Nazism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Illustration: Cover of the catalogue of the Nazi "Degenerate Art Exhibition" (1937). The exhibition was held to defame modern and Jewish artists. On the cover is Der Neue Mensch sculpture by Otto Freundlich.
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Nazism, or National Socialism (Template:Lang-de) in full, was the ideology of the Nazi Party in Germany and related movements outside Germany. It is a variety of fascism that incorporates biological racism and antisemitism. Nazism developed in Germany from the influence of the far-right racist Völkisch German nationalist movement and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary culture which fought against the communists in post-World War I Germany. The German Nazi Party and its affiliates in Germanic states supported pan-Germanicism. It was designed to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Major elements of Nazism have been described as far-right, such as allowing domination of society by people deemed racially superior, while purging society of people declared inferior, who were said to be a threat to national survival.
Nazism claimed that an Aryan master race was superior to all other races. To maintain what it regarded as the purity and strength of the Aryan race, Nazis sought to exterminate Jews and Romani, and the physically and mentally disabled. Other groups deemed "degenerate" or "asocial" received exclusionary treatment, including homosexuals, blacks, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents. The Nazis supported territorial expansionism to gain Lebensraum ("living space") as being a law of nature for all healthy and vigorous peoples of superior races growing in population to displace peoples of inferior races; especially people of a superior race facing overpopulation in their given territories. Nazism rejected democracy because it believed Jews used it for their self-preservation.
The German Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler had objected to the party's previous leader's decision to use the word "Socialist" in its name, as Hitler at the time preferred to use "Social Revolutionary". Upon taking over the leadership, Hitler kept the term but defined socialism as being based upon a commitment of an individual to a community.<ref name="Konrad Heiden 2010. p. 85"/> Hitler did not want the ideology's socialism to be conflated with Marxian socialism. He claimed that true socialism does not repudiate private property unlike the claims of Marxism, and stated that the "Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning" and "Communism is not socialism. Marxism is not socialism."<ref name="guardian"/> Nazism denounced both capitalism and communism for being associated with Jewish materialism.<ref>Cyprian P. Blamires. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 2. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, 2006. P. 130.</ref> Nazism favoured private property, freedom of contract, and promoted the creation of a national solidarity that would transcend class differences.<ref name="autogenerated11"/><ref name="political"/> Like other fascist movements, Nazism supported the outlawing of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers, because these were regarded as a threat to national unity.<ref name="university3"/> Instead, the state controlled and approved wage and salary levels.<ref name="university3"/>
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Etymology
[[File:Flag of the NSDAP (1920–1945).svg|thumb|180px|Flag of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (alternate national flag of Germany, 1933-35)]] The full name of Adolf Hitler's party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party). The shorthand Nazi was formed from the first two syllables of the German pronunciation of the word "national" (Template:IPA-de).<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
Position in the political spectrum
[[File:WWII, Europe, Germany, "Nazi Hierarchy, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess", The Desperate Years p143 - NARA - 196509.tif|thumb|Führer Adolf Hitler (first from left side), Hermann Göring (second from left side), Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (third from left side), Rudolf Hess (fourth from left side).]] [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-02134, Bad Harzburg, Gründung der Harzburger Front.jpg|thumb|Nazis alongside members of the far-right reactionary and monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP), during the brief Nazi-DNVP alliance in the Harzburg Front from 1931 to 1932.]]
A majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics.<ref name="Fritzsche, Peter 1998"/> Far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements.<ref name="Oliver H. Woshinsky 2008. p. 156"/> Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but syncretic.<ref name="Adolf Hitler p. 170"/><ref name="Rudy Koshar 1986. p. 190"/> Hitler in Mein Kampf directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany, saying:
Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors [...] But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms.<ref name="Adolf Hitler 2010. p. 287"/>
Hitler, when asked whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", claimed that Nazism was not exclusively for any class, and indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps", stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism".
Romanticism and Nazism
German Romanticism and the völkisch ideologies were influential in the development of Nazism. Authors such as Thomas Mann and Georg Lukács have advanced the thesis of romanticism as the intellectual parent of Nazism (Rereading Romanticism).
See also
- 1940s subcultures
- Anti-capitalism
- Anti-communism
- Antisemitism
- Consequences of German Nazism
- Degenerate art
- Degenerate music
- Denazification
- Fascism
- Fascism and ideology
- Final Solution
- Functionalism versus intentionalism
- German nationalism
- Holocaust
- Nationalism
- Nazi exploitation
- Nazi Germany
- Nazi occultism
- Neo-Nazism
- New Order (Nazism)
- Racism
- Weimar culture
- Women in the Third Reich
