Nazismo

O "Nazismo" ou o "Nacional Socialismo" designa a política da ditadura que governou a Alemanha de 1933 a 1945, o "Terceiro Reich. O nazismo é comummente associado ao fascismo, embora os nazis dissessem praticas uma forma nacionalista e totalitária de socialismo (oposta ao socialismo internacional marxista).

O Partido Nacional Socialista alemão defendia o "Nationalsozialismus" ("Nacional-Socialismo"). Ainda hoje há alguma controvérsia sobre se a natureza do regime nazi tinha alguma coisa em comum com o socialismo. Alguma direita e extrema-direita, chegando por vezes até ao centro, em especial em países com mais forte tradição anti-comunista (como os Estados Unidos da América), referem-se ao nazismo como uma forma de socialismo, apontando para o nome, para alguma da retórica nazi e para a estatização da sociedade como provas. A generalidade da esquerda rejeita essas ideias, apontando para a existência, desde ainda antes da tomada do poder por Hitler, de uma resistência comunista e socialista ao nazismo, para o carácter internacionalista e fraterno do socialismo, totalmente oposto à teoria e prática nazi, e para a manutenção, pelos nazis, de toda a estrutura capitalista da economia alemã, limitada apenas pelas condicionantes de uma economia de guerra e pela abordagem àquilo a que os nazis chamavam o "problema judeu".

O ditador Adolf Hitler chegou ao poder enquanto líder de um partido político, o Partido Nacional Socialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, ou NSDAP). A Alemanha deste período é também conhecida como Alemanha Nazi, e os partidários do nazismo eram (e são) chamados nazis. O nazismo foi proibido na Alemanha moderna, muito embora pequenos grupúsculos de simpatizantes, chamados neo-nazis, continuem a existir na Alemanha e noutros países. Alguns revisionistas históricos disseminam propaganda que nega ou minimiza o Holocausto e outras acções dos nazis e tenta deitar uma luz positiva sobre as poíticas do regime nazi e os acontecimentos que ocorreram sob ele.

Uma suástica nazi, dobrada no sentido dos ponteiros do relógio
O partido nazi usou a suástica como símbolo

Teoria ideológica

De acordo com "Mein Kampf" (A Minha Luta), Hitler desenvolveu as suas teorias políticas pela observação cuidadosa das políticas do Império Austro-Húngaro. Ele nasceu como cidadão do Império e acreditava que a sua diversidade étnica e linguística o enfraquecera. Também via a democracia como uma força desestabilizadora, porque colocava o poder nas mãos das minorias étnicas, que tinham incentivo para enfraquecer e desestabilizar mais o Império.

O centro da ideologia nacional-socialista é o termo raça. A teoria nazi diz que a raça ariana é uma "raça-mestra", superior a todas as outras, e justifica esta crença da seguinte maneira:

O nacional-socialismo diz que uma nação é a máxima criação de uma raça. Consequentemente, as grandes nações (literalmente, nações grandes) seriam a criação de grandes raças. A teoria diz que as grandes nações nascem do poderio militar e que este, por sua vez, se origina em culturas racionais e civilizadas, que, por sua vez ainda, são criadas por raças com boa saúde natural e traços agressivos, inteligentes e corajosos.

As nações mais fracas, para os nazis, são aquelas criadas por raças impuras, "mulatas" porque têm culturas divididas, briguentas e, portanto, fracas.

De acordo com os nazis, um erro óbvio deste tipo é permitir ou encorajar múltiplas línguas dentro de uma nação. Esta crença é o motivo pelo qual os nazis alemães estavam tão preocupados com a unificação dos territórios dos povos de língua alemã.

Nações incapazes de defender as suas fronteiras, diziam, seriam a criação de raças fracas ou escravas. Pensava-se que as raças escravas eram menos dignas de existir do que as raças-mestras. Em particular, se uma raça-mestra necessitar de espaço para viver (Lebensraum), pensava-se que ela tinha o direito de tomar o território e matar ou escravizar as "raças escravas" indígenas.

Raças sem pátria era, portanto, consideradas "raças parasíticas". Quanto mais ricos fossem os membros da "raça parasítica" mais virulento seria o parasitismo. Uma raça-mestra podia, portanto, de acordo com a doutrina nazi, endireitar-se facilmente pela eliminação das "raças parasíticas" da sua pátria.

Foi esta a justificação teórica para a opressão e eliminação dos judeus e dos ciganos, um dever que muitos nazis (curiosamente) consideravam repugnante.

As religiões que reconhecessem e ensinassem estas "verdades" eram as religiões "verdadeiras" ou "mestras" porque criavam liderança por evitarem as "mentiras reconfortantes". As que pregassem o amor e a tolerância, "em contradição com os factos", eram chamadas religiões "escravas" ou "falsas".

Os homens que aceitassem estas "verdades" eram chamados "líderes naturais"; os que as rejeitassem eram chamados "escravos naturais". Dizia-se dos escravos, especialmente dos inteligentes, que embaraçavam os mestres pela promoção de falsas doutrinas religiosas e políticas.

Se bem que a raça fosse fulcral na mundovisão nazi, não era tudo. As raízes ideológicas do nazismo iam um pouco mais fundo do que isso, visto que os nazis procuraram legitimação em obras anteriores, particularmente numa leitura, por muitos considerada no mínimo discutível, da tradição romântica do século XIX, e em especial do pensamento de Friedrich Nietzsche sobre o desenvovimento do homem em direcção ao Übermensch.

Nazismo e romantismo

De acordo com Bertrand Russell, o nazismo provém de uma tradição diferente quer do capitalismo liberal quer do comunismo. E por isso, para entender os valores do nazismo, é necessário explorar esta ligação, sem trivializar o movimento tal como ele era no seu auge, nos anos 30, e o descartar como pouco mais que racismo.

Muitos historiadores dizem que o elemento anti-semítico, que não existe nos movimentos-irmãos do nazismo, os fascismos de Itália e Espanha, foi adoptado por Hitler para obter popularidade para o seu movimento. O preconceito anti-semita era muito comum nas massas do Império Alemão. Por isso, diz-se que a aceitação das massas dependia do anti-semitismo e da exaltação do orgulho alemão, ferido com a derrota na Primeira Guerra Mundial.

Mas há quem diga que as origens e os valores do nazismo provém da tradição irracionalista do movimento romântico do início do século XIX. Os nazis valorizavam a força, a paixão, a falta de hipocrisia o utilitarianismo, os valores tradicionais da família e a devoção à comunidade.

O nazismo e o Império Britânico

Hitler admirava o Império Britânico. Os intelectuais britânicos desenvolveram teorias racistas no século XIX para controlar o povo indiano e outros "selvagens", e os nazis compiaram muitos destes métodos.

De forma semelhante, na sua juventude Hitler também admirou bastante os Estados Unidos da América. Em Mein Kampf, louvou os Estados Unidos pelas suas leis anti-imigração. De acordo com Hitler, os EUA eram uma nação bem sucedida porque se mantinham "puros" de "raças inferiores". No entanto, à medida que a guerra se aproximava, a sua opinião dos Estados Unidos piorou e ele começou a acreditar que a Alemanha iria conseguir uma vitória fácil sobre os EUA precisamente porque este país, na sua nova maneira de o ver, se tinha tornado uma nação mestiça.

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Folheto de propaganda económica
doméstica nazi

Economic Theory

Nazi economic theory concerned itself with immediate domestic issues and separately with ideological conceptions of international economics.

Domestic economic policy was narrowly concerned with three major goals:

• Elimination of unemployment
• Elimination of hyperinflation
• Expansion of production of consumer goods to improve middle- and lower-class living standards.

All of these policy goals were intended to address the perceived shortcomings of the Weimar Republic and to solidify domestic support for the party. In this, the party was very successful. Between 1933 and 1936 the German GNP increased by an average annual rate of 9.5 percent, and the rate for industry alone rose by 17.2 percent. However, many economists argue that the expansion of the Germany economy between 1933 and 1936 was not the result of the Nazi party, but rather the consequence of economic policies of the late Weimar Republic which had begin to have an effect.

In addition, it has been pointed out that while it is often popularly believed that the Nazis ended hyperinflation, that the end of hyperinflation preceded the Nazis by several years.

This expansion propelled the German economy out of a deep depression and into full employment in less than four years. Public consumption during the same period increased by 18.7%, while private consumption increased by 3.6% annually. However, as this production was primarily consumptive rather than productive (make work projects, expansion of the war-fighting machine, initiation of the draft to remove working age males from the labor force), inflationary pressures began to rear their head again, although not to the highs of the Weimar Republic. These economic pressures, combined with the war-fighting machine created in the expansion (and concomitant pressures for its use), has led some commentators to the conclusion that a European war was inevitable for these reasons alone. Stated another way, without another general European war to support this consumptive and inflationary economic policy, the Nazi domestic economic program was unsupportable. This is not to say that other more important political considerations were not to blame. It is only meant to state that economics have been, and are a primary motivating factor for any society to go to war.

Internationally, the Nazi party believed that an international banking cabal was behind the global depression of the 1930s. The control of this cabal was identified with the ethnic group known as Jews, providing another link in their ideological motivation for the destruction of that group in the holocaust. However, broadly speaking, the existence of large international banking or merchant banking organizations was well known at this time. Many of these banking organizations were able to exert influence upon nation states by extension or withholding of credit. This influence is not limited to the small states that preceded the creation of German Empire as a nation state in the 1870s, but is noted in most major histories of all European powers from the 1500s onward. In fact, some transnational corporations in the 1500 to 1800 period (the Dutch East India Company for one good example) were formed specifically to engage in warfare as a proxy for governmental involvement, as opposed to the other way around.

Using more modern nomenclature, it is possible to say that the Nazi Party was against transnational corporations power vis-a-vis that of the nation state. This basic anti-corporate stance is shared with many mainstream center-left political parties, as well as otherwise totally opposed anarchist political groups.

It is important to note that the Nazi Party's conception of international economics was very limited. As the National Socialist in the name NSDAP suggests, the party's primary motivation was to incorporate previously international resources into the Reich by force, rather than by trade (compare to the international socialism as practiced by the Soviet Union and the COMECON trade organization). This made international economic theory a supporting factor in the political ideology rather than a core plank of the platform as it is in most modern political parties.

In a economic sense, Nazism and Fascism are related. Nazism may be considered a subset of Fascism, with all Nazis being Fascists, but not all Fascists being Nazis. Nazism shares many economic features with Fascism, featuring complete government control of finance and investment (allocation of credit), industry, and agriculture. Yet in both of these systems, corporate power and market based systems for providing price information still existed. Quoting Benito Mussolini: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

Rather than the state requiring goods from industrial enterprises and allocating raw materials required for their production (as in socialist / communist systems), the state paid for these goods. This allows price to play an essential role in providing information as to relative scarcity of materials, or the capital requirements in technology or labor (including education, as in skilled labor) inputs to produce a manufactured good. Additionally, the unionist (strictly speaking, syndicalist) veneer placed on corporate labor relations was another major point of agreement. Both the German and Italian fascist political parties began as unionist labor movements, and grew into totalitarian dictatorships. This idea was maintained throughout their time in power, with state control used as a means to eliminate the assumed conflict between management labor relations.

Effects

These theories were used to justify a totalitarian political agenda of racial hatred and suppression using all the means of the state, and suppressing dissent.

Like other fascist regimes, the Nazi regime emphasized anti-communism and the leader principle (Führerprinzip), a key element of fascist ideology in which the ruler is deemed to embody the political movement and the nation. Unlike other fascist ideologies, Nazism was virulently racist. Some of the manifestations of Nazi racism were:

• Anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust
• Ethnic nationalism, including the notion of Germans' status as the Herrenvolk ("master race") and Übermensch
• A belief in the need to purify the German race through eugenics - this culminated in the involuntary euthanasia of disabled people

Anti-clericalism was also part of Nazi ideology.

Backlash Effects

Perhaps the primary intellectual effect has been that Nazi doctrines discredited the attempt to use biology to explain or influence social issues, for at least two generations after Nazi Germany's brief existence.

People and History

The most prominent Nazi was Adolf Hitler, who ruled Nazi Germany from 30 January 1933 until his suicide on 30 April 1945, led the German Reich into World War II, and oversaw the murder of over 40 million people. Under Hitler, ethnic nationalism and racism were joined together through an ideology of militarism to serve his goals.

After the war, many prominent Nazis were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials.

The Nazi symbol is the clockwise swastika.

Swastika
Nazi sacred symbol
"gamma cross"

Nazism and Religion

The relationship between Nazism and Christianity can only be described as complex and controversial.

Hitler and other Nazi leaders clearly made use of Christian symbolism and emotion in propagandizing the overwhelmingly Christian German public, but it remains a matter of controversy whether Hitler believed himself a Christian. Some Christian writers have sought to typify Hitler as an atheist or occultist -- even a Satanist -- whereas non-Christian writers have emphasized Nazism's outward use of Christian doctrine, regardless of what its inner-party mythology may have been. The existence of a Ministry of Church Affairs, instituted in 1935 and headed by Hanns Kerrl, was hardly recognized by ideologists such as Rosenberg and by other political decision-makers.

The Nazi Party's relations with the Catholic Church are yet more fraught. Many Catholic priests and leaders vociferously opposed Nazism on the grounds of its incompatibility with Christian morals. As with many political opponents, many of these priests were sentenced in the concentration camps for their opposition. Nevertheless, the Church hierarchy represented by Pope Pius XII remained largely silent on the issue, and allegations of the Pope's complicity are today commonplace. There were also pro-Nazi Catholic leaders like Bishop Alois Hudal.

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Nazism is considered as a kind of fascism

Nazism and Fascism

Nazism is often (but incorrectly) used interchangeably with Fascism. While Nazism employed stylistic elements of Fascism, the only serious similarities between the two were dictatorship, territorial irredentism, and basic economic theory. For example, Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism, did not embrace anti-Semitism until seduced by his alliance with Hitler, whereas Nazism had been explicitly racialist from its inception. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, often termed a fascist by his largely Communist opposition, could perhaps be described as a reactionary Catholic monarchist who adopted little of fascism but its style.

Toward the end of the 20th century, Neo-Nazi movements have arisen in a number of countries, including the United States of America and several European nations. Neo-Nazism can include any group or organization that exhibits an ideological link to Nazism. It is frequently associated with the skinhead youth subculture. Some fringe political parties, such as the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, have also adopted Nazi ideas.

Which factors promoted the success of National socialism?

An important question about national socialism is the question for the factors that promoted its success not only in Germany, but also in other European countries (National socialistic movements could be found in Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and even in the US) in the twenties and thirties of the last century?

These factors might have included:

• Economic devastation all over Europe after WWI
• Lack of orientation of many people after the breakdown of monarchy in many European countries.
• Perceived Jewish involvement in WWI profiteering
• Rejection of Communism

Were the Nazis Socialist?

Some have claimed that Nazism was a form of socialism, although this view is rejected by most historians and by modern socialists. For more see Socialism and Nazism

The term Nazi in popular culture

The multiple atrocities and extremist ideology that the Nazis followed have made them notorious in popular grammar as well as history. The term Nazi is used in various ways. It's often used to describe groups of people who try to force an unpopular or extreme agenda on the general population, and also commit crimes and other violations on others without remorse. Israel is a common and extremely controversial target of the term "nazi" in describing its treatment of Palistinians, and it's theoretically racialist policies.

Some of the usages seen in popular culture are seen as highly offensive. Phrases like "Open Source Nazi," "Feminazi," or "Soup Nazi" are examples of those considered objectionable. Even those who are strongly opposed to e.g. the Open Source movement generally dislike perceived trivialization of the Nazis, who killed millions.

The term is used so frequently as to inspire "godwin's law" which states "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one". Perhaps as with other offensive words such as nigger and faggot, the word is being "reclaimed" by the community.

See also:

• History of Germany
• Consequences of German Nazism
• General Government
• Doublespeak (for a discussion of the semantic implications of words such as Nazi).
• Nazi children
• Führerprinzip