Nazism in Germany

Subject: IR since 1648 1945 Instructor: Mr. Jawad Hashmi

5/21/2013 Submitted by: Umair Iqbal Nagyal 11011587-048 Rabia Nawaz Warraich 11011587-001 Syeda Umme Hadisa 11011587-021

Nazis Ideological Theory: According to Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler developed his political theories after carefully observing the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was born as a citizen of the Empire, and believed that ethnic and linguistic diversity had weakened it. Further, he saw democracy as a destabilizing force, because it placed power in the hands of ethnic minorities, who he claimed had incentives to further "weaken and destabilize" the Empire. The Nazi rationale was heavily invested in the militarist belief that great nations grow from military power, which in turn grows "naturally" from "rational, civilized cultures." Hitler's calls appealed to disgruntled German Nationalists, eager to save face for the failure of World War I, and to salvage the militaristic nationalist mindset of that previous era. After Austria and Germany's defeat of World War I, many Germans still had heartfelt ties to the goal of creating a greater Germany, and thought that the use of military force to achieve it was necessary. Many placed the blame for Germany's misfortunes on those whom they perceived, in one way or another, to have sabotaged the goal of national victory. Jews and communists became the ideal scapegoats for Germans deeply invested in a German Nationalist ideology. According to Nazism, it is an obvious mistake to permit or encourage multilingualism and multiculturalism within a nation. Fundamental to the Nazi goal was the unification of all German-speaking peoples, "unjustly" divided into different Nation States. Hitler claimed that nations that could not defend their territory did not deserve it. Slave races, he thought of as less-worthy to exist than "master races." In particular, if a master race should require room to live (Lebensraum), he thought such a race should have the right to displace the inferior indigenous races. Hitler draws parallels between Lebensraum and the American ethnic cleansing and relocation policies towards the Native Americans, which he saw as key to the success of the US. "Races without homelands," Hitler claimed, were "parasitic races," and the richer the members of a "parasitic race" are, the more "virulent" the parasitism was thought to be. A "master race" could therefore, according to the Nazi doctrine, easily strengthen itself by eliminating "parasitic races" from its homeland. This was the given rationalization for the Nazi's later oppression and elimination of Jews and Gypsies. Despite the popularity of Hitler and his living space doctrine, some Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS soldiers found the duty repugnant. Only a small fraction of them were actively involved in genocide. Hitler extended his rationalizations into religious doctrine, claiming that those who agreed with and taught his "truths," were "true" or "master" religions, because they would "create mastery" by avoiding comforting lies. Those that preach love and tolerance, "in contravention to the facts," were said to be "slave" or "false" religions. The man who recognizes these "truths,"

Hitler continued, was said to be a "natural leader," and those who deny it were said to be "natural slaves." "Slaves," especially intelligent ones, he claimed were always attempting to hinder masters by promoting false religious and political doctrines. The ideological roots which became German "National Socialism" were based on numerous sources in European history, drawing especially from Romantic 19th Century idealism, and from a biological misreading of Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on "breeding upwards" toward the goal of an bermensch (Superhuman). Hitler was an avid reader and received ideas that were later to influence Nazism from traceable publications, such as those of the Germanenorden (Germanic Order) or the Thule society. Nazi Ideology: Key elements of the Nazi ideology National Socialist Program

Racism 1. Especially anti-Semitism, which eventually culminated in the Holocaust. 2. The creation of a Herrenrasse (Master Race= by the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life; A department in the Third Reich) 3. Anti-Slavism 4. Belief in the superiority of the White, Germanic, Aryan or Nordic races.

Euthanasia and Eugenics with respect to "Racial Hygiene" Anti-Marxism, Anti-Communism, Anti-Bolshevism The rejection of democracy, with as a consequence the ending the existence of political parties, labor unions, and free press. Fhrerprinzip (Leader Principle) /belief in the leader (Responsibility up the ranks, and authority down the ranks.) Strong show of local culture. Social Darwinism Defense of Blood and Soil (German: "Blut und Boden" - represented by the red and black colors in the Nazi flag) "Lebensraumpolitik", "Lebensraum im Osten" (The creation of more living space for Germans) Related to Fascism

Nazism and romanticism: According to Bertrand Russell, Nazism comes from a different tradition than that of either liberal capitalism or communism. Thus, to understand values of Nazism, it is necessary to explore this connection, without trivializing the movement as it was in its peak years in the 1930s and dismissing it as a little more than racism. Many historiographers say that the anti-Semitic element, which does not exist in the sister fascism movement in Italy and Spain, was adopted by Hitler to gain popularity for the movement. Anti-Semitic prejudice was very common among the masses in German Empire. It is claimed that mass acceptance required anti-Semitism, as well as flattery of the wounded pride of German people after the defeat of WWI. Others see anti-Semitism as central to Hitler's Weltanschauung (World view). Many see strong connections to the values of Nazism and the irrationalism tradition of the romantic movement of the early 19th century. Strength, passion, lack of hypocrisy, utilitarianism, traditional family values, and devotion to community were valued by the Nazis and first expressed by many Romantic artists, musicians, and writers, as well as, among the Nazi elite, the ancient Greek habit of same-sex relations between the military and young boys praised notably in Plato's works, and favored by German sensualists such as Rhm, Bielas and Wessel. German romanticism in particular expressed these values. For instance, the Nazis identified closely with the music of Richard Wagner (a noted anti-Semite, author of Das Judenthum in der Musik, and idol to the young Hitler). Many of his operas express the ideals of the strong dominating the weak, and a celebration of traditional Norse Aryan folklore and values. The style of his music is often very militaristic. The idealization of tradition, folklore, classical thought, the leadership of Frederick the Great, their rejection of the liberalism of the Weimar Republic and the decision to call the German state the Third Reich (which hearkens back to the medieval First Reich and the pre Weimar Second Reich) has led many to regard the Nazis as reactionary. What Made Nazism Possible: Nazi Germany was not inevitable. It took Germany's defeat in World War I and the failure of Germany's first democracy to make Hitler's dictatorship possible. Prior to 1871, there was no nation called Germany, rather there was a collection of small states. The recently formed German Empire entered the First World War severely divided by political, religious, and regional conflicts. Fighting bitter battles from a system of trenches against Britain, France, and Russia for more than four years gave Germans a new sense of national unity. Because of the

war, Germans felt they had become members of a national community locked in a life and death struggle against Germany's enemies. Victory would have made Germany a superpower. But, the Germans were defeated. After living through a bloody war and facing the threat of starvation at home, Germans rose up against their monarchy and, in 1919, replaced it with the Weimar (pronounced "Viemar") Republic, Germany's first democracy. This new democracy started out its short life with several strikes against it. To begin with, there was the lost war. Thirteen million German men had been mobilized to serve in the German Army in World War I. Of these, 1.6 million were killed and 4 million were wounded. By 1918, the British naval blockade had brought Germany to the verge of starvation. If Germany had won the war, Germans would have been rewarded for their suffering and sacrifice by new territories and reparation payments from the defeated British and French. Instead, the Versailles Treaty, the agreement to end the war imposed by the victorious Allies and universally hated by Germans, stripped Germany of large areas of its territory. The treaty also made Germany demobilize its armed forces. Germany was now to be allowed only an army of 100,000 men, no air force, no submarines, and no weapons of mass destruction, such as poison gas. Germany was also required to pay enormous reparations (compensation for war damage, paid by a defeated enemy). Many Germans also feared that the revolution that produced the Weimar Republic had opened the door to communism. Inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917, the small but vocal German Communist Party wanted to ignite a second revolution that would make Germany more like the Soviet Union. Almost all the other political parties insisted that communism was a dangerous threat and anticommunism quickly became a powerful force in Weimar politics, but many thought the Weimar Republic was too weak to stop the communist challenge. Weimar's dazzling cultural modernity was a third major weakness of the new democracy. This modernity involved cutting-edge experimentation with new styles and forms, in many areas of cultural activity ranging from painting and music to photography and architecture. Germans did not agree about the meaning and the value of modern art, architecture, literature, music or film. For every Weimar German who loved jazz, for example, there were just as many who saw it as an unwelcome import from America that threatened the morals of German young people. The increasing popularity of film, especially movies imported from Hollywood, was likewise seen as a dangerous symptom of the decline of German culture. Modern architects and designers proposed radically new styles. Houses were to become simple "machines for living" with no unnecessary decoration. Yet, to many Germans this type of architecture seemed cold, heartless, and, worst of all, "un- German." In their minds, the flat roofs typical of modern houses belonged in the sunny climate of North Africa. In Germany, only the pointed roof, or what the Nazis later called the German roof, was acceptable.

As if all these problems were not enough, the Weimar Republic also had to deal with the effects of two massive economic crises. Up until 1924, hyperinflation (an extreme devaluation of a nation's currency produced by a massive state budget deficit) ravaged Germany, as no European country had experienced before. During the Great Inflation, as the period from 1918 to 1923 is known, Germans lost faith in their currency, and they began to abandon hope for the future. People who had worked hard and saved money for their retirement found that what they had in the bank was now worthless. Unlike the depression, which began in 1929, the inflation of the early 1920s did not destroy the Weimar Republic. The main reason was that the Weimar government was able to reach an agreement with Germany's former enemies, who reduced the amount of reparations to be paid. The Weimar government was now able to replace the old inflated German currency with a new one that Germans could again trust. On the other hand, during the worldwide Great Depression, which hit Germany in 1929, no Weimar leader was able to solve the central economic problem, mass unemployment. By 1932, almost 30 percent of the entire population was officially out of work. For many of those who lost their jobs, unemployment was long-term, a matter not of weeks or months but of years. Economic despair translated into votes for the political extremesthe Communists, to whom many of the unemployed now turned, and the Nazis who benefited above all from the growing fear and anxiety among the lower middle classes that Germany was on the edge of the abyss. The increasingly extreme and revolutionary language of the Communist movement served to convince many Germans that there were now only two choices: Hitler or a communist dictator. Relation with fascism: Nazism is a politically syncretic variety of fascism, which incorporates policies, tactics and philosophic tenets from left and right-wing politics. Italian fascism and German Nazism reject liberalism, democracy and Marxism. Usually supported by the far right (military, business, Church), fascism is historically anti-communist, anti-conservative and anti-parliamentary. The Nazis' rise to power was assisted by the Fascist government of Italy that began to financially subsidize the Nazi party in 1928. Hitler admired Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, and after Mussolini's successful March on Rome in 1922, presented the Nazis as a German version of Italian Fascism. Hitler endorsed Italian Fascism, saying that "with the victory of fascism in Italy the Italian people has triumphed [over] Jewry" and appraised Mussolini as "the brilliant statesman". Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's chief propagandist, credited Italian Fascism with starting a conflict against liberal democracy, saying: The march on Rome was a signal, a sign of storm for liberal-democracy. It is the first attempt to destroy the world of the liberal-democratic spirit which started in 1789 with the storm on the

Bastille and conquered one country after another in violent revolutionary upheavals, to let... the nations go under in Marxism, democracy, anarchy and class warfare Hitler remained impressed by Mussolini and Fascist Italy for many years in spite of resentments towards Italy by other Nazis and resentments by Italian Fascists towards Germany. During the period of positive outlook towards Fascist Italy, Hitler became an Italophile. Hitler like Mussolini profoundly admired Ancient Rome, and repeatedly mentioned it in Mein Kampf as being a model for Germany. In particular, Hitler admired ancient Rome's authoritarian culture, imperialism, town planning, and architecture, which were incorporated by the Nazis. Hitler considered the ancient Romans to have been a master race. In an unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf, Hitler declared that he held no antagonism towards Italy for having waged war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I, saying that Italy only went to war with Germany because of Germany's alliance with Austria Hungary, which Italy had territorial claims on. Hitler declared his sympathy to the Italians for desiring to regain Italian-populated lands held by Austria-Hungary, claiming it was naturally in Italians' national interest to wage war to regain those lands. Hitler made controversial concessions to gain Fascist Italy's approval and alliance, such as abandoning territorial claims on the South Tyrol region of Italy that had a dense population of hundreds of thousands of Germans. In Mein Kampf Hitler declared that it was not in Germany's interest to have war with Italy over South Tyrol. Nazism differs from Italian fascism in that it does not view a nation as being created and developed by a state, but that a nation is created and developed outside a state. This difference is based upon the different histories of development of the German and Italian nations that formed the basis of Nazism's and Italian Fascism's respective nationalisms; the German national identity developed outside a state while Italian national identity developed through a state. The Italian fascists proposed a corporatist "organic state" that required uniting the classes of society, like a fasces. A major source of contention between the Nazis and the Italian Fascists was the Nazis' belief that the collapse of the Roman Empire was caused by racial intermixing. The Nazis conception of the origins of the Aryan race in Europe included the ancient Romans and ancient Greeks as members of the Aryan race. However, contemporary Italy was deemed by the Nazis to not be racially pure, in that the Aryan Roman heritage had been diluted by multiple racial influences. Hitler believed that northern Italians were members of the Aryan race. However he believed that Italians as a whole had been racially tainted by intermixing, especially with the black race. Nazi claims of racial impurity of Italians evoked resentment and rebuke by the Italian Fascists. At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and Italian Fascists over race, Mussolini

condemned Nazi racial theory as flawed, claiming that the Germans themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that Nazi theory on German superiority was based on the theory of non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau. As hostility by Fascist Italy towards Nazi Germany increased in the early 1930s, Mussolini claimed that Italy's heritage to ancient Rome linked Italians to a great civilization, while claiming that the ancient Germans of that time were uncivilized tribes that were "ignorant of writing" at a time "when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus". Mussolini in an interview with German interviewer Roland Strunk in January 1936 stated that the problems in Italo-German relations were caused by "Hitler's Nordic gospel" and Italian Fascists denounced Nordicism as flawed. However Mussolini did not reject racism, and said in 1936, "As you know, I am a racist." Italian Fascism did not have a strong attachment to anti-Semitism. A number of Italian Fascists were Jews such as Ettore Ovazza. There were also a number of Italian Fascists who supported anti-Semitism, most notably Julius Evola, Roberto Farinacci, Paolo Orano, Giovanni Preziosi, and Gino Sottochiesa. Issues concerning Jews in Italy were addressed by the Fascist regime, one in particular was alarm by the Fascist over the presence of the Zionist movement in Italy, exemplified in Italian Fascist reactions to the creation of the Zionist newspaper Israel. In 1934 Farinacci addressed the issue of Zionism by denouncing Zionist Jews who did not identify as Italians, saying: We do not exclude the possibility that there are good Jews, but it is also our right to demand clarity. Does there or does there not exist a Zionist movement in Italy? To deny it would be to lie. The existence of a newspaper in Florence [the Zionist magazine, Israel] should cut short any discussion. And so these others who claim to be anti-Zionists, what are they doing to fight the other Jews who believe that they have another Fatherland that is not Italy? So far nothing. Therefore it is necessary to decide. We have reached a point at which everyone must take a position. Because he, who declares himself a Zionist has no right to hold any responsibilities or honors in our country. Roberto Farinacci, 1934. Many Italian fascists held anti-Slavist views, especially against neighbouring Yugoslav nations, whom the Italian fascists saw as being in competition with Italy, which had claims on territories of Yugoslavia, particularly Dalmatia. Mussolini claimed that Yugoslavs posed a threat after Italy did not receive the territory along the Adriatic coast at the end of World War I, as promised by the 1915 Treaty of London. He said: "The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians settle along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions. Students, professors, workmen, citizens representative menwere entreating the ministers and the professional politicians. Italian fascists accused Serbs of having "atavistic impulses", and of being part of a "social democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot". The fascists accused Yugoslavs of conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient masonry and its funds".

Nazism, however, emphasized the Aryan race Herrenvolk concept until reducing the German state to mere means to an ideological end. Furthermore, blond-blue-eyed-Aryanism was unpopular with Italians, who are not such a volk; nonetheless, the Italian Fascist government exercised a variety of nationalist racism and genocide in its concentration camps, antedating Nazi Germany. The Israeli political scientist and historian Zeev Sternhell proposes that the varieties of fascism are unique, despite the schematic resemblance between Italian fascism and German Nazism greater than resemblances among the Eastern Bloc Communist states of the Cold War, and among European liberal democracies. Nazi Economics: Regarding international finance, Nazism postulated an international banking Jewish conspiracy headed by a cabal of financiers responsible for the Great Depression. The Nazis claimed that controllers of the cabal, who had maneuvered themselves into economically controlling the United States and Europe, were a powerful Jewish lite. The Nazis believed that the cabal was integral to a greater, long-term Jewish conspiracy, wherein Jews would establish global domination via the New World Order. The banks that the cabal allegedly controlled exerted political influence upon nation-states by granting or withholding credit. Nazi economic practice first concerned the immediate domestic economy of Germany, then international trade. To eliminate Germanys poverty, domestic policy was narrowly concerned with four major goals: (i) Elimination of unemployment,
(ii) Rapid and substantial re-armament, (iii) Fiscal protection against resurgent hyper-inflation, and (iv) Expansion of consumer-goods production, to raise middle- and lower- class living standards. The intent was correcting the Nazi-perceived short-comings of the Weimar Republic, and to solidify domestic support for the Nazi Party; between 1933 and 1936, the German (Gross National Product) annually increased 9.5 per cent, and the industrial rate increased 17.2 per cent.

The expansion propelled the German economy from depression to full employment in less than four years. Public consumption increased 18.7 per cent, and private consumption increased 3.6 per cent annually. Historian Richard Evans reports that before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the German economy "had recovered from the Depression faster than its counterparts in other countries. Germanys foreign debt had been stabilized, interest rates had fallen to half their 1932 level, the stock exchange had recovered from the Depression, and the gross national product had risen by 81 per cent over the same period. Inflation and unemployment had been conquered."

Health: Nazi Germany had a strong anti-tobacco movement. Pioneering research by Franz H. Mller in 1939 demonstrated a causal link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. These findings were largely forgotten after the war, but interest resumed in the 1950s, when American and British researchers began re-examining the question. The Reich Health Office took measures to try to limit smoking, including producing lectures and pamphlets. Smoking was banned in many workplaces, on trains, and among on-duty members of the military. Government agencies also worked to control other carcinogenic substances such as asbestos and pesticides. As part of a general public health campaign, water supplies were cleaned up, lead and mercury were removed from consumer products, and women were urged to undergo regular screenings for breast cancer. Government-run health care insurance plans were available, but Jews were denied coverage starting in 1933. That same year, Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat government-insured patients. In 1937 Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat non-Jewish patients, and in 1938 their right to practice medicine was removed entirely. Medical experiments, many of them unscientific, were performed on concentration camp inmates beginning in 1941. In summer 1942, Himmler created the Institute for Applied Research in Defense Science to conduct experiments such as testing how long people could survive in ice-cold water, determining the effects of extreme decompression, and other experiments thought to have military applications. Many of the victims died. The most notorious doctor to perform medical experiments was SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Dr. Josef Mengele, camp doctor at Auschwitz. He took a special interest in twins, as he hoped his research would one day allow the master race to be mass-produced. Many of his victims died or were intentionally killed. Concentration camp inmates were made available for purchase by pharmaceutical companies for drug testing and other experiments. Role of women and family Women were a cornerstone of Nazi social policy. The Nazis opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it was the creation of Jewish intellectuals, and instead advocated a patriarchal society in which the German woman would recognize that her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." Soon after the seizure of power, feminist groups were shut down or incorporated into the National Socialist Women's League. This organization coordinated groups throughout the country to promote motherhood and household activities. Courses were offered on childrearing, sewing, and cooking. The League published the NSFrauen-Warte, the only NSDAP-approved women's magazine in Nazi Germany. Despite some propaganda aspects, it was predominantly an ordinary woman's magazine.

Women were encouraged to leave the workforce, and the creation of large families by racially suitable women was promoted through a propaganda campaign. Women received a bronze awardknown as the Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter (Cross of Honor of the German Mother)for giving birth to four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more. Large families received subsidies to help with their utilities, school fees, and household expenses. Though the measures led to increases in the birth rate, the number of families having four or more children declined by five per cent between 1935 and 1940. Removing women from the workforce did not have the intended effect of freeing up jobs for men. Women were for the most part employed as domestic servants, weavers, or in the food and drink industriesjobs that were not of interest to men. Nazi philosophy prevented large numbers of women from being hired to work in munitions factories in the build-up to the war, so foreign laborers were brought in. After the war started, slave laborers were extensively used. In January 1943 Hitler signed a decree requiring all women under the age of fifty to report for work assignments to help the war effort. Thereafter, women were funneled into agricultural and industrial jobs. By September 1944, 14.9 million women were working in munitions production. The Nazi regime discouraged women from seeking higher education. The number of women allowed to enroll in universities dropped drastically under the Nazi regime, as a law passed in April 1933 limited the number of females admitted to university to ten per cent of the number of male attendees. Female enrolment in secondary schools dropped from 437,000 in 1926 to 205,000 in 1937. The number of women enrolled in post-secondary schools dropped from 128,000 in 1933 to 51,000 in 1938. However, with the requirement that men be enlisted into the armed forces during the war, women comprised half of the enrolment in the postsecondary system by 1944. Women were expected to be strong, healthy, and vital. The sturdy peasant woman who worked the land and bore strong children was considered ideal, and athletic women were praised for being tanned from working outdoors. Organisations were created for the indoctrination of Nazi values. From 25 March 1939, membership in the Hitler Youth became compulsory for all children over the age of ten. The Jungmdelbund (Young Girls League) section of the Hitler Youth was for girls age 10 to 14, and the Bund Deutscher Mdel (BDM; League of German Girls) was for young women age 14 to 18. The BDM's activities focused on physical education, with activities such as running, long jumping, somersaulting, and tightrope walking, marching, and swimming. The Nazi regime promoted a liberal code of conduct regarding sexual matters, and was sympathetic to women who bore children out of wedlock.[336] Promiscuity increased as the war progressed, with unmarried soldiers often intimately involved with several women simultaneously. The same was the case for married women, who liaised with soldiers, civilians,

or slave laborers. Sex was sometimes used as a commodity to obtain, for example, better work from a foreign laborer. Pamphlets enjoined German women to avoid sexual intercourse with foreign workers as a danger to their blood. With Hitler's approval, Himmler intended that the new society of the Nazi regime should destigmatize illegitimate births, particularly of children fathered by members of the SS, who were vetted for racial purity. His hope was that each SS family would have between four and six children. The Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) association, founded by Himmler in 1935, created a series of maternity homes where single mothers could be accommodated during their pregnancies. Both parents were examined for racial suitability before acceptance. The resulting children were often adopted into SS families. The homes were also made available to the wives of members of the SS and the NSDAP, who quickly filled over half the available spots. Existing laws banning abortion except for medical reasons were strictly enforced by the Nazi regime. The number of abortions declined from 35,000 per year at the start of the 1930s to fewer than 2,000 per year at the end of the decade. In 1935 a law was passed allowing abortions for eugenics reasons. Environmentalism: Nazi society had elements supportive of animal rights, and many people were fond of zoos and wildlife. Several Nazis were environmentalists. Himmler made efforts to ban the hunting of animals, and Goring was an animal lover and conservationist. The government took several measures to ensure the protection of animals and the environment. In 1933 the Nazis enacted a stringent animal-protection law that had an impact on what was allowed for medical research. But the law only loosely enforced. In spite of a ban on vivisection, the Ministry of the Interior readily handed out permits for experiments on animals. The current animal welfare laws in Germany are adapted from laws introduced by the National Socialist regime. The Reich Forestry Office, under Goring, enforced regulations that required foresters to plant a wide variety of trees to ensure suitable habitat for wildlife. A new Reich Animal Protection Act became law in 1933. Drawing in part on existing ideas and legislation, the regime enacted the Reich Nature Protection Act in 1935 to protect the natural landscape from excessive economic development. The legislation provided a framework for long-range planning regarding the use of natural areas and allowed for the expropriation of privately owned land to create nature preserves. Perfunctory efforts were made to curb air pollution, but little enforcement of existing legislation was undertaken once the war began. Church and state:

Hitler extended his rationalizations into a religious doctrine supported by his criticism of traditional Roman Catholicism. In particular and closely related to Positive Christianity, he objected to Catholicism because it was not the religion of an exclusive race and its culture. Simultaneously, the Nazis integrated to Nazism the community elements of Lutheranism, from its organic pagan past. Hitlerian theology integrated militarism by proposing that his was a true, master-religion, because it would create mastery by avoiding comforting lies. About religions that preached love, tolerance, and equality in contravention to the facts, Hitler said they were false, slave religions, and that the man who recognized said truths was a natural leader, whilst deniers were natural slaves; hence, slaves, especially the intelligent, continually hindered their masters with false religions. Although the National Socialist leaders and dogmas were basically, uncompromisingly antireligious, Nazi Germany usually did not directly attack the Churches, the exceptions being clerics who refused accommodation with the Nazi rgime. Martin Bormann, a prominent Nazi official, said: "Priests will be paid by us and, as a result, they will preach what we want. If we find a priest acting otherwise, short work is to be made of him. The task of the priest consists in keeping the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted." To demoralize Poland, the Nazis killed almost 16 per cent of the Polish Catholic clergy; 13 of 38 Bishops were sent to concentration camps. These actions, and the closing of churches, seminaries and other religious institutions, almost succeeded in exterminating the Polish clergy. In pro-Nazi countries, fascist anti-clericalism was unofficial, and was usually manifested in the arrests of select clergy via false charges of immorality, and secret harassment by Gestapo and SD agents provocateur. A notable case was that of Dietrich Bonheoffer, the Lutheran Pastor and theologian who fought Nazism in the German Resistance. Nonetheless, the Nazis often used the Church to justify their politics, by using Christian symbols as Reich symbols, and, in other cases, replacing Christian symbols with Reich symbols, Nazism thus conflated Church and State as an ultra-nationalist political entity the Nazi Germany embodied in the motto Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fhrer (One People, One Empire, One Leader). Education: Anti-Semitic legislation passed in 1933 led to the removal all of Jewish teachers, professors, and officials from the education system. Politically undesirable teachers such as socialists also lost their jobs. Most teachers were required to belong to the Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (National Socialist Teachers League; NSLB), and university professors were required to join the National Socialist Association of University Lecturers. Teachers had to take an oath of loyalty and obedience to Hitler, and those who failed to show sufficient conformity to party ideals were often reported by students or fellow teachers and dismissed. Lack of funding for salaries led to many teachers leaving the profession. The average class size increased from 37 in 1927 to 43 in 1938 due to the resulting teacher shortage.

Frequent and often contradictory directives were issued by Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, Bernhard Rust of the Reichserziehungsministerium (Ministry of Education), and various other agencies regarding content of lessons and acceptable textbooks for use in primary and secondary schools. Books deemed unacceptable to the regime were removed from school libraries. Indoctrination in National Socialist thought was made compulsory in January 1934. Students selected as future members of the party elite were indoctrinated from the age of 12 at Adolf Hitler Schools for primary education and National Political Institutes of Education for secondary education. Detailed National Socialist indoctrination of future holders elite military rank was undertaken at Order Castles. Primary and secondary education focused on racial biology, population policy, culture, geography, and especially physical fitness. The curriculum in most subjects, including biology, geography, and even arithmetic, was altered to change the focus to race. Military education became the central component of physical education, and education in physics was oriented toward subjects with military applications, such as ballistics and aerodynamics. Students were required to watch all films prepared by the school division of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. At universities, appointments to top posts were the subject of power struggles between the education ministry, the university boards, and the National Socialist German Students' League. In spite of pressure from the League and various government ministries, most university professors did not make changes to their lectures or syllabus during the Nazi period. This was especially true of universities located in predominately Catholic regions. Enrolment at German universities declined from 104,000 students in 1931 to 41,000 in 1939. But enrolment in medical schools rose sharply; Jewish doctors had been forced to leave the profession, so medical graduates had good job prospects. From 1934, university students were required to attend frequent and time-consuming military training sessions run by the SA. First-year students also had to serve six months in a labor camp for the Reichsarbeitsdienst (National Labor Service); an additional ten weeks service was required of second-year students. Opposition to homosexuality: In late February 1933, as the moderating influence of Ernst Rohm the homosexual leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA) diminished, the Nazi Party purged the homophile clubs, where gay, lesbian and bisexual Berliners congregated. It also outlawed academic and pornographic sexual publications. In March 1933, Kurt Hiller, the organizer of Magnus Hirschfields Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sex Research), was imprisoned to a concentration camp. On 6 May 1933, Hitler Youth members attacked the Institute of Sex Research and publicly incinerated its library and archives in the streets. They destroyed some 20,000 books and journals, as well as some 5,000 images. They also seized the Institutes ros ters of gay, lesbian,

bisexual, and transgender patients. Initially, Hitler had protected Rohm from Nazis who considered his homosexuality a violation of the Partys anti-homosexual policy. When Rohm proved to be a politically-viable challenger to Hitler's leadership of the Nazi Party, Hitler ordered that he be assassinated in 1934, along with other Nazi political opponents. This purge became known as the Night of the Long Knives. To suppress outrage in the SA ranks, the Nazi leaders justified Rohms killing on the basis that he was homosexual. Schutzstaffel (SS) Chief Heinrich Himmler, initially a supporter of Rohm, defended him against charges of homosexuality, arguing they were the fabrications of a Jewish character assassination conspiracy. After the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler promoted Himmler, who then zealously suppressed homosexuality, saying: "We must exterminate these people root and branch ... the homosexual must be eliminated. In 1936, Himmler established the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. The Nazis officially declared that homosexuality was contrary to "wholesome popular sentiment", identifying gay men as "defilers of German blood". The Nazi rgime incarcerated some 100,000 homosexuals during the 1930s. As concentration camp prisoners, homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangle badges. Nazi anti-homosexual laws did not persecute lesbians much because the Nazis considered female homosexuals easier to persuade or to compel to conformity with the heterosexual mores of patriarchy. Nonetheless, the Nazis considered lesbians to be a cultural threat to family values, and legally identified them as anti-social. Concentration camp prisoners who were lesbian were forced to wear black triangle badges. Working class and middle class appeal: In 1922, to ensure German public perception of the Nazi Party as politically unique, Adolf Hitler discredited other nationalist and racialist political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower- and working-class young people: The racialists were not capable of drawing the practical conclusions from correct theoretical judgments, 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 honorable, but fantastically nave men of learning, professors, district counselors, schoolmasters, and lawyers in short a bourgeois, idealistic, and refined class. It lacked the warm breath of the nations youthful vigor. Despite many working-class supporters and members, the appeal of the Nazi Party to the working class was neither true nor effective, because its politics mostly appealed to the middleclass, as a stabilizing, pro-business political party, not a revolutionary workers party. Moreover, the financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism, thus the great percentage of declared middle-class support for the Nazis. In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realized their

socialist policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless later recruited to the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (SA Storm Detachment). Culture: The regime promoted the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, a national German ethnic community. The goal was to build a classless society based on racial purity and the perceived need to prepare for warfare, conquest, and a struggle against Marxism. The German Labour Front founded the Kraft durch Freude (KdF; Strength Through Joy) organisation in 1933. In addition to taking control of tens of thousands of previously privately run recreational clubs, it offered highly regimented holidays and entertainment experiences such as cruises, vacation destinations, and concerts. The Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture) was organised under the control of the Propaganda Ministry in September 1933. Sub-chambers were set up to control various aspects of cultural life, such as films, radio, newspapers, fine arts, music, live theatre, and literature. All members of these professions were required to join their respective organisation. Jews and people considered politically unreliable were prevented from working in the arts, and many emigrated. Books and scripts had to be approved by the Propaganda Ministry prior to publication. Standards deteriorated as the regime sought to use cultural outlets exclusively as propaganda media. Radio became very popular in Germany during the 1930s, with over 70 per cent of households owning a receiver by 1939, more than any other country. Radio station staffs were purged of leftists and others deemed undesirable by the summer of 1933. Propaganda and speeches were typical radio fare immediately after the seizure of power, but as time went on Goebbels insisted that more music be played so that people would not turn to foreign broadcasters for entertainment. As with other media, newspapers were controlled by the state, with the Reich Press Chamber shutting down or buying newspapers and publishing houses. By 1939 over two-thirds of the newspapers and magazines were directly owned by the Propaganda Ministry. The NSDAP daily newspaper, the Vlkischer Beobachter (Ethnic Observer), was edited by Alfred Rosenberg, author of The Myth of the Twentieth Century, a book of racial theories espousing Nordic superiority. Although Goebbels tried to insist that all newspapers in Germany should publish content uniformly favorable to the regime, publishers still managed to include veiled criticism, for example by editorializing about dictatorships in ancient Rome or Greece. Newspaper readership plummeted, partly because of the decreased quality of the content, and partly because of the surge in popularity of radio. Authors of books left the country in droves, and some wrote material highly critical of the regime while in exile. Goebbels recommended that

the remaining authors should concentrate on books themed on Germanic myths and the concept of blood and soil. By the end of 1933 over a thousand books, most of them by Jewish authors or featuring Jewish characters, had been banned by the Nazi regime. Hitler took a personal interest in architecture, and worked closely with state architects Paul Troost and Albert Speer to create public buildings in a neoclassical style based on Roman architecture.[365][366] Speer constructed imposing structures such as the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and a new Reich Chancellery building in Berlin.[367] Hitler's plans for rebuilding Berlin included a gigantic dome based on the Pantheon in Rome and a triumphal arch more than double the height of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Neither of these structures was ever built. Hitler's opinion was that abstract, Dadaist, expressionist, and modern art were decadent, an opinion that became the basis for policy. Many art museum directors lost their posts in 1933 and were replaced by party members. Some 6,500 modern works of art were removed from museums and replaced with works chosen by a Nazi jury. Exhibitions of the rejected pieces, under titles such as "Decadence in Art", were launched in sixteen different cities by 1935. The Degenerate Art Exhibition, organized by Goebbels, ran in Munich from July to November 1937. The exhibition proved wildly popular, attracting over two million visitors. Composer Richard Strauss was appointed president of the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) on its founding in November 1933. As was the case with other art forms, the Nazis ostracized musicians who were not deemed racially acceptable, and for the most part did not approve of music that was too modern or atonal. Jazz music was singled out as being especially inappropriate, and foreign musicians of this genre left the country or were expelled. Hitler favored the music of Richard Wagner, especially pieces based on Germanic myths and heroic stories, and attended the Bayreuth Festival each year from 1933. Movies were popular in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, with admissions of over a billion people in 1942, 1943, and 1944. By 1934 German regulations restricting currency exports made it impossible for American film makers to take their profits back to America, so the major film studios closed their German branches. Exports of German films plummeted, as their heavily anti-Semitic content made them impossible to show in other countries. The two largest film companies, Universal Film AG and Tobis, were purchased by the Propaganda Ministry, which by 1939 was producing most German films. The productions were not always overtly propagandistic, but generally had a political subtext and followed party lines regarding themes and content. Scripts were pre-censored. Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935), documenting the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, and Olympia (1938), covering the 1936 Summer Olympics, pioneered techniques of camera

movement and editing that influenced later films. New techniques such as telephoto lenses and cameras mounted on tracks were employed. Both films remain controversial, as their aesthetic merit is inseparable from their propagandizing of national socialist ideals. Militarism: Nazi militarism was based upon the belief that great nations grow from military power, and maintain order in the world. The Nazi Party exploited irredentist and revanchist sentiments, and cultural aversions to aspects of Modernism, (despite the Reich embracing modernism by their admiration for engine power), thus conflating nationalism and militarism into the ultranationalism necessary to establishing Grodeutschland. Anti-communism: After Benito Mussolinis National Fascist Party assumed power of the Italian gove rnment in 1922, Italian Fascism became a strong force against Marxist communism. Historians Ian Kershaw and Joachim Fest argue that in post-World War I Germany, the Nazis were one of many nationalist and fascistic political parties contending for the leadership of Germanys anticommunist movement, and of the German state. During the late 1930s and the 1940s, several other anti-communist regimes and groups supported Nazism: the Falange in Spain; the Vichy regime and the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (Wehrmacht Infantry Regiment 638) in France; and the Cliveden set, Lord Halifax, and associates of Neville Chamberlain in Britain. World War II: The Nazis were determined to retrieve the territories that Germany ceded as per the Treaty of Versailles, to establish Grodeutschland (Greater Germany). This included the Free City of Danzig, to which Poland had limited rights, as per the treaty. When diplomacy failed to secure Danzig, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR) signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939. In 1939, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany in response its attack on Poland. Simultaneously, the USSR attacked Poland from the east. Poland was disestablished, and the war among Germany, France and the UK continued. In 1940, Nazi Germany attacked and defeated the French and British continental forces in France, then occupied the country. The Battle of Britain (JulyOctober 1940) followed and stalled, so Germany then attacked east, believing that when the USSR was vanquished, the UK would sue for peace with Germany. In 1941, Germany and its Axis allies attacked the USSR with Operation Barbarossa (22 June5 December 1941). Despite initial successes, the Red Army repelled them. After the Battle of Stalingrad (17 July 19422 February 1943), the USSR counterattacked, repelled the Axis invaders from Russia, then progressed west to Germany and

vanquished Nazi Germany at the Battle of Berlin (16 April2 May 1945). On 6 June 1944, the AngloAmerican Normandy Invasion landed Allied armies in France, heading east to meet the Red Army. Denazification: Denazification in Germany was attempted through a series of directives issued by the Allied Control Council, seated in Berlin, beginning in January 1946. "Denazification directives" identified specific people and groups and outlined judicial procedures and guidelines for handling them. Though all the occupying forces had agreed on the initiative, the methods used for denazification and the intensity with which they were applied differed between the occupation zones. Denazification also refers to the removal of the physical symbols of the Nazi regime. For example, in 1957 the German government re-issued World War II Iron Cross medals without the swastika in the center. About 8.5 million Germans, or 10% of the population, had been members of the Nazi Party. Nazi-related organizations also had huge memberships, such as the German Labour Front (25 million), the National Socialists People's Welfare organization (17 million), the League of German Women, Hitler Youth, the Doctors' League, and others. It was through the Party and these organizations that the Nazi state was run, involving as many as 45 million Germans in total. In addition, Nazism found significant support among industrialists, who produced weapons or used slave labour, and large landowners, especially the Junkers in Prussia. Denazification after the surrender of Germany was thus an enormous undertaking, fraught with many difficulties. The first difficulty was the enormous number of Germans who might have to be first investigated, and then penalized if found to have supported the Nazi state to an unacceptable degree. In the early months of denazification there was a great will, especially among the Americans, to be utterly thorough, to investigate everyone and hold every supporter of Nazism to account; however, it turned out that the numbers simply made that goal impractical. It soon became evident, too, that pursuing denazification too scrupulously would make it impossible to create a functioning, democratic society in Germany, one that would be able to support itself economically and not become a burden on the victorious nations. Enforcing the strictest sanctions against lesser offenders would prevent too many talented people from participating in the reconstruction process. The Morgenthau Plan had recommended that the Allies create a post-war Germany with all its industrial capacity destroyed, reduced to a level of subsistence farming; however, that plan was soon abandoned as unrealistic and too likely, because of its punitiveness, to give rise to another round of German anger and aggressiveness. As time went

on, another consideration that moderated the denazification effort in the West was the concern to keep enough good will of the German population to prevent the growth of communism. The denazification process was often completely disregarded by both the Soviets and the Western powers for German rocket scientists and other technical experts, who were taken out of Germany to work on projects in the victor's own country or simply seized in order to prevent the other side from taking them. The U.S. sent 785 scientists and engineers back to America, some of whom formed the backbone of the U.S. space program. In the case of the top-ranking Nazis, such as Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Streicher, and Speer, the initial plan was to simply arrest them and shoot them, but that course of action was replaced by putting them on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials in order to publicize their crimes while demonstrating that the trials and the sentences were just, especially to the German people. However, the legal foundations of the trials were sometimes questioned, and the German people were not entirely convinced that the trials were anything more than "victors' justice" Many refugees from Nazism were Germans and Austrians, and some had fought for Britain in the Second World War. Some were transferred into the Intelligence Corps and sent back to Germany and Austria in British uniform. However, German-speakers were small in number in the British zone, which was hampered by the language deficit. The Americans were able to bring a larger number of German-speakers to the task of working in the Allied Military Government, although many were poorly trained. They were assigned to all aspects of military administration, the interrogation of POWs, collecting evidence for the War Crimes Investigation Unit and the search for war criminals. The Allied powers organized war crimes trials, beginning with the Nuremberg Trials, held from November 1945 to October 1946, of 23 top Nazi officials. They were charged with four counts conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of international laws governing warfare. All but three of the defendants were found guilty; twelve were sentenced to death. The victorious Allies outlawed the NSDAP and its subsidiary organizations. The display or use of Nazi symbolism such as flags, swastikas, or greetings, is illegal in Germany and Austria. Nazi ideology and the actions taken by the regime are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral. Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust have become symbols of evil in the modern world. Interest in Nazi Germany continues in the media and the academic world. Historian Sir Richard J. Evans remarks that the era "exerts an almost universal appeal because its murderous racism stands as a warning to the whole of humanity."

The Nazi era continues to inform how Germans view themselves and their country. Virtually every family suffered losses during the war or has a story to tell. For many years Germans kept quiet about their experiences and felt a sense of communal guilt, even if they were not directly involved in war crimes. Once study of Nazi Germany was introduced into the school curriculum starting in the 1970s, people began researching the experiences of their family members. Study of the era and a willingness to critically examine its mistakes has led to the development of a strong democracy in today's Germany, but with lingering undercurrents of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi thought. References: http://www.nazism.net/about/ideological_theory/ Hitler and the Nazis: A History in Documents by David F. Crew http://www.scribd.com/doc/127922459/world-war-2 http://www.scribd.com/doc/36003380/nazism http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/648813/World-War-II/53552/Invasion-of-theSoviet-Union-1941 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany