What is Nazism?
Nazism, formally National Socialism, is the specific fascist movement and ideology of Germany's National Socialist German Workers' Party, distinguished from other fascist movements by its central, foundational commitment to a racial hierarchy and antisemitic ideology, alongside ultranationalism and a single-party totalitarian state.
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Core tenets
- Racial hierarchy and antisemitism
- Held a doctrine of racial hierarchy placing a defined Aryan or Germanic race at the top, with explicit, central antisemitism identifying Jewish people as a claimed existential racial enemy, a foundational and defining tenet distinct from other fascist movements.
- Ultranationalism and territorial expansion
- Called for German national rebirth and, explicitly, for territorial expansion, Lebensraum, to be achieved through conquest, framed as a racial and national necessity.
- Single-party totalitarian state
- Established a single-party state under the National Socialist German Workers' Party, eliminating independent political, civic, and, eventually, religious institutions.
- State-directed violence, culminating in genocide
- Combined domestic repression of political opposition with, ultimately, the systematic state-organized genocide of European Jews and the persecution and murder of other targeted groups, a documented historical outcome, not a disputed interpretation.
How it works in practice
The Nazi Party built a totalitarian state apparatus that implemented its ideology through law, propaganda, and, ultimately, industrialized violence.
- Nuremberg Laws and legal persecution
- Enacted specific laws stripping Jewish citizens of legal rights and citizenship, an early and explicit legal implementation of the party's racial ideology.
- The Holocaust
- The systematic, state-organized murder of approximately six million Jewish people and millions of others, including Roma people, disabled people, and political prisoners, the ideology's ultimate documented outcome.
What it is often confused with
Nazism is a specific historical movement with a well-documented ideology and record, and this site's discipline against evaluative framing of contemporary politics does not extend to softening or omitting Nazism's own documented core tenets and historical outcomes, which are a matter of settled historical record, not contested interpretation.
Criticisms and debates
There is no serious scholarly tradition defending Nazism's core racial ideology or its historical record; scholarly debate instead concerns questions of historical interpretation, causation, and classification.
Historical-causation debate
Historians have debated the specific social, economic, and political causes that allowed the Nazi party to gain and consolidate power in Germany, including the Treaty of Versailles's aftermath, the Great Depression, and the Weimar Republic's institutional weaknesses.
Response: This is an active area of historical scholarship concerning causation, not a debate over whether Nazism's ideology or actions were legitimate; no mainstream historical position defends the ideology itself.
Comparative-fascism debate
Scholars have debated the degree to which Nazism should be treated as a variant of the broader fascist category, given its distinctively central racial ideology, compared to Italian Fascism's more state-and-nation-centered doctrine.
Response: This is a debate over classification and emphasis among historians and political scientists, not a dispute over Nazism's documented racial ideology or historical record.
Historical examples
- Nazi Germany, 1933 to 1945
- The historical state governed by the National Socialist German Workers' Party under Adolf Hitler, ending with Germany's defeat in the Second World War.
Sources
- 1.Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. 1925.
- 2.National Socialist German Workers' Party. 25-Point Program. 1920.
- 3.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
- 4.Encyclopaedia Britannica. Nazi Party.