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As I demonstrated in a recent study of the Kremlin’s relationship with Russian fascists, these linkages made possible a bold experiment to create a pro-Putin neo-Nazi movement. While unmarried until the very end of the regime, Hitler often made excuses about his busy life hindering any chance for marriage. [231] Among National Socialist ideologues, marriage was valued not for moral considerations but because it provided an optimal breeding environment. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler reportedly told a confidant that when he established the Lebensborn program, an organisation that would dramatically increase the birth rate of "Aryan" children through extramarital relations between women classified as racially pure and their male equals, he had only the purest male "conception assistants" in mind. [232] The Kremlin’s cultivation of domestic neo-Nazis is matched by its promotion of neo-Nazis in the West. Some have amplified anti-Western conspiracy theories as “experts” on RT, the Kremlin’s cable TV propaganda channel. Moving Together, a pro-Putin youth organisation notorious for its campaign against postmodernist literature, made the first move by reaching out to OB88, the most powerful skinhead gang in Russia.
The Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schutzstaffel (SS) functioned as the paramilitary organisations of the Nazi Party. Using the SS for the task, Hitler purged the party's more socially and economically radical factions in the mid-1934 Night of the Long Knives, including the leadership of the SA. After the death of President Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, political power was concentrated in Hitler's hands and he became Germany's head of state as well as the head of the government, with the title of Führer und Reichskanzler, meaning "leader and Chancellor of Germany" (see also here). From that point, Hitler was effectively the dictator of Nazi Germany – also known as the Third Reich – under which Jews, political opponents and other "undesirable" elements were marginalised, imprisoned or murdered. During World War II, many millions of people—including around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe—were eventually exterminated in a genocide which became known as the Holocaust. Following Germany's defeat in World War II and the discovery of the full extent of the Holocaust, Nazi ideology became universally disgraced. It is widely regarded as immoral and evil, with only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, describing themselves as followers of National Socialism. The significance of substantial White émigré influences on Hitler’s Weltanschauung has become more apparent since Brigitte Hamann convincingly argued in her 1996 work, Hitlers Wien: Lehrjahre eines Diktators ( Hitler’s Vienna: Apprentice Years of a Dictator), that Hitler was not yet anti-Semitic during his “hunger years” in Vienna from 1908 to 1913. He even defended the Jews in intense political arguments with those who denounced them. 11 Hamann’s book refutes the earlier historical consensus which had contended that Hitler developed an acutely anti-Semitic world-view during his time in Vienna. 12 Former Tsentr khraneniia istoriko-dokumentalnych kollektsii (Center for the Preservation of Historical-Documentary Collections, now part of RGVA, Moscow).Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism took several forms. The death of First Lieutenant Max von Scheubner-Richter, Aufbau's de facto leader and Hitler's closest political advisor, in the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch served as an example of heroic sacrifice for the National Socialist cause. White émigrés continued to raise significant funds for the NSDAP after 1923. In the vein of Aufbau, Hitler continued to use White émigrés, especially Ukrainian nationalists, to destabilize Soviet rule after the failure of the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch. Hitler's preoccupation with winning the Ukraine for Germany along the lines of Aufbau policy led him to divert powerful armed forces away from Moscow in 1941, thereby diminishing German chances of victory in World War II. I offer thanks first and foremost to the members of my Ph.D. Committee at the University of California, Los Angeles: Professors Saul Friedländer, David Sabean, Ivan Berend, and Rogers Brubaker, who have given me excellent advice over the years. Professor Peter Baldwin of UCLA granted me valuable advice and support. Professor Arch Getty of UCLA helped me to gain an overview of important archival materials in Moscow. Others associated with UCLA who aided me in writing this book include Julie Jenkins, who gave me editing advice, Barbara Bernstein and Kathleen Addison, who took care of administrative matters for me while I was abroad, and Julia Wallace, who helped me to revise my text.
Adolf Hitler himself along with other members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) were greatly influenced by several 19th- and early 20th-century thinkers and proponents of philosophical, onto-epistemic, and theoretical perspectives on ecological anthropology, scientific racism, holistic science, and organicism regarding the constitution of complex systems and theorization of organic-racial societies. [77] [78] [79] [80] In particular, one of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the 19th-century German nationalist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose works had served as an inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi Party members, and whose ideas were implemented among the philosophical and ideological foundations of Nazi-oriented Völkisch nationalism. [78] The Nazi notion of Slavs as inferior served as a legitimisation of their desire to create Lebensraum for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe, where millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into once those territories were conquered, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed or enslaved. [198] Nazi Germany's policy changed towards Slavs in response to military manpower shortages, forcing it to allow Slavs to serve in its armed forces within the occupied territories in spite of the fact that they were considered "subhuman". [199] The historical roots of Nazism are to be found in various elements of European political culture which were in circulation in the intellectual capitals of the continent, what Joachim Fest called the "scrapheap of ideas" prevalent at the time. [75] [76] In Hitler and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, historian Martin Broszat points out that We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have achieved the greatest deed in the world. We may work injustice, but if we rescue Germany then we have removed the greatest injustice in the world. We may be immoral, but if our people is rescued we have opened the way for morality. [200]Völkisch nationalism denounced soulless materialism, individualism and secularised urban industrial society, while advocating a "superior" society based on ethnic German "folk" culture and German "blood". [87] It denounced foreigners and foreign ideas and declared that Jews, Freemasons and others were "traitors to the nation" and unworthy of inclusion. [88] Völkisch nationalism saw the world in terms of natural law and romanticism and it viewed societies as organic, extolling the virtues of rural life, condemning the neglect of tradition and the decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment and condemned "cosmopolitan" cultures such as Jews and Romani. [89] This cooperation expanded in the aftermath of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004. To insulate Russia against the contagion of pro-democracy protest, the Kremlin transformed Moving Together into a more ambitious project called “Nashi”, or “Ours”. Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in the 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining the belief that certain groups of white people were members of an Aryan "master race" that is superior to other races and particularly superior to the Semitic race, which they associated with "cultural sterility". [101] Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the purity of the Aryan race, a term which he only reserved for Germanic people. [102] [103] Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, [102] emphasised the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan ( Germanic) and Jewish cultures. [101] Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century would prove to be a seminal work in the history of German nationalism
Further information: Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, German Christians (movement), German Faith Movement, Kreuz und Adler, Positive Christianity, Religious aspects of Nazism, Anti-Masonry §Nazi_Germany_and_occupied_Europe, and Religious views of Adolf Hitler Members of the German Christians organisation celebrating Luther Day in Berlin in 1933. A speech is given by Bishop Hossenfelder. Hitler in 1935 with Cesare Orsenigo, the Catholic Church's nuncio to GermanyGeneral Biskupskii acted as Scheubner-Richter’s invaluable partner at the head of Aufbau, and he later directed the White émigré community in the Third Reich. 2 Poltavets-Ostranitsa led Aufbau’s Ukrainian section, and he sought to establish a National Socialist Ukraine. 3 Shabelskii-Bork transferred The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an inflammatory forgery that influenced National Socialists and other anti-Semites around the world, from the Ukraine to Berlin for publication in German shortly after World War Ⅰ. 4 Vinberg held detailed ideological discussions with Hitler, and he convinced the Führer that the Soviet Union represented a “Jewish dictatorship.” 5 The Nazis came to power in the midst of Great Depression, when the unemployment rate at that point in time was close to 30%. [277] Generally speaking, Nazi theorists and politicians blamed Germany's previous economic failures on political causes like the influence of Marxism on the workforce, the sinister and exploitative machinations of what they called international Jewry and the vindictiveness of the western political leaders' war reparation demands. Instead of traditional economic incentives, the Nazis offered solutions of a political nature, such as the elimination of organised trade unions, rearmament (in contravention of the Versailles Treaty) and biological politics. [278] Various work programs designed to establish full-employment for the German population were instituted once the Nazis seized full national power. Hitler encouraged nationally supported projects like the construction of the Autobahn highway system, the introduction of an affordable people's car ( Volkswagen) and later the Nazis bolstered the economy through the business and employment generated by military rearmament. [279] The Nazis benefited early in the regime's existence from the first post-Depression economic upswing, and this combined with their public works projects, job-procurement program and subsidised home repair program reduced unemployment by as much as 40 per cent in one year. This development tempered the unfavourable psychological climate caused by the earlier economic crisis and encouraged Germans to march in step with the regime. [280]
The Nazis argued that free-market capitalism damages nations due to international finance and the Hitler’s intellectual viewpoint was influenced during his youth not only by these currents in the German tradition but also by specific Austrian movements that professed various political sentiments, notably those of pan-Germanic expansionism and anti-Semitism. Hitler’s ferocious nationalism, his contempt of Slavs, and his hatred of Jews can largely be explained by his bitter experiences as an unsuccessful artist living a threadbare existence on the streets of Vienna, the capital of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. Multiple experts on the region said the claim that Ukraine is corrupted by Nazis is false. President Volodymyr Zelensky, who received 73 percent of the vote when he was elected in 2019, is Jewish, and all far-right parties combined received only about 2 percent of parliamentary votes in 2019 — short of the 5 percent threshold for representation. There is a history of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis, and Putin is trying to build upon that history,” Dr. Veidlinger said. “During the Second World War there were parties in Ukraine that sought to collaborate with the Germans, particularly against the Soviets.”Historians regard the equation of Nazism as "Hitlerism" as too simplistic since the term was used prior to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. In addition, the different ideologies incorporated into Nazism were already well established in certain parts of German society long before World War I. [38] The Nazis were strongly influenced by the post–World War I far-right in Germany, which held common beliefs such as anti-Marxism, anti-liberalism and antisemitism, along with nationalism, contempt for the Treaty of Versailles and condemnation of the Weimar Republic for signing the armistice in November 1918 which later led it to sign the Treaty of Versailles. [39] A major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. [39] Initially, the post–World War I German far-right was dominated by monarchists, but the younger generation, which was associated with völkisch nationalism, was more radical and it did not express any emphasis on the restoration of the German monarchy. [40] This younger generation desired to dismantle the Weimar Republic and create a new radical and strong state based upon a martial ruling ethic that could revive the "Spirit of 1914" which was associated with German national unity ( Volksgemeinschaft). [40] Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Abteilung Kriegsarchiv (Bavarian State Archives in Munich, Military Archives Department). Historians should discard the notion of a linear German Sonderweg (special path) that led directly to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The American scholar Daniel Goldhagen in particular presents an overly simplistic version of the Sonderweg thesis in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners. He asserts, “The Holocaust was a sui generis event that has a historically specific explanation,” notably “enabling conditions created by the long-incubating, pervasive, virulent, racist, eliminationist antisemitism of German culture.” Instead of focusing solely on alleged German peculiarities in the vein of Goldhagen, historians should understand the genesis and development of National Socialism in the context of cross-cultural interaction between defeated groups from World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution: alienated völkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans and vengeful White émigrés. While the National Socialist movement largely developed in a völkisch framework, many White émigrés made crucial political, military, financial, and ideological contributions to National Socialism. Further information: German Question, German nationalism, Pan-Germanism, Unification of Germany, and Völkisch movement Johann Gottlieb Fichte, considered one of the fathers of German nationalism It is part of a great leader’s genius to make even widely separated adversaries appear as if they belonged to but one category, because among weakly and undecided characters the recognition of various enemies all too easily marks the beginning of doubt of one’s own rightness.
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