page_title: Political views of Adolf Hitler
section_title: Völkisch nationalism
hierarchical_section_title: Political views of Adolf Hitler / Völkisch nationalism
caption_attribution_description: English: Boundaries of the planned "Greater Germanic Reich" (German: "Großgermanisches Reich"), fully styled the "Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation" (German: "Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation"), based on various, only partially systematised target projections (e.g. Generalplan Ost) from state administration and the SS leadership sources.
context_page_description: The political views of Adolf Hitler have presented historians and biographers with some difficulty. His writings and methods were often adapted to need and circumstance, although there were some steady themes, including antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-parliamentarianism, German Lebensraum, belief in the superiority of an "Aryan race" and an extreme form of German nationalism. Hitler personally claimed he was fighting against "Jewish Marxism".
  Adolf Hitler's political views were formed during three periods, namely his years as a poverty-stricken young man in Vienna and Munich prior to World War I, during which he turned to nationalist-oriented political pamphlets and antisemitic newspapers out of distrust for mainstream newspapers and political parties; the closing months of World War I when Germany lost the war as Hitler is said to have developed his extreme nationalism during this time, desiring to "save" Germany from both external and internal "enemies" who in his view betrayed it; and the 1920s, during which his early political career began and he wrote Mein Kampf.
context_section_description: Hitler was a pan-Germanic nationalist whose ideology was built around a philosophically authoritarian, anti-Marxist, antisemitic and anti-democratic worldview. Such views of the world in the wake of the fledgling Weimar government were not uncommon in Germany since democratic/parliamentary governance seemed ineffectual to solve Germany's problems. Correspondingly, veterans of the First World War and like-minded nationalists formed the Vaterlandspartei which promoted expansionism, soldierly camaraderie and heroic leadership, all under the guise of völkisch traditions like ethnic and linguistic nationalism, but which also included obedience to authority as well as the belief in political salvation through decisive leadership. The völkisch parties began to fractionalize during Hitler's absence from the revolutionary scene in Germany after the failed "Beer Hall Putsch" of November 1923. When he re-emerged upon release from Landsberg Prison, his importance to the movement was obvious and he came to believe that he was the realization of völkisch nationalistic ideals in a sort of near messianic narcissism which included his conviction to shake off the restrictive Treaty of Versailles and to "restore Germany's might and power", creating a reborn German nation as the chosen leader of the Nazi Party.
  Hitler stressed the völkisch ideology, claiming Germanic/Aryan superiority in Mein Kampf:
  Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power. This very fact fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term: MAN. He is the Prometheus of mankind, from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge, illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery and thus showing man how to rise and become master over all the other beings on the earth. Should he be forced to disappear, a profound darkness will descend on the earth; within a few thousand years human culture will vanish and the world will become a desert.
  The völkisch nationalism of Hitler and Nazis encompassed the notion that the German Volk was epitomized by German farmers and peasants, people who remained uncorrupted by modern ideals and whose greatest attribute was their "cheerful subservience" and their capacity to respond to their "monarchical calling". Hitler was their new monarch in a manner of speaking. Völkisch nationalism also forged into its ideals, the importance of nature, the centrality of a knightly savior (Hitler in this case) and the belief in the superior Aryan. Antisemitism remained a key component of the völkisch movement and a permanent undercurrent throughout conservative parties in German history and after many years culminated with the view that the Jews were the only thing standing in the way of the ideal society. As Germany's newfound völkisch nationalist leader, Hitler initiated a policy of ethnic nationalism replete with directives to eliminate Jews and other identified enemies as Nazism ultimately became the religion of the movement and the "irrational became concrete" under the terms of its "ideological framework".
caption: Boundaries of the Greater Germanic Reich
exif: {}