I | INTRODUCTION |
National
Socialism, commonly called Nazism, German political movement initiated in
1920 with the organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party
(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP), also called
the Nazi Party. The movement culminated in the establishment of the Third Reich,
the totalitarian German state led by the dictator Adolf Hitler from 1933 to
1945.
II | ORIGINS AND RISE OF NAZISM |
National Socialism was similar in many
respects to Italian fascism (see Fascism). The roots of National
Socialism, however, were peculiarly German, grounded, for example, in the
Prussian tradition of military authoritarianism and expansion; in the German
romantic tradition of hostility to rationalism, liberalism, and democracy; in
various racist doctrines according to which the Nordic peoples, as so-called
pure Aryans, were not only physically superior to other races, but were the
carriers of a superior morality and culture; and in certain philosophical
traditions that idealized the state or exalted the superior individual and
exempted such a person from conventional restraints.
The theorists and planners of National
Socialism included General Karl Ernst Haushofer, a German geographer who
exercised much influence in German foreign affairs. The German editor and party
leader Alfred Rosenberg formulated Nazi racial theories on the basis of the work
of the Anglo-German writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain. To the German financier
Hjalmar Schacht fell the task of formulating and carrying out much economic and
banking policy, and the German architect and party leader Albert Speer was a
major figure in overseeing the economy just before the end of World War II
(1939-1945).
III | EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR I |
The immediate origins of National Socialism
are to be found in the consequences of the German defeat in World War I
(1914-1918). Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was charged
with sole responsibility for the war, stripped of its colonial empire, and
forced to pay heavy reparations. German political and economic life was
seriously disrupted as a result of the treaty. Severe inflation, which reached
its climax in 1923, all but destroyed the German middle class, leaving many of
its impoverished and despairing members vulnerable to the appeals of radical
political groups that sprang up in the postwar years. Only a few years after
some measure of economic stability and progress had been achieved, the worldwide
economic crisis that began in 1929 plunged Germany into an apparently hopeless
depression. During these years the democratic Weimar Republic was subjected to
increasing attack from both left and right. The republic proved unable to cope
effectively with the desperate condition of the country. By 1933 the majority of
German voters supported one or the other of the two major totalitarian parties,
the Communist and the National Socialist.
IV | THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY |
The National Socialist Party originated in the
German Workers' Party, formed in Munich in 1919. At the time that Hitler joined
it in 1919, the German Workers' Party had a nominal membership of about 25, only
6 of whom were active in its discussions and lecture activities. Shortly after
joining, Hitler became a leader of the group. At the first mass meeting of the
German Workers' Party, held in Munich on February 24, 1920, Hitler read the
party program, which he had partly written; this consisted of 25 points
comprising a mixture of exaggerated nationalistic demands, corruptions of
socialist ideas, and racist and anti-Semitic doctrines. As the essential
conditions for the realization of its aims, the party declared in point 25 of
the program: “For modern society, a colossus with feet of clay, we shall create
an unprecedented centralization which will unite all powers in the hands of the
government. We shall create a hierarchical constitution, which will mechanically
govern all movements of individuals.”
V | HITLER ASSUMES COMPLETE LEADERSHIP |
Some time after the meeting of February 1920,
Hitler's party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
The new party grew slowly, and principally in Bavaria. Convinced of the
necessity, indeed, the value, of violence to achieve its ends, the party soon
organized the Sturmabteilung (Storm Troops), or SA, to defend its
meetings; to disrupt the meetings of liberal democrats, socialists, Communists,
and trade unionists; and to persecute Jews, especially Jewish merchants. It was
aided in these activities by some disaffected army officers, notably Ernst
Röhm.
In 1921 Hitler was elected “unlimited chairman”
of the party, which in the same year adopted as its official emblem a flag
consisting of a red field in the center of which was a large white circle
containing a black swastika. In 1923 Hitler established the newspaper
Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer) as the official daily party
organ. As the German Communist Party, founded in 1919, grew in strength, the
National Socialists concentrated much of their propaganda on denunciations of
Bolshevism, which they characterized as a conspiracy of international Jewish
financiers. They also proclaimed their contempt for parliamentary democracy and
agitated for a dictatorship.
VI | THE BEER HALL PUTSCH |
On November 8, 1923, with 600 armed storm
troopers, Hitler marched on a beer hall in Munich, at which Gustav von Kahr,
head of the provincial Bavarian government, was addressing a public meeting.
Hitler took von Kahr and his associates prisoner and, abetted by General Erich
Ludendorff, declared in von Kahr's name the formation of a new national
government. Immediately thereafter von Kahr was released, and he turned against
Hitler and Ludendorff. Following a brief skirmish with the Munich police on
November 9, Hitler and his associates fled, and the so-called beer hall putsch
(revolt) failed. Hitler and Ludendorff were subsequently arrested. The latter
went unpunished, but Hitler was tried and received a five-year prison sentence,
and the party was outlawed. In prison Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to
Rudolf Hess. As later expanded by Hitler, this was a frank statement of National
Socialist doctrines, propaganda techniques, and plans for the conquest first of
Germany, and then of Europe. In later years Mein Kampf became the bible
of National Socialism.
Hitler was released from prison in little less
than a year. The National Socialist Party was then in a state of virtual
dissolution, in large part because improvement in the country's economic
conditions had created an atmosphere more favorable to moderate political
organizations. During the following years, with the aid of a small number of
loyal associates, Hitler slowly rebuilt the party. In 1926 he established
himself as the Führer (leader) of the party and organized the armed and
black-shirted Schutzstaffeln (protective units), or SS, known as the
Elite Guard, to supervise and control the party and its semimilitary arm, the
SA. Following the onset of the world economic depression in 1929, the flow of
foreign capital into Germany ceased, the country's foreign trade declined, the
wheels of German industry slowed, unemployment increased greatly, and
agricultural prices fell. As the depression deepened, a situation ripe for
revolution began to emerge. Fritz Thyssen, head of the Thyssen conglomerate of
steelworks and related enterprises, and other capitalists contributed large sums
of money to the National Socialist Party. Numerous German capitalists were,
however, unalterably opposed to National Socialism.
VII | THE PARTY IN THE REICHSTAG |
The movement grew rapidly, recruiting
thousands of discharged civil servants, ruined shopkeepers and small-business
owners, impoverished farmers, workers disillusioned with the Socialist and
Communist parties, and a host of frustrated and embittered young people of all
classes, brought up in the postwar years and without hope of personal economic
security. In the Reichstag elections of 1930 the National Socialists polled
almost 6.5 million votes (more than 18 percent of the total votes cast) compared
to little more than 800,000 (about 2.5 percent) in 1928. The 107 seats they won
in that election made them the second largest party in the Reichstag, after the
Social Democrats, who won 143 seats. The Communists, who polled 4.6 million
votes and who also made a considerable gain, had 77 seats.
The Nazi Party took all possible advantage
of the deepening depression from 1929 to 1932. Desperate efforts by Chancellor
Heinrich Brüning to save the democratic republic by emergency decrees did not
succeed in stemming the growing tide of unemployment. Rather, his ineffectual
government undermined what remained of belief in parliamentary democracy in
Germany. As a consequence, Hitler drew a huge vote in the presidential elections
of 1932, although he lost to President Paul von Hindenburg.
In the elections to the Reichstag held in
July 1932, the National Socialists polled 13.7 million votes and won 230 of the
total of 670 seats. Now the strongest party, although still lacking a majority,
they were offered places in a coalition government by President Hindenburg.
Hitler refused and demanded sole power. The Reichstag was dissolved, and in the
elections for its successor, held in November, the party vote declined to
approximately 11.7 million and the party won only 196 seats. The combined Social
Democratic and Communist vote was more than 13 million, and together the Social
Democrats and Communists won 221 seats; but as these parties were bitter
opponents, the Nazis, despite their setback, were still the strongest party in
the Reichstag. Again Hitler refused to participate in a coalition government,
and again the Reichstag was dissolved. On the advice of former chancellor Franz
von Papen, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. Then the
party began the creation of the National Socialist state.
Late in February, almost at the close of the
election campaign for a new Reichstag, the building housing the national
parliament was destroyed by fire of incendiary origin. The Nazis blamed the
Communists and made the incident a pretext to suppress the Communist Party with
brutal violence; later, the Social Democratic Party was also violently
suppressed. Neither party offered organized resistance. All other parties were
subsequently outlawed, the attempt to create a new party was made a crime, and
the National Socialist Party became the only legal party. In the Enabling Act of
March 23, 1933, the legislative powers of the Reichstag were passed to the
cabinet. The act granted Hitler dictatorial powers and signified the end of the
Weimar Republic. By a law enacted on December 1, 1933, the Nazi Party was
“indissolubly joined to the state.”
VIII | ORGANIZATION OF THE PARTY AFTER 1933 |
Thereafter the party was the principal
instrument of the totalitarian control of the state and of German society,
exercised through the leadership corps of the party. Loyal Nazis soon held most
high government offices—national, provincial, and local. Party members of “pure”
German blood 18 years or more of age swore allegiance to the Führer and
according to Reich law were accountable for their actions only in special party
courts. Nominally, membership in the party was voluntary, and millions willingly
joined, but a great many others were compelled to become members against their
will. Many civil-service employees were required to join. At its peak, the party
had an estimated membership of about 7 million.
The principal auxiliary organization of the
Nazi Party was the SA, officially designated as the “guarantor of the National
Socialist revolution” and the “vanguard of National Socialism.” It extorted
large sums of money from German workers and farmers through its annual “winter
help” collections for the poor; conducted the training in National Socialism of
all German youth through the age of 17; organized a thorough pogrom against the
Jews in 1938; and, during World War II, supplied the indoctrination officers
attached to the field forces of the German army and led the home-defense forces
of the Reich. Another important party formation was the SS, which during World
War II organized special combat divisions to bolster the regular army at
critical moments. Together with the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service),
or SD, the espionage agency of the party and the Reich, the SS controlled the
Nazi Party during the last years of the war. The SD operated the concentration
camps for victims of National Socialist terrorism (see Concentration
Camp) and during the war played an important role in enabling Hitler to win
control of the armed forces from the general staff. Still another important
party auxiliary was the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth organization), which
prepared boys of 14 to 17 years of age for membership in the SA, the SS, and the
party. The party's Auslandsorganisation (Foreign Organization) conducted
National Socialist propaganda and created, financed, and directed National
Socialist organizations among Germans and people of German extraction
abroad.
IX | REORGANIZATION OF GERMAN SOCIETY |
Hitler began to create the National Socialist
state by eliminating all working-class and liberal democratic opposition. The
Reichstag fire trial served as the pretext not only for suppressing the
Communist and Social Democratic parties, but also for abrogating all
constitutional and civil rights and for instituting concentration camps for
victims of National Socialist terror.
A | The Gestapo |
The Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret
State Police), known as the Gestapo, was created in 1933 to suppress opposition
to the Hitler regime. In 1936, when it was incorporated into the state, the
Gestapo was declared not subject to legal restraints and responsible only to its
chief, Heinrich Himmler, and to Hitler.
B | Centralization and Coordination |
From 1933 to 1935 the democratic structure
of Germany was replaced with a completely centralized state. The autonomy
previously exercised in many matters by the provincial governments was
eliminated, and these subnational governments were transformed into strictly
controlled instruments of the central government. The Reichstag retained only a
ceremonial, not a legislative, function. By a process of coordination
(Gleichschaltung), all private organizations of business, labor, and
agriculture, as well as education and culture, were subjected to party control
and direction. Even the Protestant church was infiltrated by National Socialist
doctrines. Special legislation excluded Jews from the protection of German
law.
C | The Economy and the Purge of 1934 |
The most crucial problem the party
leadership confronted on coming to power was unemployment. German industry was
then operating at about 58 percent of capacity. Estimates of the number of
unemployed people at that time in Germany vary from 6 to 7 million. Among them
were tens of thousands of party members who expected Hitler to carry out the
anticapitalist promises of National Socialist propaganda, put an end to the
monopolistic enterprises and cartels, and revive industry through the
establishment of a large number of small businesses. The party rank and file
demanded a “second revolution.” The SA, led by Ernst Röhm, included control of
the Reichswehr (the army) in the program of the second revolution. Hitler
had to choose between a “plebeian” National Socialist regime and an alliance
with the industrialists of the country and the general staff of the Reichswehr.
He chose the latter course. On the evening of June 30, 1934, later known as the
Night of the Long Knives, Hitler ordered the SS to murder members of the unruly
SA, a group Hitler feared would agitate the Reichswehr. A number of SA and party
leaders (including Röhm) and between 400 and 1000 of their followers, many of
them innocent of any opposition to Hitler, were killed. Also included in the
purge were other enemies such as General Kurt von Schleicher and some
monarchists who had advocated restoration of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
X | THE “NEW ORDER” |
Suppression of opposition parties and blood
purges, however, did not solve the unemployment problem. To eliminate
unemployment, Hitler had to revive German industry. His solution was to create
the “new order,” the basic premises of which were the following: that the full
and profitable utilization of the capacity of German industry could be achieved
only by restoring Germany to a position of leadership in world trade, industry,
and finance; that necessary sources of raw materials of which Germany had been
deprived had to be reacquired, and control of other necessary sources had to be
established; that an adequate merchant fleet and modern rail, air, and
motor-transport systems had to be constructed; and that industry had to be
reorganized for the greatest possible efficiency.
Two necessary sets of conclusions were drawn
from these premises. The first set recognized that carrying out the entire plan
required eliminating the economic and political restrictions imposed by the
Treaty of Versailles, and that ultimately this step would result in war.
Therefore the economy was to be reorganized essentially as a war economy.
Germany had to become completely self-sufficient in strategic raw materials by
developing synthetic substitutes for those materials in which the country was
deficient and that could not be secured from abroad. An adequate supply of food
was to be assured by the controlled development of agriculture. The second set
of conclusions concerned eliminating obstacles to the realization of the plan,
arising from the struggle of the workers to improve their condition and embodied
organizationally in the trade unions and their auxiliary organizations.
XI | TRADE UNIONS |
Concretely, the “new order” involved
abolishing trade unions and cooperatives, confiscating their financial and other
assets, eliminating collective bargaining between workers and their employers,
prohibiting strikes and lockouts, and requiring membership by law of all German
workers in the state-controlled Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor
Front), or DAF. Wages were determined by the ministry of national economy.
Government officials, called trustees of labor and appointed by the minister of
national economy, handled all questions relating to wages and hours and
conditions of work.
The trade associations of business owners
and industrialists of the Weimar Republic were transformed into organs of state
control. Membership by employers was compulsory. Supervision of these
associations was vested in the ministry of national economy, which had the power
to recognize trade organizations as the sole representatives of their respective
branches of industry, organize new associations, dissolve or merge existing
ones, and appoint and recall the leaders of all the associations. Through the
exercise of these powers and also as specifically empowered by law, the ministry
of economy greatly expanded existing cartels and cartelized entire industries.
The banks were similarly “coordinated.” Private property rights were preserved,
and previously nationalized enterprises were “reprivatized”—that is, returned to
private ownership but all owners were subject to rigid state controls. By all of
these and related means the Hitler regime eliminated competition. Ultimately the
“new order” was economically dominated by four banks and a relatively small
number of huge conglomerates, including the vast munitions and
steel-manufacturing empire of the Krupp family and the notorious
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie, known as I. G. Farben, which produced
dyes, synthetic rubber, oil, and other products and participated in or dominated
almost 400 enterprises. Some of these enterprises made use of millions of
prisoners of war and inhabitants of conquered countries as slave laborers in
German industry. The cartels also supplied materials for the systematic and
scientific extermination by the Hitler government of millions of Jews, Poles,
Russians, and others. See Genocide; Holocaust.
XII | RUINOUS EFFECTS OF NAZISM |
The creation of the “new order” enabled the
National Socialists to eliminate unemployment; provide the German workers and
farmers with a tolerable standard of living; enrich the elite ruling group of
the state, industry, and finance; and build a stupendous war machine. As they
constructed their “new order” in Germany, they pressed forward politically and
diplomatically for the creation of Greater Germany. The record of Hitler's
foreign policy constitutes an ugly chapter in history and is told in detail in
the articles in this encyclopedia on Germany, Europe, Austria, Czechoslovakia
(now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Spain, Italy, and the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics. The outstanding events of the era of totalitarian
aggression were the remilitarization of the Rhineland (1936), formation of the
Italo-German Fascist Axis (1936), intervention in the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939) on behalf of the royalist forces of Francisco Franco,
Anschluss (“union,” that is, annexation) with Austria (1938), destruction
of the Czechoslovak state (1939), negotiation of a nonaggression pact with the
Soviet Union containing a secret agreement to partition Poland, and, in
consequence of that pact, the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which
precipitated World War II.
Hitler boasted that National Socialism had
solved the problems of German society and would endure for a thousand years.
That the party resolved problems with which the Weimar Republic was powerless to
cope, and that it transformed the weak republic into an industrially and
politically powerful state is a matter of record. Equally of record and
undeniable is that the cost of that transformation included the horror of World
War II, the bloodiest and most destructive conflict in human history, from which
Germany emerged beaten, divided, and impoverished. Also included in that cost is
the price paid in suffering endured by the German people under Hitler and after
his death. The most tragic aspect of the National Socialist reign was the
systematic murder of between 5.6 million and 5.9 million European Jews.
After the war a small neo-Nazi movement
continued to exist in West Germany. Neo-Nazism gained some popularity after the
reunification of Germany in 1990. The movement is largely composed of
discontented young males who target Jews, blacks, homosexuals, and members of
other minority groups with acts of violence. Neo-Nazi groups have also sprung up
in other countries, including the United States.
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