NATIONAL SOCIALISM. — A movement, generically socialist but hierarchical and centralized in structure, which arose in Germany in 1919–20 and gradually established itself there through alternating fortunes, and then remained, in totalitarian fashion, at the head of that State from 1933 to 1945; thereafter, overwhelmed by the disastrous outcome of the Second World War, which was itself essentially determined by N.
I. ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT UP TO 1933
With the entry of A. Hitler (then a propaganda officer in a Munich regiment) into the German Workers’ Party (founded by A. Drexler on 5 Jan. 1919), N. soon underwent an unexpected development in Bavaria; on 24 Feb. 1920 Hitler himself provided it with an extensive 24-point programme, while its name was changed, in Apr., to that of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei: N. S. D. A. P.); and finally, on 25 July 1921, Hitler attained its presidency and, especially by making use of specially organized military groups (the Sturmabteilungen, or assault detachments: S. A.), succeeded in reducing its most direct opponents, the Social Democrats, to inactivity. From that time onward, several of the future leaders joined him: former officers such as H. Göring and E. Röhm, journalists such as A. Rosemberg (the future theorist of racism), and students such as R. Hess (for a long time the Party’s secretary and the Führer’s designated successor in 1939).However, the ill-fated participation in a coup against the Bavarian government, organized by various right-wing groups led by General Ludendorff (the so-called Munich Putsch of 8–9 Nov. 1923), which ended with Hitler’s being sentenced to five years in a fortress and some of his collaborators fleeing abroad, appeared to mark the Party’s decline. But Hitler, in his cell, compiled a volume of memoirs and reflections, destined to become (under the title Mein Kampf) the movement’s definitive ideological text.
Once he was released, the propaganda of the N. S. D. A. P. rapidly spread beyond Bavaria as well (in the north, particularly through the efforts of G. Strasser, who would nevertheless later break with Hitler in 1932, and in the Rhineland, through those of J. Goebbels). The Party also created numerous other dependent organizations (including the one for young people, directed by B. von Schirach), issued a broad agrarian programme in defence of peasant groups (inspired by W. Darré), and began on a large scale to participate in the most diverse electoral contests, eventually obtaining, in the elections to the Reichstag of 30 July 1932, a majority of the parliamentary seats.
The rise to power was thus by then ripe; all the more so because the disillusioned and depressed masses (in 1929 the unemployed had reached three million) saw in a decisive change of regime a hope of recovery. President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor on 30 Jan. 1933; the elections to the Reichstag on 5 March, conducted in an atmosphere of blatant intimidation, gave the Party 17 million votes; on 23 March, by law, “full powers” were conferred upon the National Socialist cabinet, and the country fell into the hands of the leaders of N., which thus became the arbiter of its destiny.
II. THE POLITICAL-SOCIAL DOCTRINE
The 24 points of the 1920 programme, despite their initial provisional character, constituted for many years the essential nucleus of the n.’s demands: the union of all Germans in a great Germany, no longer bound by treaties imposed by force and once again endowed with its colonies; the formation of a closer community among all citizens (Volksgemeinschaft), while excluding from it, however, all those of non-German blood (especially Jews); protection of the middle class in industry and commerce, eliminating excessive profits and safeguarding labour in every way; equally effective aid for the rural classes, burdened by taxes and debts; extensive and multifaceted activity in favour of the physical and ideal health of the people; acceptance of a positive Christianity unconnected with particular confessions, which were to be admitted only if they did not “endanger the security of the State or harm the customs and sentiments of the German race”; finally, the establishment of a strong central power in the Reich.Unlike what had occurred with fascism, which Hitler undoubtedly took as a model in many respects, principally external ones, the long wait before attaining power enabled the n. to elaborate a complete political-social doctrine and then to translate it into juridical terms through extensive and coordinated legislation during the first years of government. It is therefore possible to identify, in broad outline, its essential foundations as they appeared delineated in its most advanced phase.
For the n., the dominant political value was no longer the State, according to the scheme scientifically elaborated by the classical public-law scholars of the nineteenth century, but the people (Volk), as an ethnic unity essentially determined by identity of blood. It was claimed that such intimate racial community (Volksgemeinschaft) could be attained by eliminating non-Aryan elements from the German people. Indeed, according to this prejudice, the Aryo-Nordic race existed in its greatest purity specifically in Germany and, following the theory of the inequality of the human races formulated much earlier by the Frenchman Gobineau and the Englishman Chamberlain, was regarded as the most highly developed of those in existence. In particular, individuals of non-assimilable blood (among Europeans, for example, Jews and gypsies) had to be struck from the ranks of citizens; they had entered it in periods when the racial factor was given no consideration, and were to be reduced to the condition of mere subjects, simple Staatsangehörige, instead of Reichsbürger. It is clear that only the latter were to be regarded as actual members of the Germanic people (Volksgenossen).
The formula Blut und Boden summed up the n.’s thinking on this matter; but the term Blut also evoked the concept of lineage (Abstammung), that is, the biological, psychological and moral substance determined by birth, while the other, Boden, indicated not only the space dominated by the State’s supreme authority, but also that area of the earth’s surface to which a people must be considered intrinsically bound by its work and its history.
It is thus understandable that, alongside the so-called racial laws of Nuremberg of 15 September 1935, which were clearly anti-Semitic in character, there were enacted the law of 14 July 1933 on sterilization (incurable mental illnesses, habitual criminals, etc.), that of 18 October 1935 prohibiting marriage for persons suffering from particular contagious diseases, and, in addition, the law of 20 September 1935 on hereditary farms (Reichserbhafgesetz), which, by prohibiting the further division of the family agricultural unit, aimed to create, through a sound and numerous rural population, a source of healthy blood.
The aforementioned “Germanic popular community, based on the identity of blood and historical traditions,” was to bind all its members in a bond of sincere comradeship, and within it the common good would thus naturally have precedence over individual interest (“Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz”: this, in fact, was then read on the coins of the Reich). The individual was therefore to be considered only in his capacity as a member of the popular collective, which, in turn, was to become increasingly homogeneous by abolishing the many political, social and cultural particularisms, until it fully realized, with regard to the entire Germanic race, even beyond the territorial borders of the State, the axiom “ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.”
Law, which was to bring order and power to the aforementioned community, was not, in fact, conceived as something external and foreign to the people itself, but rather as something that existed within it in a diffuse state, awaiting the emergence of a Führer capable of giving it concrete form by expressing it in normative terms. The Führer appeared as the person who, better than any other Volksgenosse, was capable of interpreting this communal spirit (Volksgeist); and in his activity directed towards protecting and strengthening the Volksgemeinschaft, he was not to employ a coercive power of command (Herrschaft), but merely to advance as one who leads (führt), followed by all his comrades with complete spontaneity and trust, forming his faithful Geflogschaft.
The principal means necessary to the Führer for attaining these ends were: the National Socialist Party (or Bewegung, that is, political Movement) and the State, now conceived as the aggregate of bureaucratic, military and paramilitary organizations (Beamtentum, Wehrmacht, Arbeitsdienst), that is, as a simple Apparat, a pure instrument of his activity of Führung.
As is evident, this political-social doctrine of the n., with its almost mystical exaltation of race, its absolute contempt for all individuals not belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft, its cult of pure violence, and so forth, could not be accepted by the Catholic Church. And therefore, although on 20 July 1933, especially through the mediation of F. von Papen, a concordat was concluded with the Reich (which incorporated those previously existing with certain Länder), numerous disputes soon arose over its interpretation; meanwhile, attempts were made surreptitiously to weaken the Church’s prestige through numerous trials of priests accused of alleged offences against currency laws (1935) and against morality (1936–37). The Pontiff, however, reacted with the utmost firmness to the increasing suffocation of religious life with the letter Mit brennender Sorge (14 March 1937), which was followed by numerous pastoral letters and declarations of the German episcopate. In reality, the Catholic opposition was the only one to remain effective even during the harshest years of oppression. Moreover, the n.’s intention of totally subjugating the Protestant Church, given its national character (law of 11 July 1933), also encountered considerable difficulties from not a few pastors.
III. ITS EPHEMERAL ESTABLISHMENT IN GERMANY
Particularly during the first years of the Second World War, the programmatic principles set out above appeared in large part to have been effectively achieved, even though subsequent events then revealed their ephemeral substance.In fact, after the death of President Hindenburg (2 Aug. 1934), the Führer had become the sole legislator; all public officials (including members of the armed forces) depended on him alone and swore personal allegiance to him; a devoted party militia (the Schutzstaffeln, or protection squads: SS), with police duties, reported directly to him; even the judiciary had by then become subject to his will, while he could personally intervene in any judgment to determine and even carry out the punishment, as he had done, for example, in 1934, when it was a matter of suppressing the revolt ordered by the Chief of Staff of the SA, Röhm. Moreover: on the basis of the maxim “authority downward, responsibility upward,” all public functions, without any democratic participation by the people in government, appeared to be assigned to a complex hierarchy of Unterführer, subordinate at the summit to the sole irresponsible Führer (the so-called Führerprinzip). Likewise: citizens no longer enjoyed any serious constitutional guarantee, since judges could impose penalties even where appropriate punitive provisions were lacking, whenever they discretionally deemed the prosecuted action contrary to the immanent law, latent and diffused, within the Volksgemeinschaft itself. Finally, the latter had in fact been purged internally of numerous non-assimilable elements (especially through the relentless application of the anti-Semitic laws), and gathered into a solid unitary State through the complete abolition of the autonomy of the Länder and the incorporation of neighboring Germanic territories, accomplished through the incorporation of Austria, the Sudetenland, etc.; and externally, it had attained an evident position of supremacy over various smaller ethnic groups bordering it through the formation of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the governorate of Poland, etc.
With the victory of the United Nations in 1945, the total overthrow of the political institutions of the n. was followed, then, in a truly rapid and definitive process in its consequences, by the complete dissolution of the ideological “myth” that formed its foundation and had drawn strength only from their apparent success. The moral absurdity underlying such theories could not, in fact, remain concealed any longer, despite certain aspects seductive at first sight, such as the proclaimed spirit of comradeship or the alleged spontaneous subordination to the collective good. In reality, they masked an unjustifiable contempt for the eminent dignity of every single human person.