Nazism

(Assignment spring -2021)

May 01, 2021

By

Fawad Tariq 19011587-049

Ahmed Mehboob 19011587-002

Ammad ul Hassan 19011587-011

IR#301 (IR since 1648-1945)

BS-IR 4th

Submitted To

Mam Saiqa Hanif

Department of Political Science and International Relations

1|Page
 UNIVRSITY OF GUJRAT

Introduction
Nazism, also spelled Naziism, in full National Socialism, totalitarian movement led by Adolf Hitler as head
of the Nazi Party in Germany. In its intense nationalism, mass appeal, and dictatorial rule, Nazism shared
many elements with Italian fascism. However, Nazism was far more extreme both in its ideas and in its
practice. In almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and atheoretical movement, emphasizing the will
of the charismatic dictator as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation, as well as a vision of
annihilation of all enemies of the Aryan Volk as the one and only goal of Nazi policy.

The roots of Nazism

Nazism had peculiarly German roots. It can be partly traced to the Prussian tradition as developed under 
Frederick the Great and Otto von Bismarck, which regarded the militant spirit and the discipline of the
Prussian army as the model for all individual and civic life. To it was added the tradition of political
romanticism, with its sharp hostility to rationalism and to the principles underlying the French Revolution,
its emphasis on instinct and the past, and its proclamation of the rights of Friedrich Nietzsche’s exceptional
individual [“Superman”] over all universal law and rules. These two traditions were later reinforced by the
19th-century adoration of science and of the laws of nature, which seemed to operate independently of all
concepts of good and evil. Further reinforcements came from such 19th-century intellectual figures as
the comte de Gobineau, Richard Wagner, and Houston Stewart, all of whom greatly influenced early
Nazism with their claims of the racial and cultural superiority of the “Nordic” (Germanic) peoples over all
other Europeans and all other races.

Hitler’s Youth

Hitler’s intellectual viewpoint was influenced during his youth not only by these currents in the German
tradition but also by specific Austrian movements that professed various political sentiments, notably those
of pan-Germanic expansionism and anti-Semitism. Hitler’s ferocious nationalism, his contempt of Slavs,
and his hatred of Jews can largely be explained by his bitter experiences as an unsuccessful artist living a
threadbare existence on the streets of Vienna, the capital of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire.

2|Page
Inequality of Human Races

The most important promoter of racial ideology in Europe during the mid-19th century was Joseph-Arthur,

comte de Gobineau, who had an almost incalculable effect on late 19th-century social theory. His Essay on
the Inequality of Human Races was widely read, embellished, and publicized by many different kinds of
writers. He imported some of his arguments from the polygenists, especially the American Samuel Morton.
Gobineau claimed that the civilizations established by the three major races of the world (white, Black, and
yellow) were all products of the white races and that no civilization could emerge without their cooperation.
The purest of the white races were the Aryans. When Aryans diluted their blood by intermarriage with lower
races, they helped to bring about the decline of their civilization.

Intellectual Preparation

This intellectual preparation would probably not have been sufficient for the growth of Nazism in Germany
but for that country’s defeat in World War I. The defeat and the resulting disillusionment, pauperization, and
frustration particularly among the lower middle classes paved the way for the success of the propaganda of
Hitler and the Nazis. The Treaty of Versailles, the formal settlement of World War I drafted without
German participation, alienated many Germans with its imposition of harsh monetary and territorial
reparations. The significant resentment expressed toward the peace treaty gave Hitler a starting point.
Because German representatives (branded the “November criminals” by Nazis) agreed to cease hostilities
and did not unconditionally surrender in the armistice of November 11, 1918, there was a widespread feeling
—particularly in the military that Germany’s defeat had been orchestrated by diplomats at the Versailles
meetings. From the beginning, Hitler’s propaganda of revenge for this “traitorous” act, through which the
German people had been “stabbed in the back,” and his call for rearmament had strong appeal within
military circles, which regarded the peace only as a temporary setback in Germany’s expansionist program.
The ruinous inflation of the German currency in 1923 wiped out the savings of many middle-class
households and led to further public alienation and dissatisfaction.

Hitler’s contributions

Hitler added to Pan-Germanic aspirations the almost mystical fanaticism of a faith in the mission of the

German race and the fervor of a social revolutionary gospel. This gospel was most fully expressed in
Hitler’s personal testament Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which he outlined both his practical aims and his
theories of race and propaganda.

Posing as a bulwark against communism, Hitler exploited the fears aroused in Germany and worldwide by
the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the consolidation of communist power in the Soviet Union. Thus, he

3|Page
was able to secure the support of many conservative elements that misunderstood the totalitarian character
of his movement.

Hitler’s most important individual contribution to the theory and practice of Nazism was his deep
understanding of mass psychology and mass propaganda. He stressed the fact that all propaganda must hold
its intellectual level at the capacity of the least intelligent of those at whom it is directed and that its
truthfulness is much less important than its success. According to Hitler:

“It is part of a great leader’s genius to make even widely separated adversaries appear as if they belonged
to but one category, because among weakly and undecided characters the recognition of various enemies all
too easily marks the beginning of doubt of one’s own rightness”.

Inequality of Human Races

The most important promoter of racial ideology in Europe during the mid-19th century was Joseph-Arthur,

comte de Gobineau, who had an almost incalculable effect on late 19th-century social theory. Published in
1853–55, his Essay on the Inequality of Human Races was widely read, embellished, and publicized by
many different kinds of writers. He imported some of his arguments from the polygenists, especially the
American Samuel Morton. Gobineau claimed that the civilizations established by the three major races of
the world (white, Black, and yellow) were all products of the white races and that no civilization could
emerge without their cooperation. The purest of the white races were the Aryans. When Aryans diluted their
blood by intermarriage with lower races, they helped to bring about the decline of their civilization.

Jewish Discrimination
Hitler found this common denominator in the Jewish people, whom he identified with both Bolshevism and
a kind of cosmic evil. Jews were to be discriminated against not according to their religion but according to
their “race.” Nazism declared Jews—whatever their educational and social achievements to be forever
fundamentally different from and inimical to Germans.

Rejecting Rationale Approaches

Nazism attempted to reconcile conservative, nationalist ideology with a socially radical doctrine. In so

doing, it became a profoundly revolutionary movement albeit a largely negative one. Rejecting
rationalism, liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and all movements of international
cooperation and peace, it stressed instinct, the subordination of the individual to the state, and the necessity
of blind and unswerving obedience to leaders appointed from above. It also emphasized the inequality of
humans and races and the right of the strong to rule the weak; sought to purge or suppress competing

4|Page
political, religious, and social institutions; advanced an ethic of hardness and ferocity; and partly
destroyed class distinctions by drawing into the movement misfits and failures from all social classes.
Although socialism was traditionally an internationalist creed, the radical wing of Nazism knew that a mass
base existed for policies that were simultaneously anticapitalist and nationalist. However, after Hitler
secured power, this radical strain was eliminated.

Totalitarianism

Hitler carried his party from its inauspicious beginnings in a beer cellar in Munich to a dominant position in
world politics 20 years later. The Nazi Party originated in 1919 and was led by Hitler from 1920. Through
both successful electioneering and intimidation, the party came to power in Germany in 1933 and governed
through totalitarian methods until 1945, when Hitler committed suicide and Germany was defeated and
occupied by the Allies at the close of World War II.

The history of Nazism after 1934 can be divided into two periods of about equal length. Between 1934 and
1939 the party established full control of all phases of life in Germany. With many Germans weary of party
conflicts, economic and political instability, and the disorderly freedom that characterized the last years of
the Weimar Republic (1919–33), Hitler and his movement gained the support and even the enthusiasm of a
majority of the German population. In particular, the public welcomed the strong, decisive, and apparently
effective government provided by the Nazis. Germany’s endless ranks of unemployed rapidly dwindled as
the jobless were put to work in extensive public-works projects and in rapidly multiplying armaments
factories. Germans were swept up in this orderly, intensely purposeful mass movement bent on restoring
their country to its dignity, pride, and grandeur, as well as to dominance on the European stage. Economic
recovery from the effects of the Great Depression and the forceful assertion of German nationalism were key
factors in Nazism’s appeal to the German population. Further, Hitler’s continuous string of diplomatic
successes and foreign conquests from 1934 through the early years of World War II secured the unqualified
support of most Germans, including many who had previously opposed him.

Despite its economic and political success, Nazism maintained its power by coercion and mass
manipulation. The Nazi regime disseminated a continual outpouring of propaganda through all cultural and
informational media. Its rallies especially its elaborately staged Nurnberg rallies—its insignia, and its
uniformed cadres were designed to impart an aura of omnipotence. The underside of its propaganda machine
was its apparatus of terror, with its ubiquitous secret police and concentration camps. It fanned and focused
German anti-Semitism to make the Jews a symbol of all that was hated and feared. By means of
deceptive rhetoric, the party portrayed the Jews as the enemy of all classes of society.

5|Page
Expansionism

Nazism’s principal instrument of control was the unification, under Heinrich Himmler and his chief
lieutenant, Reinhard Heydrich, of the SS (the uniformed police force of the Nazi Party) and all other police
and security organizations. Opposition to the regime was destroyed either by outright terror or, more
frequently, by the all-pervading fear of possible repression. Opponents of the regime were branded enemies
of the state and of the people, and an elaborate web of informers—often members of the family
or intimate friends imposed utmost caution on all expressions and activities. Justice was no longer
recognized as objective but was completely subordinated to the alleged needs and interests of the Volk. In
addition to the now-debased methods of the normal judicial process, special detention camps were erected.
In these camps the SS exercised supreme authority and introduced a system of sadistic brutality unrivaled in
modern times.

Between 1938 and 1945 Hitler’s regime attempted to expand and apply the Nazi system to territories outside
the German Reich. This endeavor was confined, in 1938, to lands inhabited by German-speaking
populations, but in 1939 Germany began to subjugate non-German-speaking nationalities as well.
Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, which initiated World War II, was the logical outcome of
Hitler’s plans. His first years were spent in preparing the Germans for the approaching struggle for world
control and in forging the military and industrial superiority that Germany would require to fulfill its
ambitions. With mounting diplomatic and military successes, his aims grew in quick progression. The first
was to unite all people of German descent within their historical homeland on the basis of “self-
determination.” His next step foresaw the creation, through the military conquest of Poland and other Slavic
nations to the east, of a Grosswirtschaftsraum (“large economic unified space”) or a Lebensraum (“living
space”), which thereby would allow Germany to acquire sufficient territory to become economically self-
sufficient and militarily impregnable. There the German master race, or Herrenvolk, would rule over
a hierarchy of subordinate peoples and organize and exploit them with ruthlessness and efficiency. With the
initial successes of the military campaigns of 1939–41, his plan was expanded into a vision of a hemispheric
order that would embrace all of Europe, western Asia, and Africa and eventually the entire world.

The Nazi empire

At the height of his success, Hitler was the master of the greater part of the European continent. German rule
in the east was extended to wide areas of the Baltic states, Belorussia (now Belarus), Ukraine, and
European Russia; Poland and the protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia; Serbia and Greece (where the
occupation was shared with the Italians); and the nominally independent satellite states of Slovakia,
Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. In the west, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands,

6|Page
and Belgium were all under German occupation, as was part of France from the summer of 1940 and the
whole country from November 1942.

Fall of Nazi’s

The extravagant hopes of Nazism came to an end with Germany’s defeat in 1945, after nearly six years of
war. To a certain extent World War II had repeated the pattern of World War I: great initial German military
successes, the forging of a large-scale coalition against Germany as the result of German ambitions and
behavior, and the eventual loss of the war because of German overreaching. Nazism as a mass movement
effectively ended on April 30, 1945, when Hitler committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of Soviet
troops completing the occupation of Berlin. Out of the ruins of Nazism arose a Germany that was divided
until 1990. Remnants of Nazi ideology remained in Germany after Hitler’s suicide, and a small number of
Nazi-oriented political parties and other groups were formed in West Germany from the late 1940s, though
some were later banned. In the 1990s gangs of neo-Nazi youths in eastern Germany staged attacks against
immigrants, desecrated Jewish cemeteries, and engaged in violent confrontations with leftists and police. In
the early 21st century, small neo-Nazi parties were to be found in most European countries as well as in the
United States, Canada, and several Central and South American countries. They were rare, but not unheard
of, in the rest of the world.

References
Augustyn, A. (n.d.). Nazism. Britannica. Retrieved May 15, 2021, from
https://www.britannica.com/event/Nazism/Totalitarianism-and-expansionism
britannica. (2021, May 01). The Nazi empire. Retrieved from www.britannica.com:
https://www.britannica.com/place/Third-Reich/The-Nazi-empire
Editors, H. (n.d.). Nazi Party. HISTORY. Retrieved May 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/world-
war-ii/nazi-party
Kakuk, P. (n.d.). Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics. Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics. Retrieved May 2021,
from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/nazism
Kershaw, I. (2021, April). Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism. Journal of Contemporary History.
Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180723?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Museum, H. (2021, April 30). HOLOCAUST. Retrieved from www.ushmm.org:
https://www.https://www.ushmm.org/learn/holocaust/path-to-nazi-genocide/chapter-1/aftermath-of-
world-war-i-and-the-rise-of-nazism-1918-1933/learn/holocaust/path-to-nazi-genocide/chapter-
1/aftermath-of-world-war-i-and-the-rise-of-nazism-1918-1933

7|Page
The Rise of the Nazi Party. (2021, May 04). Retrieved from facinghistory.org:
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-holocaust-and-human-behavior/rise-nazi-
party

8|Page