Evaluation of Nazi Ideology

dictatorship. By 1939 when war broke out, Hitler had begun his racial purifying of Germany through a policy of mass gassings, over work or medical experiments. Many Poles, Jews and Czechs were killed. In 1941, Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg as Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories. In this position and under the authority of Hitler, Rosenberg promoted the Germanisation of Eastern peoples under inhumane conditions such as supervised camp labor, the rounding up of workers to be sent to Germany, where they would eventually die and the extermination of Jews. Another close ally of Hitler was Himmler. He introduced a Lebensborn program of the selective breeding of children from Aryan and racially pure parents from countries such as Poland, Norway, France, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia for adoption by German families. In 1935, Hitler’s racialism was legalized in the Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship. It stated that citizenship was to be granted to ‘all subjects of German or kindred blood’ but not to any Jews or Gypsies. Another policy, which Hitler concentrated on profoundly and some say was the basis of all his plans during his dictatorship, was Anti-Semitism. Nazis believed that all Jews were parasites and that they corrupted nations and in turn were responsible for all the evils that had plagued Germany since its 1917 defeat. Hitler thought that all Jews were in on a plan to corrupt the Aryan race and that they had to be stopped. Whether these reasons were actually the belief of the Nazis or merely a justification for the annexation of them remains to be seen but what ever the case the Pogrom was introduced to stamp them out. A policy of organized destruction and massacre, the pogrom was used from 1938 and consisted of persecution and violence towards all Jews, it reached its peak in 1942 when any Jew found was automatically sent to death camps in the east. The concept of Lebensraum was addressed heavily in Hitler’s Mein Kampf where he referred to Germany as being a ‘people without space’. This meant that he believed Germany did not occupy enough land to support its population. The obvious solution to this problem was birth control but Hitler was quick to reject this idea, as he believed that it would weaken the German race. Instead he decided that the best solution was to acquire territory in neighboring countries. However, any movement to seize colonies would arouse the hostility of Britain, so he decided to seize land from Russia and Eastern Europe. This move would ultimately cause a war between Russia and Germany but this is exactly what Hitler wanted. Although this may sound totally ludicrous and some may say portrays Hitler as a madman, his way of thinking was actually very coherent and methodical. There would be no better way to establish the superiority of Germany and the Aryan race, to fight back against communism and Marxism and to knock back the Jewish conspiracy than to win a war. Between 1933 and 1937, Hitler was securing his dictatorship within Germany against all opposition and parties. The SA had played a major part in achieving Hitler power but now this power was threatened, as they wanted another revolution. A second revolution would disrupt the regime while Hitler was still establishing his power, but Rohm, the leader of the SA’s, was an even bigger problem as he posed a considerable threat on Hitler’s power, increasing the need for the SA’s to be kept as a minor party. The ‘Night of the Long Knives’ was what Hitler needed for the SA’s to deteriorate and lose their significance and to eventually be replaced by the SS. Although Hitler drew many of the elites away from the weak Weimar parties in favor of National Socialism, all the socialist ideas, which he had proposed, were never in actual fact carried out. The elites believed that they could suppress Hitler and become the effective rulers of Germany. This was never to be. Hitler knew how important the support of the elites was and resorted to making promises he could not keep. In this aspect Hitler was very inconsistent in his dictatorship. A considerable inconsistency that Hitler made was written in Mein Kampf. He suggested that Britain could be an ally of Germany since she helped them negotiate the removal of France from the Ruhr. This is a big contradiction as only a matter of years later Germany and Britain were opponents in WWII. In conclusion I would say that Nazi ideology was mostly coherent and consistent. Despite not carrying out any socialist ideas, renaming his party the NSDAP and the theory that Britain could be an ally of Germanys, the main aspects of Nazi ideology were consistent even if some of them were slightly far fetched. Take the idea of an Aryan race occupying Germany. On Heinz-sight this idea would never have happened but the Nazi’s never deterred from this vision. The Lebensraum concept was an idea that some would say was inhumane, as in effect Hitler was starting a war but the idea of establishing Germany and the Aryan race in the world and fighting back against communism, Marxism and the Jews was all very coherent as it was like shooting two birds with one stone. Although during the 1920’s Anti-Semitism did not feature heavily with the Nazi’s, the basic principle of the annihilation of all Jews was still there. It has also been noted that there is a similarity between the views recorded by Hitler in the 1920’s when he was failing as a politician and the events that occurred more than ten years later. In addition to this consistency, the widespread rejection of Hitler’s Weltanschauung never resulted in him losing sight of his central beliefs, making Nazi ideology throughout the years generally consistent and coherent.