The nazi's believed that support for the party should be based more on faith in, and loyalty to, the leader, than on logical thought - Therefore the nazi programme read "Adolf Hitler" or "Germany".
NATIONAL SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY AND IDEOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
- The nazi’s believed that support for the party should be based more on faith in, and loyalty to, the leader, than on logical thought. Therefore the nazi programme read “Adolf Hitler” or “Germany”
- Leading writer of nazi ideology was Alfred Rosenberg. In 1925 he published his book, The Myth of the twentieth century in which he restated the racial doctrines developed in mein kampf about the superiority of the Aryan race and denounced the Jews as parasites. He also attacked freemasonry, Christianity & communism.
- In 1934, Rosenberg was made responsible for training all nazi party members in national socialist ideology.
THE GERMAN VOLK & THE NEED FOR RACIAL PURITY
- Racially pure national community – VOLKGEMEINSCHAFT based on the principle of ‘common good before the good of the individual’.
- Creation of a racial state where membership would be open only to pure Germans in a one people, one empire – ‘ein volk, ein Reich.’
- Meant recovery of Reich’s territories and people lost in the treaty of Versailles. He wanted to take in all Germans nationals, including those of Austria, Czechoslovakia & Poland. Mein Kampf – ‘people of the same blood should be in the same Reich.’ Attractive policy for many especially the army as they resented the treaty of Versailles & wanted the restoration of German greatness & empire. He remained fixed to this aspect of his ideology even though the creation of a single Reich threatened the stability of central & central Eastern Europe.
- Hitler believed in the emergence of a new social order consisting of 4 classes. He goes on to say that existing divisions caused by class, occupation, religion or region were to be overcome by the stronger ties of blood & race to form a classless society.
- Hitler wanted the national community to be based on the peasantry whom he regarded to be racially the purest element & was critical of industrial society as the Jews were making money out of it. However, his plans to recover the lost German lands and people required rearmament & industrial production and this conflicted with the preservation of a pre-industrial peasant class. Furthermore, as a political realist, Hitler recognized that he needed to maintain the support of the elites, whose landowning interests were threatened by Nazi support of the peasantry.
