The term ‘Nazism’ is derived from its full name “National Socialism”, from which it is abbreviated in its German form thus: na from nationaland zi from socialism, as socialism is called in German.
Rise of Nazism
The World War I was a turning-point in the history of the world. It produced Communism in Russian Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, besides other momentous consequences in other parts of the world.
The World War I was started by Germany in order to conquer colonies and become the greatest imperialist power in the world. But it ended in her defeat. A humiliating treaty, the Treaty of Versailles, was imposed upon her. Under this Treaty she had to pay to the victorious Allies heavy war reparations, surrender her Ruhr and Saar territories to France and was forbidden to rebuild a strong army of her own. After the war, in 1919, Germany established a parliamentary system of government under a new Weimar Constitution. But the system failed to take roots in the post-war Germany due to her ever-increasing economic and political troubles.
The Germans smarted under the humiliating terms of the Versailles Treaty which reduced their country to the status of a third-rate power. The final blow to the Weimar Parliamentary system was delivered by the Great Economic Depression (1929-32), which hit German hard. There was complete economic collapse. Prices began to soar higher and ever higher; the value of the German Mark depreciated and unemployment rose by leaps and bounds. In 1932 there were six million un-employed workers in the country. Gold fled from Germany and her industry came to a standstill, while the victorious Allies extorted huge war reparations. At the same time, political crisis deepened. Workers’ strikes increased in number and fury. Many political parties sprang up in the country. Communist influence increased and, as usual, the powerful German industrial Junker or landlord and militarist classes were frightened of the bogey of Bolshevism.
They were ready to welcome any man or party which would save the country from a Communist Revolution. This was the hour for Hitler to strike. He organised the Nazi Party and captured political power in 1933 NAZI DOCTRINES. Like Italian Fascism, German Nazism has no well-defined doctrines. It too lacked a philosophy of the State; it was merely a political movement. But it evolved a theory as a result of its practical needs and experience. Indeed, both Germany and the German people were particularly fit for the kind of theories and ‘myths’ which the Nazis preached and practised, viz., militarism, racialism, hero-worship, State-worship, etc. No other nation equalled Germany, the homeland of Hegel, in the idealization, i.e., idolization of the State, in her traditions of military efficiency and militarism, in her glorification of war, and in a systematic and quasi- scientific exposition of racist theories. All these things became part and parcel of Nazi beliefs and doctrines, along with the brutal violence which alone was what Hitler and his Nazis contributed to them.
Nazi glorification of the State and Nation.
True to the German tradition, Nazism glorifies the State and regards it as a superhuman entity, and true to the Fascist tradition, it identifies it to the nation, or das Volk as it is called in German. To the Nazis, ‘nation’ was essentially a racial and biological entity. The Volk or the national community was the raw material out of which the State was made. In order to make the Volk strong, all individuals and all interests were placed under the full control of the State. As Hitler declared, “the individual is nothing, das Volk (the Folk) is everything.” The Nazi State is all- powerful, all-embracing and omni competent. The individual is absolutely subordinate to it. He is to find his meaning and happiness in implicitly obeying the behests of the well-ordered State.
Nazi State is a totalitarian State.
Nazi State is all-inclusive. The State is end; the individual is the means to it. It is absolute and tolerates no opposition. Nothing lay outside its power or province. It controls and regulates every person and thing, every interest and value, every activity and function in the State. All aspects of national life—political, economic, industrial, educational, cultural, scientific, intellectual—are regulated by the State. Except under its regulation, there could be manufacture, business, work or leisure, art or culture. Even Truth is what the State says, “the scientist is only free to search for truth as the State sees it.”
The Fuhrer Principle.
Far more than Fascism, Nazism emphasised the so-called Fuhrer Principle Though Italian Fascism had its “Duce”. He was a very pale thing as compared to the Nazi Fuhrer or Leader between the Duce and the people were “corporations,” but between the Fuhrer and the Germans was nothing except a chain of lesser Fuhrers, all of them responsible to the Fuhrer alone. The actions of the Fuhrer were above criticism. The Fuhrer was infallible,— he was always right Hitler himself explained the “Fuhrer Principle” “thus: authority from above as the result of leadership, conscious of its responsibility; confidence and discipline from below.”
He justified this principle by referring to the German military traditions. ‘The principle which made the former Prussian army an admirable instrument of the German nation will have to become the basis of our State structure, that is to say, full authority over his subordinates must be invested in each leader and he must be responsible to those above him”. This required a Leader (Fuhrer) at the top and the nation at the bottom with a chain of lesser Fuhrers in between the two.
The Nazis made the Germans adore Hitler. The people were taught to believe that some are born to rule and others to obey. Obedience to the Leader was a sacred duty, rigidly enforced by all methods of discipline and propaganda. The Nazi slogan was: Duty, Discipline, Sacrifice, The Nazi ideal was: One Fuhrer (Leader), One Reich (Stale). One Vok (Nation). Hitler was worshipped as a god. “We of the German religion”, so wrote a Nazi Professor, Ernest Bergmann, “today turn to the Nordic, Indo-Germanic Light-Hero figure and get rid of the false and diseased Christ picture created by the Christian Pope and Church to the hurt of humanity. The high priest of the new German paganism is Hitler himself. He is the real Holy Ghost.
Hitler is lonely. So is God. Hitler is like a god. Hitler is a new, a greater and a powerful Jesus Christ.” The worship of Hitler was preached in the schools, in the churches, on the stage, in the cinema, radio and the press. The Nazis made the Germans to use a new salutation, He’d Hitler a phrase which they used from 50 to 150 times a day. They were taught to believe that Hitler was infallible: “what Hitler decides is right and will remain eternally right,” said Herr Wagner, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior. But Nazi principle of Fuherism was really the idolisation of the arbitrary, absolutist and irresponsible power of an autocrat, as the disasters and consequences of the World War II were to show.