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Do not fill this in! === Totalitarianism === {{see also|Totalitarianism}} [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1987-0410-503, Nürnberg, Reichsparteitag, Wehrmachts-Aufmarsch.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|[[Nuremberg Rally|Nazi Party rally]] in [[Nuremberg]], 1936]] 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)''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Mosse|first=George Lachmann|title=Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich|year=1966|publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press|isbn=978-0-299-19304-1|page=239}}</ref> Hitler declared that "every activity and every need of every individual will be regulated by the collectivity represented by the party" and that "there are no longer any free realms in which the individual belongs to himself".<ref name="Fest">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BjDrszaNTygC&q=%22individual%27s+entire+life%22+hitler&pg=PA418|title=Hitler|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|author=Fest, Joachim|page=418|isbn=978-0-544-19554-7|date=2013}}</ref> One of the core objectives of the [[Nazi Party|Nazi party]] was the establishment of a [[Totalitarianism|totalitarian state]] which indoctrinated the German population with [[Ultranationalism|ultra-nationalist]] ideas and violently enforced its ideological worldview upon the society.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition: In the West 1560–1991 |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |isbn=0-415-17294-2 |editor-last=Parker |editor-first=David |location=11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, UK |pages=3, 192, 193, 194}}</ref> Heinrich 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.<ref name="Browder">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Syyy2MtOrcsC&q=individual+needs+nazism&pg=PA240|title=Foundations of the Nazi Police State: The Formation of Sipo and SD|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|author=Browder, George C|page=240|isbn=978-0-8131-9111-9|date=2004}}</ref> In his speech delivered at the inauguration of the [[Reich Chamber of Culture|Nazi Reich Chamber of Culture]] on 15 November 1933, [[Joseph Goebbels]] stated:<blockquote>"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 [[Weltanschauung|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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffin |first=Roger |title=Fascism |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-19-289249-2 |pages=133, 134}}</ref></blockquote> According to the famous philosopher and political theorist, [[Hannah Arendt]], the allure of Nazism as a totalitarian ideology (with its attendant mobilisation of the German population) resided within the construct of helping that society deal with the [[cognitive dissonance]] resultant from the tragic interruption of the First World War and the economic and material suffering consequent to the Depression and brought to order the revolutionary unrest occurring all around them. Instead of the [[Pluralism (political philosophy)|plurality]] that existed in [[Democracy|democratic]] or [[Parliamentary system|parliamentary states]], Nazism as a totalitarian system promulgated "clear" solutions to the historical problems faced by Germany, levied support by de-legitimizing the former government of Weimar and provided a politico-biological pathway to a better future, one free from the uncertainty of the past. It was the atomised and disaffected masses that Hitler and the party elite pointed in a particular direction and using clever propaganda to make them into ideological adherents, exploited in bringing Nazism to life.<ref>Hannah Arendt, ''The Origins of Totalitarianism'' (Orlando, FL Harcourt Inc., 1973), pp. 305–459.</ref> While the ideologues of Nazism, [[Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism|much like those of Stalinism]], abhorred democratic or parliamentary governance as practised in the United States or Britain, their differences are substantial. An [[Epistemology|epistemic]] crisis occurs when one tries to synthesize and contrast Nazism and Stalinism as two-sides of the same coin with their similarly tyrannical leaders, state-controlled economies and repressive police structures. Namely, while they share a common thematic political construction, they are entirely inimical to one another in their worldviews and when more carefully analysed against one another on a one-to-one level, an "irreconcilable asymmetry" results.<ref>Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, eds., "Introduction – After Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared", in ''Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared'' (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 20–21.</ref> [[Carl Schmitt]], a Nazi legal theorist and member of [[Prussian State Council (Nazi Germany)|Prussian State Council]], characterized the "''[[Führerprinzip]]''" as the ideological foundation of Nazi Germany's "total state".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffin |first=Roger |title=Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition: In the West 1560–1991 |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |isbn=0-415-17294-2 |editor-last=Parker |editor-first=David |location=11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, UK |pages=193 |chapter=11: Revolution from the Right: Fascism}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffin |first=Roger |title=Fascism |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-19-289249-2 |pages=138, 139}}</ref> In his book "''Staat, Bewegung, Volk'' " (1933), Schmitt wrote: <blockquote>"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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffin |first=Roger |title=Fascism |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-19-289249-2 |pages=138}}</ref></blockquote> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. 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