National Socialism

NATIONAL SOCIALISM(German, Nationalsozialismus), a political movement that emerged in Germany after World War I. The more popular form of the name, Nazism, is a contraction of the German word. The Nazi party was founded in 1920 and led almost from the outset by Adolph HITLER. In 1933 the party gained control of the German state and established a dictatorship, embarking on a program of domestic reconstruction and foreign conquest that culminated in World War II. With Germany's defeat in 1945, National Socialism collapsed.

While its destructive impact on Germany and Europe was profound, the historical significance of National Socialism is still far from clear. Nazism has been viewed as a specific product of German history; as a type of modern totalitarianism comparable to Soviet communism; and as a form of fascism similar to MUSSOLINI's. Some consider it to have been a counterrevolutionary, ultraconservative movement. To others, National Socialism was revolution in a new guise.

Origins

The intersection and mutual reinforcement of two social crises in Europe in the early 20th century contributed to the rise of both fascism and National Socialism. On the one hand, there was a crisis in industrial capitalism as it advanced from an earlier, liberal phase to one marked by technocracy and regulation. The transition involved an often painful restructuring of social groups, especially of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, countries like Germany and Italy, in which modernization had been delayed, were still struggling with problems created by the conversion from premodern to modern societies. The interplay of these two crises accounted for both the ambivalence and the peculiar appeal of fascism in general and Nazism in particular.

Germany's defeat in World War I and the subsequent outbreak of revolutionary activity in various parts of the country greatly intensified the effects of these crises. The nation's anxieties and confusion were exacerbated by the vindictive terms of the Treaty of Versailles and by the fear that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia would spread to Germany. The establishment of the democratic Weimar Republic did not succeed in restoring national self-confidence. When a nationalistic, militaristic opposition to the government emerged, it was able to attract a considerable following. However, lacking organization and a compelling ideology, it spent its energies in random violence.

Early History

One of the numerous small groups and sects making up this opposition was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers' Party). Founded in Munich, Bavaria, in February 1920, it grew out of the German Workers' Party. Adolf Hitler, its supreme leader from 1921, soon emerged as the greatest demagogic talent in German politics. His first success was in converting his tiny band of armchair politicians and desperadoes into a serious political force in Bavaria. However, the Nazis' Beer Hall Putsch of Nov. 8-9, 1923, was a failure. Although it won national notoriety for Hitler, it put him and his party out of action. Germany's economic recovery and political stability after 1924 forced the Nazis back into obscurity. But the Great Depression offered Hitler another chance. From 1930 on the party grew in numbers and eventually was able to take over the government in 1933.

Ideology and Propaganda

National Socialism was not grounded in a well-formulated ideology. Its underlying ideas included such abstruse and contradictory doctrines as the following: the Nordic master race was created to rule over inferior races, especially the Jews; there should be pan-German unification--that is, the gathering of all persons of German blood into a greater German Reich; the Fuhrer (leader) is the mystical embodiment of the Third Reich; National Socialism supersedes Marxist international socialism; the medieval corporatist society and a Germanic tribal society of peasants should serve as paradigms for the Third Reich. National Socialism was an amalgam of such disparate doctrines as these rather than a well-articulated, coherent political philosophy.

Hitler did not even attempt to formulate a political philosophy in Mein Kampf (1925-1927; My Struggle), and Alfred Rosenberg's attempt to do so in The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) did not succeed. In fact, the ideas of National Socialism were not even original with the Nazis. They were developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by conservative and volkisch ideologues, who idealized the German Volk ("people). Among these were the French racial theorist count de Gobineau, Richard Wagner's English son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Nietzschean and racial fanatic Julius Langbehn, the conservative nationalist Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the historian and political philosopher Oswald Spengler, and the writer Ernst Junger. These and other writers of similar persuasion adapted, and often corrupted, earlier romantic and conservative philosophies by mixing them with Darwinist, imperialist, and populist notions.

Hitler believed that these ideas could become politically effective only if their negative and hostile qualities were emphasized. In Hitler's hands the ideas of these writers became anti-ideas: anti-Marxist, antiliberal, antihumanist, antidemocratic, and, above all, anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism was to serve as a vehicle for reducing the many enemies to one. Training in Nazi doctrine was a training in hostility.

Hitler also developed propaganda techniques for instilling his doctrines. Instead of trying to convert the Germans by reason, he exhorted them in emotional harangues and provided them with visual symbols of National Socialism--uniforms, flags, the swastika emblem. Ideas were transformed into myths and were used to trigger activity and violence. Thus in National Socialism, ideology, propaganda, and action tended to merge.

The Party and the Movement

The National Socialist Party differed in an important respect from the National Socialist movement. As a party, Nazism was formally organized and highly bureaucratic. Its organization became increasingly diversified and specialized, so that by 1932, just before it gained exclusive control of the state, the party might have appeared as a mirror image of the state, except that Hitler's dictatorial leadership of the party differed from the chancellor's role in the state.

As a movement, by contrast, Nazism was an emotional community, mobilized for revolutionary action. Within the movement, formal office and organization counted for nothing and personal leadership for everything. In actual operation this dualism generated rivalries among subordinate party leaders, which Hitler used to maintain control over his followers. But it also made the party somewhat unstable, prone to disintegration and anarchy.

National Socialism's Constituencies

Nazism shared its original constituency with the volkisch ideologues. Its three components were the old, modern, middle class employed in crafts and trades and the lower strata of the teaching profession; a minority of the new middle class of white-collar workers, which included people who considered their clerical jobs socially demeaning; and those war veterans whom society had not succeeded in reintegrating and who had become brutalized from many years of fighting. Originally competing with the volkisch groups for this constituency, by the end of the 1920s the Nazis were in sole control of it.

In 1929 and 1930, during the Great Depression, Nazism attracted four more groups: the bulk of the bourgeois moderate right, which included Protestant agrarians, white-collar workers, and the upper bourgeoisie; former nonvoters, who under the impact of the crisis voted in unusually high numbers; the young; and a growing number of the unemployed. Hitler continued to be unsuccessful, however, in attracting the Catholic population and the socialist working class. Nor was he more than moderately successful with big business. During this time the Nazi party largely financed itself. Big business contributions were limited prior to 1933.

Strategies for Seizing Power

After his abortive putsch in 1923, Hitler returned to his original plan of gaining control of the government through an alliance with the conservative, monarchist elites. They still occupied important positions in the bureaucracy and the Army of the Weimar Republic, but they lacked popular support. Hitler offered his political backing in return for what the conservatives understood would be no more than a role in the government for him, should the alliance win election at the polls. Hitler's ambition, however, was not a partial role but total power for himself.

Thus Nazi strategy had a dual purpose--to develop successful mass mobilization techniques and to manipulate the conservatives, by means of blackmail and bribery when that was considered efficacious. Hitler proved to be master on both counts, no more so than in January 1933 when he made a deal with the conservatives that brought him the chancellorship at the very moment when his party was losing momentum and votes. Prior to this, the army had salvaged Hitler's paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers) after Chancellor Heinrich Bruning had dissolved it in April 1932. The army was convinced that the SA had military potential for German rearmament.

National Socialism in Power (1933-1937)

On assuming the chancellorship, Hitler launched an all-out attack on his enemies and rivals outside the party. By the summer of 1933 he had defeated virtually all of them. Next he strengthened his control over the party by crushing the SA under Ernst Roehm on June 30, 1934. Roehm had become too powerful, and the SA was no longer a suitable instrument for achieving Hitler's aims. Finally, in August 1934, Hitler made himself supreme leader (Fuhrer) of Germany.

From 1934 until 1937, Hitler ruled by transferring National Socialism's institutional dualism to German society. The Nazi party coexisted with the state, and irregular operations ran parallel with regular operations. Hitler still needed the expertise of the conservatives, while the latter hoped to stave off total political defeat by retaining control over the administration. Yet their cooperation in fact helped Hitler to win such spectacular successes in his economic policies (by 1937 full employment was achieved) and in foreign affairs that his position became unassailable. Similarly, Hitler permitted the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches just enough freedom from totalitarian control to prevent them from uniting in active, total opposition.

Nazi Totalitarianism, 1938-1945

In 1937-1938, Hitler ended the coexistence of party and state by firing his top conservative collaborators. His goal was to eliminate all institutional restraints on Nazi dynamism. The result was that Nazi operations became increasingly irregular and violent. From March 1938, Hitler turned to foreign aggression. His belligerent acts culminated in WORLD WAR II . Heinrich HIMMLER 's SS (Schutzstaffel, or Black Shirts), successor to the SA, increased its acts of terrorism, particularly against the Jews, who now became victims of a policy of genocide. Party rule in general resulted in a gradual erosion of Germany's remaining social institutions, leaving the country eventually in a state of near anarchy.

Resistance to National Socialism within Germany gathered strength as Germany's defeat became more certain. But when the army putsch of July 20, 1944, failed, it remained for the Allies to destroy the Nazi regime.

National Socialism Outside Germany

Prior to 1933, militant right-wing groups in Europe, including the Nazis, were usually influenced by Italian fascism. After 1933 National Socialism also exerted some influence abroad, but it was never clearly distinguishable from the influence of fascism.

Only in German-speaking areas did Nazi parties gain a clear identity: the Austrian National Socialists, the Sudeten German party in Czechoslovakia, the Union of National Socialist Swiss. During the war the Nazis organized collaborationist groups in racially related occupied countries, most notably Vidkun Quisling's Nasjonal Samling (National Union) party in Norway.

The Legacy of National Socialism

After 1945 many Germans were reluctant to face the fact that the Nazis had committed countless atrocities. But this did not necessarily mean that they wanted Nazism back. Attempts to revive National Socialism were made, but they failed.

The most notable example was the appearance of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD; National Democratic Party of Germany) in West Germany during the recession of the 1960s. After initial gains in regional elections, the NPD failed to win a seat in the federal elections of 1969 and subsequently fell apart. It was apparent to the great majority of West Germans that a merely nihilistic revolt such as that promoted by National Socialism would inevitably lead to ruin.

Wolfgang Sauer
University of California at Berkeley