The Roots of Nazi Ideology and Its Analysis

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Szwilpo
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The Roots of Nazi Ideology and Its Analysis

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Post by Szwilpo » 13 Sep 2021, 06:37

A collection of works some may be interested in.


Thus Spake Germany

by W. W. Coole, M. F. Potter, 1941


https://archive.org/details/ThusSpakeGe ... 1/mode/2up
An impressive collection of quotations from representative Germans during the last two centuries indicating a trend of ideas that has led inexorably to Nazism

A separate scan, but without bookmarks:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dl ... 1/mode/2up




The War Against the West

by Aurel Kolnai, 1938



https://archive.org/details/TheWarAgainstTheWest
A scholarly analysis of the writings of the Nazi leaders and philosophers, and has used their own statements as his thesis, letting them condemn themselves out of their own mouths. He finds that there is a consistent determination to root out the religion, ideals, humanity, aspirations that have been accepted by the Western world. And to this end Christianity must go, the Jews must go, paganism must be enthroned.


Know Your Enemy

by T. H. Tetens, 1944


https://archive.org/details/know-your-enemy-1944


Published in 1944.

Does not the affirmation that there are no good or bad peoples stand in contradiction with the tragic events of our times? Just as a bad influence often will ruin a whole family, there are also nations that drift into moral decay. In Germany and Japan an ideology that we call today moral insanity has taken possession of the masses during the last few decades. This is the reason why our civilization is locked in a life and death struggle against a barbaric power-madness.

Those who want to know why Germany is as it is today, will find the answer in the unique documentation of this book.

Germany is again losing the war, as she did in 1918, and the cry for fairness for the "poot innocent German people" resounds once more, but Americans and Germans do not mean the same thing when they talk about fairness. A pan-German uses that word only when he wants something for Germany at the expense of others.

Today we have to pay a high price for our ignorance of the German mentality. Shall we have to pay for it again?

Here, a mass of lies is exposed, coldly, almost without comment. It is a critical selection, from purely German sources and the best part is that these men often set forth their own shame with a world of pathos.

After reading in amazement this self-exposure of Germany's poorly camouflaged nationalists, one hopes that these documents may find their way into many hands, especially those of the columnists and radio-commentators who fill so vital a role in forming public opinion. For, here it is proved a hundred times over, how ancient and ingrained Hitlerism is in Germany; how genuinely German is this movement which today as so often in the past has found enthusiastic rebirth; how it presents the fullest expression of the desires of the German people, and will rise again in the future.


Mein Kampf and Europe

by Robert Ensor, 1939


https://archive.org/details/mein-kampf-and-europe

Address given by Robert Ensor at Chatham House on May 4th, 1939

Very few great men of action have ever disclosed beforehand so clearly as Adolf Hitler the principles and purposes that guide their acts. Building up a mass movement almost from the bottom, he had to be exceptionally frank with his disciples from quite an early stage. After the European War he began looking very far ahead. He sought to create, not an ordinary political party which might play a give-and-take role among a lot of others, but a revolutionary party which should sweep the national board and brush all the other parties away. Nor was even that revolution the goal of his aims. He desired power not so much for its own sake as for the subsequent course of national policy upon which it would enable him to launch the German people.

He had to give them a whole new Weltanschauung, a new way of viewing the universe; a new interpretation, that is, of the meaning of life and the objects of national policy.

What I propose to attempt here is to give the briefest outline that I can contrive of his general Weltanschauung, and then in more detail show how he applies it in the field of politics and particularly in that of foreign policy.



The Third Reich's Road to War

by Frederick L. Schuman, 1934


https://archive.org/details/TheThirdRei ... War_201604

The program of eastern expansion, in the heroic tradition of the Teutonic knights, is no less deeply rooted in the movement. This has been from the beginning an obsession with Hitler and with all his leading colleagues.



501 Gems of German Thought

by William Archer, 1917


https://archive.org/details/501GemsOfGermanThought

Practically all my quotations are taken from books and pamphlets. The sole exceptions are a few extracts from pre-war newspapers, cited in Nippold's Der deutsche Chauvinismus.




Conquest and Kultur: Aims of the Germans in their Own Words

by The Committee on Public Information, 1918


https://archive.org/details/ConquestAnd ... s/mode/2up

"And they fight, not simply because they are forced to, hut because, curiously enough, they believe much of their talk. That is one of the dangers of the Germans to which the world is exposed; they really believe much of what they say."

Vernon Kellogg in Atlantic Monthly, August, 1917.


World Power Status or World Dominion? A Survey of the Literature on Hitler's 'Plan of World Dominion' (1937-1970)

Meir Michaelis, 1972



https://archive.org/details/world-power ... -/mode/2up

In 1937 Heiden warned his readers that Hitler was aiming not only at territorial expansion but at the dissolution of traditional society and the world-wide domination of an 'Aryan' elite. In the following year the warning was repeated by a man who claimed to have enjoyed Hitler's confidence: Hermann Rauschning, a former president of the Danzig Senate (I933-4) and a member of the National Socialist Party from 193I to I935. Rauschning agreed with Heiden that the essence of National Socialism was an 'irrational urge ' to expand and dominate; but he went much further in emphasizing the negative and destructive character of the movement, defining it as a revolution of 'nihilism', not to be confused with mere nationalism and imperialism. The liquidation of France and the conquest of Lebensraum in Russia were only the short-term objectives of the Third Reich; its long-term objective was the total annihilation of Western civilization and its replacement by the rule of a gutter elite. It was unrealistic to expect, therefore, that Hitler would defend Europe against Bolshevism; it was equally unrealistic to assume that he could be won over by a policy of appeasement. National Socialism meant above all dynamism for its own sake, perpetual motion and unending revolution. It could not be stopped unless stopped permanently.

Hitler, Rauschning warned,was an anti-Christ rather than an 'anti-Bolshevik'. If it suited him, he would not scruple to ally himself with Bolshevism against the Western democracies, his explicit statements to the contrary in Mein Kampf and in his public speeches not withstanding. In the long run, of course, Hitler's Germany could no more co-exist with the Soviet Union than with any other Power; but that was due to its inherent inability to restrain its expansionist urge, not to any doctrinal opposition to the Bolshevik regime.

The implicit and explicit references to world dominion in Mein Kampf were the 'first manifestations' of a basic attitude which persisted throughout Hitler's political career. The annulment of the Versailles Treaty, the liquidation of Russia and the attainment of world power status (involving domination of Europe and conquest of a ' supplementary colonial area' ) were to him but the preliminary phases of a protracted struggle for mastery of the globe. Hitler never had any concrete 'plan of world dominion', nor did he evolve a coherent global strategy in the Second World War. He knew that Weltherrschaft could not be achieved in his life-time; but if he achieved world power status (as he hoped he would), the rest could be left to his successors. World conquest might take generations, but the 'better' race was bound to triumph in the end: 'Hitler saw himself as the founder of a new world epoch in which Germany's claims to absolute dominion would be realized.

Weltherrschaft, then -- the German millennium -- would only materialize in the dim, indefinite future; Weltmacht, on the other hand -- the unification of Europe under German leadership and the creation of a German colonial Empire -- was well within Hitler's reach. It was his idea of a 'limited ' and 'attainable ' objective -- and he came surprisingly close to attaining it in the early years of World War II. How did he accomplish his remarkable feat? And how was he planning to proceed after the conquest of Europe?

At the conclusion of Mein Kampf Hitler stated: 'A state which in the period of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the cultivation of its best racial elements, must some day become the master of the world. This the followers of our movement must not forget, if they should ever be led to fear that the sacrifice is too great m comparison with the attainable results.'

Hitler's political programme could be summed up in one sentence which appears on page 742 of Mein Kampf: 'Germany will either be a World Power or there will be no Germany.'





The Inner Nazi: A Critical Analysis of Mein Kampf

by Hans Staudinger, written in 1944, published in 1981


https://archive.org/details/the-inner-n ... mein-kampf

The Nazi new order of Europe can be understood only within the framework of the total picture of Hitler's expansionist ideas. In essence, these are worldwide goals for which the Nazis are fighting. It would be utter folly to believe that Nazi conquest receives its impetus from nothing but bloodthirst and a power obsession. The convinced Nazis are certainly not facile opportunists. Hitler and a large group of his influential followers do not plan conquest solely for the selfish purpose of keeping themselves in power. If that were true, they could have stopped at Munich for their own benefit and security; they could have enjoyed an enormous power position at home and abroad. But there is an inescapable force behind their further actions that, unleashed within themselves, carried them forward.

What is the expansionist scheme which Adolf Hitler designed long before he came to power? The expansionist scheme may be described as the step-by-step widening of Germany's orbit and power in the form of four concentric circles. The innermost circle represents the Reich within the boundaries of Versailles, which distends into the next circle by absorbing the Germans living abroad. In the third state, the lebensraum is conquered to be settled in the future by racial Germans. The lebensraum, in turn, is the precondition for expansion into the next circle, namely, European hegemony. Finally, the hegemony is to be extended over the entire globe.

Hitler refused to recognize the liberal scheme of world economy against which he postulated "national selfsufficiency."For him, the quantity of food produced within the country provided the only criterion of overpopulation. The idea that Hitler had at the back of his mind when he painted this strange apocalyptic picture of starvation and poverty was the postulate of a self-sufficient Germany that did not exchange industrial products against foodstuffs on the world market.

It was self-deception, Hitler argued, to believe in the possibility of a peaceful solution of Germany's overpopulation problem. With the "peaceful economic" conquest of the world one had a formula which was supposed to break the neck of the former policy of force once and for all. But this "talk of the 'peaceful economic conquest' of the world was certainly," for Hitler, "the greatest folly that was ever made the leading principle of a State policy".

The theory that underlay Hitler's reasoning represents a recrudescence of the Malthusian population law, with the added promise, however, that self-sufficiency in foodstuffs must be guaranteed within the bounds of the nation. But, while Malthus proposed "moral restraint" as the solution of overpopulation, Hitler rejected any artificial check on population because it would endanger the future of the German race. The only solution for Hitler was seizure of new land. More than that, he considered it a national duty even to counteract the trend towards population decrease and thus to provide reason for still further expansion. (His population policy after 1933 aimed at encouraging marriages and illegitimatc births and suppressing birth control devices and institutions.)

Like Fichte, Hitler considered economic independence a natural corollary of any healthy national state. In the magic mirror of such selfsufficieney, Germany suddenly appeared overpopulated, as would indeed any country that, even under modern agricultural methods, fed part of its population by importing foodstuffs. The tortuous workings of Hitler's mind are revealed by the manner in which he proposed a seemingly practical cure for an overpopulation that was arbitrarily called into existence on the basis of a political assumption regarding Germany as an independent and isolated economic unit in the world.

According to Hitler the future lebensraum in the East had to be conquered. This contiguous territory had to be large enough so that 250 million Germans could live on the continent a hundred years hence. Hitler had a definite conception of the socioeconomic structure of this new and enlarged Germany. A balance between industry and agriculture provided the indispensable basis for a healthy and strong nation imbued with a new heroic spirit. This was necessary for Germany to obtain world power status at a time when the world was divided among empires like England and France, and continental nations like the United States. Not only was population pressure as "push" an argument for conquest of lebensraum, but the ideal socioeconomic structure in the lebensraum was, as "pull," an even more powerful reason for exacting heavy, though temporary, sacrifices to secure it. Hitler adduced the overpopulation argument as a necessity for expansion. He envisioned the lebensraum as the condition for a pure race, a healthy Volk (people) and a united nation.

Hitler restricted himself in Mein Kampf to a few general suggestions relating to the territorial expanse of the lebensraum and its prospective place on the map, and he carefully avoided committing himself to any definite geographical boundaries. The size of the lebensraum was to be broadly determined by three considerations: autarky, strategy, and prestige. First, the lebensraum must be large enough to insure Hitler's ideal of autarky. He wrote, "The foreign policy of a folkish State is charged with guaranteeing the existence on this planet of the race embraced by the State, by establishing between the number and growth of the population, on the one hand, and the size and value of the soil and territory, on the other hand, a viable, natural relationship" (935). This statement must be understood under its long-term aspect: it concerned not only the present generation, but the future generations as well. "Never," he argued, "regard the Reich as secure while it is unable to give every national offshoot for centuries his own bit of soil and territory" (964). If we recall Hitler's demographic "forecast" of 250 million Germans within a century's time, it may readily be conjectured how much land would be required for the German population in four or five hundred years.

Hitler demanded that territory newly acquired by National Socialist Germany be settled with German peasants. He omitted in this context the fate of the non-German population of these lands. "What in history," he asserted, "has been profitably Germanized was the soil which our forefathers acquired through the sword and settled with German peasants" (591). And "a Germanization can only be earned out with the soil and never with men" (588).

The German people was, for Hitler, the potential German race. It was not the unity of language that constituted a nation but its racial unity. In his words, "nationality, or rather the race, is not rooted in the language but in the blood" (589). Hitler violently denounced the imposition of the German language upon what he considered inferior races. He called such a process de-Germanization, because he believed that such an "enforced outward acceptance of the German language" jeopardized the racial purity of the German nation and if carried on over a long period and on a huge scale would finally lead to the loss of the nation's racial identity. A mechanical expansion of Germany's linguistic frontiers "would mean the beginning of a hybridization and with this, in our case, not a Germanization but a destruction of the Germanic element. In history it happens only too frequently that the outward means of power of a conquering people succeeds in forcing their language upon the oppressed, but that after a thousand years their language is spoken by a different people and the conquerors thus become actually the vanquished" (589).

Race for Hitler, was the alpha and omega of nature and history: "All great questions of the times," he declared, "are questions of the moment, and they represent only consequences of certain causes. Only one of them is of causal importance, that is the question of the racial preservation of the nationality [ Volkstum ]. In the blood alone there rests the strength as well as the weakness of man" (469). Strength and weakness of nations depended upon their racial composition. The purer a nation in its racial make-up, the stronger it would be.

By newly promoting the Germanic-Nordic stock, Germany could and would regain her original purity and avail herself of the historic certainty to become the "Mistress of the globe." The historic mission that Hitler assigned to the Third Reich was, therefore, not confined to unification of all people of German race into one state and the extension of the German racial frontiers into a new lebensraum, but as well it presupposed the purification of the race. With all these conditions fulfilled, Hitler believed the German Reich could and would rise to world rulership.

Hitler believed that once a fighting Germany, endowed with a healthy and increasingly unified racial stock and led by a state which was the "sovereign incorporation of a nation's [Volkstum] instinct of preserving itself on this earth" (602) had gained world domination, then--and only then--could world order be based on pacifism.

He wrote: "He who actually desires with all his heart, the victory of the pacifistic idea in this world would have to stand up, with all available means, for the conquest of the world by the Germans . . . . Therefore, whether one wanted to or not, if one had the serious will, one would have to decide to wage war in order to arrive at pacifism . . . Indeed, the pacifist-humane idea is perhaps quite good whenever the man of the highest standard has previously conquered and subjected the world to a degree that makes him the only master of this globe. Thus the idea is more and more deprived of the possibility of a harmful effect in the measure in which its practical application becomes rare and finally impossible. Therefore, first fight, and then one may sec what can be done" (394-95).

Hitler rejected every idea of cooperation of equal nations through federation in Europe or in the world. He rejected every idea of community or a league of nations. World hegemony and domination by one superior nation was the one possible solution of international integration whereby the nations of kindred race (Aryans) could occupy the preferential positions. He assigned racial kinship the task of ruling over inferior races.

It is necessary to deal here with one more question in order to make clear the relationship of Germany to the Aryan world in Hitler's system. We know of Hitler's eager concern for the future of the Aryan race. What to him is the final court of appeals: the interests of the Aryan or the interests of Germany? The answer may be summed up as follows: Germany's Herculean labors were to be expended first and above all in the struggle for victory, power, position of Germany. But Germany's final triumph resulting in world rulership would at the same time assure the final victory of the Aryan race. The Aryan peoples would live peacefully together protected by the sword of Germany. Germany would be the arbiter of the world.

Hitler magnanimously took pains to identify the interest of a world-conquering Germany with the interests of mankind. He asked, what has the world to gain from "the victorious sword of a people of overlords?" Is it only the promised relief from the scourge of the war, the blessings of a world peace? No, Hitler claimed to bear gifts more "precious" than the "Pax Germanica," namely an unprecedented cultural development of the world. This new epoch of world culture would be again, in its essential character, an Aryan culture. Since time immemorial, Hitler declared, it was the Aryan who was the creator of all culture. "What we see before us of human culture today, the results of art, science, and techniques, is almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan" (397). For, Hitler decreed, culture by definition is Aryan culture. The Aryan "is the Prometheus of mankind, out of whose bright forehead springs the divine spark of genius at all times, forever rekindling that fire which in the form of knowledge lightened up the night of silent secrets and thus made man climb the path towards the position of master of the other beings on this earth. Exclude him-and deep darkness will again fall upon the earth, perhaps even, after a few thousand years, human culture would perish and the world would turn into a desert" (398).

For Hitler there was therefore no comfortable and safe way charted by Providence for the Aryan. If the Aryan lost his urge for self-preservation, he would be doomed. For, Hitler claimed that "in the end, only the urge for self-preservation will eternally succeed. Under its pressure so-called 'humanity,' as the expression of a mixture of stupidity, cowardice and an imaginary superior intelligence, will melt like snow under the March sun. Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace" ( l 75 ). Hitler despised pacifists because they were at variance with the design of the "Creator" to set up a pacific world with the palm. A peaceful world, according to Hitler was only possible as long as a superior race could preserve its strength to subjugate the other races. World peace was a militant peace based on "the victorious sword."

The task that Hitler assigned to every German youth was to build a new Germany in the image of Nordic man, to build a race that was to make the world the sacred abode of Aryan culture. But before the new world could be built, the old, moribund world, afflicted with the sickly notions of pacifism, poisoned by democracy, and emasculated by humanitarian sentiment, had to be burned down. Germany's youth had to feel the moral grandeur of a noble mission. German youth had to learn to die not only for the good and the glory of Germany but also for the creation of a new world. War had to he fought as a holy war for the loftiest ideals. That spirit was to be the fuel that would drive the German war machine, the banner that in time to come would lead the regiments of Hitler's youth over the steppes of Asia and the deserts of Africa.

Mein Kampf contains a theory of the workings of nature and, at the same time the inner meaning of history. "Inequality" of the nations and individuals and "purity" of races to accomplish perfection and survival were, according to Hitler, the two great maxims on which nature and history were bound to develop according to the intention of the "Creator." In explaining that the eternal "laws of nature" were simultaneously "laws of history" Hitler claimed to have discovered the meaning of history--the past and the future.


Hitler's Weltanschauung: A Blueprint for Power

by Eberhard Jackel, 1972


https://archive.org/details/hitlers-wel ... -for-power


Folk or people and race are central to Hitler’s view of history.

He defined history as “the presentation of the course of a people’s struggle for existence.”

Put differently, “All the events of world history are but the expression of the racial instinct for self-preservation in its positive or negative sense.”

The race question thus provides the “key to world history.” In other words, for Hitler, the bearers and the elements of history are peoples and races, not — as in other views of history —individuals, classes, cultures, or anything else.

What nature wants everywhere “‘is the victory of the stronger and the annihilation or unconditional surrender of the weaker.”

This “iron law of necessity and of the right of the victory of the best and the strongest” is, of course, equally operative in history where it corresponds “‘to the innermost will of nature, as nature restores that free play of forces which is bound to lead to a permanent mutual higher breeding, until finally the best of mankind, having acquired the possession of this earth, are given a free road for their activity in domains which will lie partly above, partly outside it.”

World domination thus appears, with a certain amount of consistency, as the distant final goal of history.

“We all sense that in the distant future problems could approach man for conquest of which only a higher race, as the master nation, based upon the means and the possibilities of an entire globe, will be called upon.” Based on this theoretical outlook, Hitler said in 1930: “Every being strives for expansion and every nation strives for world domination.”

Hitler asserts that culture came into being only by the subjugation of the weak, and he paints the following picture of cultural development: “Aryan tribes (often with a really ridiculously small number of their people) subjugate foreign peoples, and now, stimulated by the special living conditions of the new territory (fertility, climatic conditions, etc.) and favored by the size of the labor force in the shape of people of an inferior kind now at their disposal, they develop the mental and organizational abilities which have slumbered within them.

Often, in the course of a few millennia or even centuries they create cultures which initially bear completely the inner features of their character, adapted to the already mentioned special qualities of the soil as well as to those of the subjected people. Finally, however, the conquerors deviate from the purity of their blood which they originally maintained, they begin to mix with the subjected natives, and thus end their own existence; for the fall of man in Paradise has always been followed by expulsion from it.”

From all of this Hitler derived his fundamental principle of history. Since space is limited, but the two instincts of peoples for preservation are unlimited, it follows that nations have to wage eternal war for space; and, inasmuch as this is the essential reality of their existence, history becomes the life struggle of nations for living space.

https://archive.org/details/hitlers-wel ... -for-power



Hitler is No Fool: The Menace of the Man and His Program

by Paul Massing, 1939


https://archive.org/details/HitlerIsNoF ... HisProgram

This book does not purport to be another translation of Mein Kampf. It is, however, an entirely accurate and faithful description of Hitler's world program. The original Mein Kampf is an extremely long book, and that is not its most formidable feature from the standpoint of the reader. Hitler's style is notoriously bad even in German, and the organization of his book makes it extremely difficult for the reader to acquire a clear picture of
his thesis. Hitler Is No Fool corrects this fault by the simple process of gathering together the widely scattered Hitlerian views on the Jews, democracies, war, peace, racial theories, etc., and arranging these topics in an orderly form. We learn how Hitler came to power, why anti-Semitism is an inevitable part of fascism, and why the real facts of Hitler's life are not told in his book.

The author is a young German, now taking out his American citizenship papers. He opposed Hitler during the early Nazi days and spent many terrible months in a concentration camp, which he described in his famous first book, Fatherland. This present volume is further proof of his really great ability as a writer. The book presents a most penetrating analysis of Hitler and his policies, proving conclusively that the man is not to be taken lightly and that continued attempts to laugh him off will play directly into his hands.


What Hitler Wants

by Emily Overend Lorimer, 1939


https://archive.org/details/LorimerE.O. ... 3/mode/2up
Not a thing that Hitler has done, not even the official breaches of the Munich Agreement and the seizure of territories beyond even the Godesberg demands, but is foreshadowed in the modem German Bible, Mein Kampf.


Nazi Means War

by Leland Stowe, 1934


https://archive.org/details/nazi-means- ... 9/mode/2up

Published in 1934.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, Leland Stowe. He visited Germany shortly after Hitler came to power. His reports on the militarization of Germany and the threat it posed to the world were not published by his employer, the New York Herald Tribune. As a result, he published this book, but it sold very few copies. Few people wanted to believe the seriousness of the situation and thought he was an alarmist. Only later was Stowe praised for his warnings about Nazi Germany.


TWO VOICES-ONE MAN


On October 18, four days after he had led the Third Reich out of the League of Nations and the disarmament conference, Chancellor Adolf Hitler made the following peace declaration before eight hundred of his party leaders in Berlin.

"Germany wants nothing but peace," said Chancellor Hitler. Then he added: "More than anybody else National Socialist Germany clings to peace because the National Socialist idea is based on a racial concept of state leaders united by blood. It turns toward domestic issues and therefore knows no imperialistic policy of conquest toward the outside. We reject every policy of force but we are just as much determined to guard our rights."

Four days earlier, while the Reich's Geneva bombshell was still reverberating in world capitals, Adolf Hitler spoke to foreign governments and to universal public opinion in equally impressive language. In his personal manifesto, issued on that memorable October 14, the Nazi dictator summed up the attitude of Germany in these words: "The Government and the people reject violence as an unsuitable means to remove existing differences with the European community of states."

That same night Adolf Hitler made one of the greatest and most stirring speeches of his career. At least forty million of his compatriots listened by radio to his tempestuously earnest voice. Untold millions heard his words rebroadcast in five languages, virtually to all corners of the earth. Among other things, speaking of France, Hitler stated:

"I speak in the name of the entire German people when I solemnly declare that we all are imbued with the sincere desire to wipe out an enmity that, in regard to its sacrifices, is out of all proportion to any possible gain. . . . It would be an immense event for all humanity if these two peoples banished violence once for all from their common life. The German people is ready to do so."

These ringing phrases put fateful questions to the rest of humanity, as they put them today with disturbing insistence to the foreign correspondent within the boundaries of the Third Reich.

Is the National Socialist German government--in its actions as in its words--turned toward what makes for peace? Is the National Socialist regime ready to banish resort to violence from its doctrines and its practices? Does Nazi Germany mean eventual peace or eventual war? After two months of closest observation and research in Germany, this correspondent is prepared to report what he has seen and learned. Until now the cyclonic pace of the Nazi revolution has stirred up a mystifying whirlwind of dust. There has been no time for correspondents in Berlin, caught up with the mad rush of front-page news every day, to sift more than a few fundamental facts from the chaff; neither to catalogue them nor to analyze what they may signify in full. Nor is it possible as yet to do this regarding all phases of Germany in the remaking. But Chancellor Hitler has challenged the world to accept the National Socialist government's expressed desire for peace.

It is not my purpose simply to rechallenge the peace challenge of Adolf Hitler. It is my purpose to present those facts, based upon a personal inquiry of two months, which seem most pertinent to the all-important question posed by the Reich's Chancellor when he says, "Germany wants nothing but peace." But before we proceed to the Germany whichI have seen, one distinction has been imposed by circumstances and the record-one might almost say by Chancellor Hitler himself. For the voice of Hitler on October 14 and October 18 was not his only voice, nor was it the voice which millions of Germans know best.

Adolf Hitler has two voices, and there are two tongues spoken by the National Socialist leaders of the Reich. One language has been addressed, in growing volume, for fourteen years, to the great masses of discontented German citizens. You cannot judge National Socialist Germany by one voice alone. You must listen to both and study both if you are to arrive at any approximation of the truth.

What is this other Nazi voice? It can be found in no higher an authority than in Adolf Hitler himself. In his book, Mein Kampf (My Battle), Hitler has poured out his entire philosophy of internal regeneration and social revolution and his most varied conceptions of what the bases of Germany's foreign policy must be. This book, in its original and unexpurgated German edition, is 781 pages in length (contrasting sharply with the some 300 pages in a recent English translation) and has been printed in more than one million copies.

In the German edition of Mein Kampf, which graces every books hop window in the Reich and is being read by millions of Germans, Chancellor Hitler makes such comments as these about peace and war.

"It is necessary, then, for better or worse, to resort to war if one wishes seriously to arrive at pacifism. In reality the humanitarian and pacifist idea will perhaps be excellent on that day when the man superior to all others will have conquered and subjugated the world first of all in such a measure that he becomes the sole master of this earth. First, then, the battle, and afterward-perhaps-pacifism" (page 315).

"The question of recuperation of German power is not how can we manufacture arms. Rather it is, how can we create the spirit which renders a people capable of carrying arms? When this spirit dominates a people, will power finds a thousand ways, each of which leads to a weapon" (page 365).

"France is and always will be the deadly enemy of Germany" (page 699).

"To forge a well-sharpened sword is the object of a people's domestic policy; to see that the forging is done and to seek allies at arms is the
object of its foreign policy" (page 689).

"An alliance which is not concluded with a view to war is absurd and worthless" (page 749).

"Not until the Germans have realized that they must engage in an active and final conflict with France will it be possible to bring the fruitless struggle to a conclusion-on condition, however, that Germany sees in the extermination of France a means of providing her people with the necessary room for expansion. . . . There are eighty million Germans in Europe today. This policy will be recognized as the correct one when in less than one hundred years from now the continent of Europe is inhabited by 250,000,000 Germans" (page 766).

"Woe betide the National Socialist movement if (in its foreign policy) it relies on protests, instead of preparing to fight" (page 712).

Does National Socialist Germany want "nothing but peace"?

Or is National Socialist Germany "preparing to fight"?

Which voice and which doctrine is a perplexed and anxious world to accept as true and final words, alas, are too obscure and too contradictory. One must go to Germany and seek for oneself.

If actions are more eloquent than words, then Germany today is the most eloquent nation in Europe. Here action, and all kinds of actions, abound.
Last edited by Szwilpo on 13 Sep 2021, 07:18, edited 1 time in total.

Szwilpo
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Re: The Roots of Nazi Ideology and Its Analysis

#2

Post by Szwilpo » 13 Sep 2021, 06:49

Other works:


Understanding Nazi Ideology: The Genesis and Impact of a Political Faith

by Carl Müller Frøland, 2020


https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Na ... 476678308/


Nazism was deeply rooted in German culture. From the fertile soil of German Romanticism sprang ideas of great significance for the genesis of the Third Reich ideology--notions of the individual as a mere part of the national collective, and of life as a ceaseless struggle between opposing forces. This book traces the origins of the "political religion" of Nazism. Ultranationalism and totalitarianism, racial theory and antisemitism, nature mysticism and occultism, eugenics and social Darwinism, adoration of the Fuhrer and glorification of violence--all are explored. The book also depicts the dramatic development of the Nazi movement--and the explosive impact of its political faith, racing from its bloody birth in the trenches of World War I to its cataclysmic climax in the Holocaust and World War II.




The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich

by George L. Mosse, first published in 1964, new edition 2021


https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-German-Id ... 299332047/

This new edition revisits the renowned historian George L. Mosse’s landmark work exploring the ideological foundations of Nazism in Germany. First published in 1964, this volume was among the first to examine the intellectual origins of the Third Reich. Mosse introduced readers to what is known as the völkisch ideal—the belief that the German people were united through a transcendental essence. This mindset led to the exclusion of Jews and other groups, eventually allowing Nazi leaders to take their beliefs to catastrophic extremes. The critical introduction by Steven E. Aschheim, the author of Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Legacy Abroad and many other books, brings Mosse’s work into the present moment.

George L. Mosse (1918–99) was a legendary scholar, teacher, and mentor. A refugee from Nazi Germany, in 1955 he joined the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was both influential and popular. Mosse was an early leader in the study of modern European cultural and intellectual history, fascism, and the history of sexuality and masculinity. Over his career he authored more than two dozen books.





Nazi Ideology before 1933: A Documentation

by Barbara Miller Lane, Leila J. Rupp, 1978


https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Ideology-be ... 477304452/

This volume brings together a hitherto scattered and inaccessible body of material crucial to the understanding of the evolution of Nazi political thought. Before the publication of this volume, scholars had virtually ignored the extensive writings and programs published by leading Nazi ideologues before 1933. Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp have collected the political writings of Nazi theorists―Dietrich Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg, Gottfried Feder, Joseph Goebbels, Gregor and Otto Strasser, Heinrich Himmler, and Richard Walther Darré―during the period before the National Socialists came to power. The Strassers are given considerable space because of their great intellectual importance within the party before 1933. In commentary by the editors, the significance of each Nazi theorist is weighed and evaluated at each stage of the history of the party. Lane and Rupp conclude that Nazi ideology, before 1933 at least, was not a consistent whole but a doctrine in the process of rapid development to which new ideas were continually introduced.

By the time the Nazis came to power, however, a group of interrelated assertions and official promises had been made to party followers and to the public. Hitler and the Third Reich had to accommodate this ideology, even when not implementing it. Hitler’s role in the development of Nazi ideology, interpreted here as a very permissive one, is thoroughly assessed. His own writings, however, have been omitted since they are readily available elsewhere. The twenty-eight documents included in this book illustrate themes and phases in Nazi ideology which are discussed in the introduction and the detailed prefatory notes. Long selections, as often as possible full-length, are provided to allow the reader to follow the arguments. Each selection is accompanied by an introductory note and annotations which clarify its relationship to other works of the author and other writings of the period. Also included are original translations of the “Twenty-Five Points” and a number of little-known official party statements.


Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress

by Richard Weikart, 2009


https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Ethic-Pu ... 230618073/

In this book, Weikart helps unlock the mystery of Hitler's evil by vividly demonstrating the surprising conclusion that Hitler's immorality flowed from a coherent ethic. Hitler was inspired by evolutionary ethics to pursue the utopian project of biologically improving the human race.


Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview

by Jerry Bergman, 2012


https://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Nazi-Darw ... 1894400496

This book takes a fresh look at Germany's most influential Nazi leaders, examining their backgrounds, education and convictions. It provides compelling evidence that the rising influence of Darwinism, eugenics and race theory in early-twentieth century society set the foundation for the Nazi pursuit of engineering a German "master race"-and exterminating European Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, most Slavs and the Christian religion in the ensuing madness of the Holocaust of World War II. The effect of social Darwinism, eugenics and anti-Semitism, and their relative acceptance in the scientific and medical communities of Germany and many other countries worldwide, opened the door to mass murder, medical experimentation and military conquest. This title examines the roots of Nazi ideology and unmasks the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" theory behind it.


Nazism and War

by Richard Bessel, 2006


https://www.amazon.com/Nazism-War-Moder ... 81297557X/

World War II was the defining event of the twentieth century, redrawing the political map in ways that continue to affect nearly the entire human race. What was unprecedented, however, was not simply the war’s scale, but its causes. Unlike previous territorial or political clashes, the war launched by Nazi Germany was an ideological one, waged to wipe entire peoples and cultures from the face of the earth.

In Nazism and War, Richard Bessel, one of the preeminent authorities on the social and political history of modern Germany, demonstrates that “Nazi war was racial struggle; Nazi racial struggle was war.”

War was the anvil on which Hitler’s worldview was forged: German National Socialism emerged triumphant over a country deeply scarred by defeat and eager to reclaim its greatness. As a political philosophy, Nazism glorified struggle and conflict, viewing them as the purpose of a nation and a measure of its overall condition. As a political movement and state system, Nazism made its ideology real, plunging the European continent into a war of annihilation and a sea of blood. Nazism destroyed the old Europe, and thus helped to create the world in which we live.


Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain

by Geoffrey G. Field, 1981


https://www.amazon.com/Evangelist-Race- ... 0231048602


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wm
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Re: The Roots of Nazi Ideology and Its Analysis

#3

Post by wm » 15 Sep 2021, 01:39

The last sentence, in my opinion, is absolutely false.
Not the Nazis destroyed the old Europe but the Soviets. Watching movies from the fifties it's obvious how little life changed, and that's even true in the case of countries of the Soviet bloc (the Soviet Union excluded of course.)

But eventually, the communists destroyed the old culture and way of life, and Western Europe was changed by the threat of Soviet invasion and nuclear war.

J. Duncan
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Re: The Roots of Nazi Ideology and Its Analysis

#4

Post by J. Duncan » 15 Sep 2021, 01:45

This is an awesome list. Thanks for posting. I have many of these title but several I’ve not heard of.

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