(WORLD HISTORY)RISE OF HITLER AND NAZISM

                            RISE OF HITLER AND NAZISM

 Adolf Hitler's rise to power:

• Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party known as the DAP – German Workers' Party; the name was changed in 1920 to the National Socialist German Workers' Party(Nazi Party).
• Hitler's "rise" can be considered to have ended in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month; president Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues. The Enabling Act—when used ruthlessly and with authority—virtually assured that Hitler could thereafter constitutionally exercise dictatorial power without legal objection.
• Adolf Hitler rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Being one of the best speakers of the party, he told the other members of the party to either make him leader of the party, or, he would never return.
• He was aided in part by his willingness to use violence in advancing his political objectives. The Beer Hall Putsch (failed attempt by Hitler with General Ludendorff and other Kampfbund(a league of patriotic fighting societies and the German National Socialist party) leaders to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, )in November 1923 and the later release of his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) introduced Hitler to a wider audience.
• In the mid-1920s, the party engaged in electoral battles in which Hitler participated as a speaker and organizer, as well as in street battles and violence between the Rotfrontkämpferbund(paramilitary organization under the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany) and the Nazi's Sturmabteilung(SA)( paramilitarywing of the Nazi Party).
• Through the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazis gathered enough electoral support to become the largest political party in the Reichstag, and Hitler's blend of political acuity, deceptiveness and cunning converted the party's non-majority but plurality status into effective governing power in the ailing Weimar Republic of 1933.

The beginning (1918–1924)

• Hitler became involved with the fledgling Nazi Party after World War One, and set the violent tone of the movement early, by forming the Sturmabteilung (SA), a paramilitary.
• Catholic Bavaria resented rule from Protestant Berlin, and Hitler at first saw revolution in Bavaria as a means to power – but an early attempt proved fruitless, and he was imprisoned after the 1923 Munich Beerhall Putsch. He used the time to produce Mein Kampf, in which he argued that the effeminate Jewish-Christian ethic was enfeebling Europe, and that Germany needed a man of iron to restore itself and build an empire. He decided on the tactic of pursuing power through "legal" means.

From Armistice (November 1918) to party membership (September 1919)

• After being granted permission from King Ludwig III of Bavaria, 25-year-old Austrian-born Hitler enlisted in a Bavarian regiment of the German army, although he was not yet a German citizen. For over four years (August 1914 – November 1918), Germany was a principal belligerent in World War I,on the Western Front. Soon after the fighting on the front ended in November 1918,Hitler returned to Munich after the Armistice with no job, no real civilian job skills and no friends. He remained in the Reichswehr and was given a relatively meaningless assignment during the winter of 1918–1919,but was eventually recruited by the Army's Political Department (Press and News Bureau).He took part in "national thinking" courses under Captain Karl Mayr.Apparently his skills in oratory, as well as his extreme and open anti-Semitism, caught the eye of an approving army officer and he was promoted to an "education officer"—which gave him an opportunity to speak in public.
• In July 1919 Hitler was appointed intelligence agent both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). The DAP had been formed by Anton Drexler, Karl Harrer and others, through amalgamation of other groups, on 5 January 1919 at a small gathering in Munich. While he studied the activities of the DAP, Hitler became impressed with Drexler's antisemitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist ideas.
• Impressed with Hitler's oratory skills, Drexler invited him to join the DAP. Hitler accepted on 12 September 1919. Further, Hitler was allowed to stay in the army .
• With the support of Anton Drexler, Hitler became chief of propaganda for the party in early 1920. In February 1920 he engineered the name change of the DAP to the National Socialist German Workers' Party(Nazi Party).Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika. He organised their biggest meeting yet on 24 February 1920.There Hitler announced the party's 25-point program. Hitler was later discharged from the army in March 1920 and began working full-time for the NSDAP.
• In August Hitler also organized a "hall protection" squad which later was known as the "Gymnastics and Sports Division."Their principal intended purpose was, in fact, to keep order at Nazi meetings. In early October the group's name was officially changed to the Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment) or SA, which suggested the possibility of offensive, as well as defensive, action.
• Throughout 1920, Hitler began to lecture at Munich's beer halls, particularly. Only Hitler was able to bring in the crowds for the party speeches and meetings.
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• In June 1921, while Hitler and Dietrich Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the NSDAP in Munich. Members of the its executive committee, some of whom considered Hitler to be too overbearing, wanted to merge with the rival German Socialist Party (DSP).Hitler returned to Munich on 11 July and angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised his resignation would mean the end of the party.Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed.He was granted absolute powers.
• In 1922 and early 1923, Hitler formed two organizations that would grow to have huge significance. The first was the Jungsturm and Jugendbund, which would later become the Hitler Youth. The other was the Stabswache, an early incarnation of what would later become the Schutzstaffel (SS).
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• Inspired by Benito Mussolini's March on Rome Hitler decided that a coup d'état was the proper strategy to seize control of the country. In May 1923, elements loyal to Hitler within the army helped the SA to procure a barracks and its weaponry, but the order to march never came.
• A pivotal moment came when Hitler led the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted coup d'état on 8–9 November 1923. Hitler was arrested on 11 November 1923.Hitler was put on trial for high treason, gaining great public attention.
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• The rather spectacular trial began in February 1924. Hitler endeavored to turn the tables and put democracy and the Weimar Republic on trial as traitors to the German people. Hitler was convicted and on 1 April sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Hitler received friendly treatment from the guards. The Bavarian Supreme Court issued a pardon and he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections.
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• Hitler used the time in Prison to consider his political strategy and dictate the first volume of Mein Kampf. After the putsch the party was banned in Bavaria, but it participated in 1924's two elections by proxy as the National Socialist Freedom Movement. In the German election, May 1924 the party gained seats in the Reichstag, with 6.55% voting for the Movement. In the German election, December 1924 the National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSFB) (Combination of the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (DVFP) and the Nazi Party (NSDAP)) lost 18 seats, only holding on to 14 seats, with 3% (907,242) of the electorate voting for Hitler's party.
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• The Barmat Scandal was often used later in Nazi propaganda, both as an electoral strategy and as an appeal to anti-Semitism.
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• Hitler had determined, after some reflection, that power was to be achieved not through revolution outside of the government, but rather through legal means, within the confines of the democratic system established by Weimar.
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• For five to six years there would be no further prohibitions of the party (see below Seizure of Control: (1931–1933)).
• Move towards power (1925–1930)[edit]
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• In the German election, May 1928 the Party achieved just 12 seats (2.6% of the vote) in the Reichstag. The highest provincial gain was again in Bavaria (5.11%), though in three areas the NSDAP failed to gain even 1% of the vote. Overall the NSDAP gained 2.63% (810,127) of the vote. Partially due to the poor results, Hitler decided that Germans needed to know more about his goals. Despite being discouraged by his publisher, he wrote a second book that was discovered and released posthumously as the Zweites Buch. At this time the SA began a period of deliberate antagonism to the Rotfront by marching into Communist strongholds and starting violent altercations.
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• At the end of 1928, party membership was recorded at 130,000. In March 1929, Erich Ludendorff represented the Nazi Party in the Presidential elections. He gained 280,000 votes (1.1%), and was the only candidate to poll fewer than a million votes. The battles on the streets grew increasingly violent. After the Rotfront interrupted a speech by Hitler, the SA marched into the streets of Nuremberg and killed two bystanders. In a tit-for-tat action, the SA stormed a Rotfront meeting on 25 August and days later the Berlin headquarters of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) itself. In September Goebbels led his men into Neukölln, a KPD stronghold, and the two warring parties exchanged pistol and revolver fire.
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• The German referendum of 1929 was important as it gained the Nazi Party recognition and credibility it never had before.
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• On 14 January 1930 Nazi activist Horst Wessel got into an argument with his landlady. Depending on the source, it was over unpaid rent or Wessel's activities as a pimp.[31][32] It led to fatal consequences. The landlady was a member of the KPD, and contacted one of her Rotfront friends, Albert Hochter, who shot Wessel.[31] Wessel had penned a song months before which would become a Nazi anthem as the Horst-Wessel-Lied. Goebbels seized upon the attack (and the weeks Wessel spent on his deathbed) to publicize the song, and the funeral was used as an anti-Communist propaganda opportunity for the Nazis.[33]
• On 1 April Hannover enacted a law banning the Hitlerjugend (the Hitler Youth), and Goebbels was convicted of high treason at the end of May. Bavaria banned all political uniforms on 2 June, and on 11 June Prussia prohibited the wearing of SA brown shirts and associated insignia. The next month Prussia passed a law against its officials holding membership in either the NSDAP or KPD. Later in July, Goebbels was again tried, this time for "public insult", and fined. The government also placed the army officers on trial for "forming national socialist cells".
• Against this violent backdrop, Hitler's party gained a shocking victory in the Reichstag, obtaining 107 seats. The Nazis became the second largest party in Germany. 
• The Great Depression was also a factor in Hitler's electoral success. Against this legal backdrop, the SA began its first major anti-Jewish action in 1930 when groups of brownshirts attacked Jews.

Weimar parties fail to halt Nazis

• The Wall Street Crash of 1929 heralded worldwide economic disaster. The Nazis and the Communists made great gains at the 1930 Election and between them secured over 50% of Reichstag seats, requiring the moderate parties to consider negotiations with anti-democrats.
• Both the Nazis and Communists were pledged to eliminating democracy. The Communists openly announced that they would prefer to see the Nazis in power rather than lift a finger to save the republic.
• The Weimar political parties failed to stop the Nazi rise. Germany's Weimar political system made it difficult for chancellors to govern with a stable parliamentary majority, and successive chancellors instead relied on the president's emergency powers to govern. From 1931 to 1933, the Nazis combined terror tactics with conventional campaigning – Hitler criss-crossed the nation by air, while SA troops paraded in the streets, beat up opponents.
• A middle class liberal party strong enough to block the Nazis did not exist – the People's Party and the Democrats suffered severe losses to the Nazis at the polls. The Social Democrats were essentially a conservative trade union party, with ineffectual leadership. The Catholic Centre Party maintained its voting bloc, but was preoccupied with defending its own particular interests.
• The Communists meanwhile were engaging in violent clashes with Nazis on the streets, but Moscow had directed the Communist Party to prioritise destruction of the Social Democrats, seeing more danger in them as a rival for the loyalty of the working class. 
• The heaviest responsibility lay with the German Right, who "forsook a true conservatism" and made Hitler their partner in a coalition government.
• The Centre Party's Heinrich Brüning was Chancellor from 1930 to 1932. Brüning and Hitler were unable to reach terms of co-operation.The 84-year-old President von Hindenburg, a conservative monarchist, was reluctant to take action to suppress the Nazis, while the ambitious Major-General Schleicher, as Minister handling Army and Navy matters hoped to harness their support.With Schleicher's backing, and Hitler's stated approval, Hindenburg appointed the Catholic monarchist Papen to replace Brüning as Chancellor in June 1932. 
• At the July 1932 Elections, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag and Hitler withdrew support for Papen, and demanded the Chancellorship. He was refused by Hindenburg. Papen dissolved Parliament, and the Nazi vote declined at the November Election.Schleicher convinced Hindenburg to sack Papen, and Schleicher himself became Chancellor, promising to form a workable coalition.
• The aggrieved Papen opened negotiations with Hitler, proposing a Nazi-Nationalist Coalition.

Seizure of control (1931–1933)

• On 10 March 1931, with street violence between the Rotfront and SA spiraling out of control, Prussia re-enacted its ban on brown shirts(Wore by of SA).
• The deaths mounted up, with many more on the Rotfront side.Street fights and beer hall battles resulting in deaths occurred throughout February and April 1932, all against the backdrop of Adolf Hitler's competition in the presidential election which pitted him against Hindenburg. In the first round on 13 March, Hitler had polled over 11 million votes but was still behind Hindenburg. The second and final round took place on 10 April: Hitler lost out to Hindenburg.
• Three days after the presidential elections, the German government banned the NSDAP paramilitaries, the SA and the SS, on the basis of the Emergency Decree for the Preservation of State Authority. SA men were tried for assaulting unarmed Jews in Berlin. Soon law was repealed by Papen, Chancellor of Germany. Such ambivalence about the fate of Jews was supported by the culture of anti-Semitism that pervaded the German public at the time.
• Dwarfed by Hitler's electoral gains, the KPD turned away from legal means and increasingly towards violence.By this time both sides marched into each other's strongholds hoping to spark rivalry. Hermann Göring, as speaker of the Reichstag, asked the Papen government to prosecute shooters. Laws were then passed which made political violence a capital crime.
• At the end of July, the Nazi Party secured 230 seats in the Reichstag. Energised by the incredible results, Hitler asked to be made Chancellor. Papen offered the position of Vice Chancellor, but Hitler refused.
• Hermann Göring, in his position of Reichstag president, asked that decisive measures be taken by the government over the spate in murders of national socialists. On 9 August, amendments were made to the statute on 'acts of political violence', increasing the punishments. Special courts were announced to try such offences. When in power less than half a year later, Hitler would use this legislation against his opponents with devastating effect.
• The law was applied almost immediately, but did not bring the perpetrators behind the recent massacres to trial as expected. 
• The Nazi party lost 35 seats in the November 1932 election, but remained the Reichstag's largest party. The most shocking move of the early election campaign was to send the SA to support a Rotfront action against the transport agency and in support of a strike.
• After Chancellor Papen left office, he secretly told Hitler that he still held considerable sway with president Hindenburg and that he would make Hitler chancellor as long as he, Papen, could be the vice chancellor.
• Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, in a coalition arrangement between the Nazis and the Nationalist-Conservatives(NSDAP-DNVP Party). The SA and SS led torchlight parades throughout Berlin.Papen was to serve as Vice-Chancellor in a majority conservative Cabinet – still falsely believing that he could "tame" Hitler.Initially, Papen did speak out against some Nazi excesses, and only narrowly escaped death in the night, whereafter he ceased to openly criticize the regime..
• With Germans who opposed Nazism failing to unite against it, Hitler soon moved to consolidate absolute power.
• Following the Reichstag fire, the Nazis began to suspend civil liberties and eliminate political opposition. The Communists were excluded from the Reichstag. At the March 1933 elections, again no single party secured a majority. Hitler required the vote of the Centre Party and Conservatives in the Reichstag to obtain the powers he desired. He called on Reichstag members to vote for the Enabling Act on 24 March 1933. Hitler was granted plenary powers"temporarily" by the passage of the Act.The law gave him the freedom to act without parliamentary consent and even without constitutional limitations.
• Employing his characteristic mix of negotiation and intimidation, Hitler offered the possibility of friendly co-operation, promising not to threaten the Reichstag, the President, the States or the Churches if granted the emergency powers. With Nazi paramilitary encircling the building, he said: "It is for you, gentlemen of the Reichstag to decide between war and peace".The Centre Party, having obtained promises of non-interference in religion, joined with conservatives in voting for the Act (only the Social Democrats voted against).
• The Act allowed Hitler and his Cabinet to rule by emergency decree for four years, though Hindenburg remained President.Hitler immediately set about abolishing the powers of the states and the existence of non-Nazi political parties and organisations.Reichstag abdicated its democratic responsibilities.
• The Act did not infringe upon the powers of the President, and Hitler would not fully achieve full dictatorial power until after the death of Hindenburg in August 1934. Hindenburg remained commander and chief of the military and retained the power to negotiate foreign treaties.

Nazism:

• Nazism is the ideology and practice associated with the German Nazi Party and state as well as other related far-right groups. It was also promoted in other European countries with large ethnic German communities, such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.
• Nazism originally developed from the influences of pan-Germanism, German nationalist movement and the anti-communist, paramilitary culture in post-First World War Germany.
• The Nazi Party was founded as the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party on 5 January 1919. 
• By the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler had become its leader and assumed control of the organisation, now renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or NAZI Party) in a bid to broaden its appeal. 
• The National Socialist Program, adopted in 1920, called for a united Greater Germany that would deny citizenship to Jews or those of Jewish descent, while also supporting land reform and the nationalisation of some industries. 
• In Mein Kampf, written in 1924, Hitler outlined the virulent antisemitism and anti-communism that lay at the heart of his political philosophy, as well as his disdain for parliamentary democracy and his belief in Germany’s right to territorial expansion.
• In 1933, with the support of more traditional right-wing conservatives, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and the Nazis gradually established a one-party state.
• Once in power, Hitler purged the remnants of the party’s more socially and economically radical factions in the mid-1934 Night of the Long Knives(purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders)and, following the death of President Hindenburg, ultimate authority became increasingly concentrated in his hands, as Führer or leader. 
• Term 'Nazi' was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a derogatory word for a backwards peasant. Opponents seized on this and shortened the first word of the party's name, Nationalsozialistische, to the dismissive "Nazi".

Position in the political spectrum

• 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 towards the Treaty of Versailles, and condemnation of the Weimar Republic for signing the armistice in November 1918 that later led to their signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
• A major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I.
• Initially, the post-World War I German far right was dominated by monarchists, but the younger generation, who were associated with Völkisch nationalism(that elevates the "Volk" (the People) above all other concerns), were more radical and did not express any emphasis on the restoration of the German monarchy.
• The Nazis, the far-right monarchist, reactionary German National People's Party (DNVP), and others, such as monarchist officers of the German Army and several prominent industrialists, formed an alliance in opposition to the Weimar Republic on 11 October 1931 in town Bad Harzburg; officially known as the "National Front" or Harzburg Front.
• The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP. The Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party.
• After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag. 
• The Nazis denounced them as "an insignificant heap of reactionaries".The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their street violence, and the "economic experiments" that would take place if the Nazis rose to power.
• Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, initially supported the Nazi Party in hopes that in exchange for the support, the Nazis would permit the restoration of the monarchy.
• There were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical. The conservative Nazi urged Hitler to conciliate with capitalists and reactionaries.
• The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels, hated capitalism.Large segments of the Nazi Party staunchly supported its official socialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and economic revolution upon the party gaining power in 1933. The leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, pushed for a "second revolution" (the "first revolution" being the Nazis' seizure of power) that would entrench the party's official socialist program.
• Hitler served in World War I. After the war, his battalion was absorbed by the Bavarian Soviet Republic from 1918 to 1919.
• Hitler altered his political views in response to the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, and it was then that he became an antisemitic, German nationalist.
• Hitler took a pragmatic position between the conservative and radical factions of the Nazi Party, in that he accepted private property and allowed capitalist private enterprises to exist as long as they adhered to the goals of the Nazi state. However, if a capitalist private enterprise resisted Nazi goals, he sought to destroy it.
• Although he opposed communist ideology,Hitler commended Stalin for seeking to purify the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of Jewish influences, noting Stalin's purging of Jewish communists such as Leon Trotsky.

Origins:
Völkisch nationalism

• One of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the German nationalist Fichte, whose works had served as inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi members. 
• In Speeches to the German Nation (1808), written amid Napoleonic France's occupation of Berlin, Fichte called for a German national revolution against the French occupiers, making passionate public speeches, arming his students for battle against the French. Fichte's nationalism was populist and opposed to traditional elites, spoke of the need of a "People's War" (Volkskrieg).
• Fichte promoted German exceptionalism and stressed the need for the German nation to be purified (including purging the German language of French words, a policy that the Nazis undertook upon rising to power).
• Völkisch nationalism advocated a "superior" society based on ethnic German "folk" culture and German "blood".
• It denounced foreigners, foreign ideas and declared that Jews, national minorities,Catholics, and Freemasons were "traitors to the nation".
• It condemned the neglect of tradition and decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment, and condemned "cosmopolitan" cultures.
• During the era of Imperial Germany, Völkisch nationalism was overshadowed by Prussian patriotism.The events of World War I including the end of the Prussian monarchy in Germany, resulted in a surge of revolutionary Völkisch nationalism.
• The Nazis supported such revolutionary Völkisch nationalist policies.The Nazis declared that they were dedicated to continuing the process of creating a unified German nation state that Bismarck had begun and desired to achieve.
• While Hitler was supportive of Bismarck's creation of the German Empire, he was critical of Bismarck's moderate domestic policies.
• Bismarck's support of "Lesser Germany", excluding Austria versus the pan-German "Greater Germany" of the Nazis.
• In Mein Kampf Hitler presented himself as a "second Bismarck".
• During his youth in Austria, Hitler was politically influenced by Austrian pan-Germanist proponent Schönerer, who advocated radical German nationalism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Slavism and anti-Habsburg views.
• From Schönerer and his followers, Hitler adopted for the Nazi movement the Heil greeting, the Führer title, and the model of absolute party leadership.

Response to World War I and fascism:

• During World War I, German sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789" (the French Revolution).
• The "ideas of 1789" that included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were being rejected in favour of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German values" of duty, discipline, law, and order. 
• He believed that ethnic solidarity would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain.
• Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism.Plenge's ideas formed the basis of Nazism.
• Oswald Spengler, a German cultural philosopher, was a major influence on Nazism.Spengler's views were also popular amongst Italian Fascists.Spengler's book The Decline of the West (1918) addressed the claim of decadence of modern European civilisation, which he claimed was caused by irreligious individualisation and cosmopolitanism. He believed that the "young" German nation as an imperial power would inherit the legacy of Ancient Rome, lead a restoration of value in "blood" and instinct, while the ideals of rationalism would be revealed as absurd.
• Fascism was a major influence on Nazism. The seizure of power by Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the March on Rome in 1922 drew admiration by Hitler. Hitler presented the Nazis as a German fascism. In November 1923, the Nazis attempted a "March on Berlin" modelled upon the March on Rome that resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.
• Many Nazis, like Himmler,rejected Italian Fascism, accusing it of being too conservative(that lacked a full revolutionary potential) or capitalist. Alfred Rosenberg condemned Italian Fascism for being racially confused. Strasser criticised the policy of Führerprinzip("leader principle") as being created by Mussolini, and considered its presence in Nazism as a foreign imported idea.

Ideology:
Nationalism and racialism
(a)Irredentism and expansionism

• The German Nazi Party supported German irredentist claims to Austria, Alsace-Lorraine, the region now known as the Czech Republic, and the territory since 1919 known as the Polish Corridor. 
• A major policy of the German Nazi Party was "living space" for the German nation based on claims that Germany after World War I was facing an overpopulation crisis and that expansion was needed to end the country's overpopulation and provide resources necessary to its people's well-being.Since the 1920s, the Nazi Party publicly promoted the expansion of Germany into territories held by the Soviet Union.
• Hitler in his early years as Nazi leader had claimed that he would be willing to accept friendly relations with Russia on the tactical condition that Russia agree to return to the borders established by the German-Russian peace agreement of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed by Lenin of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in 1918 which gave large territories held by Russia to German control in exchange for peace.
• By the end of 1922, he supported an alliance of Germany with Britain to destroy Russia.
• Hitler planned for the "surplus" Russian population living west of the Urals were to be deported to the east of the Urals as he said that the safety of Europe will not be assured until we have driven Asia back behind the Urals.

(b)Racial theories

• The concept of the Aryan race, which the Nazis promoted, stems from racial theories asserting that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Iranian settlers, people of ancient India and ancient Persia. Proponents of this theory based their assertion on the similarity of European words and their meaning to those of Indo-Iranian languages.The concept of the Aryan race was used to draw a distinction between "high and noble" Aryan culture versus that of "parasitic" Semitic culture.
• Nazism viewed the Aryan race as the master race of the world—a race that was superior to all other races. It viewed Aryans as being in racial conflict with a mixed race people, the Jews. It also viewed a number of other peoples as dangerous to the well-being of the Aryan race. 
• In order to preserve the perceived racial purity of the Aryan race, a set of race laws were introduced in 1935 which came to be known as the Nuremberg Laws. 
• At first these laws only prevented sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, but were later extended to the "Gypsies, Negroes and their bastard offspring".
• After the war began, the race defilement law was extended to include all foreigners (non-Germans).
• To maintain the "purity and strength" of the Aryan race, the Nazis eventually sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally disabled.
• Other groups deemed "degenerate" and "asocial" who were not targeted for extermination, but received exclusionary treatment by the Nazi state, included homosexuals,blacks, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents.
• Compulsory sterilization or involuntary euthanasia of physically or mentally disabled people. 
• The July 1933 "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring" prescribed compulsory sterilisation for people with a range of conditions thought to be hereditary.Sterilisation was also mandated for chronic alcoholism and other forms of social deviance.
• Nazi racial theorist Hans Günther identified the Aryan race in Europe as having five subtype races.Nordics were the highest in the racial hierarchy amongst these five Aryan subtype races.In his book "Racial Science of the German People"(1922), he recognised Germans as being composed of all five Aryan subtypes, but emphasised the strong Nordic heritage amongst Germans.
• Nazis claimed that Jews were "racially alien" to all European peoples.They considered Jews a hybrid race with strong non-European heritage.
• Hitler's conception of the "Aryan master race" excluded the vast majority of Slavs from central and eastern Europe (i.e., Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc.), regarding the Slavs as having dangerous Jewish and Asiatic influences.
• Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master".The Nazi notion of Slavs being inferior served as legitimising their goal for creating lebensraum for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe, where millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into conquered territories of Eastern Europe. Nazi Germany's policy changed towards Slavs in response to military manpower shortages, in which it accepted Slavs to serve in its armed forces within occupied territories, in spite of them being considered subhuman.
• Hitler declared that racial conflict against Jews was necessary to save Germany from suffering under them and dismissed concerns about such conflict being inhumane or an injustice.
• Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels: "The Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race ... As socialists, we are opponents of the Jews, because we see, in the Hebrews, the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods."

Social class

• The use of the name "National Socialism" arose out of earlier attempts by German right-wing figures to create a nationalist redefinition of "socialism", as a reactionary alternative to both internationalist Marxist socialism and free market capitalism.
• Spengler's notions of "Prussian socialism" as described in his book "Prussiandom and Socialism", 1919, influenced Nazism.Spengler wrote: "The meaning of socialism is that life is controlled not by the opposition between rich and poor, but by the rank that achievement and talent bestow".He advocated National socialism that was free from Marxism and that would connect the individual to the state through corporatist organisation.It will have creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity and self-sacrifice.He prescribed war as a necessity considering it the eternal form of higher human existence.
• Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of internationalist class struggle, but supported "class struggle between nations", and sought to resolve internal class struggle in the nation while it identified Germany as a proletarian nation fighting against plutocratic nations(who exercises power by virtue of wealth).
• In 1922, Adolf Hitler discredited other nationalist and racialist political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower and working-class young people.
• Despite many working-class supporters and members, the appeal of the Nazi Party was arguably more effective with the middle class.The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism.
• The Nazi Party realised their socialist policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless—later recruited to the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (Militia).

Sex and gender

• Nazi ideology advocated excluding women from political involvement and confining them to the spheres of "Children, Kitchen, Church".
• Since the Nazis at the beginning of the war extended the race defilement law to all foreigners,pamphlets were issued to German women to avoid sexual relations with foreign workers brought to Germany and view them as a danger to their blood. The law was punishable to both genders.

Opposition to homosexuality

• Nazi established "Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion".
• The Nazi regime incarcerated some 100,000 homosexuals during the 1930s.
• Nazi ideology still viewed German gay men as part of the Aryan master race but attempted to force them into sexual and social conformity. Gay men who would not change their sexual orientation were sent to concentration camps under the "Extermination Through Work" campaign.

Religion:

• The Nazi Party Programme of 1920 guaranteed freedom for all religious denominations not hostile to the State and endorsed Positive Christianity to combat “the Jewish-materialist spirit”.
• It was a modified version of Christianity which emphasised racial purity and nationalism.
• The Nazis were aided by theologians, such as, Ernst Bergmann. Bergmann, in his work Twenty-five Points of the German Religion, held that the Old Testament of the Bible were inaccurate. He claimed that Jesus was not a Jew and of Aryan origin, and that Adolf Hitler was the new messiah.
• Hitler denounced the Old Testament as "Satan's Bible", and utilising components of the New Testament attempted to demonstrate that Jesus was Aryan and antisemitic.
• The Nazis utilised Protestant Martin Luther in their propaganda. Nazis publicly displayed an original of Luther's On the Jews and their Lies.The Nazis endorsed the pro-Nazi Protestant German Christians organisation.
• The Nazis were initially highly hostile to Catholics because most Catholics supported the German Centre Party. Catholics opposed the Nazis' promotion of sterilisation of those deemed inferior, and the Catholic Church forbade its members to vote for the Nazis. 
• In 1933, extensive Nazi violence occurred against Catholics. The Nazis demanded that Catholics declare their loyalty to the German state.In propaganda, the Nazis used elements of Germany's Catholic history.
• The Nazis did seek official reconciliation with the Catholic Church and endorsed the creation of the pro-Nazi Catholic Kreuz und Adler organisation
• On 20 July 1933, a successful concordat was signed between Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church which demanded loyalty of German Catholics to the German state in exchange for acceptance of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Catholic Church then ended its ban on members supporting the Nazi Party.
• Nazism used Christianity for political purposes.Although there were some influential neo-paganists(Pagans pursue their own vision of the Divine as a direct and personal experience) in the Nazi Party, they represented a minority and their views did not influence Nazi ideology beyond its use for symbolism; and Hitler denounced Germanic paganism in Mein Kampf.

Economics

• Hitler had little interest in economics in general.After becoming Reichskanzler on 30 January 1933,Hitler left the subject to others. 
• Hitler believed that private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and technical innovation, but insisted that it had to conform to national interests and be "productive" rather than "parasitical".
• Private property rights were conditional upon the economic mode of use; if it did not advance Nazi economic goals then the state could nationalise it.Although the Nazis privatised public properties and public services, they also increased economic state control.
• Under Nazi economics, free competition and self-regulating markets diminished; nevertheless, Hitler's social Darwinist beliefs made him reluctant to entirely disregard business competition and private property as economic engines.
• To tie farmers to their land, selling agricultural land was prohibited.Farm ownership was nominally private, but discretion over operations and residual income were proscribed.That was achieved by granting business monopoly rights to marketing boards to control production and prices with a quota system.
• The Nazis sought to gain support of workers by declaring May Day, a day celebrated by organised labour, to be a paid holiday and held celebrations on 1 May 1933 to honour German workers.The Nazis stressed that Germany must honour its workers.The regime believed that the only way to avoid a repeat of the disaster of 1918 was to secure workers' support for the German government.
• The Nazis wanted all Germans take part in the May Day celebrations in the hope that this would help break down class hostility between workers and burghers.Hitler spoke of workers as patriots who had built Germany's industrial strength and had honourably served in the war and claimed that they had been oppressed under economic liberalism.
• The Nazis continued social welfare policies initiated by the governments of the Weimar Republic and mobilised volunteers to assist those impoverished, "racially-worthy" Germans through the National Socialist People's Welfare organisation.This organisation oversaw charitable activities, and became the largest civic organization in Nazi Germany.Successful efforts were made to get middle-class women involved in social work assisting large families.

Anti-communism

• In post-World War I Germany, the Nazis were one of many nationalist and fascist political parties contending for the leadership of Germany's anti-communist movement. 
• The Nazis claimed that communism was dangerous to the well-being of nations because of its intention to dissolve private property, its support of class conflict, its aggression against the middle class, its hostility towards small businessmen, and its atheism.
• Nazism rejected class conflict-based socialism and economic egalitarianism, favouring instead a stratified economy with social classes based on merit and talent, retaining private property, and the creation of national solidarity.
• Hitler asserted that the "three vices" of "Jewish Marxism" were democracy, pacifism and internationalism.
• Hitler said: "Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not."He insisted on protecting private property.
• A very significant influence was the losing side in the Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution. After 1918, Tsarist exiles flooded into Munich and Berlin and spread theories about a worldwide Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy.

Anti-capitalism

• The Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance, the economic dominance of big business, and Jewish influences.Nazi propaganda posters in working class districts emphasised anti-capitalism.
• In Germany, the idea of Jews economically exploiting Germans became prominent upon the foundation of Germany, due to the ascendance of many wealthy Jews into prominent positions upon the unification of Germany in 1871. German Jewish financiers and bankers played a key role in fostering Germany's economic growth from the 1871 to 1913, and such Jewish financiers and bankers benefited enormously from this boom. This overrepresentation of Jews in these areas created resentment by non-Jewish Germans during periods of economic crisis such as in response to the 1873 stock market crash that resulted in a severe depression.The 1873 stock market crash and ensuing depression resulted in a spate of attacks on alleged Jewish economic dominance in Germany, and antisemitism surged.
• Hitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism, and he preferred a state-directed economy.Hitler said, "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitations."
• Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that "Capitalism had run its course".Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic.
• Hitler effectively supported mercantilism, in the belief that economic resources should be seized by force.He argued that the only means to maintain economic security was to have direct control over resources even through war rather than being forced to rely on world trade.
• A number of other Nazis held strong revolutionary socialist and anti-capitalist beliefs but those were suppresed by Hitler.
• Another radical Nazi, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had stressed the socialist character of Nazism, and claimed in his diary in the 1920s that if he were to pick between Bolshevism and capitalism, he said "it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism."
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1912) was an antisemitic forgery created by the police of the Russian Empire.The Protocol became widely popular after World War I. The Protocols claimed that there was a secret international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.Hitler considered it true.
• Some accused Jews in Germany of having been, and inevitably continuing to be, a "state within a state" that threatened German national unity.
• The Nazis claimed that Bismarck was unable to complete German national unification because of Jewish infiltration of the German parliament, and that their abolition of parliament ended the obstacle to unification. Using the "stab in the back" legend, the Nazis accused Jews, and other populaces it considered non-German, of possessing extra-national loyalties, thereby exacerbating German antisemitism.
• The Mendelian theory of inheritance(by German botanist Gregor Mendel) declared that genetic traits and attributes were passed from one generation to another.It was used to demonstrate the inheritance of social traits, with racialists claiming a racial nature of certain general traits such as inventiveness or criminal behaviour.

Totalitarianism

• Under Nazism, with its emphasis on the nation, individual needs were subordinate to those of the wider community.
• Hitler declared that "every activity and every need of every individual will be regulated by the collectivity represented by the party" and that "there are no longer any free realms in which the individual belongs to himself".