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5 key parts of Nazi Socialism - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Furthermore, he considered it vital to maintain racial purity, so that the blood of the weak would not undermine the strong.
      - (Social Darwinism is a philosiphy that portrays the world as a "struggle" between people, races and nations. Hitler viewed war as the highest form of "struggle" and was deeply influenced by the theory of eolution based on natural selection)
  - - - At the lower end of his racial pyramid Hitler placed the Slavs, gypsies, negroes and the particular focus of his hatred, the Jews.
  - - - There had emerged in Germany, in the course of the nineteenth century, a more clearly defined anti-Semitism based on racism and national resentment. By 1900 a number of specifically anti - Semitic völkisch political parties were winning seats in the Reichstag and, although they were comparatively few, their success shows that anti-Semitic ideas were becoming more prevalent and generally more respectable.
- - - - In place of democracy Hitler wanted an all-embracing one-party state that would be run on the Führerprinzip, which rejected representative government and liberal values. Thus, the masses in society were to be controlled for the common good, but an individual leader was to be chosen in order to rouse the nation into action, and to take the necessary decisions.
- - - - Yet, Hitler's nationalist aims did not end there. He dreamed of a Greater Germany, a superpower, capable of competing with the British Empire and the USA, Such an objective could be achieved only by territorial expansion on a grand scale. This was the basis of Hitler's demand for Lebensraum for Germany Only by the conquest of Poland, the Ukraine and Russia could Germany obtain the raw materials, cheap labour and food supplies so necessary for continental supremacy.
        
        The creation of his "New Order" in eastern Europe also held one other great attraction : namely, the destruction of the USSR, the centre of world communism .
- - - - What Hitler and Goebbels later began to promote was the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community). This remained the vaguest element of the Nazi ideology, and is therefore difficult to define precisely. First, it was intended to overcome the old differences of class, religion and politics.
        
        But secondly, it aimed to bring about a new collective national identity by encouraging people to work together for the benefit of the nation and by promoting "German values". Such a system could of course benefit only those who racially belonged to the German Volk and who willingly accepted the loss individual freedoms in an authoritarian system.
    - - profit sharing in large industrial enterprises
      - the extensive development of insurance for old age
      - the nationalisation of all businesses .
- - - - Nazism lacked coherence and was intellectually superficial and simplistic It was not genuinely a rational system of thought, just a random collection of ideas. It was not in any positive sense original - every aspect of Hitler's thinking was to be found in the nationalist and racial writings of the nineteenth century.
        
        Thus, even before Hitler and other leading Nazis were born, the core of what would become Nazism was already current in political circles. It was to be found in the cheap and vulgar pamphlets sold to the masses in the large cities, in the political programme of respectable pressure groups, such as the Pan-German League; within the corridors of Germany's great universities; and in the creative works of certain cultural figures , such as the composer Richard Wagner.
        
        Despite these links, one must avoid labelling Nazi ideology as the logical result of German intellectual thinking. It is all too easy to emphasise those elements that prove the linkage theory, while ignoring the host of other evidence that points to entirely different views. For example the strong socialist tradition in Germany. .
        
        Moreover, it is well to remember that a number of countries (especially Britain and France) also witnessed the circulation of very similar ideas at this time. In that sense, nationalism and racism were an outgrowth of nineteenth-century European history. Nazi ideology may not have been original, but it should not therefore be assumed that it was an inevitable result of Germany's past
        
        . Hitler's nationalism was an outgrowth of the fervour generated in the years leading up to Germany's unification of 1871.
        
        Even the imperialism of Lebensraum had already found expression in the programme of Germanisation supported by those writers who saw the German race as somehow superior.
        
        The growing veneration for the Volk had gone hand-in-hand with the development of racist ideas, and in particular of anti-Semitism
        
        Hitler's idea of an all-German Reich was a simple repetition of the demands for the 'Greater Germany' made by those German nationalists who criticised the limits of the 1871 unification.