What is Nazism?
Nazism, or National Socialism, was the ideology of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), led by Adolf Hitler. Historians generally classify it as a form of fascism, distinguished by the central place it gave to racism and antisemitism. Nazi ideology held that humanity was divided into races of unequal worth, that Germans belonged to a superior 'Aryan' race, and that Jews were a racial enemy. It rejected democracy, liberalism, Marxism and the Versailles peace settlement, and demanded 'living space' for Germans in Eastern Europe. These ideas led directly to a war of conquest and the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million European Jews.
Core beliefs
- Humanity is divided into races of unequal worth, and the nation is defined by race.
- Jews were cast as the central enemy of the German people, a view that led to genocide.
- Parliamentary democracy, liberalism and Marxism should be destroyed.
- All power should belong to a single leader, the Führer, and one party.
- Germany should conquer 'living space' in Eastern Europe.
- A unified 'people's community' should replace class and party divisions.
History
The party grew out of the German Workers' Party, founded in Munich in 1919, which Hitler joined that year. In 1920 it adopted the name NSDAP and a 25-point program combining extreme nationalism, antisemitism and attacks on big capital. After a failed coup attempt in Munich in November 1923, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison. The party grew rapidly during the Great Depression and became the largest party in the Reichstag in 1932. Hitler was appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933. Within months the Enabling Act gave him power to rule by decree, other parties were banned and the first concentration camps were opened. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped Jews of citizenship, and the November 1938 pogrom known as Kristallnacht was followed by mass arrests. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, starting the Second World War in Europe. The regime was destroyed by Allied military defeat in May 1945, and leading Nazis were tried at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946.
Variants
Within the party, the Strasser brothers led a faction that stressed anti-capitalist rhetoric; it was sidelined by Hitler, and Gregor Strasser was killed in 1934. After 1945, neo-Nazi groups emerged in many countries, often combining Holocaust denial with white supremacist ideas.
Criticisms
Nazism is condemned across the political spectrum and by international law for genocide, crimes against humanity and wars of aggression. Historians point out that its racial theories had no scientific basis. Critics note that its socialist label was propaganda: the regime abolished independent trade unions, banned strikes and worked with large industrial firms, while seizing Jewish property. Scholars also study how ordinary institutions, professions and citizens took part in or accepted persecution.
In practice
The Nazi state abolished civil liberties, controlled the press, culture and education, and used the Gestapo and SS to terrorize opponents. It murdered disabled people in the so-called euthanasia program. During the war, it carried out the Holocaust, murdering about six million Jews in mass shootings and in killing centers such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, gay men, political opponents and others were also persecuted and killed in large numbers. Today Germany and Austria, among other countries, ban Nazi propaganda and symbols.