Support Of The German People example essay topic

Nazism, ideological or not This is a very important question when looking into the rise of Hitler and how he used his so-called ideologies to win over the support of the German people. The dictionary definition of the word Ideology is Ideas that form the basis of a political or economic theory, from this we should be able to weigh the evidence to see if the Nazis ideas about political and economic system form an ideology. The Nazis did not fit the criteria for being ideological; they were contradictory and hypocritical. The Nazis coagulated the ideas and theories of philosophers, musicians and scientists and produced them in a way that appealed to the masses this is what made the Nazi party believable and supportable.

Hitler presented to the masses a bombardment of political and ideological ideas, which seemed to take into account every individual and personal opinion of the average and indeed middle class German. The nationalistic component to Nazism appealed to every German, the fact that they were superior and stronger than other nations appealed to the masses and the apparent coherent way in which Hitler presented these ideas made it more believable than ridiculous. Firstly it is necessary to look at what Hitler and indeed the NSAP wanted for Germany. In a programme, which the German Workers Party published on 24th February 1920 it states the beliefs and ideas of the party, it was co-written by Hitler along with Anton Drexler, the leader of the party at that time.

Reading through this document it is clear that the 25 point demands of the party were very contradictory. For example point 2 states that We demand equality of right for the German People in its dealings with other nations, and the abolition of the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St Germain This would indirectly appeal to German Generals as the down sizing of the army caused the dwindling power and server job losses in Germany. The Generals would be able to reassert themselves into the military positions that they once held and take advantage of the independent states that once belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. In point 22 however it says We demand the abolition of the professional army and its replacement by a peoples army. Obviously this is alienating the Generals, as the original autocratic and militant regime of the army would be abolished for a new peoples army, which is very socialistic and partly communistic. From this we can see that Hitler was very contradictory, it is evident that Hitler wanted to whip up the support of the people but not just certain people he wanted the whole support of the nation, to do this he had to be hypocritical and contradictory.

In Hitlers book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), 1925 he states that Politics is the art of using mens weaknesses for ones ends. This clearly shows Hitlers intentions on how to get the support of the German people, by appealing to every single German regardless of social standing. From the 25-point programme I have picked out the four predominant beliefs of the party they are racism, socialism, nationalism and anti-democracy I will go onto see how these became the ideologies of the Nazi party. Hitlers National Socialists believed heavily in the November Criminals and Stab in the Back theories.

Hitler used this against the government as propaganda to whip up support for his own party. He believed that the weimar republic had humiliated Germany and had put shame on the German people. Hitlers ideas were built on his concept of race. He believed that humanity consisted of a graduated hierarchy of races and that life was no more than the survival of the fittest. He argued that Social Darwinism necessitated a struggle between races, just as animals fought for food and territory in the wild. Furthermore, he considered it vital to maintain racial purity, so that the blood of the weak would not undermine the strong.

It was a crude philosophy, which appears even more simplistic when Hitlers analysis of the races is considered. The Herrenvolk (master race) was the Aryan race, made up of peoples of Northern Europe and epitomized by the Germans. It was the task of the Aryan to remain pure and to subjugate the inferior races. At the lower end of his racial pyramid Hitler placed the Negroes, the Slavs, the Gypsies and, the particular focus of his hatred, the Jews. Hitlers anti-Semitism was violent and irrational. The Jew became the universal scapegoat for the nazis, responsible for all the problems of Germany past and present.

Hitler saw the Jewish community as a kind of cancer within the German body politic a disease that had to be treated, as the following extract from Mein Kampf illustrates: The adulteration of the blood and racial deterioration conditioned thereby are the only causes that account for the decline of ancient civilisations: for it is never by war that nations are ruined, but by the loss of their powers of resistance, which are exclusively a characteristic of pure racial blood. A number of points in the 1920 programme demanded socialist reforms, and for a long time there existed a faction within the party which emphasised the anti-capitalist aspect of Nazism. Hitler accepted these points in the early years because he recognised their popular appeal, but he himself never showed any real commitment to such ideas, and they were to be dropped after he came to power. What Hitler did promote was the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft (peoples community). This remained the vaguest element of the Nazi ideology, and is therefore difficult to define precisely. It meant working together for the benefit of the nation; the provision of jobs and social benefits; and the encouragement of German values.

Such a system could of course only benefit those who belonged to the German Volk and who willingly accepted the loss of individual freedoms in an authoritarian system. In Hitlers opinion there was no realistic alternative to strong dictatorial government. Ever since his years in Vienna he had viewed parliamentary democracy as weak and ineffective. It went against the German Historical traditions of militarism and absolutism, and further more, it encouraged the development of an even greater evil, communism. More specifically, Hitler saw Weimar democracy as a betrayal. In his eyes, it was the democratic and socialist politicians of 1918 the November Criminals who had stabbed the German army in the back, by accepting the armistice and establishing the Republic.

Since then Germany had lurched from crisis to crisis. In place of democracy Hitler envisaged the creation of an all-embracing one party state that would be run on the leadership principle. (Fuhrerprinzip). Thus, the mass of individuals in society were t be subjugated for the common good, but the individual leader was to be elevated in order to rouse the nations into action, and to take the necessary decisions. The final element in Nazi ideology was an aggressive nationalism, which developed out of the particular circumstances of Germany recent history. The armistice of 1918 and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles had to be overturned and the lost territories had to be restored to Germany.

But Hitler's nationalism called for more than a mere restoration of the 1914 frontiers. It meant the creation of an empire (Reich) to include all those members of the German Volk who lived beyond the frontiers of the Kaisers Germany. The Austrian Germans, the Sudeten Germans, the German communities along the Baltic coast, all were to be included within the borders of Germany... Yet Hitlers nationalist aims did not end there.

He dreamed of a Greater Germany, a superpower capable of competing with the British Empire and the United States. Such an objective could be achieved only by territorial expansion on a grand scale. This was the basis of Hitlers demand for Lerberndtaum (living space) 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 the New Order in eastern Europe also held one other great attraction; ; namely it would involve the destruction of Russia, the centre of world communism. As he argued in Mein Kampf: the German people must be assured the territorial area which is necessary for it to exist on earth People of the same blood should be in the same Reich.

The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have brought all their children together in one state. To descirbe Hitlers thinking as an ideology is flattery. It lacked coherence and was intellectually superficial and simplistic. It wasnt even a rational system of thought. It was merely a collection of ideas not cleverly pieced together. Although the combination was unique, it was not in any positive sense origional.

Every aspect of Hitlers thinking was to be found in the nationalist and racist writings of the 19th century. His nationalism was generated in Germany in the years between Prussia's struggle against Napoli an and the unification of 1871. His idea of an all German Reich was a simple repition of the demands for the Greater Germany made by those German nationalists who criticised Bismarck's limited unification. Even the imperialism of Lebensraum had already found expression in the programme of Germanization supported by those writers who saw the German racer as some how superior. This growing support for the Volk had also gone hand in hand with the development of racist ideas, and in particular of anti-Semitism. Thus, even before Hitler and other leading Nazis were born, the core of what would become Nazism was already current in political circles.