Nazism
Nazism was the totalitarian practices engaged in by the German nationalistic dictatorship which ruled in Germany from 1933 to 1945. The dictator Adolf Hitler rose to power as leader of a political party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP for short). Germany during this period is also referred to as Nazi Germany. Nazism was also called National Socialism (a contraction of the German Nationalsozialismus). Adherents of Nazism were called Nazis. Nazism has been outlawed in modern Germany, although tiny remnants, known as neo-nazis continue to operate in Germany and abroad. An allied movement, historical revisionism, disseminates propaganda which denies or minimizes the holocaust and other Nazi atrocities, and tries to put a positive spin on the policies of Nazi Germany and the events which occured.
Ideological Theory
National Socialism classically says that a nation is the highest creation of a race. Therefore, great nations (literally large nations) are said to be the creation of great races. The theory says that great nations grow from military power. In turn, military power naturally grows from rational, civilized cultures. In turn, these cultures naturally grow from races with natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits.
The weakest nations are said to be those from impure of mongrel races, because they have divided, quarreling, and therefore weak cultures.
Nations that cannot defend their borders are therefore said to be the creation of weak or slave races. Slave races are thought to be less worthy of existence than master races. In particular, if a "master race" should require room to live, ("Lebensraum"), it is thought to have the right to take it and kill the indigenous "slave races."
Races without homelands are therefore said to be "parasitic races." The richer the members of a "parasitic race" are, the more virulent the parasitism is said to be. A "master race" can therefore, it is said, easily strengthen itself by eliminating "parasitic races" from its homeland.
Religions that recognize and teach these "truths" are said to be "true" or "master" religions because they create mastery by avoiding comforting lies. Those that preach love and toleration, "in contravention to the facts" are said to be "slave" or "false" religions.
The man who recognizes these truths is said to be a natural leader, those who deny it are said to be natural slaves. Slaves, especially intelligent ones, are said to always attempt to hinder masters by promoting false religious and political doctrines.
Economic Theory
Nazi economic theory concerned itself with immediate domestic concerns and separately with ideological conceptions of international economics.
Domestic economic policy was narrowly concerned with three major goals:
- elimination of unemployment
- elimination of hyperinflation
- expansion of production of consumer goods to improve middle and lower-class living standards.
All of these policy goals were intended to address the extensive shortcomings of the Weimar Republic and to solidify domestic support for the party. In this, the party was very successful. Between 1933 and 1936 the German 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 4 years. Public consumption during the same period increased by 18.7%, while private consumption increased by 3.6% annually. However, as this production was primarily consumptive rather than productive (make work projects, expansion of the war-fighting machine, initiation of the draft to remove working age males from the labor force), inflationary pressures began to rear their head again, although not to the highs of the Weimar Republic. These economic pressures, combined with the war-fighting machine created in the expansion (and concomitant pressures for its use), lead some commentators to the conclusion that European war was inevitable for these reasons alone. Stated another way, without another general European war to support this consumptive and inflationary economic policy, the Nazi domestic economic program was unsupportable. This is not to say that other more important political considerations were not to blame. It is only meant to state that economics have been, and are a primary motivating factor for any society to go to war.
Internationally, the Nazi party believed that a international banking cabal was behind the global depression of the 1930s. The control of this cabal was identified with the ethnic group known as Jews, providing another link in their ideological motivation for the destruction of that group in the holocaust. However, 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 German nation state in the 1870s, but is noted in most major histories of all European powers from the 1500s onward. In fact, some transnational corporations in the 1500 – 1800 period (the Dutch East India Company for one good example) were formed specifically to engage in warfare as a proxy for governmental involvement, as opposed to the other way around.
Using more modern nomenclature, it is possible to say that the Nazi Party was against transnational corporations power vis-a-vis that of the nation state. This basic anti-corporate stance is shared with many mainstream center-left political parties, as well as otherwise totally opposed anarchist political groups.
It is important to note that the Nazi Party’s conception of ‘international’ economics was very limited. As the ‘National Socialist’ in the name NSDAP suggests, the party’s primary motivation was to incorporate previously international resources into the Reich by force, rather than by trade (compare to the international socialism as practiced by the Soviet Union and the COMECON trade organization). This made international economic theory a supporting factor in the political ideology rather than a core plank of the platform as it is in most modern political parties.
Effects
This theory has been used to justify a totalitarian political agenda of racial hated and suppression using all the means of the state, and suppressing dissent. These include:
- Ethnic nationalism, including the notion of Germans' status as the Herrenvolk ("master race") and Übermensch
- Racism, including Anti-Semitism
- Anti-communism
- Anti-clericalism
- eugenics- to purify the master race
- euthanasia- to implement eugenics
- The leader principle (Führerprinzip), a key element of fascist ideology in which the ruler is deemed to embody the political movement and the nation.
Backlash Effects
Perhaps the primary intellectual effect has been that Nazi doctrines completely discredited any attempt to use biology to explain or influence social issues, for at least two generations after Nazi Germany's brief existence.
People and History
The most prominent Nazi was Adolf Hitler, who ruled Germany from 30 January 1933 until his suicide on 30 April 1945, led Germany into World War II, and oversaw the murder of over 20 million people, and who is held responsible for the Holocaust. Under Hitler, ethnic nationalism and racism were joined together through an ideology of militarism to serve his goals.
After the war, many prominent Nazis were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials.
The Nazi symbol is the clockwise swastika.
Nazism and Religion
The relationship between Nazism and Christianity can only be described as complex -- and controversial, since most modern writers wish to dissociate their own views from Nazism as much as possible.
Insofar as Christianity preaches love and toleration, it is clearly a slave religion, and the Nazis suppressed it in this form. In so far as it blames Jews for the world's ills, it supported a key Nazi doctrine (parasitic races) and was accepted.
Hitler and other Nazi leaders clearly made use of Christian symbolism and emotion in propagandizing the overwhelmingly Christian German public, but it remains a matter of controversy whether Hitler believed himself a Christian. Some Christian writers have sought to typify Hitler as an atheist or occultist -- even a Satanist -- whereas non-Christian writers have emphasized Nazism's outward use of Christian doctrine, regardless of what its inner-party mythology may have been.
The Nazi Party's relations with the Catholic Church are yet more fraught. Many Catholic priests and leaders vociferously opposed Nazism on the grounds of its incompatibility with Christian morals. As with many political opponents, many of these priests were sentenced in the concentration camps for their opposition. Nevertheless, the Church hierarchy represented by Pope Pius XII remained largely silent on the issue, and allegations of the Pope's complicity are today commonplace.
Nazism and Fascism
Nazism is often (but incorrectly) used interchangeably with Fascism. While Nazism employed stylistic elements of Fascism, the only serious similarities between the two were dictatorship and territorial irredentism. For example, Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism, did not embrace anti-Semitism until seduced by his alliance with Hitler, whereas Nazism had been explicitly racialist from its inception. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, often termed a fascist by his largely Communist opposition, could perhaps be described as a reactionary Catholic monarchist who adopted little of fascism but its style.
Toward the end of the 20th century, Neo-Nazi movements have arisen in a number of countries, including the United States of America and several European nations. Neo-Nazism can include any group or organization that exhibits an ideological link to Nazism. It is frequently associated with the skinhead youth subculture. Some fringe political parties, such as the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, have also adopted Nazi ideas.
Nazism and Communism
It has been said that both ideologies, Nazism and Communism, would share some goals in matters of totalitarian state and expansionism. However, they differ in respective identification of the social group of which they propose the supremacy, the "Aryan race" or the proletariat.
See also:
- History of Germany
- doublespeak (for a discussion of the semantic implications of words such as Nazi).