Nationalism and Racialism. Nazism was intensely nationalistic. But it equated the national with the race. In the racial theory of Nazism,there were superior and inferior races. The ‘white’ races were superior and the ‘coloured’ races inferior. Among the superior white races, the Aryans or the Germanic race, also called the ‘Nordic’ or the Teutonic’ race, was the most superior—the “Herrenvolk”—the master-race and among the white races, the German was above all.
Imperialism and Lebensraum.
Hitler and the Nazi Party had come to power with the avowed purpose of conquering colonies and foreign lands for the Germans. They must have a “living space”—’Lebensraum’ as the Nazis called it—in order to settle surplus German population and find raw materials and markets for German industrial goods. “There can be,” declared Hitler, “no economic life unless behind this economic life there stands the determined political will of the nation absolutely ready to strike—and strike hard.”
Just as British Imperialism always declared: ‘Trade follows the Navy,” so the Nazi Imperialism cried, Trade follows the tank.” “Our task,” cried Hitler, “is to organise on a large scale the whole world so that each country produces what it can best produce, while the white race, the Nordic race, undertakes the organisation of this gigantic plan….the lower race is destined for tasks different from those of the higher race: the latter must have in its hands the control, and the control must remain with us.” For this purpose, the Nazis planned for a war on the eastern countries especially Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine and Russia, which were, according to them, peopled by the inferior “Slav race”. But finally they aimed at the world conquest. These Nazi dreams and designs of world conquest led the world straight to the Second World War.