NATIONAL SOCIALISM

NATIONAL SOCIALISM (for short, Nazism), a movement in Germany patterned after fascism, which grew under adolf hitler 's leadership and ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. The Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, founded on Jan. 5, 1919, changed its name in the summer of 1920 to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) and Hitler, who had been the seventh member of the original party, soon became its undisputed leader (Fuehrer). From then on, the history of National Socialism became virtually identical with Hitler's career. As an ideology, National Socialism was a mixture of extreme nationalist, racialist ideas and a trend of populist radicalism which never formed a coherent unity. Among its major tenets were biological racialism, social Darwinism–the survival of the fittest–unrestrained antisemitism, anti-Bolshevism,   and the quest for Lebensraum–German conquest of living space to the East. It preached a folkish antisemitism, pan-Germanism and the Dolchstosslegende–stab in the back myth–that Germany would have won World War I if it had not been attacked at home by Jews and others. It built itself on the myth of blood and soil and on the notion of Germans as the master race and Germany dominating Europe. Prior to 1923 the Nazi Party was active mainly in Bavaria, where in November it attempted to overthrow the Weimar Republic in what became known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, or Hitler's Putsch. The coup was crushed and Hitler was imprisoned for a surprisingly short period of time; and it was there in Landsberg that he wrote Mein Kampf. The book became the bible of the movement, the platform of the party. Prior to 1928 it was a marginal party of virtually no significance, receiving less than 3% of the vote in 1928. Yet in the interim it organized, attracting more moderate elements along with folkish groups and a core of militant followers that it knew how and when to deploy effectively. The worldwide economic depression of 1929 and 1930 which hit Germany hard added to the dissatisfaction with the Weimar Republic and to the attraction of extremist parties. In September 1930 the Nazi seat total rose to 107 in the 608-seat Reichstag, winning some 6.4 million (18%) of the vote. They improved their performance in the elections of July 31, 1932, when they received 37.3 percent of the vote, which translated into 230 of 608 seats. Yet in the elections of November 6, 1932, the last free elections before Hitler's rise to power, the Nazis received only 33.1 percent of the vote and won 196 seats. Hitler came to power as the head of a coalition government, with conservative elements believing that once in power he would moderate his views due to the responsibilities of office and that he and his followers could be controlled. Once in power, Hitler moved swiftly against external opposition, establishing concentration camps to house political opponents of the regime, using the pretext of the Reichstag Fire of February 27, 1933, to establish rule by decree, and suspending existing guarantees, and then eliminating the remaining non-Nazi parties. By July 1933 the Nazi Party was the only party in Germany. In 1934 Hitler decided to act against his opponents within the party, eliminating SA chief Ernst Rohm and other rivals–perceived or real. On August 2, President Von Hindenburg died and Hitler was named head of state as well. After the pressures of 1933–34, the Nazis consolidated power and achieved successes at home and abroad. Unemployment was lowered and Germany was no longer isolated. Hitler's achievements in the realm of foreign policy were indeed impressive to the German people. He had reversed the shame of Versailles, returning Germany to the world stage and rearming its military. From the Nazi perspective the annexation of Austria and the entrance into the Sudentenland were triumphant. From 1938 onward Nazism became increasingly unrestrained. kristallnacht was the eruption of violence against Jews, the letting loose of controlled mob violence. Wartime was the best time to solve certain problems that could not be addressed at other times. Thus, the "euthanasia Program," an extreme expression of Social Darwinism and of applied biology, was approved in an order backdated to September 1, 1939, to give it the appearance of a wartime measure. The conquest of territories, the incorporation of lands, and the appeal to ethnic Germans living in other countries, were all expressions of Nazi ideology. Above all, so was the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," which wanted to eliminate all Jewish blood from the face of the earth and therefore remake the human species. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Broszat, German National Socialism 1919–1945 (1966), incl. bibl. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: K.D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and Effects of National Socialism (1970); G.L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (1964); idem, Nazism: A Historical and Comparative Analysis of National Socialism (1978, 20062). (Jozeph Michman (Melkman) / Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)