The Ideology of the Nazi Party

Hello. My name is Neil Gregor.

I'm professor of modern European history at the University of Southampton.

And today I'm going to be talking in a

series of lectures about the history of Nazi Germany.

Now my first lecture is about ideology.

If we're going to understand the history of Nazi Germany,

we have to start with ideology.

It's not the end of any explanation, but it certainly is the beginning.

The roots of Nazi Germany or the roots of Nazi

ideology can be traced back into the 19th century.

It's in the 19th century that we

witnessed the emergence of varieties of nationalism,

colonialism and imperialism,

militarism, racism, anti Semitism.

They become part of the everyday common sense of broad sections of society,

and they create a reservoir

of thought and ideas on which Nazism can eventually draw.

Now it's important to know that there's

little that's peculiarly German about this.

At this stage, If we go to Britain in the 19th century,

we can find colonialism to, uh, we can find nationalism.

If we go to Eastern European countries,

we can similarly find plenty of anti Semitism.

Now, these ideas are also at this point quite vague. They diffuse.

Different elements can be put together in different

ways by different people with different emphasis.

Uh, so it's important not to see this as kind of two. Fixed a story at this point,

but crucial at least in retrospect,

is the emergence of a new form of anti Semitism in the late 19th century.

Traditionally, anti Semitism had largely been based upon religion on religion,

religious intolerance.

So the solution for anti Semites was to convert,

to convert to Roman Catholicism to convert to Protestantism.

The 19th century also saw the growth of what we might call liberal anti Semitism.

Uh, these people saw all religion as irrational

and superstitious, and so for them,

the solution was just to give up religion for stop.

But in the late 19th and early 20th century, we see a new form of anti Semitism emerge.

It's what we think of as biological or specifically racial anti Semitism,

the animating spirit.

There is the set of ideas we associate

with Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution

for anti Semites who were inspired by people like Darwin.

History became seen as a as a struggle between species,

a struggle in which the strong survive and the weak go under.

Increasingly,

nations were imagined as bodies,

with individual members of the nation functioning as individual cells.

And those bodies were seen as constantly under attack by their enemies,

who are imagined as a disease

and illness a plague.

Now this has two implications. Really.

The first is that being Jewish is biological

rather than a question of belief or faith or culture.

It can't be changed. A Jew can't give up being a Jew.

If Jewishness is determined biologically anymore than a

horse can stop being a horse and become

a fox.

The second implication is,

is very chilling. Indeed.

If the national body is weakened by a disease,

then it can only be revived. It can only be cured

if that disease is eradicated.

If we can get our heads firmly around that central metaphor,

the idea that emerges on the right

that the nation is a body,

then we're well on the way to

understanding what eventually happened in Nazi Germany.

After 1933.

Now, after 1918, Hitler, who enters the story as an unknown army veteran,

picks up on these these broad ideas to make sense

of what has happened to Germany during the First World War

to explain to himself why it is that Germany has been defeated

who,

in Hitler's view of history is inevitable.

War reflects the laws of racial struggle.

So in Hitler's view,

Germany has been defeated in 1918 because the national body, as he as he thinks of it,

has gone into battle, weakened by an illness or a disease,

a disease that has been

undermining the health of Germany from within.

Now that disease, of course, is the Jews, uh, and their front organisation,

Socialism and Marxism,

which in his view, spreads pacifism.

International is, um,

and undermines the Germans willingness to fight.

It's the disease of socialism and Marxism as he sees that

that spreads and culminates in the revolution of 1918 to 1919.

Just as Germany is about to triumph on the field,

these unpatriotic revolutionaries voiced their their their

dirty date upon an unsuspecting Germany.

They signed the armistice they foist an alien republic on to Germany.

They signed the Treaty of Versailles.

They deliver a collapsed Germany up to her enemies.

Now it's important to emphasise, of course,

that this is a wholly spurious account of the war and revolution.

The revolution was a consequence of Germany's defeat in the first World War.

It was not the cause.

But what matters here, first of all, is that Hitler believes it.

And what matters, secondly,

is that it chimes with what many other people in Germany believe, too.

So

it's that central belief that the Weimar Republic

reflects the triumph of Germany's national enemies,

behind whom stands the Jews

that determines Hitler's politics in the 19 twenties

and 19 thirties.

National Revival demands overcoming the republic,

overcoming Versailles,

making Germany great again

and dealing with this internal enemy, the Jew himself.

It also, of course, has longer term implications.

If Germany is going to go to war again,

it must make sure that the same thing doesn't happen.

If the national body is going to go

to war and withstand

the pressures of a new war,

it can't go into a war weakened internally by the same disease.

In other words,

preparing for another war sustaining another war means eradicating the Jews.

Now, quite what that means in practise is not entirely clear.

And of course, historians have argued over that.

But the central metaphor of the diseased national body

and a need to cure it contains an implied logic that we need to recognise

if we can understand that we are well on the way

to beginning to understand how the history of Nazi Germany unfolds.