- What was Nazism?
- Characteristics of Nazism
- Rise of Nazism
- The Holocaust
- Nazism and fascism
- Fall of Nazism
We explain what Nazism was, how it arose, its characteristics and its relationship with fascism. Also, what was the Holocaust.
What was Nazism?
Nazism or National Socialism (in German nationalsozialismus) is the German variant of fascism, emerged in the 1920s. It was promoted by the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and its leader, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).
It was an ideology and a political practice of reactionary values, totalitarian, which differentiated the citizens from his race, and that the establishment of a third German empire (the so-called Third Reich).
With Nazism in power, Germany quickly became a dictatorship and militarize your society. A single party regime was built that deposited in Adolf Hitler the totality of political power, creating for him the position of "guide" or "Leader” (führer), supposedly destined by providence to lead Germany to its former glory. Such aspirations led to Europe to WWII.
However, the most controversial feature of Nazism was probably its particular interpretation of history from the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, in what is known as “social Darwinism”, that is, the belief in which the different human ethnic groups must compete with each other so that only the strong and fit survive, taking over all the resources.
The latter led to Nazism and the German people to persecute the considered "inferior races" (untermenschen), especially the Jews, whom Hitler professed a particular hatred, and to undertake measures for their forcible deportation and then, during the critical times of World War II, for their extermination.
Characteristics of Nazism
Nazism was not always consistent with its ideological assumptions, nor was it explainable in traditional political terms. Broadly speaking, it was characterized by the following:
- It was an antidemocratic, totalitarian, militaristic movement, racist Y nationalist, vertically organized around the figure of its eternal and undisputed leader, Hitler.
- Its ideological position aspired to be a "third way" between the conservative right and the revolutionary left. Thus, it promoted a Condition strong and at the same time a strongly stratified society, with first, second and third class citizens, ethnically differentiated.
- Nazism had as enemies Marxism and all forms of communism or anarchism, but he was also opposed to bourgeoisie traditional and Judaism, seeing in the latter the symbol of usury and lending. In their nationalist delusions, the Nazis even claimed that they were all part of a global conspiracy against Germany.
- The Nazi state was repressive and police, one-party, and viewed as enemies of the nation not only to Jews and Communists, but also to homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies and all those who opposed his model of government. Many of them were reduced to slave labor and later imprisoned in concentration camps.
- Nazi foreign policy was based on the idea of "living space" (Lebensraum) necessary for the German people to achieve the glory for which they were destined. For this, it was necessary to annex the territories neighbors of Eastern Europe and repopulate them with German blood, after having "cleansed" them of their traditional settlers.
- The Nazis considered themselves direct descendants of the people Aryan, a supposed racially and linguistically homogeneous Indo-European ethnic group, from which all traditional European peoples would descend. For that reason, they viewed racial mixing as an act against nature and they watched over the preservation of the genetic purity of the German people.
Rise of Nazism
Although he belonged to a still minority party, Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933.
Nazism appeared in the Germany of the Weimar Republic, established after the German defeat in the First World War and the signature of Treaty of Versailles, in which the losers of the conflict were subjected to a series of crushing political and economic conditions.
Resentment, discontent, poor living conditions and the feeling of having been betrayed were some of the feelings that hung in the air, and of which Hitler's voice echoed.
Furthermore, since the beginning of the 20th century a strong pan-Germanist sentiment had nested in the Germanic populations of Europe, inside and outside Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, yearning for a powerful nation to bring them together, or as Hitler himself later proposed, "A Reich that lasts a thousand years."
It was thus that in 1919 Hitler joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), whose nationalist preaching had seduced him, and quickly became one of its leaders and top speakers.
After reforming the party and founding the NSDAP, in 1921 Hitler was first introduced as führer, starting a frantic race to seize political power, amid a climate of generalized crisis for which the Social Democrats were blamed. The Nazis created their own shock troops, the SA (sturmabteilung) with which to parade and intimidate your opponents.
Hand in hand with other political actors such as Franz von Papen (1879-1969), who saw Hitler as a puppet through which to achieve power, the Nazi party entered the running of the State despite still being a minority party. . Thus, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, which gave him control of the executive power.
His first action was to request the dissolution of parliament (Reichstag) and call for new elections for the same year, which were interrupted by the burning of the legislative building (probably on Hitler's own orders) and the declaration of the state of emergency, which led to the abolition of the fundamental rights of the Constitution of 1919.
Anyway, the elections were held and Nazism won 44% of the votes. But Hitler had an ace up his sleeve: request the declaration of special powers to parliament, with which to manage the crisis.
This enabling Law was granted to him in 1933 thanks to a strong social and political coercion on the part of the members of the Nazi party. Once the dictatorial powers were obtained, Hitler banned and dissolved the opposition parties, starting his political regime.
The following year took place the infamous "night of the long knives" (Nacht der langen Messer) in which Nazi troops (the newly created SS and Gestapo) besieged remnants of Germany's opponents, assassinating and arresting major politicians.
Among the victims were former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher (1882-1934), or former comrades of Hitler who were no longer useful for the command or whose loyalty he was suspicious, like Gregor Strasser, Gustav Ritter von Kahr, and Ernest Röhm.
Through this coup, Nazism took over almost all the structures of the State. The last steps towards total dictatorship took place after the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934): in 1934 Hitler announced that the powers of the President would henceforth be transferred to the Chancellor, that is, to his person.
Thus, after holding an approval plebiscite in which the Nazis obtained 90% of the vote, the German Third Reich had formally begun.
The Holocaust
Today it is known as the Holocaust (in Hebrew Shoah, "Catastrophe") to what at the time the Nazis baptized as the "final solution" (Endlösung) for the Jews of Europe, that is, a systematic and large-scale plan for the extermination of the "inferior races" that inhabited the countries occupied by the German army during the Second World War, especially the Jews.
Similar genocide it took place between late summer 1941 and the end of the war in 1945. It cost the lives of two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, an estimated 6 million people.
In addition, millions of Poles, Gypsies, physically and mentally disabled, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners of war were executed along a network of concentration camps and forced labor, many of which also had gas chambers and industrial crematoria.
The Holocaust is considered the greatest genocide of the 20th century and one of the greatest in the contemporary history of the humanity.
Nazism and fascism
In general, Nazism and Fascism are more or less equivalent terms. Both are extreme, radical and undemocratic political tendencies, especially those that have a racist or xenophobic. However, at the time, the term “fascist”He was referring to the Italian political movement homologous to Nazism, led by Benito Mussolini.
The Italian fascists adhered to similar militaristic, anti-communist and imperialist values to the Germans. They got their name from the Latin term fasces, translatable as "do", and that the ancient Romans used as a symbol of authority. His task was to restore in Italy the glory of the ancient Roman Empire, and to seize the African colonies of his European rivals.
Fall of Nazism
Nazism met its end in early 1945, when the German Third Reich was finally defeated by the combined armies of the Soviet Union and the Western Allies (the United States and Great Britain).
With everything already given up for lost, Hitler and many of his top officials committed suicide in their underground bunker in Berlin. On the other hand, many of the high military leaders of the Reich were captured and tried by an international court in the Nuremberg Trials between 1945 and 1946.