Expansionism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Nazism, or National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus) 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.
