Völkisch nationalism

Adolf Hitler himself along with other members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) were greatly influenced by several 19th- and early 20th-century thinkers and proponents of philosophical, onto-epistemic, and theoretical perspectives on ecological anthropology, scientific racism, holistic science, and organicism regarding the constitution of complex systems and theorization of organic-racial societies.^{[76][77][78][79]} In particular, one of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the 19th-century German nationalist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose works had served as an inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi Party members, and whose ideas were implemented among the philosophical and ideological foundations of Nazi-oriented Völkisch nationalism.^[77]

Fichte’s works served as an inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi Party members, including Dietrich Eckart and Arnold Fanck.^[77][80] In Speeches to the German Nation (1808), written amid the First French Empire‘s occupation of Berlin during the Napoleonic Wars, Fichte called for a German national revolution against the French Imperial Army occupiers, making passionate public speeches, arming his students for battle against the French and stressing the need for action by the German nation so it could free itself.^[81] Fichte’s German nationalism was populist and opposed to traditional elites, spoke of the need for a “People’s War” (Volkskrieg) and put forth concepts similar to those which the Nazis adopted.^[81] Fichte promoted German exceptionalism and stressed the need for the German nation to purify itself (including purging the German language of French words, a policy that the Nazis undertook upon their rise to power).^[81]

Another important figure in pre-Nazi völkisch thinking was Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, whose work—Land und Leute (Land and People, written between 1857 and 1863)—collectively tied the organic German Volk to its native landscape and nature, a pairing which stood in stark opposition to the mechanical and materialistic civilisation which was then developing as a result of industrialisation.^[82] Geographers Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer borrowed from Riehl’s work as did Nazi ideologues Alfred Rosenberg and Paul Schultze-Naumburg, both of whom employed some of Riehl’s philosophy in arguing that “each nation-state was an organism that required a particular living space in order to survive”.^[83] Riehl’s influence is overtly discernible in the Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) philosophy introduced by Oswald Spengler, which the Nazi agriculturalist Walther Darré and other prominent Nazis adopted.^[84][85]

Völkisch nationalism denounced soulless materialism, individualism and secularised urban industrial society, while advocating a “superior” society based on ethnic German “folk” culture and German “blood”.^[86] It denounced foreigners and foreign ideas and declared that Jews, Freemasons and others were “traitors to the nation” and unworthy of inclusion.^[87] Völkisch nationalism saw the world in terms of natural law and romanticism and it viewed societies as organic, extolling the virtues of rural life, condemning the neglect of tradition and the decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment and condemned “cosmopolitan” cultures such as Jews and Romani.^[88]

The first party that attempted to combine nationalism and socialism was the (Austria-Hungary) German Workers’ Party, which predominantly aimed to solve the conflict between the Austrian Germans and the Czechs in the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire, then part of Austria-Hungary.^[89] In 1896 the German politician Friedrich Naumann formed the National-Social Association which aimed to combine German nationalism and a non-Marxist form of socialism together; the attempt turned out to be futile and the idea of linking nationalism with socialism quickly became equated with antisemites, extreme German nationalists and the völkisch movement in general.^[37]

During the era of the German Empire, völkisch nationalism was overshadowed by both Prussian patriotism and the federalist tradition of its various component states.^[90] The events of World War I, including the end of the Prussian monarchy in Germany, resulted in a surge of revolutionary völkisch nationalism.^[91] The Nazis supported such revolutionary völkisch nationalist policies^[90] and they claimed that their ideology was influenced by the leadership and policies of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who was instrumental in founding the German Empire.^[92] The Nazis declared that they were dedicated to continuing the process of creating a unified German nation state that Bismarck had begun and desired to achieve.^[93] While Hitler was supportive of Bismarck’s creation of the German Empire, he was critical of Bismarck’s moderate domestic policies.^[94] On the issue of Bismarck’s support of a Kleindeutschland (“Lesser Germany”, excluding Austria) versus the Pan-German Großdeutschland (“Greater Germany”) which the Nazis advocated, Hitler stated that Bismarck’s attainment of Kleindeutschland was the “highest achievement” Bismarck could have achieved “within the limits possible at that time”.^[95] In Mein Kampf, Hitler presented himself as a “second Bismarck”.^[96]

During his youth in Austria, Hitler was politically influenced by Austrian Pan-Germanist proponent Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who advocated radical German nationalism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Slavic sentiment and anti-Habsburg views.^[97] From von Schönerer and his followers, Hitler adopted for the Nazi movement the Heil greeting, the Führer title and the model of absolute party leadership.^[97] Hitler was also impressed by the populist antisemitism and the anti-liberal bourgeois agitation of Karl Lueger, who as the mayor of Vienna during Hitler’s time in the city used a rabble-rousing style of oratory that appealed to the wider masses.^[98] Unlike von Schönerer, Lueger was not a German nationalist and instead was a pro-Catholic Habsburg supporter and only used German nationalist notions occasionally for his own agenda.^[98] Although Hitler praised both Lueger and Schönerer, he criticised the former for not applying a racial doctrine against the Jews and Slavs.^[99]

Racial theories and antisemitism

The concept of the Aryan race, which the Nazis promoted, stems from racial theories asserting that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Iranian settlers, people of ancient India and ancient Persia.^[100] Proponents of this theory based their assertion on the fact that words in European languages and words in Indo-Iranian languages have similar pronunciations and meanings.^[100] Johann Gottfried Herder argued that the Germanic peoples held close racial connections to the ancient Indians and the ancient Persians, who he claimed were advanced peoples that possessed a great capacity for wisdom, nobility, restraint and science.^[100] Contemporaries of Herder used the concept of the Aryan race to draw a distinction between what they deemed to be “high and noble” Aryan culture versus that of “parasitic” Semitic culture.^[100]

Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in the 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining the belief that certain groups of white people were members of an Aryan “master race” that is superior to other races and particularly superior to the Semitic race, which they associated with “cultural sterility”.^[100] Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the purity of the Aryan race, a term which he only reserved for Germanic people.^[101][102] Gobineau’s theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany,^[101] emphasised the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan (Germanic) and Jewish cultures.^[100]

Aryan mysticism claimed that Christianity originated in Aryan religious traditions, and that Jews had usurped the legend from Aryans.^[100] Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an English-born German proponent of racial theory, supported notions of Germanic supremacy and antisemitism in Germany.^[101] Chamberlain’s work, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), praised Germanic peoples for their creativity and idealism while asserting that the Germanic spirit was threatened by a “Jewish” spirit of selfishness and materialism.^[101] Chamberlain used his thesis to promote monarchical conservatism while denouncing democracy, liberalism and socialism.^[101] The book became popular, especially in Germany.^[101] Chamberlain stressed a nation’s need to maintain its racial purity in order to prevent its degeneration and argued that racial intermingling with Jews should never be permitted.^[101] In 1923, Chamberlain met Hitler, whom he admired as a leader of the rebirth of the free spirit.^[103] Madison Grant‘s work The Passing of the Great Race (1916) advocated Nordicism and proposed that a eugenics program should be implemented in order to preserve the purity of the Nordic race. After reading the book, Hitler called it “my Bible”.^[104]

In Germany, the belief that Jews were economically exploiting Germans became prominent due to the ascendancy of many wealthy Jews into prominent positions upon the unification of Germany in 1871.^[105] From 1871 to the early 20th century, German Jews were overrepresented in Germany’s upper and middle classes while they were underrepresented in Germany’s lower classes, particularly in the fields of agricultural and industrial labour.^[106] German Jewish financiers and bankers played a key role in fostering Germany’s economic growth from 1871 to 1913 and they benefited enormously from this boom. In 1908, amongst the twenty-nine wealthiest German families with aggregate fortunes of up to 55 million marks at the time, five were Jewish and the Rothschilds were the second wealthiest German family.^[107] The predominance of Jews in Germany’s banking, commerce and industry sectors during this time period was very high, even though Jews were estimated to account for only 1% of the population of Germany.^[105] The overrepresentation of Jews in these areas fuelled resentment among non-Jewish Germans during periods of economic crisis.^[106] The 1873 stock market crash and the ensuing depression resulted in a spate of attacks on alleged Jewish economic dominance in Germany and antisemitism increased.^[106] During this time period, in the 1870s, German völkisch nationalism began to adopt antisemitic and racist themes and it was also adopted by a number of radical right political movements.^[108]

Radical antisemitism was promoted by prominent advocates of völkisch nationalism, including Eugen Diederichs, Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn.^[88] De Lagarde called the Jews a “bacillus, the carriers of decay … who pollute every national culture … and destroy all faiths with their materialistic liberalism” and he called for the extermination of the Jews.^[109] Langbehn called for a war of annihilation against the Jews, and his genocidal policies were later published by the Nazis and given to soldiers on the front during World War II.^[109] One antisemitic ideologue of the period, Friedrich Lange, even used the term “National Socialism” to describe his own anti-capitalist take on the völkisch nationalist template.^[110]

Johann Gottlieb Fichte accused Jews in Germany of having been and inevitably of continuing to be a “state within a state” that threatened German national unity.^[81] Fichte promoted two options in order to address this, his first one being the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine so the Jews could be impelled to leave Europe.^[111] His second option was violence against Jews and he said that the goal of the violence 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”.^[111]

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1912) is an antisemitic forgery created by the secret service of the Russian Empire, the Okhrana. Many antisemites believed it was real and thus it became widely popular after World War I.^[112] The Protocols claimed that there was a secret international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.^[113] Hitler had been introduced to The Protocols by Alfred Rosenberg and from 1920 onwards he focused his attacks by claiming that Judaism and Marxism were directly connected, that Jews and Bolsheviks were one and the same and that Marxism was a Jewish ideology-this became known as “Jewish Bolshevism“.^[114] Hitler believed that The Protocols were authentic.^[115]

During his life in Vienna between 1907 and 1913, Hitler became fervently anti-Slavic.^{[116][117][118][119]} Prior to the Nazi ascension to power, Hitler often blamed moral degradation on Rassenschande (“racial defilement”), a way to assure his followers of his continuing antisemitism, which had been toned down for popular consumption.^[120] Prior to the induction of the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935 by the Nazis, many German nationalists such as Roland Freisler strongly supported laws to ban Rassenschande between Aryans and Jews as racial treason.^[120] Even before the laws were officially passed, the Nazis banned sexual relations and marriages between party members and Jews.^[121] Party members found guilty of Rassenschande were severely punished; some party members were even sentenced to death.^[122]

The Nazis claimed that Bismarck was unable to complete German national unification because Jews had infiltrated the German parliament and they claimed that their abolition of parliament had ended this obstacle to unification.^[92] Using the stab-in-the-back myth, the Nazis accused Jews—and other populations who it considered non-German—of possessing extra-national loyalties, thereby exacerbating German antisemitism about the Judenfrage (the Jewish Question), the far-right political canard which was popular when the ethnic völkisch movement and its politics of Romantic nationalism for establishing a Großdeutschland was strong.^[123][124]

Nazism’s racial policy positions may have developed from the views of important biologists of the 19th century, including French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, through Ernst Haeckel‘s idealist version of Lamarckism and the father of genetics, German botanist Gregor Mendel.^[125] Haeckel’s works were later condemned by the Nazis as inappropriate for “National-Socialist formation and education in the Third Reich”. This may have been because of his “monist” atheistic, materialist philosophy, which the Nazis disliked, along with his friendliness to Jews, opposition to militarism and support altruism, with one Nazi official calling for them to be banned.^[126] Unlike Darwinian theory, Lamarckian theory officially ranked races in a hierarchy of evolution from apes while Darwinian theory did not grade races in a hierarchy of higher or lower evolution from apes, but simply stated that all humans as a whole had progressed in their evolution from apes.^[125] Many Lamarckians viewed “lower” races as having been exposed to debilitating conditions for too long for any significant “improvement” of their condition to take place in the near future.^[127] Haeckel used Lamarckian theory to describe the existence of interracial struggle and put races on a hierarchy of evolution, ranging from wholly human to subhuman.^[125]

Mendelian inheritance, or Mendelism, was supported by the Nazis, as well as by mainstream eugenicists of the time. The Mendelian theory of inheritance declared that genetic traits and attributes were passed from one generation to another.^[128] Eugenicists used Mendelian inheritance theory to demonstrate the transfer of biological illness and impairments from parents to children, including mental disability, whereas others also used Mendelian theory to demonstrate the inheritance of social traits, with racialists claiming a racial nature behind certain general traits such as inventiveness or criminal behaviour.^[129]

Response to World War I and Italian Fascism

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).^[131] According to Plenge, the “ideas of 1789” which included the rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were being rejected in favour of “the ideas of 1914” which included the “German values” of duty, discipline, law and order.^[131] 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.^[131] He believed that the “Spirit of 1914” manifested itself in the concept of the “People’s League of National Socialism”.^[132] 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.^[132] 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.^[132] Plenge advocated an authoritarian, rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical technocratic state,^[133] and his ideas were part of the basis of Nazism.^[131]

Oswald Spengler, a German cultural philosopher, was a major influence on Nazism, although after 1933 he became alienated from Nazism and was later condemned by the Nazis for criticising Adolf Hitler.^[134] Spengler’s conception of national socialism and a number of his political views were shared by the Nazis and the Conservative Revolutionary movement.^[135] Spengler’s views were also popular amongst Italian Fascists, including Benito Mussolini.^[136]

Spengler’s book The Decline of the West (1918), written during the final months of World War I, addressed the supposed decadence of modern European civilisation, which he claimed was caused by atomising and irreligious individualisation and cosmopolitanism.^[134] Spengler’s major thesis was that a law of historical development of cultures existed involving a cycle of birth, maturity, ageing and death when it reaches its final form of civilisation.^[134] Upon reaching the point of civilisation, a culture will lose its creative capacity and succumb to decadence until the emergence of “barbarians” creates a new epoch.^[134] Spengler considered the Western world as having succumbed to decadence of intellect, money, cosmopolitan urban life, irreligious life, atomised individualisation and believed that it was at the end of its biological and “spiritual” fertility.^[134] 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.^[134]

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.^[135] 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”.^[135] 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 organisation.^[134] Spengler claimed that socialistic Prussian characteristics existed across Germany, including creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity and self-sacrifice.^[137] He prescribed war as a necessity by saying: “War is the eternal form of higher human existence and states exist for war: they are the expression of the will to war”.^[138]

Spengler’s definition of socialism did not advocate a change to property relations.^[135] 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.^[140] He claimed that “Marxism is the capitalism of the working class” and not true socialism.^[140] According to Spengler, true socialism would be in the form of corporatism, stating that “local corporate bodies organised 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 organised parties, no professional politicians, no periodic elections”.^[141]

Wilhelm Stapel, an antisemitic German intellectual, used Spengler’s thesis on the cultural confrontation between Jews as whom Spengler described as a Magian people versus Europeans as a Faustian people.^[142] Stapel described Jews as a landless nomadic people in pursuit of an international culture whereby they can integrate into Western civilisation.^[142] As such, Stapel claims that Jews have been attracted to “international” versions of socialism, pacifism or capitalism because as a landless people the Jews have transgressed various national cultural boundaries.^[142]

For all of Spengler’s influence on the movement, he was opposed to its antisemitism. He wrote in his personal papers “[H]ow much envy of the capability of other people in view of one’s lack of it lies hidden in anti-Semitism!” as well as “[W]hen one would rather destroy business and scholarship than see Jews in them, one is an ideologue, i.e., a danger for the nation. Idiotic.”^[143]

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck was initially the dominant figure of the Conservative Revolutionaries influenced Nazism.^[144] He rejected reactionary conservatism while proposing a new state that he coined the “Third Reich”, which would unite all classes under authoritarian rule.^[145] Van den Bruck advocated a combination of the nationalism of the right and the socialism of the left.^[146]

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.^[147] Hitler presented the Nazis as a form of German fascism.^[148][149] In November 1923, the Nazis attempted a “March on Berlin” modelled after the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.^[150]

Hitler spoke of Nazism being indebted to the success of Fascism’s rise to power in Italy.^[151] In a private conversation in 1941, Hitler said that “the brown shirt would probably not have existed without the black shirt”, the “brown shirt” referring to the Nazi militia and the “black shirt” referring to the Fascist militia.^[151] He also said in regards to the 1920s: “If Mussolini had been outdistanced by Marxism, I don’t know whether we could have succeeded in holding out. At that period National Socialism was a very fragile growth”.^[151]

Other Nazis—especially those at the time associated with the party’s more radical wing such as Gregor Strasser, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler—rejected Italian Fascism, accusing it of being too conservative or capitalist.^[152] Alfred Rosenberg condemned Italian Fascism for being racially confused and having influences from philosemitism.^[153] Strasser criticised the policy of Führerprinzip as being created by Mussolini and considered its presence in Nazism as a foreign imported idea.^[154] 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.^[154]

Nationalism and racialism

Nazism emphasised German nationalism, including irredentism and expansionism. Nazism held racial theories based upon a belief in the existence of an Aryan master race, superior to all other races. The Nazis emphasised the existence of conflict between the Aryan race and others—particularly Jews, whom the Nazis viewed as a mixed race that had infiltrated multiple societies and was responsible for exploitation and repression of the Aryan race. The Nazis categorised Slavs as Untermensch (sub-human).^[158]

Wolfgang Bialas argues the Nazis’ sense of morality could be described as a form of procedural virtue ethics, as it demanded unconditional obedience to absolute virtues, with the attitude of social engineering and replaced common sense intuitions with an ideological catalogue of virtues and commands. The ideal Nazi new man was to be race-conscious, and an ideologically-dedicated warrior, who committed actions for the sake of the German race, while convinced he was acting morally. The Nazis believed an individual could only develop their capabilities and individual characteristics within the framework of the individual’s racial membership; the race one belonged to determined whether or not one was worthy of moral care. The Christian concept of self-denial was replaced with the idea of self-assertion towards those deemed inferior. Natural selection and the struggle for existence were declared by the Nazis to be the most divine laws; peoples and individuals deemed inferior were said to be incapable of surviving without those deemed superior, yet by doing so they imposed a burden on the superior. Natural selection was deemed to favour the strong over the weak and the Nazis deemed that protecting those declared inferior was preventing nature from taking its course; those incapable of asserting themselves were viewed as doomed to annihilation, with the right to life being granted only to those who could survive on their own.^[159]

Social class

The Nazis believed “human life consisted of eternal struggle and competition and derived its meaning from struggle and competition.”^[209] The Nazis saw this struggle in military terms, and advocated a society organised like an army to achieve success. They promoted the idea of a national-racial “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft) to accomplish “the efficient prosecution of the struggle against other peoples and states.”^[210] Like an army, the Volksgemeinschaft was meant to consist of a hierarchy, some commanding, others obeying, all working together for a common goal.^[210] This concept was rooted in writings of 19th century völkisch authors who glorified medieval German society, viewing it as a “community rooted in the land and bound together by custom and tradition,” in which there was no class conflict, or selfish individualism.^[211] The concept of the Volksgemeinschaft appealed to many, as it was seen to affirm a commitment to a new type of society, yet offer protection from the tensions and insecurities of modernisation. It would balance individual achievement with group solidarity. Stripped of its ideological overtones, the Nazi vision of modernisation without internal conflict, and a community that offered security and opportunity, was so potent a vision that many Germans were willing to overlook its racist and anti-Semitic essence.^[212]

Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of class conflict, and praised German capitalists and workers as essential to the Volksgemeinschaft. Social classes would continue, but there would be no conflict.^[213] Hitler said “the capitalists have worked their way to the top through their capacity, and as the basis of this selection, which again only proves their higher race, they have a right to lead.”^[214] German business leaders co-operated in the Nazi rise to power and received benefits from the Nazi state after it was established, including high profits and state-sanctioned monopolies.^[215] Celebrations and symbolism were used to encourage those engaged in physical labour, with leading National Socialists praising the “honour of labour”, which fostered a sense of community (Gemeinschaft) for the people and promoted solidarity towards the Nazi cause.^[216] To win workers away from Marxism, Nazi propaganda sometimes presented its expansionist foreign policy as a “class struggle between nations.”^[214] Bonfires were made of school children’s differently coloured caps as symbolic of the unity of social classes.^[217]

In 1922, Hitler disparaged other nationalist and racialist parties as disconnected from the populace, especially working-class young people:

The racialists were not capable of drawing the practical conclusions…especially in the Jewish Question…the German racialist movement developed a similar pattern to that of the 1880s and 1890s. As in those days, its leadership gradually fell into the hands of highly honourable, but fantastically naïve men of learning, professors, district counsellors, schoolmasters, and lawyers—in short a bourgeois, idealistic, and refined class. It lacked the warm breath of the nation’s youthful vigour.^[218]

Nevertheless, the Nazi’s voter base consisted mainly of farmers and the middle class, including groups such as Weimar government officials, teachers, doctors, clerks, self-employed businessmen, salesmen, retired officers, engineers, and students.^[219] Their demands included lower taxes, higher prices for food, restrictions on department stores and consumer co-operatives, and reductions in social services and wages.^[220] The need to maintain their support made it difficult for the Nazis to appeal to the working class, which often had opposite demands.^[220]

From 1928, the Nazi’s growth into a national political movement was dependent on middle class support, and the public perception that it “promised to side with the middle classes and to confront the economic and political power of the working class.”^[221] The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figured significantly in their support of Nazism.^[222] Although the Nazis continued to make appeals to “the German worker”, Timothy Mason concludes “Hitler had nothing but slogans to offer the working class.”^[223] Conan Fischer and Detlef Mühlberger argue that while the Nazis were primarily rooted in the lower middle class, they were able to appeal to all classes and that while workers were underrepresented, they were still a substantial source of support.^[224][225] H.L. Ansbacher argues working-class soldiers had the most faith in Hitler out of any occupational group.^[226]

The Nazis established a norm that every worker should be semi-skilled, which was not simply rhetorical. The number of men leaving school, to work as unskilled labourers, fell from 200,000 in 1934 to 30,000 in 1939. For many working-class families, the 1930s and 40s were a time of social mobility; not in moving into the middle class, but within the blue-collar skill hierarchy.^[227] The experience of workers varied considerably. Workers’ wages did not increase much during Nazi rule, as the government feared wage-price inflation, and thus wage growth was limited. Prices for food and clothing rose, though costs for heating, rent and light decreased. Skilled workers were in shortage from 1936, meaning workers who engaged in vocational training could look command higher wages. Benefits provided by the Labour Front were positively received, even if workers did not always believe propaganda about the Volksgemeinschaft. Workers welcomed opportunities for employment after the harsh years of the Depression, creating a belief that the Nazis had removed the insecurity of unemployment. Workers who remained discontented risked the Gestapo‘s informants. Ultimately, the Nazis faced a conflict between their rearmament program, which required sacrifices from workers (longer hours and a lower standard of living), versus a need to maintain the confidence of the working class. Hitler was sympathetic to the view that stressed taking further measures for rearmament, but did not fully implement them, to avoid alienating the working class.^[228]

While the Nazis had substantial support amongst the middle-class, they often attacked traditional middle-class values and Hitler personally held contempt for them. This was because the traditional image of the middle class was one that was obsessed with status, material attainment and quiet, comfortable living, in opposition to the Nazi ideal of a New Man. The New Man was envisioned as a heroic figure who rejected a materialistic and private life, for a public life and pervasive sense of duty, willing to sacrifice everything for the nation. Despite the Nazis’ contempt for these values, they were able to secure millions of middle-class votes. Hermann Beck argues that while some of the middle-class dismissed this as mere rhetoric, many others agreed with the Nazis. The defeat of 1918, and failures of Weimar, caused many middle-class Germans to question their own identity, thinking their values to be anachronisms and agreeing these were no longer viable. While this rhetoric would become less frequent after 1933, due to the increased emphasis on the volksgemeinschaft, its ideas would not disappear until the Nazi’s overthrow. The Nazis instead emphasised that the middle-class must become staatsbürger, a publicly active and involved citizen, rather than a selfish, materialistic spießbürger, only interested in private life.^[229][230]

Sex and gender

Nazi ideology advocated excluding women from politics and confining them to the spheres of “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (Children, Kitchen, Church).^[231] Many women enthusiastically supported the regime, but formed internal hierarchies.^[232] Hitler’s opinion was that while other eras of history had experienced the development and liberation of the female mind, the National Socialist goal was singular: it wished for them to produce children.^[233] Hitler remarked about women that “with every child that she brings into the world, she fights her battle for the nation. The man stands up for the Volk, exactly as the woman stands up for the family”.^[234] Proto-natalist programs offered favourable loans and grants to newlyweds, and encouraged them to give birth by providing additional incentives.^[235] Contraception was discouraged for racially-valuable women and abortion was forbidden by law, including prison for women who sought them, and doctors who performed them, whereas abortion for racially “undesirable” persons was encouraged.^[236][237]

While unmarried until the end of the regime, Hitler often made excuses about his busy life hindering any chance for marriage.^[238] Among National Socialist ideologues, marriage was valued not for moral considerations, but because it provided an optimal breeding environment. Himmler reportedly told a confidant that when he established the Lebensborn program, an organisation that would dramatically increase the birth rate of “Aryan” children through extramarital relations between women classified as racially pure and their male equals, he had only the purest male “conception assistants” in mind.^[239]

Since the Nazis extended the Rassenschande (“race defilement”) law to all foreigners at the beginning of the war,^[177] pamphlets were issued to German women which ordered them to avoid sex with foreign workers brought to Germany and view these workers as a danger to their blood.^[240] Although the law was applicable to both genders, German women were punished more severely for having sex with foreign forced labourers.^[241] The Nazis issued the Polish decrees in March 1940 which contained regulations concerning the Polish forced labourers (Zivilarbeiter) brought to Germany. One regulation stated that any Pole “who has sex…with a German man or woman, or approaches them in any other improper manner, will be punished by death”.^[242] After the decrees were enacted, Himmler stated:

Fellow Germans who engage in sexual relations with male or female civil workers of the Polish nationality, commit other immoral acts or engage in love affairs shall be arrested immediately.^[243]

The Nazis issued similar regulations against ‘Eastern Workers’ (Ostarbeiter), including imposition of the death penalty if they engaged in sex with German persons.^[244] Heydrich issued a decree in 1942, which declared that: sex between a German woman and Russian worker or prisoner of war, would result in the Russian man being punished with death.^[245] Another decree stated any “unauthorised” sex would result in the death penalty.^[246] Because the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour did not permit capital punishment for race defilement, special courts were convened to allow the death penalty to be imposed.^[247] Women accused of race defilement were marched through the streets with their head shaven and placards detailing their crimes around their necks^[248] and those convicted of race defilement were sent to concentration camps.^[240] When Himmler reportedly asked Hitler what the punishment should be for German women who were found guilty of race defilement with prisoners of war, he ordered that “every POW who has relations with a German girl or a German would be shot” and the woman should be publicly humiliated by “having her hair shorn and being sent to a concentration camp”.^[249]

The League of German Girls, the girls’ wing of the Nazi party, instructed girls to avoid race defilement.^[250] Transgender people had a variety of experiences depending on whether they were considered “Aryan” or capable of useful work.^[251] Historians have noted trans people were targeted by the Nazis through legislation and sent to concentration camps.^{[252][253][254][255][256]}

Religion

The Nazi Party Programme of 1920 guaranteed freedom for all religious denominations which were not hostile to the State and endorsed Positive Christianity, in order to combat “the Jewish-materialist spirit”.^[262] Positive Christianity was a modified version of Christianity which emphasised racial purity and nationalism.^[263] The Nazis were aided by theologians such as Ernst Bergmann. In his Die 25 Thesen der Deutschreligion (Twenty-five Points of the German Religion), Bergmann held the view that the Old Testament was inaccurate, along with portions of the New Testament, claimed Jesus was not a Jew but instead of Aryan origin, and Hitler was the new messiah.^[263]

Hitler denounced the Old Testament as “Satan‘s Bible” and using components of the New Testament he attempted to prove Jesus was an Aryan and antisemite by citing passages such as John 8:44 where he noted Jesus is yelling at “the Jews”, as well as saying to them “your father is the devil” and the Cleansing of the Temple, which describes Jesus’ whipping of the “Children of the Devil”.^[264] Hitler claimed the New Testament included distortions by Paul the Apostle, who Hitler described as a “mass-murderer turned saint”.^[264] The Nazis displayed an original edition of Martin Luther‘s On the Jews and their Lies during the Nuremberg rallies.^[265][266]

The Nazis were initially hostile to Catholics because most supported the German Centre Party. Catholics opposed Nazi promotion of compulsory sterilisation of those deemed inferior, and the Catholic Church forbade its members to vote for the Nazis. In 1933, extensive Nazi violence occurred against Catholics due to their association with the Centre Party, and opposition to the Nazi sterilisation laws.^[267] The Nazis demanded Catholics declare their loyalty to the German state.^[268] In their propaganda, the Nazis used elements of Germany’s Catholic history, in particular the German Catholic Teutonic Knights and their campaigns in Eastern Europe. The Nazis identified them as “sentinels” in the East against “Slavic chaos”, though beyond that symbolism, the influence of the Teutonic Knights on Nazism was limited.^[269] Hitler admitted Nazis’ night rallies were inspired by Catholic rituals he had witnessed during his Catholic upbringing.^[270] The Nazis did seek official reconciliation with the Catholic Church and endorsed the creation of the pro-Nazi Catholic Kreuz und Adler, an organisation which advocated a form of national Catholicism that would reconcile the Catholic Church’s beliefs with Nazism.^[268] In July 1933, a concordat (Reichskonkordat) was signed between Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church, which in exchange for acceptance of the Catholic Church in Germany required Catholics to be loyal to the German state. The Catholic Church ended its ban on members supporting the Nazis.^[268]

During the Second World War and fanaticization of National Socialism, priests and nuns increasingly came to the attention of the Gestapo and SS. In the concentration camps, separate priestly blocks were formed, and church resistance was strictly persecuted. Monastery sister Maria Restituta Kafka was sentenced to death and executed only for a song critical of the regime.^[271] Polish priests came en masse to Auschwitz. Catholic resistance groups like those around Roman Karl Scholz were persecuted.^[272][273] While Catholic resistance was often anti-war and passive, there are examples of active combating National Socialism. The group around the priest Heinrich Maier approached the American secret service and provided them with plans and location sketches of V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks, Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and their production sites, so the Allies could successfully bomb them.^{[274][275][276][277][278]} After the war, their history was often forgotten, also because they acted against the express instructions of their church authorities.^{[279][280][281]}

Michael Burleigh claims Nazism used Christianity for political purposes, such use required that “fundamental tenets were stripped out, but the remaining diffuse religious emotionality had its uses”.^[270] Burleigh claims that Nazism’s conception of spirituality was “self-consciously pagan and primitive”.^[270] Roger Griffin rejects the claim Nazism was primarily pagan, noting that while there were influential neo-paganists in the Party, such as Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg, they represented a minority and their views did not influence ideology beyond its use for symbolism. Hitler denounced paganism in Mein Kampf and condemned Rosenberg and Himmler’s paganism as “nonsense”.^[282]

Economics

The Nazis came to power in the midst of the Great Depression, when unemployment was close to 30%.^[283] Nazi theorists and politicians blamed economic failures on political causes like the influence of Marxism on the workforce, the exploitative machinations of what they called international Jewry and the vindictiveness of western leaders’ reparation demands. Instead of traditional economic incentives, the Nazis offered political solutions, such as the elimination of trade unions, rearmament and biological politics.^[284] Work programs designed to establish full employment for the population were instituted once the Nazis seized power. Hitler encouraged national projects like construction of the Autobahn highway system, introduction of an affordable ‘people’s car’ (Volkswagen) and the Nazis bolstered the economy through the business and employment generated by rearmament.^[285] The Nazis benefited from the post-Depression upswing, and combined with their public works projects, job-procurement and subsidised home repair programmes reduced unemployment by 40% in one year. This development tempered the unfavourable psychological climate caused by the economic crisis and encouraged Germans to march in step with the regime.^[286]

Nazi economic policies were in many respects a continuation of those from the German National People’s Party, a national-conservative party and the Nazis’ coalition partner.^[287] While other capitalist countries strove for increased state ownership of industry, the Nazis transferred public ownership into the private sector and handed over some public services to private organizations, mostly affiliated with the Party. It was an intentional policy with multiple objectives, rather than ideologically driven and was used as a tool to enhance support for the government and party.^[288] The Nazi war economy was a mixed economy that combined free markets with central planning, between the command economy of the Soviet Union and the capitalist system of the US.^[289]

The Nazis continued the policies introduced by the government of Kurt von Schleicher in 1932 to combat the Depression.^[290] Upon being appointed Chancellor in 1933, Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht, a former member of the German Democratic Party, as President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics in 1934.^[283] Hitler promised measures to increase employment, protect the currency, and promote recovery from the Depression. These included an agrarian settlement program, labour service, and a guarantee to maintain health care and pensions.^[291] However, these policies and programs, which included a public works programs supported by deficit spending to stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment,<sup class="mw-ref reference default-touch-area" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTETooze2007[[Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_page_number_citations_from_January_2011]]^{[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page&nbsp;needed]]]}_292-0″><a href="./Nazism#cite_note-FOOTNOTETooze2007[[Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_page_number_citations_from_January_2011]]^{[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page&nbsp;needed]]]}-292″ class=”reference-link”>[292] were planned by the Weimar Republic and appropriated by the Nazis.^[293] Hitler’s priority was rearmament and buildup of the military in preparation for a war to conquer Lebensraum in the East.^[294] The policies of Schacht created a scheme for deficit financing, in which capital projects were paid for with the issuance of promissory notes called Mefo bills, which could be traded by companies with each other.^[295] This was particularly useful in allowing Germany to rearm because the Mefo bills were not Reichsmarks and did not appear in the federal budget, so helped conceal rearmament.^[296] Hitler said that “the future of Germany depends exclusively and only on the reconstruction of the Wehrmacht. All other tasks must cede precedence to the task of rearmament.”^[294] This policy was implemented immediately, with military expenditures quickly growing larger than civilian work-creation programs. As early as June 1933, military spending for the year was budgeted to be three times larger than spending on civilian work-creation measures in 1932 and 1933 combined.^[297] Germany increased its military spending faster than any other state in peacetime, with its share of spending rising from 1 to 10 per cent of national income in the first two years of the regime.^[298] Eventually, it reached 75 per cent by 1944.^[299]

In spite of their rhetoric condemning big business prior to power, the Nazis quickly entered into a partnership with business from as early as February 1933. After appointment as Chancellor but before gaining dictatorial powers, Hitler made a personal appeal to business leaders to help fund the Party for the crucial months to follow. He argued they should support establishing a dictatorship because “private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy” and because democracy would allegedly lead to communism.^[69] He promised to destroy the German left, including trade unions, without mention of anti-Jewish policies or foreign conquests.^[300] In the following weeks, the Party received contributions from 17 different business groups, the largest from IG Farben and Deutsche Bank.^[300] Adam Tooze writes that business leaders were “willing partners in the destruction of political pluralism in Germany”.^[67] In exchange, owners and managers of businesses were granted unprecedented powers to control their workforce, collective bargaining was abolished and wages frozen at a relatively low level.^[301] Profits rose rapidly, as did corporate investment.^[302] The Nazis privatised public properties and services, only increasing economic state control through regulations.^[303] Hitler believed private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and innovation, but insisted it had to conform to national interests and be “productive” rather than “parasitical”.^[304] Property rights were conditional upon following Nazi priorities, with high profits as a reward for firms who followed them and the threat of nationalisation used against those who did not.^[305] Under Nazi economics, free competition and self-regulating markets diminished, but Hitler’s social Darwinist beliefs made him retain business competition and private property as economic engines.^[306][307]

The Nazis were hostile to the idea of social welfare in principle, upholding the social Darwinist concept that the weak should perish.^[308] They condemned the Weimar welfare system, and charity, accusing them of supporting people regarded as racially inferior and weak, who should have been weeded out through natural selection.^[309] Nevertheless, faced with the mass unemployment and poverty of the Depression, the Nazis found it necessary to set up charitable institutions to help racially-pure Germans, to maintain popular support, while arguing this represented “racial self-help” and not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.^[310] Nazi programs such as the Winter Relief of the German People and the broader National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) were organised as quasi-private institutions, officially relying on donations from Germans to help others of their race, though in practice those who refused to donate could face severe consequences.^[311] Unlike the social welfare institutions of the Weimar Republic and the Christian charities, the NSV distributed assistance on explicitly racial grounds. It provided support only to those who were “racially sound, capable of and willing to work, politically reliable, and willing and able to reproduce”. Non-Aryans were excluded, as well as the “work-shy”, “asocials” and the “hereditarily ill”.^[312] Successful efforts were made to get middle-class women involved in social work assisting large families,^[217] and the Winter Relief campaigns acted as a ritual to generate public sympathy.^[313]

Agrarian policies were important to the Nazis, as they corresponded not just to the economy, but their geopolitical conception of Lebensraum. For Hitler, the acquisition of land and soil was important in moulding the economy.^[314] To tie farmers to their land, selling it was prohibited.^[315] Farm ownership remained private, but business monopoly rights were granted to marketing boards to control production and prices with a quota system.^[316] The Hereditary Farm Law of 1933 established a cartel structure under a government body known as the Reichsnährstand (RNST) which determined “everything[,] from what seeds and fertilizers were used to how land was inherited”.^[316] Hitler primarily viewed the economy as an instrument of power, not creating wealth and technical progress to improve quality of life, but to provide the material foundations for conquest.^[317] While economic progress generated by National Socialist programs had its role in appeasing Germans, the Nazis did not believe economic solutions were sufficient to thrust Germany onto the stage as a world power. The Nazis sought to secure an economic revival accompanied by massive military spending for rearmament, especially later through the implementation of the Four Year Plan, which consolidated their rule and firmly secured a command relationship between the arms industry and government.^[318] Between 1933-39, military expenditures were upwards of 82 billion Reichsmarks and represented 23% of Germany’s economy as the Nazis mobilised their people and economy for war.^[319]

Totalitarianism

Under Nazism, with its emphasis on the nation, individualism was denounced and instead importance was placed upon Germans belonging to the German Volk and “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft).^[354] Hitler declared that “every activity and every need of every individual will be regulated by the collectivity represented by the party” and “there are no longer any free realms in which the individual belongs to himself”.^[355]

A core objective of the Nazis was the establishment of a totalitarian state which indoctrinated the population with ultra-nationalist ideas and violently enforced its ideological worldview upon the society.^[356] Himmler justified the establishment of a repressive police state, in which the security forces could exercise power arbitrarily, by claiming that national security and order should take precedence over the needs of the individual.^[357] In a speech in 1933, Joseph Goebbels stated:

“The revolution we have carried out is a total one. It has embraced all areas of public life and transformed them from below. It has completely changed and recast the relationship of people to each other, to the State, and to life itself. It was in fact the breakthrough of a fresh world-view, which had fought for power in opposition for fourteen years to provide the basis for the German people to develop a new relationship with the State. What has been happening since 30 January is only the visible expression of this revolutionary process.”^[358]

According to Hannah Arendt, the allure of Nazism as a totalitarian ideology resided within it helping Germany deal with the aftermath of the First World War and material suffering of the Depression, and brought to order the revolutionary unrest. Instead of the plurality that existed in democratic or parliamentary states, Nazism as a totalitarian system promulgated “clear” solutions to the problems faced by Germany, levied support by de-legitimizing the former government of Weimar and provided a politico-biological pathway to a better future, free from uncertainty. It was the atomised and disaffected masses that Hitler and the party elite pointed in a particular direction and used propaganda to make them into ideological adherents, to bring Nazism to life.^[359]

While the ideologues of Nazism, much like those of Stalinism, abhorred democratic governance as practised in the US or Britain, their differences are substantial. They had similarly tyrannical leaders, state-controlled economies, repressive police structures, and a common thematic political construction. But when analysed against one another, can be see to be radically different.^[360]

Carl Schmitt, a Nazi legal theorist characterized the “Führerprinzip” as the ideological foundation of Nazi Germany’s “total state”.^[361][362] In “Staat, Bewegung, Volk ” (1933), Schmitt wrote:

“National Socialism does not think in abstractions and clichés. It is the enemy of all normative and functionalist ways of proceeding. It supports and cultivates every authentic substance of the people wherever it encounters it, in the countryside, in ethnic groups [Stämme] or classes. It has created the hereditary farm law; saved the peasantry; purged the Civil Service of alien [ fremdgeartet] elements and thus re-stored it as a class. It has the courage to treat unequally what is unequal and enforce necessary differentiations.”^[363]

Contemporary events and views

After the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, and his subsequent trial and imprisonment, Hitler decided that the way for the Nazi Party to achieve power was not through insurrection, but through legal and quasi-legal means. This did not sit well with the brown-shirted stormtroopers of the SA, especially those in Berlin, who chafed under the restrictions that Hitler placed on them, and their subordination to the party. This resulted in the Stennes Revolt of 1930–31, after which Hitler made himself the Supreme Commander of the SA and brought Ernst Röhm back to be their Chief of Staff and keep them in line. The quashing of the SA’s revolutionary fervor convinced many businessmen and military leaders that the Nazis had put aside their insurrectionist past, and that Hitler could be a reliable partner.^[374][375]

After the Nazis’ “Seizure of Power” in 1933, Röhm and the Brown Shirts were not content for the party to simply carry the reins of power. Instead, they pressed for a continuation of the “National Socialist revolution” to bring about sweeping social changes, which Hitler, primarily for tactical reasons, was not willing to do at that time. He was instead focused on rebuilding the military and reorienting the economy to provide the rearmament necessary for invasion of the countries to the east of Germany, especially Poland and Russia, to get the Lebensraum (“living space”) he believed was necessary to the survival of the Aryan race. For this, he needed the co-operation of not only the military, but also the vital organs of capitalism, the banks and big businesses, which he would be unlikely to get if Germany’s social and economic structure was being radically overhauled. Röhm’s public proclamation that the SA would not allow the “German Revolution” to be halted or undermined caused Hitler to announce that “The revolution is not a permanent condition.” The unwillingness of Röhm and the SA to cease their agitation for a “Second Revolution”, and the unwarranted fear of a “Röhm putsch” to accomplish it, were factors behind Hitler’s purging of the SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives in the summer of 1934.^[376][377]

Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor, was appalled at the Kristallnacht of 9–10 November 1938, stating “For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German”:^[378]

There’s a man alone, without family, without children, without God … He builds legions, but he doesn’t build a nation. A nation is created by families, a religion, traditions: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children … For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism. I thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were, associated with it for a time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans. But these, one by one, he has got rid of or even killed … He has left nothing but a bunch of shirted gangsters! This man could bring home victories to our people each year, without bringing them either glory or danger. But of our Germany, which was a nation of poets and musicians, of artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics and hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics.

Otto von Hapsburg, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, denounced Nazism, stating:^[379]

I absolutely reject [Nazi] Fascism for Austria … This un-Austrian movement promises everything to everyone, but really intends the most ruthless subjugation of the Austrian people … The people of Austria will never tolerate that our beautiful fatherland should become an exploited colony, and that the Austrian should become a man of second category.

Following the German annexation of Austria, Otto was sentenced to death by the Nazi regime; Rudolf Hess ordered that Otto was to be executed immediately if caught.^{[380][381][382]} As ordered by Adolf Hitler, his personal property and that of the House of Habsburg were confiscated. It was not returned after the war.^[383] The so-called “Habsburg Law“, which had previously been repealed, was reintroduced by the Nazis.^[384]