Nazism (orNational Socialism;German:Nationalsozialismus) is a set ofpolitical beliefs associated with theNazi Party ofGermany. It started in the 1920s, but the Nazi Party gained power in 1933 and started carrying out their ideas in Germany, which they called theThird Reich. They stayed in power in Germany until 1945, when they lostWorld War II.
Nazism is afar-rightfascistideology heavily inspired from the works ofOswald Spengler.[source?] The Nazis believed that only the Aryan (German) race was capable of building nations and other races, notably the Jewish race, were agents of the corruptive forces ofcapitalism andMarxism, both of which the Nazis opposed.
Some Nazis, such asErnst Röhm, wanted thereforms to go further and called for arevolution, eliminating economic classes in Germany and for the government to take control of majorbusinesses. Many of them weremurdered on Hitler's orders during theNight of the Long Knives as they were deemed a threat to his leadership.
The world will now understand that the only real 'ideological' issue is one betweendemocracy,liberty andpeace on the one hand anddespotism,terror andwar on the other.
The Nazis blamed the Jewish people for Germany's defeat inWorld War I. This is known as the Stab in the Back Myth. The Nazis also blamed the Jewish people for rapid inflation and practically every other economic woe facing Germany at the time as a result of their defeat in World War I.[2]
For this reason, the Nazis not only viewed Jews asinferior to them, but as oppressors of the Aryan people who were creating inequality. The Nazis' tactic of lazily albeit effectively blaming the Jewish people for all of Germany's problems is apropaganda tactic known asscapegoating and was used to justifythe Holocaust.[2]
To implement the racist ideas, theNuremberg Race Laws (1935) banned non-Aryans and political opponents of the Nazis from serving the government. They also forbid anysexual contact between 'Aryan' andnon-Aryan persons.
In November 1923, the Nazis tried to overthrow the democratic German government that had been set up after WWI. Nazi thinking emphasises conflict and violence, and believes that these are the best way to sort out political problems. The Nazis had therefore set up their own private army, called theSturmabteilung (SA) which were sometimes known as the 'Nazi stormtroopers' or simply the 'brownshirts'. Many political parties had their own private armies at this time in Germany to guard their events and meetings from the private armies of other political parties. The attempt to take power is referred to as the Munich Putsch or Beer Hall Putsch and was crushed after less than 24 hours.
After the Putsch, Hitler was imprisoned for six months and the Nazi Party briefly banned. It was allowed to exist again in if it promised to only be democratic. The Nazis agreed, but made it clear that if they took power in Germany, they would turn Germany into a dictatorship. The Nazis believed in something called the Führer Principle, which means that they believe that all groups should be organised like armies, with absolute loyalty shown to the leader of the group. They wanted to apply this principle to Germany. They disagreed with democracy, because they believed that it divided groups which made them weaker.
The Nazis performed very badly in elections until the early 1930s, where they became exceptionally popular. This can be partly explained by a massive increase in poverty in Germany caused by theWall Street Crash of 1929, and Nazi promises to rebuild German strength and pride. However, this is not the only reason for the Nazis coming to power, because it still took more than three years for Adolf Hitler to becomeChancellor of Germany after the Crash.
On the night of the 27 February 1933 and 28 February 1933, someone set theReichstag building on fire. This was the building where the GermanParliament held their meetings. The Nazis blamed thecommunists. Opponents of the Nazis said that the Nazis themselves had done it to come to power. On the very same day, an emergency law calledReichstagsbrandverordnung was passed. The government claimed it was to protect the state from people trying to hurt the country. With this law, most of thecivil rights of theWeimar Republic did not count any longer. The Nazis used this against the otherpolitical parties. Members of the communist andsocial-democratic parties were put into prison or killed.
The Nazis became the biggest party in the parliament. By 1934, they managed to make all other parties illegal.Democracy was replaced with adictatorship. Adolf Hitler became leader (Führer) of Germany, and had the power to make any laws he wanted.
The Nazis changed Germany to fit their ideas of what a country should be like. They created atotalitarian state, which is a country where the government tries to have total control over ordinary people's lives.
In schools, several subjects were changed to fit a Nazi interpretation. History was taught to emphasise German military victories and blames Jewish people and Marxists for defeat in WWI. Children were also taught racial hygiene lessons, where pseudo-scientific racist principles taught to them. In 1936, all German children had to be members of theHitler Youth which was a Nazi version of theScouting movement, and was designed to prepare them to be soldiers in wars against other races.
People who opposed the Nazis were seen as traitors. The Nazis created a very effectivepolice state, led byHeinrich Himmler and his deputyReinhard Heydrich. They were in charge of an organisation called theSchutzstaffel (SS) that took control of all of the police forces in Germany. The SS also set up a new secret police organisation called theGestapo which hunted down people who wanted to protest against the Nazi government. Enemies of the Nazis were regularly tortured, put inconcentration camps or executed.
The Nazis madealliances with otherEuropean countries, such asFinland andItaly. Every other European country that allied with Germany did it because they did not want to be taken over by Germany. Through these alliances and invasions, the Nazis managed to control much of Europe.
In theHolocaust, millions of Jews, as well as Roma people (also called "Gypsies"),people with disabilities,homosexuals, political opponents, and many other people were sent toconcentration camps anddeath camps inPoland and Germany. The Naziskilled millions of these people at the concentration camps withpoison gas. The Nazis also killed millions of people in these groups by forcing them to doslave labor without giving them much food or clothing. In total, 17 million people died, 6 million of them being Jews.
During the invasion of Berlin, Hitlershot himself in a bunker with his new wife,Eva Braun. Other Nazis alsokilled themselves, includingJoseph Goebbels just one day after Hitler named him as his successor. The Nazissurrendered after the Red Army captured Berlin.
After the war, the Allied governments, namely the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, heldtrials of the Nazi leaders. These trials were held inNuremberg, Germany. For this reason, these trials were called "theNuremberg Trials." The Allied leaders accused the Nazi leaders ofwar crimes andcrimes against humanity, includingmurdering millions of people (in theHolocaust), of starting wars, ofconspiracy, and belonging to illegal organizations like theSS (called, "Schutzstaffel", in German). Most Nazi leaders were foundguilty by the court, and they were sent to jail or sentenced to death andexecuted.
There has not been aNazi state since 1945, but there are still people who believe in those ideas. These people are often calledNeo-Nazis. Here are some examples of modern Nazi ideas:
Moreover,British historian Roger Griffin defined fascism as a form of revolutionarynationalism hinged on the unity of a group to achieve a national rebirth (orpalingenesis,Koine Greek: παλιγγενεσία).[4] The definition was adopted by historian Matthew Kott[5] to redefine Nazism as a type of antisemitic fascism rooted inpopulistultranationalism given that he saw the conventional definition of Nazism as too Germanocentric and unable to account for the massive local collaboration in Nazi-occupied territories.[6]
Kott cited the pre-war anti-German Latvian ultranationalist groupPērkonkrusts ("Thunder Cross") andVidkun Quisling's Norwegian collaborationist[7] groupNasjonal Samling ("National Gathering") as examples that an entity can still be Nazi without supporting Hitlerite Nazism.[6]
After the war, laws were made in Germany and other countries, especially countries in Europe, that make it illegal to say the Holocaust never happened. Sometimes, they also ban questioning the number of people affected by it and saying that it killed a smaller amount of people than it really did. There has been some controversy over whether this affects people'sfree speech. Certain countries, such as Germany, Austria, and France, also banned the use of Nazi symbols It is also banned to make a Nazi pledge position on a popular media source to stop Nazis from using them.
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