Nazism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! == Ideology and programme== In his book ''The Hitler State'' (''Der Staat Hitlers''), historian [[Martin Broszat]] writes: <blockquote>...National Socialism was not primarily an ideological and programmatic, but a [[Charismatic authority|charismatic movement]], whose ideology was incorporated in the Führer, Hitler, and which would have lost all its power to integrate without him. ... [T]he abstract, utopian and vague National Socialistic ideology only achieved what reality and certainty it had through the medium of Hitler.</blockquote> Thus, any explication of the ideology of Nazism must be descriptive, as it was not generated primarily from first principles, but was the result of numerous factors, including Hitler's strongly-held personal views, some parts of the [[25-point plan]], the general goals of the ''[[völkische]]'' and nationalist movements, and the conflicts between Nazi Party functionaries who battled "to win [Hitler] over to their respective interpretations of [National Socialism]." Once the Party had been purged of divergant influences such as [[Strasserism]], Hitler was accepted by the Party's leadership as the "supreme authority to rule on ideological matters".{{sfn|Broszat|1981|p=29}} Nazi ideology was based on a bio-geo-political "''[[Weltanschauung]]''" (worldview), advocating territorial expansionism to cultivate what it viewed as a "purified and homogeneous [[Aryan race|Aryan population]]." Nazi regime's policies were shaped by the integration of [[biopolitics]] and [[geopolitics]] within the [[Hitlerian]] worldview, amalgamating spatial theory, practice, and imagination with biopolitics. In Hitlerism, the concepts of space and [[Race (human categorization)|race]] were not separate but existed in tension, forming a distinct bio-geo-political framework at the core of the Nazi project. This ideology viewed German territorial conquests and extermination of those ethnic groups it dehumanised as "''[[untermensch]]''" as part of a biopolitical process to establish an ideal German community.<ref>{{Cite book |last= |first= |title=Hitler's Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-226-27442-3 |editor-last=Giaccaria, Minca |editor-first=Paolo, Claudio |location=Chicago, USA |pages=10, 11, 29 |chapter=}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Neumann |first=Boaz |date=2002 |title=The National Socialist Politics of Life |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3115178 |journal=New German Critique |volume= |issue=85 |pages=107–130 |doi=10.2307/3115178 |jstor=3115178 |via=JSTOR}}</ref> === Nationalism and racialism === {{further|Nazism and race|Racial policy of Nazi Germany}} Nazism emphasised German nationalism, including both [[irredentism]] and [[expansionism]]. Nazism held racial theories based upon a belief in the existence of an Aryan master race that was superior to all other races. The Nazis emphasised the existence of racial 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 also categorised [[Slavs]] as ''[[Untermensch]]'' (sub-human).<ref>Steve Thorne. ''The Language of War''. London: Routledge, 2006, p. 38. {{ISBN|978-0-415-35867-5}}</ref> Wolfgang Bialas argues that 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 would commit actions for the sake of the German race while at the same time convinced he was doing the right thing and 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 to be 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.<ref>Bialas, Wolfgang, and Lothar Fritze, eds. ''Nazi Ideology and Ethics.'' Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. 15–57 {{ISBN|978-1443854221}}</ref> ==== Irredentism and expansionism ==== {{further|Lebensraum}} [[File:Bundesarchiv R 49 Bild-0131, Aussiedlung von Polen im Wartheland.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|left|Beginning of ''Lebensraum'', the [[Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany|Nazi German expulsion of Poles]] from [[Reichsgau Wartheland|central Poland]], 1939]] At the core of the Nazi ideology was the bio-geo-political project to acquire ''[[Lebensraum]]'' ("living space") through territorial conquests.<ref>{{Cite book |last= |first= |title=Hitler's Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-226-27442-3 |editor-last=Giaccaria, Minca |editor-first=Paolo, Claudio |location=Chicago, USA |pages=37 |chapter=1: For a Tentative Spatial Theory of the Third Reich}}</ref> The German Nazi Party supported German irredentist claims to Austria, [[Alsace-Lorraine]], the region of [[Sudetenland]], and the territory known since 1919 as the [[Polish Corridor]]. A major policy of the German Nazi Party was ''Lebensraum'' for the German nation based on claims that Germany after World War I was facing an overpopulation crisis and that expansion was needed to end the country's overpopulation within existing confined territory, and provide resources necessary to its people's well-being.<ref name="Stephen J. Lee 1945, p. 237">Stephen J. Lee. ''Europe, 1890–1945'', p. 237. {{ISBN?}}</ref> Since the 1920s, the Nazi Party publicly promoted the expansion of Germany into territories held by the Soviet Union.<ref name="Peter D. Stachura P. 31">Peter D. Stachura. ''The Shaping of the Nazi State'', p. 31.</ref> In ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler stated that ''Lebensraum'' would be acquired in Eastern Europe, especially Russia.<ref>Joseph W. Bendersk, A History of Nazi Germany: 1919–1945, p. 177</ref> In his early years as the Nazi leader, Hitler had claimed that he would be willing to accept friendly relations with Russia on the tactical condition that Russia agree to return to the borders established by the German–Russian peace agreement of the [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]] signed by [[Grigori Sokolnikov]] of the [[Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic|Russian Soviet Republic]] in 1918 which gave large territories held by Russia to German control in exchange for peace.<ref name="Peter D. Stachura P. 31"/> In 1921, Hitler had commended the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as opening the possibility for restoration of relations between Germany and Russia by saying: [[File:Trial of the Nazis of the Klaipėda Region – priest Theodor Freiherr von Sass, veterinarian Ernst Neumann, and others in Kaunas, 1935.jpg|thumb|The [[Trial of Neumann and Sass|first trial of the Nazis in Europe]], which took place in [[Kaunas]] in 1935. The accused claimed that the [[Klaipėda Region]] should be part of Germany, not [[Lithuania]], and spread propaganda, prepared for an armed uprising.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Gliožaitis |first1=Algirdas |title=Neumanno-Sasso byla |trans-title= The Case of Neumann-Sass |url=https://www.mle.lt/straipsniai/neumanno-sasso-byla |website=Mažosios Lietuvos enciklopedija |access-date=12 February 2022 |language=lt}}</ref>]] {{blockquote|Through the peace with Russia the sustenance of Germany as well as the provision of work were to have been secured by the acquisition of land and soil, by access to raw materials, and by friendly relations between the two lands.|Adolf Hitler<ref name="Peter D. Stachura P. 31"/>}} From 1921 to 1922, Hitler evoked rhetoric of both the achievement of ''Lebensraum'' involving the acceptance of a territorially reduced Russia as well as supporting [[Russian nationalism|Russian nationalists]] in overthrowing the [[Bolsheviks]] and establishing a new [[White movement|White Russian]] government.<ref name="Peter D. Stachura P. 31"/> Hitler's attitudes changed by the end of 1922, in which he then supported an alliance of Germany with Britain to destroy Russia.<ref name="Peter D. Stachura P. 31"/> Hitler later declared how far he intended to expand Germany into Russia: {{blockquote|Asia, what a disquieting reservoir of men! The safety of Europe will not be assured until we have driven Asia back behind the Urals. No organized Russian state must be allowed to exist west of that line.|Adolf Hitler<ref name="André Mineau 2004, p. 36">André Mineau. ''Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity''. Rodopi, 2004, p. 36</ref>}} {{quote box | title = Hitler's doctrine of ''Lebensraum''|"For the future of the German nation the 1914 frontiers are of no significance. They did not serve to protect us in the past, nor do they offer any guarantee for our defence in the future. With these frontiers the [[German people]] cannot maintain themselves as a compact unit, nor can they be assured of their maintenance. ... Against all this we, National Socialists, must stick firmly to the aim that we have set for our foreign policy; namely, that the German people must be assured the territorial area which is necessary for it to exist on this earth. ... The right to territory may become a duty when a great nation seems destined to go under unless its territory be extended. And that is particularly true when the nation in question is not some little group of negro people but the Germanic mother of all the life which has given cultural shape to the modern world." | author = — [[Adolf Hitler]] | source = — ("''[[Mein Kampf]]''", Volume 2, Chapter 14: "Germany's policy in Eastern Europe")<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hitler |first=Adolf |date=1939 |title=Mein Kampf |publisher=Hurst & Blackett Ltd.|chapter= XIV: Germany's policy in Eastern Europe|pages=498, 500}}</ref> | align = right | width = 25em }} Policy for ''Lebensraum'' planned mass expansion of Germany's borders to eastwards of the [[Ural Mountains]].<ref name="André Mineau 2004, p. 36"/><ref>[[Rolf-Dieter Müller]], [[Gerd R. Ueberschär]]. ''[[Hitler's War in the East 1941−1945|Hitler's War in the East, 1941–1945: A Critical Assessment]]''. Berghahn Books, 2009, p. 89.</ref> Hitler planned for the "surplus" Russian population living west of the Urals to be deported to the east of the Urals.<ref>Bradl Lightbody. ''The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis''. London; New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 97.{{ISBN?}}</ref> Historian Adam Tooze explains that Hitler believed that lebensraum was vital to securing American-style consumer affluence for the German people. In this light, Tooze argues that the view that the regime faced a "[[Guns versus butter model|guns or butter]]" contrast is mistaken. While it is true that resources were diverted from civilian consumption to military production, Tooze explains that at a strategic level "guns were ultimately viewed as a means to obtaining more butter".{{sfn|Tooze|2008|pp=161–162}} While the Nazi pre-occupation with agrarian living and food production are often seen as a sign of their backwardness, Tooze explains this was in fact a major driving issue in European society for at least the last two centuries. The issue of how European societies should respond to the new [[World economy|global economy]] in food was one of the major issues facing Europe in the early 20th century. Agrarian life in Europe (except perhaps with the exception of Britain) was incredibly common—in the early 1930s, over 9 million Germans (almost a third of the work force) were still working in agriculture and many people not working in agriculture still had small allotments or otherwise grew their own food. Tooze estimates that just over half the German population in the 1930s was living in towns and villages with populations under 20,000 people. Many people in cities still had memories of rural-urban migration—Tooze thus explains that the Nazis obsessions with agrarianism were not an atavistic gloss on a modern industrial nation but a consequence of the fact that Nazism (as both an ideology and as a movement) was the product of a society still in economic transition.{{sfn|Tooze|2008|pp=166–167}} [[File:Europe topography map.png|thumb|upright=1.25|Topographical map of Europe: the Nazi Party declared support for ''[[Drang nach Osten]]'' (expansion of Germany east to the Ural Mountains), that is shown on the upper right side of the map as a brown diagonal line.]] The Nazis obsession with food production was a consequence of the First World War. While Europe was able to avert famine with international imports, blockades brought the issue of [[food security]] back into European politics, the [[Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)|Allied blockade of Germany]] in and after World War I did not cause an outright famine but chronic malnutrition did kill an estimated 600,000 people in Germany and Austria. The economic crises of the interwar period meant that most Germans had memories of acute hunger. Thus Tooze concludes that the Nazis obsession with acquiring land was not a case of "turning back the clock" but more a refusal to accept that the result of the distribution of land, resources and population, which had resulted from the imperialist wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, should be accepted as final. While the victors of the First World War had either suitable agricultural land to population ratios or large empires (or both), allowing them to declare the issue of living space closed, the Nazis, knowing Germany lacked either of these, refused to accept that Germany's place in the world was to be a medium-sized workshop dependent upon imported food.{{sfn|Tooze|2008|pp=167–168}} According to Goebbels, the conquest of ''Lebensraum'' was intended as an initial step<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FhEFAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Whoever+dominates+Europe+will+thereby+assume+the+leadership+of+the+world.+%22|title=The Goebbels Diaries, 1942–1943|first=Joseph|last=Goebbels|date=1970|publisher=Greenwood Press|isbn=978-0-8371-3815-2|via=Google Books}}</ref> towards the final goal of Nazi ideology, which was the establishment of complete German global hegemony.<ref name="Weinberg">Weinberg, Gerhard L. (1995) ''Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in modern German and world history'' [[Cambridge University Press]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=9OfrTvu7CNYC&q=world+peace&pg=PA28 p. 36]</ref> [[Rudolf Hess]] relayed to [[Walter Hewel]] Hitler's belief that [[world peace]] could only be acquired "when one power, the [[Racial supremacism|racially best one]], has attained uncontested supremacy". When this control would be achieved, this power could then set up for itself a world police and assure itself "the necessary living space. [...] The lower races will have to restrict themselves accordingly".<ref name="Weinberg"/> ==== Racial theories ==== In its [[Race (human categorization)|racial categorisation]], Nazism viewed what it called the Aryan race as the [[master race]] of the world—a race that was superior to all other races.<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79">George Lachmann Mosse. Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich, p. 79.</ref> It viewed Aryans as being in racial conflict with a mixed race people, the Jews, whom the Nazis identified as a dangerous enemy of the Aryans. It also viewed a number of other peoples as dangerous to the well-being of the Aryan race. In order to preserve the perceived racial purity of the Aryan race, a set of race laws was introduced in 1935 which came to be known as the Nuremberg Laws. At first these laws only prevented sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, but they were later extended to the "[[Romani people|Gypsies]], [[Black people|Negroes]], and their bastard offspring", who were described by the Nazis as people of "alien blood".<ref name=RGallately>{{cite book |author=S.H. Milton |chapter="Gypsies" as social outsiders in Nazi Germany|title=Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany |editor1=Robert Gellately |editor2=Nathan Stoltzfus |year=2001 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-08684-2 |pages=216, 231}}</ref><ref name="Burleigh1991">{{cite book |author=Michael Burleigh |title=The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 |date=1991 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-39802-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/racialstate00mich/page/49 49] |url=https://archive.org/details/racialstate00mich/page/49}}</ref> Such relations between Aryans (cf. [[Aryan certificate]]) and non-Aryans were now punishable under the race laws as ''[[Rassenschande]]'' or "race defilement".<ref name=RGallately /> After the war began, the race defilement law was extended to include all foreigners (non-Germans).{{sfn|Majer|2003|p=180}} At the bottom of the racial scale of non-Aryans were Jews, Romanis, Slavs<ref name="Mineau, André 2004 p. 180">Mineau, André (2004). ''Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity''. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, p. 180. {{ISBN|90-420-1633-7}}.</ref> and blacks.<ref name="Simone Gigliotti 2005. Pp. 14">Simone Gigliotti, Berel Lang. ''The Holocaust: a reader''. Malden, MA; Oxford, England; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 14.</ref> To maintain the "purity and strength" of the Aryan race, the Nazis eventually sought to [[Genocide|exterminate]] Jews, Romani, Slavs and the [[Physical disability|physically]] and [[Developmental disability|mentally disabled]].<ref name="Mineau, André 2004 p. 180"/><ref name="Simone Gigliotti 2005, p. 14"/> Other groups deemed "[[Social degeneration|degenerate]]" and "[[Asociality|asocial]]" who were not targeted for extermination, but were subjected to [[Social exclusion|exclusionary treatment]] by the Nazi state, included [[Homosexuality|homosexuals]], [[Black people in Nazi Germany|blacks]], [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] and political opponents.<ref name="Simone Gigliotti 2005, p. 14"/> One of Hitler's ambitions at the start of the war was to [[Generalplan Ost|exterminate, expel or enslave]] most or all Slavs from [[Central Europe|Central]] and [[Eastern Europe]] in order to acquire [[Lebensraum|living space]] for German settlers.<ref name="google"/> [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-16748, Ausstellung "Wunder des Lebens".jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|A "poster information" from the exhibition "''Miracle of Life''" in Berlin in 1935]] A Nazi-era school textbook for German students entitled ''Heredity and Racial Biology for Students'' written by Jakob Graf described to students the Nazi conception of the Aryan race in a section titled "The Aryan: The Creative Force in Human History".<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79"/> Graf claimed that the original Aryans developed from Nordic peoples who invaded [[Ancient India]] and launched the initial development of Aryan culture there that later spread to [[ancient Persia]] and he claimed that the Aryan presence in Persia was what was responsible for its development into an empire.<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79"/> He claimed that [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greek culture]] was developed by Nordic peoples due to paintings of the time which showed Greeks who were tall, light-skinned, light-eyed, blond-haired people.<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79"/> He said that the [[Roman Empire]] was developed by the [[Italic peoples|Italics]] who were related to the [[Celts]] who were also a Nordic people.<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79"/> He believed that the vanishing of the Nordic component of the populations in Ancient Greece and [[Ancient Rome]] led to their downfall.<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79"/> The [[Renaissance]] was claimed to have developed in the [[Western Roman Empire]] because of the [[Migration Period]] that brought new Nordic blood to the Empire's lands, such as the presence of Nordic blood in the [[Lombards]] (referred to as Longobards in the book); that remnants of the [[Visigoths]] were responsible for the creation of the [[Spanish Empire]]; and that the heritage of the [[Franks]], [[Goths]] and [[Germanic peoples]] in [[France]] was what was responsible for its rise as a major power.<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79" /> He claimed that the rise of the Russian Empire was due to its leadership by people of [[Normans|Norman]] descent.<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79" /> He described the rise of Anglo-Saxon societies in [[North America]], [[South Africa]] and [[Australia]] as being the result of the Nordic heritage of [[Anglo-Saxons]].<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79"/> He concluded these points by saying: "Everywhere Nordic creative power has built mighty empires with high-minded ideas, and to this very day [[Indo-European languages|Aryan languages]] and cultural values are spread over a large part of the world, though the creative Nordic blood has long since vanished in many places".<ref name="George Lachmann Mosse p79"/> [[File:Buchenwald Corpses 60623.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.25|A wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium in [[Buchenwald concentration camp]]]] In Nazi Germany, the idea of creating a master race resulted in efforts to "purify" the ''Deutsche Volk'' through [[Nazi eugenics|eugenics]] and its culmination was the [[compulsory sterilisation]] or the [[involuntary euthanasia]] of physically or mentally disabled people. After World War II, the euthanasia programme was named [[Action T4]].<ref>Sandner (1999): 385 ([http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1999_3.pdf 66 in PDF]) Note 2. The author claims that the term Aktion T4 was not used by the Nazis and that it was first used in the trials of the doctors and later included in the historiography.</ref> The ideological justification for [[euthanasia]] was Hitler's view of [[Sparta]] (11th century – 195 BC) as the original ''völkisch'' state and he praised Sparta's dispassionate destruction of congenitally deformed infants in order to maintain racial purity.<ref name="pathological"/><ref name="Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: nature as model and nature as threat"/> Some non-Aryans enlisted in Nazi organisations like the Hitler Youth and the ''[[Wehrmacht]]'', including Germans of African descent<ref name="experiences"/> and Jewish descent.<ref>{{cite book|author=Bryan Mark Rigg|title=Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story Of Nazi Racial Laws And Men Of Jewish Descent In The German Military|date=2004|publisher=University Press of Kansas|isbn=978-0-7006-1358-8}}</ref> The Nazis began to implement "racial hygiene" policies as soon as they came to power. The July 1933 "[[Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring]]" prescribed [[Compulsory sterilization|compulsory sterilisation]] for people with a range of conditions which were thought to be hereditary, such as [[schizophrenia]], [[epilepsy]], [[Huntington's chorea]] and "[[Intellectual disability|imbecility]]". Sterilization was also mandated for chronic [[alcoholism]] and other forms of [[Deviance (sociology)|social deviance]].{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=507}} An estimated 360,000 people were sterilised under this law between 1933 and 1939. Although some Nazis suggested that the programme should be extended to people with physical disabilities, such ideas had to be expressed carefully, given the fact that some Nazis had physical disabilities, one example being one of the most powerful figures of the regime, Joseph Goebbels, who had a deformed right leg.<ref>This was the result of either a [[club foot]] or [[osteomyelitis]]. Goebbels is commonly said to have had [[club foot]] (''talipes equinovarus''), a congenital condition. [[William L. Shirer]], who worked in Berlin as a journalist in the 1930s and was acquainted with Goebbels, wrote in ''[[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich]]'' (1960) that the deformity was caused by a childhood attack of [[osteomyelitis]] and a failed operation to correct it.</ref> Nazi racial theorist [[Hans F. K. Günther]] argued that European peoples were divided into five races: [[Nordic race|Nordic]], [[Mediterranean race|Mediterranean]], [[Dinaric race|Dinaric]], [[Alpine race|Alpine]] and [[East Baltic race|East Baltic]].<ref name="Baum2006_156" /> Günther applied a [[Nordicism|Nordicist]] conception in order to justify his belief that Nordics were the highest in the racial hierarchy.<ref name="Baum2006_156" /> In his book ''[[Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes]]'' (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), Günther recognised Germans as being composed of all five races, but emphasised the strong Nordic heritage among them.<ref name="Maxwell150">Anne Maxwell (2010 [2008]). ''Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940''. Eastbourne, England; Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press p. 150. {{ISBN?}}</ref> Hitler read ''Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes'', which influenced his racial policy.<ref>John Cornwell. ''Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact''. Penguin, 2004. [https://books.google.com/books?id=5bA2vTgvobAC&dq=hitler+gunther+aryan&pg=PT68]</ref> Gunther believed that Slavs belonged to an "Eastern race" and he warned against Germans mixing with them.<ref>Racisms Made in. Germany (Racism Analysis |Yearbook 2 – 2011) Ed. by Wulf D. Hund, Christian Koller, Moshe Zimmermann p. 19</ref> The Nazis described Jews as being a racially mixed group of primarily [[Armenoid race|Near Eastern]] and [[Arabid race|Oriental]] racial types.<ref name="Weinreich111">Max Weinreich. ''Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People''. Yale University Press, 1999, p. 111.</ref> Because such racial groups were concentrated outside Europe, the Nazis claimed that Jews were "racially alien" to all European peoples and that they did not have deep racial roots in Europe.<ref name="Weinreich111" /> Günther emphasised Jews' Near Eastern racial heritage.{{sfn|Steinweis|2008|p=28}} Günther identified the mass conversion of the [[Khazars]] to [[Judaism]] in the 8th century as creating the two major branches of the Jewish people: those of primarily Near Eastern racial heritage became the [[Ashkenazi Jews]] (that he called Eastern Jews) while those of primarily Oriental racial heritage became the [[Sephardi Jews]] (that he called Southern Jews).{{sfn|Steinweis|2008|pp=31–32}} Günther claimed that the Near Eastern type was composed of commercially spirited and artful traders, and that the type held strong [[psychological manipulation]] skills which aided them in trade.{{sfn|Steinweis|2008|p=28}} He claimed that the Near Eastern race had been "bred not so much for the conquest and exploitation of nature as it had been for the conquest and exploitation of people".{{sfn|Steinweis|2008|p=28}} Günther believed that European peoples had a racially motivated aversion to peoples of Near Eastern racial origin and their traits, and as evidence of this he showed multiple examples of depictions of satanic figures with Near Eastern physiognomies in European art.{{sfn|Steinweis|2008|p=29}} [[File:Der_Untermensch.jpg|thumb|Cover of the racist booklet "''Der Untermensch''" published by [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] in 1942. 4 million copies of the brochure were printed by Nazi Germany and distributed across occupied territories. The pamphlet depicted the [[Slavs|Slavic]] and Jewish inhabitants of [[Eastern Europe]] as primitive people.<ref>Sources: * {{cite book |last1=Müller, R. Ueberschar |first1= Rolf-Dieter, Gerd |title= Hitler's war in the East, 1941-1945 |publisher= Berghahn Books |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-84545-501-9 |location= 150 Broadway, New York, NY 10038, United States |pages=245}} * {{Cite journal |title=Der Untermensch |url=https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126075206/https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |archive-date=26 November 2020 |journal=Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection|date=January 1942 }} * {{cite book |last1=E. Aschheim |first1= Steven |title=The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-520-08555-8 |location= Los Angeles, California, United States |pages=236, 237 |chapter=8: Nietzsche in the Third Reich}}</ref>]] Hitler's conception of the Aryan ''[[Herrenvolk]]'' ("Aryan master race") excluded the vast majority of Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe (i.e. [[Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles|Poles]], [[Russians]], [[Ukrainians]], [[Belarusians]], etc.). They were regarded as a race of men not inclined to a higher form of [[civilisation]], which was under an instinctive force that reverted them back to nature. The Nazis also regarded the Slavs as having dangerous Jewish and Asiatic, meaning [[Mongols|Mongol]], influences.<ref>André Mineau. ''Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity''. Rodopi, 2004. pp. 34–36.</ref> Because of this, the Nazis declared Slavs to be ''Untermenschen'' ("subhumans").<ref>Steve Thorne. ''The Language of War''. London: Routledge, 2006, p. 38.</ref> Nazi anthropologists attempted to scientifically prove the historical admixture of the Slavs who lived further East and leading Nazi racial theorist [[Hans F. K. Günther|Hans Günther]] regarded the Slavs as being primarily Nordic centuries ago but he believed that they had mixed with non-Nordic types over time.<ref name="Wendt2010">{{cite book|author=Anton Weiss-Wendt|author-link = Anton Weiss-Wendt|title=Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-Dominated Europe|date=2010|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|isbn=978-1-4438-2449-1|page=63}}</ref> Exceptions were made for a small percentage of Slavs who the Nazis saw as descended from German settlers and therefore fit to be Germanised and considered part of the Aryan master race.<ref>[[Wendy Lower]]. ''Nazi Empire-building and the Holocaust In Ukraine''. The University of North Carolina Press, 2005, p. 27.</ref> Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need for a master".<ref>Marvin Perry. Western Civilization: A Brief History. Cengage Learning, 2012, p. 468.</ref> Himmler classified [[Slavs]] as "bestial ''untermenschen''" and Jews as the "decisive leader of the ''Untermenschen''".<ref>{{cite book |last1=E. Aschheim |first1= Steven |title=The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-520-08555-8 |location= Los Angeles, California, United States |pages=236, 237 |chapter=8: Nietzsche in the Third Reich}}</ref> These ideas were fervently advocated through [[Propaganda in Nazi Germany|Nazi propaganda]], which had a massive impact on the indoctrination of the German population. "''Der Untermenschen''", a racist brochure published by the SS in 1942, has been regarded as one of the most infamous pieces of [[Anti-Slavic sentiment#Nazi Germany|Nazi anti-Slavic propaganda]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Müller, R. Ueberschar |first1= Rolf-Dieter, Gerd |title= Hitler's war in the East, 1941-1945 |publisher= Berghahn Books |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-84545-501-9 |location= 150 Broadway, New York, NY 10038, United States |pages=245}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=E. Aschheim |first1= Steven |title=The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-520-08555-8 |location= Los Angeles, California, United States |pages=236 |chapter=8: Nietzsche in the Third Reich}}</ref> The Nazi notion of Slavs as inferior served as a legitimisation of their desire to create ''Lebensraum'' for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe, where millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into once those territories were conquered, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed or enslaved.<ref name="Bendersky">{{cite book|last=Bendersky|first=Joseph W.|title=A Concise History of Nazi Germany|year=2007|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.|location=Plymouth, England|isbn=978-0-7425-5363-7|pages=161–62}}</ref> Nazi Germany's policy changed towards Slavs in response to military manpower shortages, forcing it to allow Slavs to serve in its armed forces within the occupied territories in spite of the fact that they were considered "subhuman".<ref>Norman Davies. ''[[Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory]]''. Pan Macmillan, 2008. pp. 167, 209.</ref> Hitler declared that racial conflict against Jews was necessary in order to save Germany from suffering under them and he dismissed concerns that the conflict with them was inhumane and unjust: <blockquote>We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have achieved the greatest deed in the world. We may work injustice, but if we rescue Germany then we have removed the greatest injustice in the world. We may be immoral, but if our people is rescued we have opened the way for morality.<ref name="koenigsberg"/></blockquote> Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels frequently employed antisemitic rhetoric to underline this view: "The Jew is the enemy and the destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race."<ref name="thosedamnednazis"/> {{clear}} === Social class === National Socialist politics was based on competition and struggle as its organising principle, and the Nazis believed that "human life consisted of eternal struggle and competition and derived its meaning from struggle and competition."{{sfn|Mason|1993|p=6}} The Nazis saw this eternal struggle in military terms, and advocated a society organised like an army in order to achieve success. They promoted the idea of a national-racial "people's community" (''[[Volksgemeinschaft]]'') in order to accomplish "the efficient prosecution of the struggle against other peoples and states."{{sfn|Mason|1993|p=7}} Like an army, the ''Volksgemeinschaft'' was meant to consist of a hierarchy of ranks or classes of people, some commanding and others obeying, all working together for a common goal.{{sfn|Mason|1993|p=7}} This concept was rooted in the 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 neither class conflict nor selfish individualism.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=40}} The Nazis concept of the ''volksgemeinschaft'' appealed to many, as it was seen as it seemed at once to affirm a commitment to a new type of society for the modern age yet also offer protection from the tensions and insecurities of modernisation. It would balance individual achievement with group solidarity and cooperation with competition. Stripped of its ideological overtones, the Nazi vision of modernisation without internal conflict and a political community that offered both security and opportunity was so potent a vision of the future that many Germans were willing to overlook its racist and anti-Semitic essence.<ref>Fritz, Stephen. ''Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II.'' University Press of Kentucky, 1997.{{ISBN?}}</ref> Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of [[class conflict]], and it praised both German capitalists and German workers as essential to the ''Volksgemeinschaft''. In the ''Volksgemeinschaft'', social classes would continue to exist, but there would be no class conflict between them.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=48}} Hitler said that "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."<ref name="Nicholls 245">David Nicholls. ''Adolf Hitler: A Biographical Companion''. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000, p. 245.{{ISBN?}}</ref> German business leaders co-operated with the Nazis during their rise to power and received substantial benefits from the Nazi state after it was established, including high profits and state-sanctioned monopolies and cartels.<ref>Grunberger, Richard, ''A Social History of the Third Reich'', Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1971. pp. 167, 175–176</ref> Large celebrations and symbolism were used extensively to encourage those engaged in physical labour on behalf of Germany, with leading National Socialists often praising the "honour of labour", which fostered a sense of community (''Gemeinschaft'') for the German people and promoted solidarity towards the Nazi cause.<ref>Alf Lüdtke, "The 'Honor of Labor': Industrial Workers and the Power of Symbols under National Socialism", in ''Nazism and German Society, 1933–1945'', edited by David F. Crew (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 67–109.</ref> To win workers away from Marxism, [[Propaganda in Nazi Germany|Nazi propaganda]] sometimes presented its expansionist foreign policy goals as a "class struggle between nations."<ref name="Nicholls 245"/> Bonfires were made of school children's differently coloured caps as symbolic of the unity of different social classes.<ref name="Grunberger46">[[Richard Grunberger]], ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 46, {{ISBN|0-03-076435-1}}</ref> In 1922, Hitler disparaged other nationalist and [[racialist]] political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower and working-class young people: {{blockquote|The racialists were not capable of drawing the practical conclusions from correct theoretical judgements, especially in the Jewish Question. In this way, 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.<ref name="burleigh"/>}} Nevertheless, the Nazi Party's voter base consisted mainly of farmers and the middle class, including groups such as Weimar government officials, school teachers, doctors, clerks, self-employed businessmen, salesmen, retired officers, engineers, and students.{{sfn|Mason|1993|pp=48–50}} Their demands included lower taxes, higher prices for food, restrictions on department stores and consumer co-operatives, and reductions in social services and wages.{{sfn|Mason|1993|p=49}} The need to maintain the support of these groups made it difficult for the Nazis to appeal to the working class, since the working class often had opposite demands.{{sfn|Mason|1993|p=49}} From 1928 onward, the Nazi Party's growth into a large national political movement was dependent on middle class support, and on the public perception that it "promised to side with the middle classes and to confront the economic and political power of the working class."{{sfn|Mason|1993|p=44}} The financial collapse of the [[White-collar worker|white collar]] middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism.<ref name="Burleigh, 2000, p. 77"/> Although the Nazis continued to make appeals to "the German worker", historian Timothy Mason concludes that "Hitler had nothing but slogans to offer the working class."{{sfn|Mason|1993|p=48}} Historians 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 in society and that while workers were generally underrepresented, they were still a substantial source of support for the Nazis.<ref>Fischer, Conan, ed. The rise of national socialism and the working classes in Weimar Germany. Berghahn Books, 1996.</ref><ref>Mühlberger, Detlef. "The sociology of the NSDAP: The question of working-class membership." Journal of Contemporary History 15, no. 3 (1980): 493–511.</ref> H.L. Ansbacher argues that the working-class soldiers had the most faith in Hitler out of any occupational group in Germany.<ref>Fritz, Stephen. Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II. University Press of Kentucky, 1997, p. 210</ref> The Nazis also established a norm that every worker should be semi-skilled, which was not simply rhetorical; the number of men leaving school to enter the work force as unskilled labourers fell from 200,000 in 1934 to 30,000 in 1939. For many working-class families, the 1930s and 1940s were a time of social mobility; not in the sense of moving into the middle class but rather moving within the blue-collar skill hierarchy.{{sfn|Tooze|2008|p=143}} Overall, the experience of workers varied considerably under Nazism. 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 onward, meaning that workers who engaged in vocational training could look forward to considerably higher wages. Benefits provided by the Labour Front were generally positively received, even if workers did not always buy in to propaganda about the ''volksgemeinschaft''. Workers welcomed opportunities for employment after the harsh years of the Great Depression, creating a common 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 by necessity would require material sacrifices from workers (longer hours and a lower standard of living), versus a need to maintain the confidence of the working class in the regime. Hitler was sympathetic to the view that stressed taking further measures for rearmament but he did not fully implement the measures required for it in order to avoid alienating the working class.<ref>Spielvogel, Jackson J. Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History. Routledge, 2016.</ref> While the Nazis had substantial support amongst the middle-class, they often attacked traditional middle-class values and Hitler personally held great contempt for them. This was because the traditional image of the middle class was one that was obsessed with personal status, material attainment and quiet, comfortable living, which was in opposition to the Nazism's ideal of a New Man. The Nazis' New Man was envisioned as a heroic figure who rejected a materialistic and private life for a public life and a pervasive sense of duty, willing to sacrifice everything for the nation. Despite the Nazis' contempt for these values, they were still able to secure millions of middle-class votes. Hermann Beck argues that while some members of the middle-class dismissed this as mere rhetoric, many others in some ways agreed with the Nazis—the defeat of 1918 and the failures of the Weimar period caused many middle-class Germans to question their own identity, thinking their traditional values to be anachronisms and agreeing with the Nazis that these values were no longer viable. While this rhetoric would become less frequent after 1933 due to the increased emphasis on the ''volksgemeinschaft'', it and its ideas would never truly disappear until the overthrow of the regime. The Nazis instead emphasised that the middle-class must become ''staatsbürger'', a publicly active and involved citizen, rather than a selfish, materialistic ''spießbürger'', who was only interested in private life.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Beck |first=Hermann |title=The Antibourgeois Character of National Socialism |journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=88 |issue=3 |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |date=2016 |pages=572–609 |doi=10.1086/687528 |s2cid=157869544 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/687528 |access-date=7 October 2021}}</ref><ref>Steele, David Ramsay. "The Mystery of Fascism." Liberty Magazine (2001).</ref> === Sex and gender === {{further|Women in Nazi Germany}} [[File:Pflichten der polen.jpg|thumb|upright=2.0|Obligations of Polish workers in Germany, warning them of the death penalty for any sexual relations between Germans and Poles]] Nazi ideology advocated excluding women from political involvement and confining them to the spheres of "[[Kinder, Küche, Kirche]]" (Children, Kitchen, Church).<ref>For more elucidation about this conception and its oversimplification, see: Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, "Beyond ''Kinder, Küche, Kirche'': Weimar Women in Politics and Work" in Renate Bridenthal, et al. (eds), ''When Biology Became Destiny in Weimar and Nazi Germany'' (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), pp. 33–65.</ref> Many women enthusiastically supported the regime, but formed their own internal hierarchies.<ref>[[Claudia Koonz]], ''Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics'' (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), pp. 53–59.</ref> Hitler's own opinion on the matter of women in Nazi Germany was that while other eras of German history had experienced the development and liberation of the female mind, the National Socialist goal was essentially singular in that it wished for them to produce a child.<ref>Hitler on 23 November 1937. In Max Domarus ed., ''Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945'', (vol I). Triumph. (Würzburg: Verlagsdruckerei Schmidt, 1962), p. 452.</ref> Based on this theme, Hitler once 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".<ref>Adolf Hitler in a speech to the National Socialist Women's Congress, published in the ''Völkischer Beobachter'', 15 September 1935 (Wiener Library Clipping Collection). Cited from: George Mosse, ''Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich'' (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), p. 40.</ref> Proto-natalist programs in Nazi Germany offered favourable loans and grants to newlyweds and encouraged them to give birth to offspring by providing them with additional incentives.<ref>[[Claudia Koonz]], ''Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics'' (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), pp. 149, 185–187.</ref> [[Birth control|Contraception]] was discouraged for racially valuable women in Nazi Germany and [[abortion]] was forbidden by strict legal mandates, including prison sentences for women who sought them as well as prison sentences for doctors who performed them, whereas abortion for racially "undesirable" persons was encouraged.<ref>Jill Stephenson, ''Women in Nazi Germany'' (London and New York: Longman, 2001), pp. 37–40.</ref><ref>Gerda Bormann was concerned by the ratio of racially valuable women that outnumbered men and she thought that the war would make the situation worse in terms of childbirths, so much so that she advocated a law (never passed) which allowed healthy Aryan men to have two wives. See: Anna Maria Sigmund, ''Women of the Third Reich'' (Ontario: NDE, 2000), pp. 17–19.</ref> While unmarried until the very end of the regime, Hitler often made excuses about his busy life hindering any chance for marriage.<ref>Anna Maria Sigmund, ''Women of the Third Reich'' (Ontario: NDE, 2000), p. 17.</ref> Among National Socialist ideologues, marriage was valued not for moral considerations but because it provided an optimal breeding environment. ''[[Reichsführer-SS]]'' Heinrich 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.<ref>Himmler was thinking about members of the SS fulfilling this task. See: Felix Kersten, ''Totenkopf und Treue. Aus den Tagebuchblättern des finnischen Medizinalrats Felix Kersten'' (Hamburg: Mölich Verlag, 1952), pp. 228–229.</ref> Since the Nazis extended the ''[[Rassenschande]]'' ("race defilement") law to all foreigners at the beginning of the war,{{sfn|Majer|2003|p=180}} pamphlets were issued to German women which ordered them to avoid sexual relations with foreign workers who were brought to Germany and the pamphlets also ordered German women to view these same foreign workers as a danger to their blood.<ref name="Rupp1978">{{cite book|author=Leila J. Rupp|title=Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945|date=1978|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-04649-5|url=https://archive.org/details/mobilizingwomenf00leil}}</ref> Although the law was applicable to both genders, German women were punished more severely for having sexual relations with foreign [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|forced labourers]] in Germany.<ref>{{cite web|author=Helen Boak |title=Nazi policies on German women during the Second World War – Lessons learned from the First World War? |url=https://www.academia.edu/4794258 |pages=4–5}}</ref> The Nazis issued the [[Polish decrees]] on 8 March 1940 which contained regulations concerning the Polish forced labourers ([[Zivilarbeiter]]) who were brought to Germany during World War II. One of the regulations stated that any Pole "who has sexual relations with a German man or woman, or approaches them in any other improper manner, will be punished by death".<ref name="Gellately2001">{{cite book|author=Robert Gellately|title=Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany|url=https://archive.org/details/backinghitlercon00gell|url-access=registration|date =2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-160452-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/backinghitlercon00gell/page/155 155]}}</ref> After the decrees were enacted, Himmler stated: {{blockquote|Fellow Germans who engage in sexual relations with male or female civil workers of the [[Polish people|Polish]] nationality, commit other immoral acts or engage in love affairs shall be arrested immediately.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-dishonorable-german-girls-the-forgotten-persecution-of-women-in-world-war-ii-a-672803.html|title=The 'Dishonorable' German Girls: The Forgotten Persecution of Women in World War II |last=Friedmann|first=Jan|work=Der Spiegel|access-date=January 21, 2010|date=2010-01-21}}</ref>}} The Nazis later issued similar regulations against the Eastern Workers ''([[Ost-Arbeiter]])'', including the imposition of the death penalty if they engaged in sexual relations with German persons.<ref name="Gellately1990">{{cite book|author=Robert Gellately|title=The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945|year=1990|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-820297-4|page=224}}</ref> Heydrich issued a decree on 20 February 1942 which declared that sexual intercourse between a German woman and a Russian worker or prisoner of war would result in the Russian man being punished with the death penalty.<ref name="Evans2012">{{cite book|author=Richard J. Evans|title=The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster|date= 2012|publisher=Penguin Books Limited|isbn=978-0-14-191755-9|page=355}}</ref> Another decree issued by Himmler on 7 December 1942 stated that any "unauthorised sexual intercourse" would result in the death penalty.{{sfn|Majer|2003|p=369}} Because the [[Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor|Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour]] did not permit capital punishment for race defilement, special courts were convened in order to allow the death penalty to be imposed in some cases.{{sfn|Majer|2003|pp=331–32}} German women accused of race defilement were marched through the streets with their head shaven and placards detailing their crimes were placed around their necks<ref name="Stephenson2001">{{cite book|author=Jill Stephenson|title=Women in Nazi Germany|year=2001|publisher=Longman|isbn=978-0-582-41836-3|page=156}}</ref> and those convicted of race defilement were sent to concentration camps.<ref name="Rupp1978"/> When Himmler reportedly asked Hitler what the punishment should be for German girls and German women who were found guilty of race defilement with prisoners of war (POWs), he ordered that "every POW who has relations with a German girl or a German would be shot" and the German woman should be publicly humiliated by "having her hair shorn and being sent to a concentration camp".<ref name="Longerich2012">{{cite book|author=Peter Longerich|title=Heinrich Himmler: A Life|url=https://archive.org/details/heinrichhimmlerl00long|url-access=limited|year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-959232-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/heinrichhimmlerl00long/page/n495 475]}}</ref> The [[League of German Girls]] was particularly regarded as instructing girls to avoid race defilement, which was treated with particular importance for young females.<ref>"[http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/fink.htm The Jewish Question in Education]"</ref> [[Transgender]] people [[Transgender people in Nazi Germany|had a variety of experiences]] depending on whether they were considered "Aryan" or capable of useful work.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nunn |first1=Zavier |date=2022 |title=Trans Liminality and the Nazi State |journal=Past & Present |volume=260 |pages=123–157 |doi=10.1093/pastj/gtac018|doi-access=free }}</ref> Several historians have noted that transgender people were targeted by the Nazis through legislation and were sent to concentration camps.<ref>{{cite web |title=Paper: Trans Identities and "Cross Dressing" in Nazi Germany: Trans People as a Discrete Target of State Violence (134th Annual Meeting (January 3–6, 2020)) |url=https://aha.confex.com/aha/2020/webprogram/Paper27446.html |access-date=3 January 2023 |website=aha.confex.com}}</ref><ref name="Sutton">{{Cite journal |last=Sutton |first=Katie |date=2012 |title="We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun": The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23269669 |journal=German Studies Review |volume=35 |issue=2 |pages=348 |doi=10.1353/gsr.2012.a478043 |jstor=23269669 |via=JSTOR}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Campaign against Homosexuality |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/paragraph-175-and-the-nazi-campaign-against-homosexuality |access-date=12 March 2023 |website=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |quote=Not everyone arrested under Paragraph 175 identified as a man. During the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, Germany was home to a developing community of people who identified as 'transvestites.' [...] Initially, this term encompassed people who performed in drag, people who cross-dressed for pleasure, as well as those who today might identify as trans or transgender.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany |url=https://mjhnyc.org/events/transgender-experiences-in-weimar-and-nazi-germany/ |access-date=19 June 2023 |website=Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Marhoefer |first=Laurie |date=6 June 2023 |title=Historians are learning more about how the Nazis targeted trans people |url=http://theconversation.com/historians-are-learning-more-about-how-the-nazis-targeted-trans-people-205622 |access-date=19 June 2023 |website=The Conversation |language=en}}</ref> ==== Opposition to homosexuality ==== {{further|Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany}} [[File:Berlin Pink Triangle.JPG|thumb|left|upright=.65|Berlin memorial to homosexual victims of the Holocaust: ''Totgeschlagen – Totgeschwiegen'' (Struck Dead – Hushed Up)]] After the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler promoted Himmler and the SS, who then zealously suppressed homosexuality by saying: "We must exterminate these people root and branch ... the homosexual must be eliminated".{{sfn|Plant|1988|p=99}} In 1936, Himmler established the "[[Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung]]" ("Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion").<ref name="Homosexualität und Staatsräson. Männlichkeit, Homophobie und Politik in Deutschland 1900-1945"/> The Nazi regime incarcerated some 100,000 homosexuals during the 1930s.<ref name="Holocaust: Gay activists press for German apology" /> As concentration camp prisoners, homosexual men were forced to wear [[pink triangle]] badges.<ref name="international"/>{{sfn|Plant|1988|p=}}{{page needed|date=January 2021}} Nazi ideology still viewed German men who were gay as a part of the Aryan master race, but the Nazi regime attempted to force them into sexual and social conformity. Homosexuals were viewed as failing in their duty to procreate and reproduce for the Aryan nation. Gay men who would not change or feign a change in their [[sexual orientation]] were sent to concentration camps under the "Extermination Through Work" campaign.<ref>{{cite web |last=Neander |first=Biedron |title=Homosexuals. A Separate Category of Prisoners |publisher=Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum |url=http://en.auschwitz.org/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=3 |access-date=10 August 2013 |archive-date=14 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140114033949/http://en.auschwitz.org/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=3 |url-status=dead }}</ref> === Religion === {{Main|Religion in Nazi Germany}} {{further|Catholic Church and Nazi Germany|German Christians (movement)|German Faith Movement|Kreuz und Adler|Positive Christianity||Religious aspects of Nazism|Anti-Masonry#Nazi Germany and occupied Europe|Religious views of Adolf Hitler}} [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-15234, Berlin, Luthertag.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|Members of the [[German Christians (movement)|German Christians]] organisation celebrating Luther Day in Berlin in 1933. A speech is given by Bishop Hossenfelder.]] [[File:Orsen.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|Hitler in 1935 with [[Cesare Orsenigo]], the [[Catholic Church]]'s [[nuncio to Germany]]]] The [[National Socialist Program|Nazi Party Programme]] of 1920 guaranteed freedom for all religious denominations which were not hostile to the State and it also endorsed [[Positive Christianity]] in order to combat "the Jewish-materialist spirit".<ref name="documents"/> Positive Christianity was a modified version of [[Christianity]] which emphasised [[Racial hygiene|racial purity]] and [[nationalism]].{{sfn|McNab|2009|p=182}} The Nazis were aided by theologians such as [[Ernst Bergmann (philosopher)|Ernst Bergmann]]. In his work ''Die 25 Thesen der Deutschreligion'' (''Twenty-five Points of the German Religion''), Bergmann held the view that the [[Old Testament]] of the [[Bible]] was inaccurate along with portions of the [[New Testament]], claimed that [[Jesus]] was not a Jew but was instead of Aryan origin and he also claimed that Adolf Hitler was the new [[messiah]].{{sfn|McNab|2009|p=182}} Hitler denounced the Old Testament as "[[Satan]]'s Bible" and using components of the New Testament he attempted to prove that Jesus was both an Aryan and an antisemite by citing passages such as [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+8:44 John 8:44] where he noted that 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".<ref name="Redles60">David Redles. ''Hitler's Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation''. New York; London: New York University Press, 2005, p. 60.</ref> Hitler claimed that the New Testament included distortions by [[Paul the Apostle]], who Hitler described as a "mass-murderer turned saint".<ref name="Redles60"/> In their propaganda, the Nazis used the writings of [[Martin Luther]], the [[Protestantism|Protestant]] [[Reformation|Reformer]]. They publicly displayed an original edition of Luther's ''[[On the Jews and their Lies]]'' during the annual Nuremberg rallies.<ref name="understandably"/><ref name="baylor"/> The Nazis endorsed the pro-Nazi Protestant [[German Christians (movement)|German Christians]] organisation.{{cn|date=September 2023}} The Nazis were initially very hostile to Catholics because most Catholics supported the [[German Centre Party]]. Catholics opposed the Nazis' promotion of [[compulsory sterilisation]] of those whom they 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 their opposition to the Nazi regime's sterilisation laws.<ref name="international27"/> The Nazis demanded that Catholics declare their loyalty to the German state.<ref name="Robert Anthony Krieg 2004, p. 4"/> 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.<ref name="interaction"/> Hitler also admitted that the Nazis' night rallies were inspired by the Catholic rituals which he had witnessed during his Catholic upbringing.<ref name="Roger Griffin 2005, p. 85"/> The Nazis did seek official reconciliation with the Catholic Church and they 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.<ref name="Robert Anthony Krieg 2004, p. 4"/> On 20 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 German Catholics to be loyal to the German state. The Catholic Church then ended its ban on members supporting the Nazi Party.<ref name="Robert Anthony Krieg 2004, p. 4"/> During the Second World War and the fanaticization of National Socialism, priests and nuns increasingly came into the focus of the Gestapo and the SS. In the concentration camps, separate priestly blocks were formed and any church resistance was strictly persecuted. The monastery sister [[Maria Restituta Kafka]] was sentenced to death by the People's Court and executed only for a harmless song critical of the regime.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.doew.at/erinnern/biographien/spurensuche/maria-restituta-helene-kafka-1894-1943|title=DÖW – Erinnern – Biographien – Spurensuche – Maria Restituta (Helene Kafka, 1894–1943)|website=www.doew.at}}</ref> Polish priests came en masse to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Catholic resistance groups like those around [[Roman Karl Scholz]] were persecuted uncompromisingly.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://roman-karl-scholz.zurerinnerung.at/|title=Zur Erinnerung an Dr. Roman Karl Scholz|website=roman-karl-scholz.zurerinnerung.at}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.noen.at/klosterneuburg/klosterneuburg-gedenken-an-widerstandskaempfer-roman-scholz-klosterneuburg-roman-scholz-148011362|title=Gedenken an Widerstandskämpfer Roman Scholz|date=25 May 2019|website=www.noen.at}}</ref> While the Catholic resistance was often anti-war and passive, there are also examples of actively combating National Socialism. The group around the priest [[Heinrich Maier]] approached the American secret service and provided them with plans and location sketches of for [[V-2 rocket]]s, [[Tiger tank]]s, [[Messerschmitt Bf 109]] and [[Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet]] and their production sites so that they could successfully bomb the factories.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ausstellung.de.doew.at/popup.php?t=img&id=240|title=DöW – Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes|website=ausstellung.de.doew.at}}</ref><ref>[https://www.zeit.de/1996/02/Die_Spione_aus_dem_Pfarrhaus/seite-2 Die Spione aus dem Pfarrhaus]</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.derstandard.at/story/1271378203933/im-netz-der-verraeter|title=Im Netz der Verräter|website=Der Standard}}</ref><ref>Hecht, Rauch, Rodt: Geköpft für Christus & Österreich. (1995).</ref><ref>Pirker, Peter (2012). Suberversion deutscher Herrschaft. Der britische Geheimdienst SOE und Österreich. Zeitgeschichte im Kontext. 6. Göttingen: V & R Unipress. p. 252. {{ISBN|978-3-86234-990-6}}.</ref> After the war, their history was often forgotten, also because they acted against the express instructions of their church authorities.<ref>Erika Weinzierl: Kirchlicher Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus. In: Themen der Zeitgeschichte und der Gegenwart. Vienna 2004, {{ISBN|3-8258-7549-0}}, p. 76.</ref><ref>Helga Thoma "Mahner-Helfer-Patrioten: Porträts aus dem österreichischen Widerstand" (2004), p 159.</ref><ref>Benedicta Maria Kempner: "Priester vor Hitlers Tribunalen" (1966).</ref> Historian [[Michael Burleigh]] claims that Nazism used Christianity for political purposes, but such use required that "fundamental tenets were stripped out, but the remaining diffuse religious emotionality had its uses".<ref name="Roger Griffin 2005, p. 85"/> Burleigh claims that Nazism's conception of spirituality was "self-consciously pagan and primitive".<ref name="Roger Griffin 2005, p. 85"/> Historian [[Roger Griffin]] rejects the claim that Nazism was primarily pagan, noting that although there were some influential neo-paganists in the Nazi Party, such as Heinrich Himmler and [[Alfred Rosenberg]], they represented a minority and their views did not influence Nazi ideology beyond its use for symbolism. It is noted that Hitler denounced Germanic paganism in ''Mein Kampf'' and condemned Rosenberg's and Himmler's paganism as "nonsense".<ref name="totalitarianism"/> === Economics === {{main|Economy of Nazi Germany}} {{further|Economics of fascism}} [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-15750, Ausstellung "Deutsches Volk-Deutsche Arbeit".jpg|thumb|upright=1.05|''Deutsches Volk–Deutsche Arbeit:'' German People, German Work (1934) – an example of [[reactionary modernism]]]] The Nazis came to power in the midst of [[Great Depression]], when the [[unemployment]] rate at that point in time was close to 30%.<ref name="DeLong 1997">{{cite web|last=DeLong|first=J. Bradford|title=Slouching Towards Utopia?: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century. XV. Nazis and Soviets|date=February 1997|publisher=University of California at Berkeley|work=econ161.berkeley.edu|url=http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Purge15.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511190923/http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Purge15.html|access-date = 21 April 2013|archive-date=11 May 2008}}</ref> Generally speaking, Nazi theorists and politicians blamed Germany's previous economic failures on political causes like the influence of Marxism on the workforce, the sinister and exploitative machinations of what they called international Jewry and the vindictiveness of the western political leaders' [[World War I reparations|war reparation]] demands. Instead of traditional economic incentives, the Nazis offered solutions of a political nature, such as the elimination of organised [[trade union]]s, rearmament (in contravention of the Versailles Treaty) and biological politics.<ref>[[Richard Overy|R.J. Overy]], ''War and Economy in the Third Reich'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 1–5.</ref> Various work programs designed to establish full-employment for the German population were instituted once the Nazis seized full national power. Hitler encouraged nationally supported projects like the construction of the ''[[Autobahn]]'' highway system, the introduction of an affordable people's car (''[[Volkswagen Beetle|Volkswagen]]'') and later the Nazis bolstered the economy through the business and employment generated by military rearmament.<ref>[[Richard Overy|R. J. Overy]], ''War and Economy in the Third Reich'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 7–11.</ref> The Nazis benefited early in the regime's existence from the first post-Depression economic upswing, and this combined with their public works projects, job-procurement program and subsidised home repair program reduced unemployment by as much as 40 per cent in one year. This development tempered the unfavourable psychological climate caused by the earlier economic crisis and encouraged Germans to march in step with the regime.<ref>Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933–1945'' (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1971), p. 19.</ref> The economic policies of the Nazis were in many respects a continuation of the policies of the [[German National People's Party]], a [[national-conservative]] party and the Nazis' coalition partner.<ref>Beck Hermann, ''The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light'' (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), p. 243.</ref> While other Western capitalist countries strove for increased [[state ownership]] of industry during the same period, the Nazis transferred [[public ownership]] into the [[private sector]] and handed over some [[public service]]s to private organizations, mostly affiliated with the Nazi Party. It was an intentional policy with multiple objectives rather than ideologically driven and was used as a tool to enhance support for the Nazi government and the party.<ref name=":2">{{cite journal |last=Bel |first=Germà |date=April 2006 |title=Against the mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930s Germany |url=http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf |journal=Economic History Review |publisher=University of Barcelona |volume=63 |issue=1 |pages=34–55 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00473.x |ssrn=895247 |access-date=20 September 2020 |hdl-access=free |hdl=2445/11716 |s2cid=154486694|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720073011/http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf |archive-date=20 July 2011 }}</ref> According to historian [[Richard Overy]], the Nazi [[war economy]] was a [[mixed economy]] that combined [[free market]]s with [[Economic planning|central planning]] and described the economy as being somewhere in between the [[Economy of the Soviet Union|command economy]] of the Soviet Union and the [[Economy of the United States|capitalist system]] of the United States.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Overy |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Overy |title=Why The Allies Won |publisher=Random House |year=2006 |isbn=978-1-84595-065-1 |location=London}}</ref> The Nazi government continued the economic policies introduced by the government of [[Kurt von Schleicher]] in 1932 to combat the effects of the Depression.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=49}} Upon being appointed Chancellor in 1933, Hitler appointed [[Hjalmar Schacht]], a former member of the [[German Democratic Party]], as President of the [[Reichsbank]] in 1933 and Minister of Economics in 1934.<ref name="DeLong 1997"/> Hitler promised measures to increase employment, protect the German currency, and promote recovery from the Great Depression. These included an agrarian settlement program, labour service, and a guarantee to maintain health care and pensions.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=37}} However, these policies and programs, which included a large [[public works]] programs supported by [[deficit spending]] such as the construction of the ''Autobahn'' network to stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment,{{sfn|Tooze|2007|p={{page needed|date=January 2011}}}} were inherited and planned to be undertaken by the [[Weimar Republic]] during conservative [[Paul von Hindenburg]]'s presidency and which the Nazis appropriated as their own after coming to power.<ref>W. Dick; A. Lichtenberg (4 August 2012). [https://www.dw.com/en/the-myth-of-hitlers-role-in-building-the-autobahn/a-16144981 "The myth of Hitler's role in building the German autobahn"]. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 4 August 2012.</ref> Above all, Hitler's priority was rearmament and the buildup of the German military in preparation for an eventual war to conquer ''[[Lebensraum]]'' in the East.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=38}} 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.<ref>{{cite book|last= Overy|first=R.J.|author-link=Richard Overy|title= The Nazi economic recovery 1932–1938|year= 1996|publisher= Cambridge Univ. Press|location= Cambridge [u.a.]|isbn= 0-521-55767-4|page= 42|edition= 2.}}</ref> This was particularly useful in allowing Germany to rearm because the Mefo bills were not [[Reichsmark]]s and did not appear in the federal budget, so they helped conceal rearmament.<ref>William L. Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 260.</ref> At the beginning of his rule, 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."{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=38}} This policy was implemented immediately, with military expenditures quickly growing far larger than the civilian work-creation programs. As early as June 1933, military spending for the year was budgeted to be three times larger than the spending on all civilian work-creation measures in 1932 and 1933 combined.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=55}} Nazi Germany increased its military spending faster than any other state in peacetime, with the share of military spending rising from 1 per cent to 10 per cent of national income in the first two years of the regime alone.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=66}} Eventually, it reached as high as 75 per cent by 1944.{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=333}} In spite of their rhetoric condemning [[big business]] prior to their rise to power, the Nazis quickly entered into a partnership with German business from as early as February 1933. That month, after being appointed Chancellor but before gaining dictatorial powers, Hitler made a personal appeal to German business leaders to help fund the Nazi Party for the crucial months that were to follow. He argued that they should support him in establishing a dictatorship because "private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy" and because democracy would allegedly lead to communism.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=99}} He promised to destroy the German left and the trade unions, without any mention of anti-Jewish policies or foreign conquests.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=100}} In the following weeks, the Nazi Party received contributions from seventeen different business groups, with the largest coming from [[IG Farben]] and [[Deutsche Bank]].{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=100}} Historian Adam Tooze writes that the leaders of German business were therefore "willing partners in the destruction of political pluralism in Germany".{{sfn|Tooze|2006|pp=101}} In exchange, owners and managers of German businesses were granted unprecedented powers to control their workforce, [[collective bargaining]] was abolished and wages were frozen at a relatively low level.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=102}} Business profits also rose very rapidly, as did corporate investment.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=114}} In addition, the Nazis privatised public properties and public services, only increasing economic state control through regulations.<ref name="guillebaud"/> Hitler believed that private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and technical innovation, but insisted that it had to conform to national interests and be "productive" rather than "parasitical".<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 403"/> Private property rights were conditional upon following the economic priorities set by the Nazi leadership, with high profits as a reward for firms who followed them and the threat of nationalisation being used against those who did not.<ref name=economic573/> 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.<ref name="economics"/><ref name="university28"/> The Nazis were hostile to the idea of [[social welfare]] in principle, upholding instead the social Darwinist concept that the weak and feeble should perish.{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=483–84}} They condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic as well as private charity, accusing them of supporting people regarded as racially inferior and weak, who should have been weeded out in the process of natural selection.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=484}} Nevertheless, faced with the mass unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression, the Nazis found it necessary to set up charitable institutions to help racially-pure Germans in order to maintain popular support, while arguing that this represented "racial self-help" and not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=484–85}} Nazi programs such as the [[Winterhilfswerk|Winter Relief of the German People]] and the broader [[Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt|National Socialist People's Welfare]] (NSV) were organised as quasi-private institutions, officially relying on private donations from Germans to help others of their race, although in practice those who refused to donate could face severe consequences.{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=486–87}} 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".{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=489}} Successful efforts were made to get middle-class women involved in social work assisting large families,<ref name="Grunberger46"/> and the Winter Relief campaigns acted as a ritual to generate public sympathy.<ref name="Richard Grunberger p 79">Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 79, {{ISBN|0-03-076435-1}}</ref> Agrarian policies were also important to the Nazis since they corresponded not just to the economy but to their geopolitical conception of ''Lebensraum'' as well. For Hitler, the acquisition of land and soil was requisite in moulding the German economy.<ref>Ian Kershaw, ''Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution'' (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 52–53.</ref> To tie farmers to their land, selling agricultural land was prohibited.<ref>Rafael Scheck, ''Germany, 1871–1945: A Concise History'', p. 167.</ref> Farm ownership remained private, but business monopoly rights were granted to marketing boards to control production and prices with a quota system.<ref name=berman >{{cite book |title=The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BNV5uVCQnq8C&q=146&pg=PA146 |first=Sheri |last=Berman | author-link=Sheri Berman|page=146 |isbn=978-0-521-52110-9|date=2006| publisher=Cambridge University Press }}</ref> 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".<ref name=berman/> Hitler primarily viewed the German economy as an instrument of power and believed the economy was not about creating wealth and technical progress so as to improve the quality of life for a nation's citizenry, but rather that economic success was paramount for providing the means and material foundations necessary for military conquest.<ref>[[Richard Overy|R.J. Overy]], ''War and Economy in the Third Reich'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 1–30.</ref> While economic progress generated by National Socialist programs had its role in appeasing the German people, the Nazis and Hitler in particular did not believe that economic solutions alone were sufficient to thrust Germany onto the stage as a world power. The Nazis thus sought to secure a general 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 German arms industry and the National Socialist government.<ref>Klaus Hildebrand, ''The Third Reich'' (London & New York: Routledge, 1986), pp. 39–48.</ref> Between 1933 and 1939, military expenditures were upwards of 82 billion Reichsmarks and represented 23 per cent of Germany's gross national product as the Nazis mobilised their people and economy for war.<ref>Jost Dülffer, ''Nazi Germany 1933–1945: Faith and Annihilation'' (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), pp. 72–73.</ref> ==== Anti-communism ==== [[File:Bolshevism is Jewish!.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Anti-communist, antisemitic propaganda poster in Nazi Germany]] The Nazis claimed that communism was dangerous to the well-being of nations because of its intention to dissolve [[private property]], its support of [[class conflict]], its aggression against the [[middle class]], its hostility towards small business and its [[atheism]].<ref name=autogenerated20 /> Nazism rejected class conflict-based socialism and [[economic egalitarianism]], favouring instead a [[Social stratification|stratified]] economy with [[social class]]es based on merit and talent, retaining private property and the creation of national solidarity that transcends class distinction.<ref name=autogenerated11/> Historians [[Ian Kershaw]] and [[Joachim Fest]] argue that in post–[[World War I]] Germany, the Nazis were one of many nationalist and fascist political parties contending for the leadership of Germany's [[anti-communist]] movement.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}} In ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler stated his desire to "make war upon the Marxist principle that all men are equal".<ref>Hitler, Adolf, ''Mein Kampf'', Hurst and Blackett ltd., 1939, p. 343</ref> He believed that "the notion of equality was a sin against nature."{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=51}} Nazism upheld the "natural inequality of men," including inequality between races and also within each race. The Nazi state aimed to advance those individuals with special talents or intelligence, so they could rule over the masses.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=49}} Nazi ideology relied on elitism and the {{Lang|de|[[Führerprinzip]]}} (leadership principle), arguing that elite minorities should assume leadership roles over the majority, and that the elite minority should itself be organised according to a "hierarchy of talent", with a single leader—the [[Führer]]—at the top.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|pp=49–50}} The {{Lang|de|Führerprinzip}} held that each member of the hierarchy owed absolute obedience to those above him and should hold absolute power over those below him.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=50}} During the 1920s, Hitler urged disparate Nazi factions to unite in opposition to [[Jewish Bolshevism]].<ref name="Adolf Hitler"/> Hitler asserted that the "three vices" of "Jewish Marxism" were democracy, [[pacifism]] and [[Internationalism (politics)|internationalism]].<ref name="Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution"/> The Communist movement, the trade unions, the Social Democratic Party and the left-wing press were all considered to be Jewish-controlled and part of the "international Jewish conspiracy" to weaken the German nation by promoting internal disunity through class struggle.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=50}} The Nazis also believed that the Jews had instigated the [[Bolshevik revolution]] in Russia and that Communists had [[Stab-in-the-back myth|stabbed Germany in the back]] and caused it to lose the First World War.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=52}} They further argued that modern cultural trends of the 1920s (such as [[jazz|jazz music]] and [[cubism|cubist art]]) represented "[[cultural Bolshevism]]" and were part of a political assault aimed at the spiritual degeneration of the German ''Volk''.{{sfn|Bendersky|1985|p=52}} Joseph Goebbels published a pamphlet titled ''The Nazi-Sozi'' which gave brief points of how Nazism differed from Marxism.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Nazi-Sozi|url=http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/nazi-sozi.htm|trans-title=Joseph Goebbels, Der Nazi-Sozi (Elberfeld: Verlag der Nationalsozialistischen Briefe, 1927).}}</ref> In 1930, Hitler said: "Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not".<ref name="university29"/> The [[Communist Party of Germany]] (KPD) was the largest Communist Party in the world outside of the Soviet Union, until it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933.<ref>David Nicholls. ''Adolf Hitler: A Biographical Companion''. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000, p. 50.</ref> In the 1920s and early 1930s, Communists and Nazis often fought each other directly in [[Weimar paramilitary groups|street violence]], with the Nazi paramilitary organisations being opposed by the Communist [[Roter Frontkämpferbund|Red Front]] and [[Antifaschistische Aktion#Establishment|Anti-Fascist Action]]. After the beginning of the Great Depression, both Communists and Nazis saw their share of the vote increase. While the Nazis were willing to form alliances with other parties of the right, the Communists refused to form an alliance with the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]], the largest party of the left.<ref>Ben Fowkes. ''Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic''. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984. pp. 166–167</ref> After the Nazis came to power, they quickly banned the Communist Party under the allegation that it was preparing for revolution and that it had caused the [[Reichstag fire]].<ref>Ben Fowkes. ''Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic''. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984. pp. 170–171</ref> Four thousand KPD officials were arrested in February 1933, and by the end of the year 130,000 communists had been sent to [[Nazi concentration camps]].<ref>Ben Fowkes. ''Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic''. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984, p. 171</ref> During the late 1930s and the 1940s, anti-communist regimes and groups that supported Nazism included the [[Falangism|Falange]] in [[Francoist Spain]], the [[Vichy regime]] and the [[33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French)]] in France and the [[British Union of Fascists]] under [[Oswald Mosley]].<ref name="carroll"/> ==== Views of capitalism ==== {{see also|List of companies involved in the Holocaust}} The Nazis argued that [[free-market capitalism]] damages nations due to [[international finance]] and the worldwide economic dominance of disloyal big business, which they considered to be the product of Jewish influences.<ref name="autogenerated20"/> Nazi propaganda posters in [[working class]] districts emphasised anti-capitalism, such as one that said: "The maintenance of a rotten industrial system has nothing to do with nationalism. I can love Germany and hate capitalism".<ref name="publishers30"/> Both in public and in private Hitler opposed free-market capitalism because it "could not be trusted to put national interests first", arguing that it holds nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic [[Cosmopolitanism|cosmopolitan]] [[Rentier capitalism|rentier]] class.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 399"/> He believed that [[Free trade|international free trade]] would lead to global domination by the British Empire and the United States, which he believed were controlled by Jewish bankers in [[Wall Street]] and the [[City of London]]. In particular, Hitler saw the United States as a major future rival and feared that the [[globalization]] after World War I would allow [[North America]] to displace [[Europe]] as the world's most powerful continent. Hitler's anxiety over the economic rise of the United States was a major theme in his unpublished ''[[Hitlers Zweites Buch|Zweites Buch]]''. He even hoped for a time that Britain could be swayed into an alliance with Germany on the basis of a shared economic rivalry with the United States.<ref name=":0">{{Harvp|Tooze|2006|pp=8–11}}</ref> Hitler desired an economy that would direct resources "in ways that matched the many national goals of the regime" such as the buildup of the military, building programs for cities and roads, and economic self-sufficiency.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 403"/> Hitler also distrusted free-market capitalism for being unreliable due to its [[egotism]] and preferred a state-directed economy that maintains private property and competition but subordinates them to the interests of the ''[[Volk]]'' and Nation.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 399"/> Hitler told a party leader in 1934: "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews".<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 399" /> Hitler said to [[Benito Mussolini]] that capitalism had "run its course".<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 399"/> Hitler also said that the business [[bourgeoisie]] "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."<ref name="dictators"/> Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, whom he referred to as "cowardly shits".<ref>Kritika: ''explorations in Russian and Eurasian history'', Volume 7, Issue 4. Slavica Publishers, 2006, p. 922.</ref> In ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler effectively supported [[mercantilism]] in the belief that economic resources from their respective territories should be seized by force, as he believed that the policy of ''[[Lebensraum]]'' would provide Germany with such economically valuable territories.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 402"/> He argued that the United States and the United Kingdom only benefitted from free trade because they had already conquered substantial internal markets through British colonial conquests and [[Territorial evolution of the United States|American westward expansion]].<ref name=":0" /> Hitler argued that the only means to maintain economic security was to [[Autarky|have direct control over resources]] rather than being forced to rely on world trade.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 402"/> Hitler claimed that war to gain such resources was the only means to surpass the failing capitalist economic system.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004, p. 402"/> In practice, however, the Nazis merely opposed one [[type of capitalism]], namely 19th-century [[free-market capitalism]] and the ''[[laissez-faire]]'' model, which they nonetheless applied to the social sphere in the form of [[social Darwinism]].{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=483–84}} Some have described Nazi Germany as an example of [[corporatism]], [[authoritarian capitalism]], or [[totalitarian capitalism]].<ref name=":2" /><ref name="SJSU">{{Cite web |title=The Economic System of Corporatism |url=https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200712232229/https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm |archive-date=12 July 2020 |access-date=2 October 2021 |publisher=San José University Department of Economics}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2007-07-01/return-authoritarian-great-powers|title=The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers|last=Gat|first=Azar|date=1 July 2007|work=Foreign Affairs|access-date=8 June 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Fuchs |first=Christian |date=29 June 2017 |title=The Relevance of Franz L. Neumann's Critical Theory in 2017: Anxiety and Politics in the New Age of Authoritarian Capitalism |url=https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/3d32b4bfd248b58cca5d0f68ede8ee936bb6e3dd0572344e82c86089553b79b0/570163/Neumann_Christian_tripleC.pdf |journal=Media, Culture & Society |volume=40 |issue=5 |pages=779–791 |doi=10.1177/0163443718772147 |access-date=8 July 2020 |s2cid=149705789}}</ref> While claiming to strive for autarky in propaganda, the Nazis crushed existing movements towards self-sufficiency<ref>{{cite book|title=Italian fascism: Its Origins and Development|orig-year=1938|last=De Grand|first=Alexander J.|year=2000|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|isbn=978-0-8032-6622-3|edition=3rd|location=Lincoln|oclc=42462895}}</ref> and established extensive capital connections in efforts to ready for expansionist war and genocide<ref>{{cite book|title=IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation|last=Edwin|first=Black|date=2001|publisher=Crown Publishers|isbn=978-0-609-60799-2|edition=1st|location=New York|oclc=45896166}}</ref> in alliance with traditional [[business]] and [[commerce]] elites.<ref>{{cite book|title=[[The Anatomy of Fascism]]|last=Paxton|first=Robert O.|author-link=Robert Paxton|date=2005|publisher=Vintage Books|isbn=978-1-4000-3391-1|edition=1st|location=New York|oclc=58452991}} – [https://archive.org/details/anatomyoffascism0000paxt Read online, registration required]</ref> In spite of their anti-capitalist rhetoric in opposition to big business, the Nazis allied with German business as soon as they got in power by appealing to the fear of communism and promising to destroy the German left and trade unions,{{sfn|Tooze|2006|pp=99–100}} eventually purging both more radical and reactionary elements from the party in 1934.{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|p=133}} Joseph Goebbels, who would later go on to become the Nazi Propaganda Minister, was strongly opposed to both capitalism and communism, viewing them as the "two great pillars of materialism" that were "part of the international Jewish conspiracy for world domination".<ref>Read, Anthony, ''The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 138</ref> Nevertheless, he wrote in his diary in 1925 that if he were forced to choose between them, "in the final analysis, it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism".<ref name="disciples"/> Goebbels also linked his antisemitism to his anti-capitalism, stating in a 1929 pamphlet that "we see, in the Hebrews, the incarnation of capitalism, the misuse of the nation's goods".<ref name="thosedamnednazis"/> Within the Nazi Party, the faction associated with anti-capitalist beliefs was the SA, a paramilitary wing led by [[Ernst Röhm]]. The SA had a complicated relationship with the rest of the party, giving both Röhm himself and local SA leaders significant autonomy.{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|pp=1110–11}} Different local leaders would even promote different political ideas in their units, including "nationalistic, socialistic, anti-Semitic, racist, völkisch, or conservative ideas."{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|p=113}} There was tension between the SA and Hitler, especially from 1930 onward, as Hitler's "increasingly close association with big industrial interests and traditional rightist forces" caused many in the SA to distrust him.{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|p=119}} The SA regarded Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 as a "first revolution" against the left, and some voices within the ranks began arguing for a "second revolution" against the right.{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|pp=123–124}} After engaging in violence against the left in 1933, Röhm's SA also began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction.{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|pp=123–124, 130}} Hitler saw Röhm's independent actions as violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardising the regime by alienating the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and the conservative-oriented German Army.{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|p=133}} This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA in 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives.{{sfn|Nyomarkay|1967|p=133}} === 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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