 921,000 births in 1932 to 1,280,000 in 1936. Suicides committed by young people under 20 dropped by 80% between 1933 and 1939.
Internationally, the Nazi Party believed that an international banking cabal was behind the global depression of the 1930s. Control of this cabal, which had grown to a position where it controlled both Europe and the United States, was identified with an elite and powerful group of Jews. Nevertheless, a number of people believed that this was part of an ongoing plot by the Jewish people, as a whole, to achieve global domination. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which began its circulation in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, were said to have confirmed this, already showing "evidence" that the Bolshevik takeover in Russia was in accordance with one of the protocols. Broadly speaking, the existence of large international banking or merchant banking organizations was well known at this time. Many of these banking organizations were able to exert influence upon nation states by extension or withholding of credit. This influence is not limited to the small states that preceded the creation of the German Empire as a nation state in the 1870s, but is noted in most major histories of all European powers from the sixteenth century onward. Nevertheless, after the Great Depression, this libelous and unverified manuscript took on an important role in Nazi Germany, thus providing another link in the Nazis ideological motivation for the destruction of that group in the Holocaust.
Additionally, many companies dealt with the Third Reich. Many know that the Volkswagen was a Nazi project. Opel employed Jewish slave labour to run their industrial plants. Additionally, Daimler-Benz used prisoners of war as slaves to run their industrial plants. Other companies that dealt with the Third Reich—many of which claim not to have known the truth of what the Nazis were doing (some claimed to have lost control of their German branches when Hitler was in power)—were: BMW, Krupp (made gas chambers), Bayer (as a small part of the enormous IG Farben chemistry monopoly), and Hugo Boss (designed the SS uniforms, admitted to this in 1997). There has also been some controversy whether IBM had dealt with the Nazis to create a cataloguing system, Hollerith punch-card machines, which the Nazis were to use to file information on those who they killed.
Domestic economic policy was narrowly concerned with four major goals to eliminate Germany's issues:
Elimination of unemployment.
Rapid and substantial rearmament.
Protection against the resurgence of hyper-inflation
Expansion of production of consumer goods to improve middle and lower-class living standards.
All of these policy goals were intended to address the perceived shortcomings of the Weimar Republic and to solidify domestic support for the party. In this, the party was successful. Between 1933 and 1936 the German Gross National Product (GNP) increased by an average annual rate of 9.5%, and the rate for industry alone rose by 17.2%.
This expansion propelled the German economy out of a deep depression and into full employment in less than four years. Public consumption during the same period increased by 18.7%, while private consumption increased by 3.6% annually. According to the historian Richard Evans, prior to the outbreak of war the German "economy had recovered from the Depression faster than its counterparts in other countries. Germany's foreign debt had been stabilized, interest rates had fallen to half their 1932 level, the stock exchange had recovered from the Depression, the gross national product had risen by 81 per cent over the same period.... Inflation and unemployment had been conquered."
German marriages increased from about 511,000 in 1932 to 611,000 in 1936, while births rose from 921,000 births in 1932 to 1,280,000 in 1936. Suicides committed by young people under 20 dropped by 80% between 1933 and 1939.
Internationally, the Nazi Party believed that an international banking cabal was behind the global depression of the 1930s. Control of this cabal, which had grown to a position where it controlled both Europe and the United States, was identified with an elite and powerful group of Jews. Nevertheless, a number of people believed that this was part of an ongoing plot by the Jewish people, as a whole, to achieve global domination. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which began its circulation in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, were said to have confirmed this, already showing "evidence" that the Bolshevik takeover in Russia was in accordance with one of the protocols. Broadly speaking, the existence of large international banking or merchant banking organizations was well known at this time. Many of these banking organizations were able to exert influence upon nation states by extension or withholding of credit. This influence is not limited to the small states that preceded the creation of the German Empire as a nation state in the 1870s, but is noted in most major histories of all European powers from the sixteenth century onward. Nevertheless, after the Great Depression, this libelous and unverified manuscript took on an important role in Nazi Germany, thus providing another link in the Nazis ideological motivation for the destruction of that group in the Holocaust.
Additionally, many companies dealt with the Third Reich. Many know that the Volkswagen was a Nazi project. Opel employed Jewish slave labour to run their industrial plants. Additionally, Daimler-Benz used prisoners of war as slaves to run their industrial plants. Other companies that dealt with the Third Reich—many of which claim not to have known the truth of what the Nazis were doing (some claimed to have lost control of their German branches when Hitler was in power)—were: BMW, Krupp (made gas chambers), Bayer (as a small part of the enormous IG Farben chemistry monopoly), and Hugo Boss (designed the SS uniforms, admitted to this in 1997). There has also been some controversy whether IBM had dealt with the Nazis to create a cataloguing system, Hollerith punch-card machines, which the Nazis were to use to file information on those who they killed.
Types of Nazi supporters
German Nazis: Though Nazi Party membership was carefully regulated (and even closed off at a certain point), many non-affiliated citizens of the Nazi State described themselves as dedicated Nazis. After the war, the most prominent Nazis were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials, where 21 were executed. Party members—even those who were ordinary citizens—experienced a post-war "purge" where they were stripped of property, assets and often forced to abandon their positions. As part of Nazi Germany, Austria also experienced denazification, though this process occurred to a smaller degree only much later.
Foreign supporters: During and prior to World War II, there were numerous people outside of the German Reich who became adherents to the Nazi ideology. Some foreign born ethnic Germans had ventured from their homelands to become citizens of the Nazi State in the pre-war years. This was particularly the case around São Paulo, where people had left in the thousands despite the fact that, at the same time, efforts were being made to draw the Germany-born population into the region. Other Nazi supporters, such as William Joyce and the "Lord Haw Haw" cast, took flight from Britain, especially after the downfall of the British Union of Fascists. Similarly, parties supportive of the Nazis had failed to influence their own countries. Some people in the German-American Bund were incarcerated during the war, as were potential Nazi supporters in the U.S.
Post-war Nazis: George Lincoln Rockwell, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, became a prominent Nazi in the 1950s and formed the American Nazi Party. Some became admirers or sympathized with the plight of Nazi Germany because they saw it as the defender of Oswald Spengler's "West". From this point of view, the Nazi State was brought to its knees trying to solidify a self-sufficient Europe and ward off the influence of the Soviet Union and the United States, political and otherwise. Spenglerians such as Francis Parker Yockey supported this view, and his magnum opus, Imperium, has sold over twenty thousand copies since 1948. Essentially, Yockey was convinced that Nazi Germany was a step towards Spengler's Imperium, and during the Cold War, Yockey dedicated his life to promoting a general European rebellion against the overlordship of both the Soviet Union and the United States.
Esoteric Nazis: Some individuals have been fascinated by National Socialist philosophy in a spiritual or esoteric direction, including: Savitri Devi of France, Julius Evola of Italy, and Miguel Serrano of Chile.
Foreign supporters: During and prior to World War II, there were numerous people outside of the German Reich who became adherents to the Nazi ideology. Some foreign born ethnic Germans had ventured from their homelands to become citizens of the Nazi State in the pre-war years. This was particularly the case around São Paulo, where people had left in the thousands despite the fact that, at the same time, efforts were being made to draw the Germany-born population into the region. Other Nazi supporters, such as William Joyce and the "Lord Haw Haw" cast, took flight from Britain, especially after the downfall of the British Union of Fascists. Similarly, parties supportive of the Nazis had failed to influence their own countries. Some people in the German-American Bund were incarcerated during the war, as were potential Nazi supporters in the U.S.
Post-war Nazis: George Lincoln Rockwell, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, became a prominent Nazi in the 1950s and formed the American Nazi Party. Some became admirers or sympathized with the plight of Nazi Germany because they saw it as the defender of Oswald Spengler's "West". From this point of view, the Nazi State was brought to its knees trying to solidify a self-sufficient Europe and ward off the influence of the Soviet Union and the United States, political and otherwise. Spenglerians such as Francis Parker Yockey supported this view, and his magnum opus, Imperium, has sold over twenty thousand copies since 1948. Essentially, Yockey was convinced that Nazi Germany was a step towards Spengler's Imperium, and during the Cold War, Yockey dedicated his life to promoting a general European rebellion against the overlordship of both the Soviet Union and the United States.
Esoteric Nazis: Some individuals have been fascinated by National Socialist philosophy in a spiritual or esoteric direction, including: Savitri Devi of France, Julius Evola of Italy, and Miguel Serrano of Chile.
Nazism in popular culture
The term Nazi has become a generic term of abuse in popular culture, as have other Third Reich terms such as Führer (often spelled differently in English-speaking countries). Related terms, such as fascist, Gestapo and Hitler are sometimes used to describe any people or behaviours that are viewed as thuggish, authoritarian, or extremist. Phrases such as grammar Nazi, Feminazi, Open Source Nazi, and parking enforcement Nazi, are sometimes used in the United States. These uses are offensive to some, as indicated by the controversy in the mainstream media over the Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" episode. These types of terms are used frequently enough to inspire Godwin's Law.
Some people strongly associate the blackletter typefaces (e.g. Fraktur or Schwabacher) with Nazi propaganda (although the typeface is much older, and its usage was banned by The Nazi German government in 1941).
In films such as the Indiana Jones series, Nazis are often portrayed as villains, whom the heroes battle without mercy. Video game website IGN declared Nazis to be the most memorable video game villains ever. The main antagonists in the manga/anime Hellsing are vampire Nazis.
Some people strongly associate the blackletter typefaces (e.g. Fraktur or Schwabacher) with Nazi propaganda (although the typeface is much older, and its usage was banned by The Nazi German government in 1941).
In films such as the Indiana Jones series, Nazis are often portrayed as villains, whom the heroes battle without mercy. Video game website IGN declared Nazis to be the most memorable video game villains ever. The main antagonists in the manga/anime Hellsing are vampire Nazis.
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