Nazism

**Nazism** is a set of political beliefs associated with the Nazi Party of Germany. It started in the 1930s, when the Nazi Party took over Germany in 1933 and started carrying out their ideas in Germany, which they called the Third Reich. They stayed in power in Germany until 1945, when they lost World War II.

The word _Nazi_ is an abbreviation for _Nationalsozialist_ – supporter of the _Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei_ – in German.

## Overview

Nazism is a form of fascism, a far-right ideology heavily inspired from the works of Oswald Spengler. The Nazis believed that only the Aryan (German) race was capable of building nations. They thought that other races, especially Jews, were agents of the corruptive forces of capitalism and Marxism, both of which the Nazis opposed. They considered the _Aryan race_ – or _Aryans_ – the "Master race" (_Übermensch_): the most biologically advanced human beings. They applied Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to mankind - for example, through eugenics.

## Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, wanted to a create a country where all "Aryans" were treated equally. They spent heavily on poorer people and began several huge government programs to help Germany deal with the unemployment and economic crisis caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression which followed it.

### Night of the Long Knives

Some Nazis, such as Ernst Röhm, wanted the reforms to go further. Röhm called for a revolution which would eliminate economic classes in Germany. He also argued that the government should take over major businesses. Because they were seen as a threat to Hitler's power, Röhm and many of his supporters were murdered on Hitler's orders in 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives.

### Nazi-Soviet Pact

In a September 18, 1939 editorial, _The New York Times_ reacted to the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop (Nazi-Soviet) Pact by declaring:

The editorial further asserted:

## Antisemitism

The Nazis blamed the Jewish people for Germany's defeat in World War I. This idea is called the Stab in the Back Myth.

The Nazis also blamed the Jews for rapid inflation and the other economic problems caused by Germany's defeat in World War I. They viewed Jews as inferior oppressors of the Aryan people who were creating inequality.

This tactic of blaming Jews for Germany's problems is a propaganda technique known as scapegoating, which was used to justify the Holocaust.

To implement their racist ideas, the Nazis passed the _Nuremberg Race Laws_ in 1935. These banned non-Aryans and the Nazis' political opponents from serving in the government. They also forbade any sexual contact between 'Aryan' and non-Aryan persons.

The Nazis sent millions of Jews, Poles, Roma, Ukrainians, homosexuals, disabled people and political opponents to death camps to be killed. The genocide of 6,000,000+ European Jews is called _the Holocaust_.

### _Mein Kampf_

In 1925, Adolf Hitler published a book called _Mein Kampf_ ("My Struggle"). The book said that Germany's problems happened because Jews were working together to hurt the country. Hitler wrote that Jewish and communist politicians planned the Armistice of 1918 that ended World War I, and that they allowed Germany to agree to pay huge amounts of money and goods in reparations.

### The Beer Hall Putsch

In November 1923, the Nazis' private army, the Sturmabteilung (SA), tried to overthrow the democratic German government that had been set up after WWI. The attempt to take power is referred to as the Munich Putsch or Beer Hall Putsch.

Nazi thinking emphasises conflict and violence, and believes that these are the best way to sort out political problems. The Nazis had therefore set up the SA, which were sometimes known as the 'Nazi stormtroopers' or simply the 'brownshirts'. Many political parties had their own private armies at this time in Germany to guard their events and meetings from the private armies of other political parties.

The SA's attempt to take over was crushed after less than 24 hours.

### The Nazi Party re-emerges

After the Putsch, Hitler was imprisoned for six months and the Nazi Party was briefly banned. It was allowed to exist again under the promise that it would only be democratic. The Nazis agreed, but made it clear that if they took power in Germany, they would turn Germany into a dictatorship.

The Nazis believed in the Führer Principle: that all groups should be organised like armies, with absolute loyalty shown to the leader of the group. They wanted to apply this principle to Germany. They disagreed with democracy and believed that it divided groups, which made them weaker.

### Rise in popularity

The Nazis performed very badly in elections until the early 1930s, where they became exceptionally popular. This can be partly explained by a massive increase in poverty in Germany caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and Nazi promises to rebuild German strength and pride. However, this is not the only reason for the Nazis coming to power, because it still took more than three years for Adolf Hitler to become Chancellor of Germany after the Crash.

### Reichstag fire

On the night of the 27 February 1933 and 28 February 1933, someone set the Reichstag building on fire. This was the building where the German Parliament held their meetings. The Nazis blamed communists. Opponents of the Nazis said that the Nazis themselves had done it to come to power.

On 28 February 1933, Parliament passed an emergency law called _Reichstagsbrandverordnung_ ('Reichstag fire ordinance'). The government claimed the law's purpose was to protect the state from people who were trying to hurt it. However, the law cancelled most of the civil rights of the Weimar Republic.

The Nazis used the new law against the other political parties. Members of the communist and social-democratic parties were put into prison or killed.

### Dictatorship

The Nazis became the biggest party in Parliament. By 1934, they had made all other political parties illegal. They replaced democracy with a dictatorship. Adolf Hitler became leader (_Führer_) of Germany, and had the power to make any laws he wanted.

## Life in Nazi Germany (1934–1945)

The Nazis changed Germany to fit their ideas of what a country should be like. They created a totalitarian state: a country where the government tries to have total control over ordinary people's lives.

People who opposed the Nazis were seen as traitors.

### School lessons

Schools were forced to change their lessons to fit Nazi ideas. History classes now emphasised German military victories. They blamed Jews and Marxists for Germany's defeat in WWI. Children were also taught "racial hygiene" lessons based on pseudo-scientific racist principles.

### Hitler Youth

Starting in 1936, all German children had to be members of the Hitler Youth or the League of German Girls. These were Nazi versions of the Scouting movement, designed to prepare German children to be soldiers in wars against other races.

### Police state

The Nazis created a very effective police state, led by Heinrich Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich. They were in charge of an organisation called the Schutzstaffel (SS), which took control of all of the police forces in Germany. The SS also set up a new secret police organisation called the Gestapo, which hunted down people who opposed the Nazi government. Enemies of the Nazis were regularly tortured, put in concentration camps, and/or executed.

## Aggressive conquests

As the German leader (Führer) of Nazi Germany, Hitler began moving Nazi armies into neighboring countries. When Germany attacked Poland, World War II started. Western countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were occupied. The Nazis planned to treat these countries as colonies. However, in Eastern countries, such as Poland and the Soviet Union, the Nazis planned to kill or enslave the Slavic peoples, so that German settlers could take their land.

### Axis powers

Nazi Germany allied with other European countries, such as Finland and Italy. Every other European country that allied with Germany did it because they did not want to be taken over by Germany. Through these alliances and invasions, the Nazis managed to control much of Europe.

## The Holocaust

In the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and his allies killed at least 6,000,000 Jews (67% of pre-war European Jews) in the Holocaust.

In addition to the Holocaust, the Nazis exterminated Poles, Roma, Ukrainians, homosexuals, disabled people, and political opponents across Nazi-occupied European territories. The Nazis killed millions of these people in concentration camps with poison gas. They killed millions more by forcing them to do slave labor without enough food or clothing.

### Definition

There have been debates on the definition of the Holocaust over the past decades. The mainstream definitions specifically define the Holocaust as the genocide of Jews by the Axis powers.

As per the _Holocaust Encyclopedia_, run by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM):

As per the Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial:

As per the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust:

As per the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA):

### Justifications

The Nazis justified the Holocaust with conspiracy theories based on self-victimization and lies. They accused Jews of controlling the world and blamed them for Germany's problems. American historian Jeffrey Herf wrote in his book _The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust_:

Herf said that Nazis' view of the Jews being an inferior race was not the motive for the Holocaust, contrary to common perception. Instead, he said, it was the stereotype of Jews being an "all-powerful anti-German force" that made the Holocaust happen:

American legal scholar Kenneth L. Marcus presented the concept Accusation in a Mirror (AiM) to describe the tendency of genocide criminals – from Nazi Germans to Hutu nationalists – to accuse their victims of seeking a genocide against them in order to justify a genocide themselves. In psychology, such behaviour is called projection.

## Allied victory

In 1945, the Soviet Union took over Berlin after defeating the German army in Russia. The Soviet Red Army met the American and British armies, who had fought right across Germany after invading Nazi Europe from Normandy in France on June 6, 1944. The Nazis lost because the Allies had many more soldiers and more money than them.

During the invasion of Berlin, Hitler shot himself in a bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun. Other Nazis also killed themselves, including Joseph Goebbels just one day after Hitler named him as his successor. The Nazis surrendered after the Red Army captured Berlin.

## Nuremberg Trials

After the war, the Allied governments, namely the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, held trials of the Nazi leaders. These trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany. For this reason, these trials were called "the Nuremberg Trials."

The Allied leaders accused the Nazi leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murdering millions of people (in the Holocaust). They also accused them of starting wars, of conspiracy, and belonging to illegal organizations like the SS. Most Nazi leaders were found guilty by the court, and they were sent to jail or sentenced to death and executed.

### Neo-Nazism

There has not been a Nazi state since 1945, but there are still people who believe in Nazi ideas. These people are often called _Neo-Nazis_. Here are some examples of their beliefs:
- Germanic peoples are superior to all other races of people. (Many neo-Nazis change "Germanic" to "all white people".)
- They have antisemitic and racist beliefs. For example:
    - They say that the Holocaust did not happen, and that it was made up by the Jews.
    - They say that Hitler was right to blame Jewish people for Germany's problems after World War I.
    - They tell people to hate Jewish people and other ethnic groups.
    - They believe that Jews have too much power in the world.
After the war, laws were made in Germany and other countries, especially in Europe, that make it illegal to say the Holocaust never happened. Sometimes, they also ban questioning the number of Holocaust victims and saying that it killed a smaller amount of people than it really did. There has been some controversy over whether this affects people's free speech.

Certain countries, such as Germany, Austria, and France, also banned the use of Nazi symbols. They also outlaw making a Nazi pledge position on a popular media source, in order to stop Nazis from using them.

### Academic discussion

British historian Roger Griffin defined fascism as a form of revolutionary nationalism hinged on the unity of a group to achieve a national rebirth (or _palingenesis_, Koine Greek: παλιγγενεσία). The definition was later adopted by historian Matthew Kott to redefine Nazism as a type of antisemitic fascism rooted in populist ultranationalism given that he saw the conventional definition of Nazism as too Germanocentric and unable to account for the massive local collaboration in Nazi-occupied territories.

Kott argued that a group can be Nazi without supporting Hitler's version of Nazism. As examples, he pointed to the pre-war anti-German Latvian ultranationalist group _Pērkonkrusts_ ("Thunder Cross") and Vidkun Quisling's Norwegian collaborationist group _Nasjonal Samling_ ("National Gathering").

## Related pages

- Ustaše
- Antiziganism
- Anti-Judaism and antisemitism