Nazism

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**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 editorial further asserted: 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 , which was used to justify the Holocaust.

### 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 
 Marienplatz during the failed Beer Hall Putsch]]
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.
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## Life in Nazi Germany (1934&ndash;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. In psychology, such behaviour is called projection. 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

## Footnotes
## References