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National Socialism
National Socialism (German Nazism) was a type of fascism. The Nazis summarised it
as "the organised will of the nation". It had several key beliefs:
• Support for dictatorship:
The Nazis rejected democracy and believed one strong
Fuhrer should have total power. They hated the idea of
parliaments or people voting to decide laws.
• Extreme nationalism:
The Nazis believed Germans were a special nation, should be united as one people
and had the right to dominate the world.
This idea came from the 19th Century Völkisch movement that claimed that that
German culture and blood were superior.
• Anti-communism:
The Nazis hated communism.
The term ‘National Socialism’ came from an attempt to replace the Marxist idea
of socialism (of class conflict and universal equality) with the idea of a
German society in which people would follow one national purpose, controlled by
the state.
• Racism and antisemitism:
The Nazis believed the pseudo-scientific theories of the time of a racial hierarchy.
They saw ethnic Germans as descendants of a Nordic Aryan ‘master race’ and other
groups—especially Jews, Slavs, Roma (Gypsies), and Black people—as inferior
Untermenschen whom it was their right to destroy or enslave.
• Anti-capitalism:
The Nazis believed that capitalism was a recent economic system based on Jewish
business principles, and that the state should control the economy.
• Social Darwinism:
The Nazis believed in the ‘survival of the fittest’ in human society. They supported
imprisoning or killing people they declared to be ‘asocial’ (including political opponents,
homosexuals, homeless people, alcoholics, and prostitutes) and believed in eugenics to sterilise or euthanise people with disabilities such as deafness and mental illness.
Nazism wanted to eliminate social divisions and create a homogeneous, ‘pure’
people's community (Volksgemeinschaft).
• Violence and military culture:
Nazism was influenced by the paramilitary Freikorps groups formed after World
War I, creating a culture of violence and terror.
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