World War Two

War Ensign of Nazi Germany (1938-1945)The Nazi rulers of Germany began World War II by invading Poland in September 1939 and conquered most of Western Europe except for the United Kingdom in the summer of 1940. On June 22, 1941, they invaded the Soviet Union and came close to capturing Moscow in December 1941. However, its fortunes in the war declined by late 1942 and early 1943 when the Allies defeated Nazi forces at Stalingrad and at both El-Alamein and Tunisia in North Africa.

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 bumociated with Nazism (such as the Swastika) acquired extremely negative connotations in Europe and North America.

[edit] Ideology

Adolf HitlerNazism has come to stand for a belief in the superiority of an Aryan race, an abstraction of the Germanic peoples. During Hitler’s time, 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 autarkic 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 remain largely interchangeable in the public eye. Some dispute whether Hitler’s views relate directly to those surrounding the movement; the problem is exacerbated 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; and the need to acquire Lebensraum (living space) at the expense of the Soviet Union [24]. The core concept of Nazism is that the German Volk is under attack from a judeo-bolshevist conspiracy[24], and must become united, disciplined and self sacrificing (must submit to Nazi leadership) in order to win.

Hitler’s political beliefs were formulated in Mein Kampf. 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 acquire land from Russia. His antisemitism, coupled with his anti-Communism, gave the grounds of his conspiracy theory of “judeo-bolshevism”.[24] 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. He believed that its ethnic and linguistic diversity had weakened the Empire and helped to create dissent. 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 formulated them definitively in Mein Kampf.[25]

[edit] Fascism

Further information: Fascism and ideology

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[26]) 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 seemed simply 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 one, as unique, the issue has been for the most part settled, 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;[27] 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 seen as a non-Nordic population, but still there was a strong racism and also genocide in concentration camps long before either was in place in Germany.[28] 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.

According to most scholars of fascism, especially once in power, has historically attracted support from the political right, especially the “far right” or “extreme right.”[29]

[edit] 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.[30] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Racism and discrimination

Further information: Nazism and race & Racial policy of Nazi Germany

The Nazi racial philosophy was influenced by the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Madison Grant, and was elaborated by Alfred Rosenberg in the Myth of the Twentieth Century.

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 (with the pink triangle) 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.[citation needed]

“Races without homelands”, Hitler proclaimed, were “parasitic races”, and the richer the members of a parasitic race were, the more virulent the parasitism was said 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.

[edit] Eugenics

Main article: Nazi 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.[31][32]

[edit] 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.”[33] In addition, the Nazis articulated opposition to finance capitalism with an emphasis on antisemitic claims that this was manipulated by a conspiracy of Jewish bankers.[34]

[edit] 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’ original view toward homosexuality was at least ambiguous if not openly tolerant or even approving, with homosexuality common in the Sturmabteilung(SA) which was critical to Hitler as the paramilitary arm of the NSDAP.[35] 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 or opportunistic than anything else.[36] For example, the homosexuality of Ernst Röhm and other leaders of the Sturmabteilung was well known for years and became the basis for satire and jokes, including in the Army, which was highly suspicious and resentful of the SA’s power and size.[37] Röhm was killed chiefly because he was perceived as a political threat, not for his homosexuality. Indeed, it was only after the murder of Roehm that the Nazis publicly expressed concern about the depraved morals of Roehm and the other S.A. leaders who were shot. …Hitler in addressing the surviving storm troop leaders in Munich at noon on June 30[when?], just after the first executions, declared that for their corrupt morals alone these men deserved to die.[38]

Eventually, Nazism declared itself incompatible with homosexuality, because gays did not reproduce and perpetuate the master race. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS, created the “Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.” Homosexuality was declared contrary to “wholesome popular sentiment,”[39] and gay men were regarded as “defilers of German blood.” Homosexuals were persecuted for their sexuality. When they were prisoners in a concentration camp, they were forced to wear a pink triangle.[40]