What is Nazism?
Nazism, short for National Socialism, was the creed of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler. Most historians count it as a radical form of fascism. What set it apart was its core belief in race. Nazis taught that people were divided into higher and lower races, that Germans were a master race and that Jews were a deadly enemy. Those claims have no scientific basis. The movement hated democracy, liberalism, communism and the peace terms of 1919, and it wanted a one-party state ruled by a single leader. It sought land in the east for Germans by war. In power it started the Second World War in Europe and murdered millions of civilians, including six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Core beliefs
- The nation is defined by race, and races are said to be unequal.
- Jews are blamed as an enemy of Germany, an idea that led to mass murder.
- Democracy, free speech, trade unions and rival parties must be wiped out.
- The leader's will is the supreme law, and the party commands society.
- Germany must win land in Eastern Europe through war and conquest.
- Individuals are valued only as members of a racial community.
History
The party began in Munich in 1919 as a small group and took the name NSDAP in 1920. Hitler led it from 1921. After a failed uprising in Munich in 1923 he went to prison and wrote Mein Kampf. The Nazis stayed on the fringe until the Great Depression, when mass unemployment and anger at the republic brought them millions of votes. They became the biggest party in 1932, and Hitler was made chancellor on 30 January 1933. Within months a fire in the Reichstag was used as a pretext to cancel rights, the Enabling Act let him rule by decree, other parties were banned and the first camps opened. Jews were stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and the pogrom of November 1938 brought mass arrests and destruction. The invasion of Poland in September 1939 began the war. Germany was beaten in May 1945. Leading Nazis were tried at Nuremberg.
Variants
Within the party, a faction around the Strasser brothers stressed hostility to big business and talked of a socialist revolution. Hitler pushed it aside, and Gregor Strasser was murdered in 1934. Historians also debate how far Nazism was a copy of Italian fascism and how far it was a unique movement driven by race. After 1945, neo-Nazi groups appeared in many countries, usually mixing Holocaust denial with white supremacy. They are small, are banned in some places and are widely condemned.
Criticisms
Nazism is condemned across the political spectrum and in international law. Its racial ideas are rejected by science. The word socialist in its name was propaganda: the regime smashed free trade unions, banned strikes and worked closely with industrialists, while confiscating Jewish property. Scholars have also asked how ordinary officials, doctors, lawyers, soldiers and neighbours took part in or tolerated persecution. No serious historian treats the regime's crimes as an exaggeration, and Holocaust denial is a form of propaganda, not a point of debate.
In practice
The Nazi state ended elections, free courts and a free press, and used the Gestapo and SS to terrorise opponents. It ran concentration camps from 1933. It murdered disabled people in a programme it called euthanasia. During the war, it carried out the Holocaust in shooting operations and in killing centres such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor. Roma, Polish civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, political opponents and others were also killed in huge numbers. On the 12 axes it scores at the top end for Strong leader, Order, Central, National identity and Strength abroad, and near the middle on markets, since the economy was bent to war aims. Germany and Austria ban Nazi symbols and propaganda.