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Origins

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See also: Early timeline of Nazism

Nationalism, antisemitism and racism

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Johann Gottlieb Fichte, considered one of the fathers of German nationalism.

One of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the German nationalist Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose works had served as inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi members, including Dietrich Eckart and Arnold Fanck.[1] Fichte's nationalism was populist and opposed to traditional elites, and spoke of the need of a "People's War" (Volkskrieg), putting forward concepts much like those the Nazis adopted.[2] Fichte promoted German exceptionalism and stressed the need for the German nation to be purified. This priority included purging the German language of French words, a policy that the Nazis undertook upon rising to power.[2] Johann Gottlieb Fichte accused Jews in Germany of having been, and inevitably continuing to be, a "state within a state" in Germany that was a threat to German national unity.[2] Fichte promoted two options to address this: the first was the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine to impel the Jews to leave Europe.[3] The other option was violence against Jews, saying that the goal would be "...to cut off all their heads in one night, and set new ones on their shoulders, which should not contain a single Jewish idea".[4]

Völkisch nationalism denounced soulless materialism, individualism, and secularized urban industrial society, while advocating a "superior" society based on ethnic German "folk" culture and way of life, based upon German "blood".[5] It also denounced foreigners, foreign ideas and declared that Jews, national minorities, Catholics, and Freemasons were "traitors to the nation" and unworthy of inclusion in the German Volk.[6] Völkisch nationalism saw the world in terms of natural law and romanticism, viewed societies as organic, it extolled the virtues of rural life, condemned the neglect of tradition and decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment, and condemned "cosmopolitan" cultures such as Jews and Romani.[7] Radical anti-Semitism was promoted by prominent advocates of Völkisch nationalism including Eugen Diederichs, Paul de Lagarde, and Julius Langbehn.[7] De Lagarde called the Jews a "bacillus, the carrier of decay...who pollute every national culture...and destroy all faith with their materialistic liberalism" and he called for the extermination of the Jews.[8] Langbehn called for a war of annihilation of the Jews and Langbehn's genocidal policies were published by the Nazis and given to soldiers on the front during World War II.[8]

The concept of the Aryan race that the Nazis used stems from racial theories asserting that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Iranian settlers, people of ancient India and ancient Persia.[9] Proponents of this theory based their assertion on the similarity of European words and their meaning to those of Indo-Iranian languages.[9] Johann Gottfried Herder argued that the Germanic peoples held close racial connections with the ancient Indians and ancient Persians, who he claimed were advanced peoples possessing a great capacity for wisdom, nobility, restraint, and science.[9] Contemporaries of Herder utilized the concept of the Aryan race to draw a distinction between what they deemed "high and noble" Aryan culture versus that of "parasitic" Semitic culture.[9] Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority combined in the nineteenth century, with white supremacists maintaining that white people were members of an Aryan "master race" that is superior to all other races, and particularly the Semitic race, which they associated with "cultural sterility".[9]

Response to World War I and fascism

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During World War I, German sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789" (the French Revolution).[10] According to Plenge, the "ideas of 1789" that included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were being rejected in favour of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German values" of duty, discipline, law, and order.[10] Plenge believed that ethnic solidarity (Volksgemeinschaft) would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain.[10] He believed that the "Spirit of 1914" manifested itself in the concept of the "People's League of National Socialism".[11] This National Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state.[11] This National Socialism was opposed to capitalism due to the components that were against "the national interest" of Germany, but insisted that National Socialism would strive for greater efficiency in the economy.[11] Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical technocratic state.[12] Plenge's ideas formed the basis of Nazism.[10]

Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler, a German cultural philosopher, was a major influence on Nazism; although after 1933 Spengler became alienated from Nazism and was later condemned by the Nazis for criticizing Adolf Hitler.[13] Spengler's conception of national socialism along with a number of his political views were shared by the Nazis and the Conservative Revolutionary movement.[14] Spengler's views were also popular amongst Italian Fascists, including Benito Mussolini.[15]

Spengler's book The Decline of the West (1918) written during the final months of World War I, addressed the claim of decadence of modern European civilization, whicht he claimed was caused by atomizing and irreligious individualization and cosmopolitanism.[13] Spengler's major thesis was that a law of historical development of cultures existed involving a cycle of birth, maturity, aging, and death when it reaches its final form of civilization.[16] Upon reaching the point of civilization, a culture will lose its creative capacity and succumb to decadence until the emergence of "barbarians" create a new epoch.[16] Spengler considered the Western world as having succumbed to decadence of intellect, money, cosmopolitan urban life, irreligious life, atomized individualization, and the end of biological fertility as well as "spiritual" fertility.[16] He believed that the "young" German nation as an imperial power would inherit the legacy of Ancient Rome, lead a restoration of value in "blood" and instinct, while the ideals of rationalism would be revealed as absurd.[16]

Spengler's notions of "Prussian socialism" as described in his book Preussentum und Sozialismus ("Prussiandom and Socialism", 1919), influenced Nazism and the Conservative Revolutionary movement.[17] Spengler wrote: "The meaning of socialism is that life is controlled not by the opposition between rich and poor, but by the rank that achievement and talent bestow. That is our freedom, freedom from the economic despotism of the individual."[14] Spengler adopted the anti-English ideas addressed by Plenge and Sombart during World War I that condemned English liberalism and English parliamentarianism while advocating a national socialism that was free from Marxism and that would connect the individual to the state through corporatist organization.[13] Spengler claimed that socialistic Prussian characteristics existed across Germany, including creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity and self-sacrifice.[18] He prescribed war as a necessity, saying "War is the eternal form of higher human existence and states exist for war: they are the expression of the will to war."[19]

Spengler's definition of socialism did not advocate a change to property relations.[14] He denounced Marxism for seeking to train the proletariat to "expropriate the expropriator", the capitalist, and then to let them live a life of leisure on this expropriation.[20] He claimed that "Marxism is the capitalism of the working class" and not true socialism.[20] True socialism, according to Spengler, would be in the form of corporatism, stating that "local corporate bodies organized according to the importance of each occupation to the people as a whole; higher representation in stages up to a supreme council of the state; mandates revocable at any time; no organized parties, no professional politicians, no periodic elections."[21]

The book Das Dritte Reich (1923) translated as "The Third Reich", authored by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck who initially was the dominant figure of the Conservative Revolutionaries influenced Nazism.[22] He rejected reactionary conservatism, while proposing a new state, that he coined the "Third Reich", which would unite all classes under authoritarian rule.[23] Van den Bruck advocated a combination of the nationalism of the right and the socialism of the left.[24]

Benito Mussolini (centre in suit with fists against body) along with other Fascist leader figures and Blackshirts during the March on Rome.

Fascism was a major influence on Nazism. The seizure of power by Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the March on Rome in 1922 drew admiration by Hitler who less than a month later had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.[25] Hitler presented the Nazis as a German fascism.[26][27] In November 1923, the Nazis attempted a "March on Berlin" modelled upon the March on Rome that resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.[28] Other Nazis — especially more radical ones such as Gregor Strasser, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler — rejected Italian Fascism, accusing it of being too conservative or capitalist.[29] Alfred Rosenberg condemned Italian Fascism for being racially confused and having influences from philo-Semitism.[30] Strasser criticized the policy of Führerprinzip as being created by Mussolini, and considered its presence in Nazism as a foreign imported idea.[31] Throughout the relationship between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a number of lower-ranking Nazis scornfully viewed fascism as a conservative movement that lacked a full revolutionary potential.[31]

  1. ^ Ryback, Timothy W. Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, New York; Toronto: Vintage Books, 2010. pp. 129-130.
  2. ^ a b c Ryback, Timothy W. Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, New York; Toronto: Vintage Books, 2010. p. 129
  3. ^ Ryback, Timothy W. Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life. New York, Toronto: Vintage Books, 2010. p. 130.
  4. ^ Ryback, Timothy W., Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, 2010. p. 130
  5. ^ Cyprian Blamires. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006. p. 542.
  6. ^ Keith H. Pickus. Constructing Modern Identities: Jewish University Students in Germany, 1815-1914. Detroit, Michigan, USA: Wayne State University Press, 1999. p. 86.
  7. ^ a b Jonathan Olsen. Nature and Nationalism: Right-wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany. New York, New York, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. p. 62.
  8. ^ a b Jack Fischel. The Holocaust. Westport, Connecticut, USA: Greenwood Press, 1998. p. 5.
  9. ^ a b c d e Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia: Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 62.
  10. ^ a b c d Kitchen, Martin, A History of Modern Germany, 1800-2000, Malden, Massaschussetts, USA; Oxford, England, UK; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, Inc., 2006. p. 205.
  11. ^ a b c Hüppauf, Bernd-Rüdiger War, Violence, and the Modern Condition, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1997. p. 92.
  12. ^ Rohkrämer, Thomas, "A Single Communal Faith?: The German Right from Conservatism to National Socialism", Monographs in German History. Volume 20, Berghahn Books, 2007. p. 130
  13. ^ a b c Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia: Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 628.
  14. ^ a b c Winkler, Heinrich August and Alexander Sager, Germany: The Long Road West, English ed. 2006, p. 414.
  15. ^ Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia: Volume 1, 2006. p. 629.
  16. ^ a b c d Blamires, Cyprian and Paul Jackson, World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia: Vol. 1, 2006. p. 628.
  17. ^ Heinrich August Winkler, Alexander Sager. Germany: The Long Road West. English edition. Oxford, England, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 414.
  18. ^ Weitz, Eric D., Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007. pp. 336-337.
  19. ^ Weitz, Eric D., Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007. p. 336.
  20. ^ a b Hughes, H. Stuart, Oswald Spengler, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1992. p. 108.
  21. ^ Hughes, H. Stuart, Oswald Spengler, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1992. p. 109.
  22. ^ Stern,Fritz Richard The politics of cultural despair: a study in the rise of the Germanic ideology University of California Press reprint edition (1974) p 296
  23. ^ Burleigh, Michael The Third Reich: a new history Pan MacMillan (2001) p75
  24. ^ Redles, David Nazi End Times; The Third Reich as a Millennial Reich in Kinane, Karolyn & Ryan, Michael A. (eds) End of days: essays on the apocalypse from antiquity to modernity McFarland and Co (2009) p176.
  25. ^ Ian Kershaw. Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, 2000. p. 182.
  26. ^ Fulda, Bernhard. Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic. Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 65.
  27. ^ Carlsten, F. L. The Rise of Fascism. 2nd ed. University of California Press, 1982. p. 80.
  28. ^ David Jablonsky. The Nazi Party in Dissolution: Hitler and the Verbotzeit, 1923–1925. London, England, UK; Totowa, New Jersey, USA: Frank Cass and Company Ltd., 1989. pp. 20–26, 30
  29. ^ Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. pp. 463-464.
  30. ^ Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, 1995. p. 463.
  31. ^ a b Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, 1995. p. 464.
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