Nazism


Nazism or National Socialism is the totalitarian ideology and practices
engaged in by the German nationalistic dictatorship which ruled Germany from
1933 to 1945, "the Third Reich".

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
(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. Some historical
revisionists disseminate propaganda which denies or minimizes the Holocaust
and other Nazi acts, and attempts to put a positive spin on the policies of
the Nazi regime and the events which occurred under it.

Ideological Theory

According to Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler developed his political
theories by carefully observing the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
He was born as a citizen of the Empire, and believed that ethnic and
linguistic diversity had weakened it. Further, he saw democracy as a
destabilizing force, because it placed power in the hands of ethnic
minorities, who had incentives to further weaken and destabilize the Empire.

The center of the national socialist ideology is the term race. The Nazi
theory says that the Aryan race is a "master race" superior to other races.
This belief is justified by the following logic.

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 of impure or "mongrel" races,
because they have divided, quarrelling, and therefore weak cultures.

According to the Nazis, an obvious mistake of this type is to permit or
encourage multiple languages within a nation. This belief is why the German
Nazis were so concerned with the unification of German-speaking peoples' territories.

Nations that cannot defend their borders were therefore said to be the
creation of weak or slave races. Slave races were thought to be less worthy
of existence than master races. In particular, if a "master race" should
require room to live (Lebensraum), it was thought to have the right to take
it and kill or enslave the indigenous "slave races."

Races without homelands were therefore said to be "parasitic races." The
richer the members of a "parasitic race" are, 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 was the theoretic justification for the oppression and elimination of
Jews and Gypsies, a duty which most Nazis (oddly enough) found personally
repugnant.

Religions that recognize and teach these "truths" were 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," were
said to be "slave" or "false" religions.

The man who recognizes these "truths" was said to be a "natural leader,"
those who deny it were said to be "natural slaves." Slaves, especially
intelligent ones, were said to always attempt to hinder masters by promoting
false religious and political doctrines.

However, it is a misconception that Nazism was all about race - this is
probably because of the bad reputation Nazism has gained after the war, and
especially because of the holocaust. The ideological roots of Nazism are
deeper, and can be found in the romantic tradition of the 19th Century, and
especially Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on "breeding upwards" toward the
goal of an †bermensch.

Nazism and Romanticism

According to Bertrand Russell, Nazism comes from a different tradition than
that of either liberal capitalism or communism. Thus, to understand values
of Nazism, it is necessary to explore this connection, without trivializing
the movement as it was in its peak years in the 30s and dismissing it as a
little more than racism.

Many historiographers say that the antisemitic element, which does not exist
in the sister fascism movement in Italy and Spain, was adopted by Hitler to
gain popularity for the movement. Antisemitic prejudice was very common
among the vulgar masses in German Empire. It is claimed that mass acceptance
required anti-Semitism, as well as flattery of the wounded pride of German
people after the defeat of WWI.

But the origin of Nazism and its values come from the irrationalist
tradition of the romantic movement of the early 19th century. Strength,
passion, lack of hypocrisy, petty utilitarianism, traditional family values
and devotion to community were valued by the Nazis.

Nazism and the British Empire

Hitler admired the British Empire. Racist theories were developed by British
intellectuals in the 19th century to control the Indian people and other
"savages." These methods were often copied by the Nazis.

Similarly, in his early years Hitler also greatly admired the United States
of America. In Mein Kampf, he praised the United States for its
anti-immigration laws. According to Hitler, America was a successful nation
because it kept itself "pure" of "lesser races." However as war approached,
his view of the United States became more negative and he believed that
Germany would have an easy victory over the United States precisely because
the United States in his later estimation had become a mongrel nation.

[Image:EconNaziPropaganda.png]
Nazi domestic economic
propaganda flyer

Economic Theory

Nazi economic theory concerned itself with immediate domestic issues and
separately with ideological conceptions of international economics.

Domestic economic policy was narrowly concerned with three major goals:

     1. Elimination of unemployment
     2. Elimination of hyperinflation
     3. 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 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%. However, many economists argue that the
expansion of the Germany economy between 1933 and 1936 was not the result of
the Nazi party, but rather the consequence of economic policies of the late
Weimar Republic which had begin to have an effect.

In addition, it has been pointed out that while it is often popularly
believed that the Nazis ended hyperinflation, that the end of hyperinflation
preceded the Nazis by several years.

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. 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), has led some commentators to the conclusion that a 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 Empire as a 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 to 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.

In a economic sense, Nazism and Fascism are related. Nazism may be
considered a subset of Fascism, with all Nazis being Fascists, but not all
Fascists being Nazis. Nazism shares many economic features with Fascism,
featuring complete government control of finance and investment (allocation
of credit), industry, and agriculture. Yet in both of these systems,
corporate power and market based systems for providing price information
still existed. Quoting Benito Mussolini: "Fascism should more appropriately
be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

Rather than the state requiring goods from industrial enterprises and
allocating raw materials required for their production (as in socialist /
communist systems), the state paid for these goods. This allows price to
play an essential role in providing information as to relative scarcity of
materials, or the capital requirements in technology or labor (including
education, as in skilled labor) inputs to produce a manufactured good.
Additionally, the unionist (strictly speaking, syndicalist) veneer placed on
corporate labor relations was another major point of agreement. Both the
German and Italian fascist political parties began as unionist labor
movements, and grew into totalitarian dictatorships. This idea was
maintained throughout their time in power, with state control used as a
means to eliminate the assumed conflict between management labor relations.

Effects

These theories were used to justify a totalitarian political agenda of
racial hatred and suppression using all the means of the state, and
suppressing dissent.

Like other fascist regimes, the Nazi regime emphasized anti-communism and
the leader principle (FŸhrerprinzip), a key element of fascist ideology in
which the ruler is deemed to embody the political movement and the nation.
Unlike other fascist ideologies, Nazism was virulently racist. Some of the
manifestations of Nazi racism were:

   * Anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust
   * Ethnic nationalism, including the notion of Germans' status as the
     Herrenvolk ("master race") and †bermensch
   * A belief in the need to purify the German race through eugenics - this
     culminated in the involuntary euthanasia of disabled people

Anti-clericalism was also part of Nazi ideology.

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 Nazi Germany from 30
January 1933 until his suicide on 30 April 1945, led the German Reich into
World War II, and oversaw the murder of over 40 million people. 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.

[Swastika]
Nazi sacred symbol
"gamma cross"

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.

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 existence of a Ministry of
Church Affairs, instituted in 1935 and headed by Hanns Kerrl, was hardly
recognized by ideologists such as Rosenberg and by other political
decision-makers.

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, territorial irredentism, and basic
economic theory. 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.

Which factors promoted the success of National socialism?

An important question about national socialism is the question for the
factors that promoted its success not only in germany, but also in other
european countries (National socialistic movements could be found in Sweden,
Great Britain, Italy, Spain and even in the U.S.) in the twenties and
thirties of the last century?

These factors might have included:

   * Economic devastation all over Europe after WWI
   * Lack of orientation of many people after the breakdown of monarchy in
     many European countries.