What did the Nazis stand for?

As I sat down to write this piece, I immediately went, as a first step, to write two lists for you cannot explain what the Nazis stood for without also thinking about what they were against:

What did the Nazis oppose, what did they stand against?

The Treaty of Versailles

The Weimar Republic

Democracy

Communism

Jews

What did the Nazis stand for?

Strong leadership

Nationalism

Uniting all Germans in one Reich

A Germany for all Germans

But a pure racial community

Lebensraum

A strong and powerful Germany, respected by other nations

Hitler and other leading Nazis had fought bravely in WW1. That cannot be doubted nor discounted for it left them feeling bitter at what they saw as Germany’s ‘stab in the back’, the signing of the armistice by the ‘November Criminals’ and the later acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles, the ‘Treaty of Shame’. They were opposed to every clause, every sentence, every word in te treaty and they wanted it not only destroyed but revenged.

They also opposed everything the Weimar Republic stood for. For them it was associated with defeat, the creation of the ‘November Criminals, of Socialists and Jews. This also meant, democracy. They looked at the chaos of Weimar: 1923 and the way it dealt with the great Depression. They wanted it gone. They didn’t want a return to an imperial Germany but they did want an end to a democratic Germany.

They were also opposed to Communism, and they saw the Socialists as nothing better than Communists. Communism would destroy the very spirit of enterprise that had made Germany great. And they didn’t want Jews to play any part in “their” Germany. The Jews were at one and the same time associated with a Communism in Russia and in Germany, whilst also being associated with a capitalist world conspiracy that would see Jews dominate economies and so the lives of countries all over the world. Crazy but there you are.

Now I began with what they opposed because it is from that, that we see what they were in favour of. Instead of democracy, they favoured strong leadership: a Fuhrer. Democracy was good at talking about what should or should not be done, what Germany needed was a leader who would get things done.

They were fervent nationalists: they were Germans and wanted Germany to be strong and powerful again. This meant getting rid of the treaty of Versailles, it meant uniting all Germans, which meant uniting Austria and the Sudetenland Germans into the Reich as well as reuniting Germans lost to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles. But they also wanted more living space, more land, for Germans to prosper. This meant conquering land that was never German, land from the Slavs.

For Nazism was a racist ideology. They saw the Aryan as being racially superior not just to the Jews but to the Slavs. Why should they occupy land that Germans could benefit from? And they wanted a racially pure Germany, rid of Jews but also gypsies and also those amongst their own, who only weakened their race: the mentally and physically handicapped, even the criminal.

There was a Left-wing in the party (they were the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and much of their membership was from the working class) that wanted a Germany for all Germans in the sense that all Germans would benefit materially. This would include nationalising parts of the economy and providing strong welfare benefits for the German people. But this was not Hitler’s priority.

This is what Hitler and the Nazis stood both against and for. It was seen in their Twenty-five Point Programme, written in 1920, and though Hitler would drop the Left-wing elements, the rest was seen in Mein Kampf, in countless speeches by Hitler and, ultimately, in the policies of the Third Reich.