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| {{Redirect|National Socialism|other ideologies and groups called National Socialism|National Socialism (disambiguation)}} | | {{Era|AC2|ACB}} |
| {{Redirect|Nazi|the Sumerian deity|Nazi (god)}}
| | [[File:S16EDEN.png|thumb|250px|Opening screen of the Truth video.]] |
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| | {{quote|There's something I have to show you. We have been lied to this whole time; everything we know, everything we've been brought up to believe - it's wrong.|Subject 16.|Assassin's Creed II}} |
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| {{Fascism sidebar|expanded=Varieties}}{{Antisemitism}}
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| '''National Socialism''' (common English short form '''Nazism''', [[German language|German]]: '''''Nationalsozialismus''''') was the [[ideology]] practiced by the [[Nazi Party]] and [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>[[Walter John Raymond]]. ''Dictionary of Politics''. (1992). ISBN 1-55618-008-X p. 327.</ref><ref>Fritzsche, Peter. 1998. ''Germans into Nazis''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.</ref><ref>Kele, Max H. (1972). Nazis and Workers: National Socialist Appeals to German Labor, 1919–1933. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.</ref><ref name="payne1995a">Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914–45. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.</ref> It is a unique variety of [[fascism]] that incorporates [[Scientific racism|biological racism]] and [[antisemitism]].<ref>Neocleous, Mark. ''Fascism''. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1997 p. 23.</ref> Nazism was founded out of elements of the [[Far-right politics|far-right]] [[Racism|racist]] ''[[Völkisch movement|völkisch]]'' [[German nationalism|German nationalist]] movement and the violent [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] ''[[Freikorps#Post-World War I|Freikorps]]'' [[paramilitary]] culture that fought against the uprisings of [[communist revolution]]aries in post-[[World War I]] [[Germany]].<ref>Thomas D. Grant. ''Stormtroopers and Crisis in the Nazi Movement: activism, ideology and dissolution''. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2004. Pp. 30-34, 44.</ref> The ideology was developed first by [[Anton Drexler]] and then [[Adolf Hitler]] as a means to draw workers away from [[communism]] and into ''völkisch'' nationalism.<ref>Otis C. Mitchell. ''Hitler's stormtroopers and the attack on the German Republic, 1919-1933''. Jefferson, North Carolina, USA: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008. Pp. 47.</ref> Initially Nazi political strategy focused on [[Big business|anti-big business]], [[Bourgeoisie|anti-bourgeois]], and [[Anti-capitalism|anti-capitalist]] rhetoric, though such aspects were later downplayed in the 1930s to gain the support from industrial owners for the Nazis; the focus shifting to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.<ref>Frank McDonough. ''Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party''. Pearson/Longman, 2003. Pp. 64.</ref> Nazism promoted [[political violence]], [[militarism]], and [[war]], it conceived of politics as being a "battle", and the Nazis utilized their paramilitary organization, the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' (SA) for violent attacks upon their opponents, particularly communists, Jews, and [[Social democracy|social democrats]].<ref>Richard Bessel. Nazism and War. Paperback Edition. New York, New York, USA: Modern Library, 2004. Pp. 24-27.</ref> Hitler and the Nazis openly promoted German territorial [[expansionism]] into [[Eastern Europe]] to be ''[[Lebensraum]]'' ("living space") for German settlers and assimilation of Germanic peoples into Germans that would result in the creation of a "[[Greater Germanic Reich|Greater Germanic Realm of the German Nation]]".<ref>Lisa Pine. ''Education in Nazi Germany''. Oxford, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Berg, 2011. Pp. 5.</ref>
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| Nazism advocated the supremacy of the claimed [[Aryan race|Aryan]] [[master race]] over all other [[Race (classification of humans)|races]].<ref name=autogenerated1>Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. ''World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1''. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 61.</ref> Nazis viewed the progress of humanity as depending on the Aryans and believed that it could maintain its dominance only if it retained its purity and instinct for self-preservation.<ref>Bendersky, Joseph W. ''A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945''. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 24. p. 30</ref> They claimed that [[Jews]] were the greatest threat to the Aryan race.<ref name="Bendersky, Joseph W. 2000. p. 24">Bendersky, Joseph W. ''A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945''. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 24.</ref> They considered Jews a [[Parasitism|parasitic]] race that attached itself to various ideologies and movements to secure its self-preservation, such as [[capitalism]], [[Age of Enlightenment|the Enlightenment]], [[industrialisation]], [[liberalism]], [[Marxism]], [[democracy]], and [[trade union]]ism.<ref name="Bendersky, Joseph W. 2000. p. 24"/> To maintain the purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to [[Genocide|exterminate]] Jews, [[Romani people|Romani]], and the [[Physical disability|physically]] and [[Developmental disability|mentally disabled]].<ref name="Simone Gigliotti 2005. Pp. 14">Simone Gigliotti, Berel Lang. ''The Holocaust: a reader''. Malden, Massachusetts, USA; Oxford, England, UK; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Pp. 14.</ref> Other groups deemed "[[Degeneration|degenerate]]" and "[[Asociality|asocial]]" who were not targeted for extermination, but received [[Social exclusion|exclusionary treatment]] by the Nazi state, included: [[Homosexuality|homosexuals]], [[Black people|blacks]], [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] and political opponents.<ref name="Simone Gigliotti 2005. Pp. 14"/>
| | '''The Truth''' refers to a video hidden in the [[Animus]] by [[Clay Kaczmarek|Subject 16]], with the intent to enlighten and possibly warn [[Desmond Miles|his successor]] in the Animus project. |
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| Nazism promoted an economic system that supported a [[Social stratification|stratified]] economy with classes based on merit and talent while rejecting universal [[egalitarianism]], retaining [[private property]], freedom of contract, and promoted the creation of national [[Social solidarity|solidarity]] that would transcend class distinction.<ref name=autogenerated11>Bendersky, Joseph W. ''A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945''. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 40.</ref><ref>''European Journal of Political Economy'', vol. 21, issue 4, pp. 1015.</ref> Hitler claimed that unconditional [[equality of opportunity]] for all able racially-sound Aryan German males in Germany was the essence of the [[socialism]] of German National Socialism.<ref>MacGregor Knox. Common destiny: dictatorship, foreign policy, and war in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Cambridge, England, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. 208.</ref> This was known as [[völkisch equality]] that officially ascribed collective racial [[Equal opportunity|equality of opportunity]], [[equality before the law]], and full legal rights to able people of Aryan blood but deliberately excluded people outside of this definition who were regarded as inferior and rejected the conception of universal human equality.<ref>Diemut Majer, Peter Thomas Hill, Edward Vance Humphrey. ''"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied''. Washington, DC, USA: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2003. Pp. 43-50.</ref> The Nazis criminalized [[Strike action|strikes]] by [[employee]]s and [[Lockout (industry)|lockouts]] by [[employer]]s for being contrary to national unity and the state took over the approval process of setting wage and salary levels.<ref>Eugene Davidson. ''The Unmaking of Adolf Hitler''. First paperback edition. Columbia, Missouri, USA: Missouri University Press, 2004. Pp. 117.</ref>
| | Its 20 pieces could be unlocked by solving the puzzles hidden behind the twenty [[Glyphs]] scattered throughout the Animus' projection of [[Renaissance]] [[Italy]]. |
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| The Nazis were presented by Hitler and other proponents and viewed by some scholars as being neither [[Left-wing politics|left-wing]] nor [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]] but [[Syncretic politics|politically syncretic]].<ref name="Adolf Hitler p. 170">Adolf Hitler, Max Domarus, Patrick Romane (ed). ''The essential Hitler: speeches and commentary''. Waulconda, Illinois, USA: Bolchazi-Carducci Publishers, Inc., 2007 p. 170.</ref><ref name="Rudy Koshar 1986. p. 190">Rudy Koshar. ''Social life, local politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880-1935''. University of North Carolina Press, 1986. p. 190.</ref><ref name="Thomas Childers 1986. p. 26">Thomas Childers. ''The Formation of the Nazi constituency, 1919-1933''. Barnes & Noble Books, 1986. p. 26.</ref><ref>Cyprian Blamires. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2006. p. 14. (Speaks of Nazism having a syncretic mix of left-wing and right-wing positions outside of the traditional linear left-right spectrum).</ref> Hitler in ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany, he accused the political left of committing treason against Germany when left-wing politicians signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]], he accused the political right as deserving equal reproach as the left, for being cowards in allowing the disarmament of Germany as stipulated by Versailles.<ref>Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. Bottom of the Hill Publishing, 2010. Pp. 287.</ref> However major elements of Nazism have been deemed as clearly [[Far-right politics|far-right]], such as its goals of the right of claimed superior people to dominate while purging society of claimed inferior elements.<ref name="Oliver H. Woshinsky 2008. p. 156">Oliver H. Woshinsky. ''Explaining Politics: Culture, Institutions, and Political Behavior''. Oxon, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2008.Pp. 156.</ref> | | ==The Truth== |
| | [[File:7651.assassins3.jpg|thumb|250px|left|A scene from the Truth video.]] |
| | In the video, [[Adam]] and [[Eve]] were dressed in skin-colored or translucent bodysuits, making them appear as if they were naked, and were seen running through an open area, followed by something.<ref name="AC2">''[[Assassin's Creed II]]''</ref> |
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| ==Etymology==
| | The scenery was a mixture of flora, a reflective blue material that resembled glass, and a white surface that sounded like stone. The garden was decorated in a futuristic style, contrary to the expected Biblical setting. Moving through a circular automatic door, Adam and Eve used [[Freerunning|free-running]] to scale a large, futuristic building.<ref name="AC2" /> |
| The full title of Adolf Hitler's party was ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (National Socialist German Workers' Party). The term ''Nazi'' was an "acronym formed from the first syllable of ''NAtional'' and the second syllable of ''SoZIalist''. Such terms, usually formed from the initial letters or syllables of successive parts of compound names, were popular in the [[Nazi Germany|Third Reich]]. Another typical example was [[Gestapo]] for ''Geheime Staatspolizei'' (Secret State Police)."<ref>L. L. Snyder, ''Encyclopedia Of The Third Reich'', Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1998, p. 245</ref> | |
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| ==Position in the political spectrum==
| | While they were climbing up the building, they stopped momentarily at a large window, through which a silhouette of a [[First Civilization|humanoid figure]] could be seen holding a [[Pieces of Eden|Piece of Eden]], along with several human slaves. These workers appeared to be in an environment similar to that of a metal refinery, with one slave in the foreground clearly using a hammer to shape a metal object.<ref name="AC2" /> |
| [[File:WWII, Europe, Germany, "Nazi Hierarchy, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess", The Desperate Years p143 - NARA - 196509.tif|thumb|300px|right|''Führer'' [[Adolf Hitler]] (first from left side), [[Hermann Göring]] (second from left side), Minister of Propaganda [[Joseph Goebbels]] (third from left side), [[Rudolf Hess]] (fourth from left side).]]
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-02134, Bad Harzburg, Gründung der Harzburger Front.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Nazis alongside members of the far-right [[reactionary]] and [[Monarchism|monarchist]] [[German National People's Party]] (DNVP), during the brief Nazi-DNVP alliance in the [[Harzburg Front]] from 1931 to 1932.]]
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| A majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of [[far-right politics]].<ref name="Fritzsche, Peter 1998">Fritzsche, Peter. ''Germans into Nazis'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); Eatwell, Roger, ''Fascism, A History'' (Viking/Penguin, 1996), pp. xvii-xxiv, 21, 26–31, 114–140, 352. [[Roger Griffin|Griffin, Roger]], "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," in David Parker, ed., ''Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991'', (London: Routledge, 2000)</ref> Far right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over others and purge society of supposed inferior elements.<ref name="Oliver H. Woshinsky 2008. p. 156"/> Adolf Hitler and other proponents, however, officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but syncretic.<ref name="Adolf Hitler p. 170">Hitler, Adolf in Domarus, Max and Patrick Romane, eds. ''The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary'' (Waulconda, Illinois: Bolchazi-Carducci Publishers, Inc., 2007), p. 170.</ref><ref name="Rudy Koshar 1986. p. 190">Koshar, Rudy. ''Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880-1935'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p. 190.</ref> Hitler in ''Mein Kampf'' directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany, saying: <blockquote>
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| Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors [...] But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms.<ref name="Adolf Hitler 2010. p. 287"> Hitler, Adolf, ''Mein Kampf'' (Bottom of the Hill Publishing, 2010), p. 287.</ref>
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| There were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical.<ref name="Michael Mann 2004. p. 183">Mann, Michael, ''Fascists'' (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 183.</ref>
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| The conservative Nazi [[Hermann Göring]] urged Hitler to conciliate with [[Capitalism|capitalists]] and [[Reactionary|reactionaries]].<ref name="Michael Mann 2004. p. 183"/> Other prominent conservative Nazis included [[Heinrich Himmler]], who was more conservative than Göring; and [[Reinhard Heydrich]].<ref>Browder, George C., ''Foundations of the Nazi Police State: The Formation of Sipo and SD'', paperback (Lexington, Kentucky, USA: Kentucky University Press, 2004) p. 202.</ref> 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 anti-Semitism, along with a [[Chauvinism|chauvinist]] nationalism, contempt towards the Treaty of Versailles, and condemnnation of the Weimar Republic for signing the armistice in November 1918 that later led to their signing of the Treaty of Versailles.<ref>Peukert, Detlev, ''The Weimar Republic''. 1st paperback ed. (Macmillan, 1993), ISBN:9780809015566, pp. 73-74.</ref>
| | [[File:Adam and Eve.png|thumb|250px|right|Adam and Eve in the Truth video.]] |
| | Adam and Eve continued climbing until they reached the roof of the building, with other futuristic buildings visible surrounding them. Further in the background, a mountain was clearly visible, while there was little other elevation in land elsewhere. The terrain was lush, and a large forest's boundaries were visible.<ref name="AC2" /> |
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| Initially, the post-World War I far right was dominated by [[Monarchism|monarchists]], but the far right's younger generation, who were associated with ''völkisch'' nationalism, were more radical than the older generation and did not express any emphasis on a restoration of the German monarchy.<ref>Peukert, Detlev, ''The Weimar Republic''. 1st paperback ed. (Macmillan, 1993), ISBN:9780809015566, p. 74.</ref> This younger generation desired to dismantle the Weimar Republic and create a new radical and strong state based upon a martial ruling ethic that could revive the "Spirit of 1914" that was associated with German national unity ([[volksgemeinschaft]]).<ref>Peukert, Detlev, ''The Weimar Republic''. 1st paperback ed. (Macmillan, 1993), ISBN:9780809015566, p. 74.</ref> A major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist ''[[Freikorps]]'', paramilitary organizations that engaged in political violence immediately after World War I.<ref>Peukert, Detlev, ''The Weimar Republic''. 1st paperback ed. (Macmillan, 1993), ISBN:9780809015566, pp. 73-74.</ref>
| | Eve could then be seen holding a Piece of Eden before saying ''"Adam, I have it!"'' Adam then called out to Eve by name, as both turned to look at what was presumably chasing them. She then shouted to Adam ''"Look out!"'', before the video cuts to black, and a binary code flashes up.<ref name="AC2" /> |
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| The Nazis, the far-right monarchist and [[reactionary]] [[German National People's Party]] (DNVP), and others, such as monarchist officers of the German army and several prominent industrialists, shared a common opposition to the Weimar Republic and formed an alliance on 11 October 1931 in [[Bad Harzburg]], officially known as the "National Front", but commonly referred to as the [[Harzburg Front]].<ref>Beck, Hermann ''The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light'' (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:9781845456801 p. 72.</ref> The Nazis stated that the alliance was purely tactical and that there remained substantial differences between them and the DNVP. The Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party.<ref>Beck, Hermann ''The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light'' (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:9781845456801, p. 72.</ref> The alliance with the DNVP broke in 1932 after the election in which DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, with the Nazis denouncing them as "an insignificant heap of reactionaries".<ref>Beck, Hermann ''The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light'' (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:9781845456801 p. 72-75.</ref> The denouncements by the Nazis upon the DNVP for its reactionary stances were responded by the DNVP denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their street violence, and the "economic experiments" that would take place if the Nazis rose to power.<ref>Beck, Hermann ''The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light'' (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:97818454568011 p. 84.</ref> | | The binary code, "01000101 01000100 01000101 01001110," translates to "[[Eden|EDEN]]." Another point of interest is that there are 20 zeros and 12 ones, a reference to the supposed doomsday year of 2012. All of the Assassins Creed games play out during 2012.<ref name="AC2" /> |
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| The radical Nazi [[Joseph Goebbels]], hated capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core, and he stressed the need for the party to emphasize both a [[Proletariat|proletarian]] and national character. Those views were shared by [[Otto Strasser]], who later left the Nazi Party in the belief that Hitler had betrayed the party's supposed socialist goals by allegedly endorsing capitalism.<ref name="Michael Mann 2004. p. 183"/> 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 Germany in 1933.<ref name="Joseph W. Bendersky 2007. p. 96">Bendersky, Joseph W., ''A Concise History of Nazi Germany'' (Lanham, Maryland, USA; Plymouth, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2007), p. 96.</ref> Of the million members of the [[Sturmabteilung]] (SA), many were committed to the party's official socialist program.<ref name="Joseph W. Bendersky 2007. p. 96"/> The leader of the SA, [[Ernst Röhm]], supported a "second revolution" (the "first revolution" being the Nazis' seizure of power) that would entrench the party's official socialist program, and he demanded the replacement of the nonpolitical German army with a Nazi-led army.<ref name="Joseph W. Bendersky 2007. p. 96"/> | | ==The Miracle== |
| | [[File:desmondstruth.jpg|thumb|250px|left|The VR-area after unlocking the videos.]] |
| | {{quote|I am with you until the end. Find me in the darkness.|Subject 16 to Desmond.|Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood}} |
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| Prior to becoming an anti-Semite and a Nazi, Hitler had served the [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]] from 1918 to 1919, where he was elected Deputy Battalion Representative of his communist-led battalion, and he attended the funeral of communist [[Kurt Eisner]] (a German Jew), where Hitler wore a black mourning armband on one arm and a red communist armband on the other.<ref name="Thomas Weber 2011. p. 251">Weber, Thomas, ''Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War'' (Oxford, England, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 251.</ref> Hitler's political beliefs had not yet solidified by then, and at that time he supported the idea of a [[classless society]] and was an [[Anti-monarchism|anti-monarchist]].<ref name="Thomas Weber 2011. p. 251"/> In ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler never mentioned his service with the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and he claimed that he became an anti-Semite in 1913 in Vienna, when in fact he was not an anti-Semite at that time.<ref name="Jeffrey S. Gaab 2008. p. 61">Gaab, Jeffrey S., ''Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History: Beer, Culture, & Politics'', 2nd ed. (New York City: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2008) p. 61.</ref> Hitler massively altered his political views in response to the [[Treaty of Versailles]] of June 1919, and it was then that he became an anti-Semitic German nationalist.<ref name="Jeffrey S. Gaab 2008. p. 61"/> As a Nazi, Hitler both in public and in private, had expressed opposition to capitalism; he regarded capitalism as having Jewish origins, and accused capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic [[Cosmopolitanism|cosmopolitan]] [[rentier]] class.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. pp. 399-403">Overy, R.J., ''The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia'' (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004), pp. 399-403.</ref>
| | Along with the video clips hidden behind the Glyphs, small strings of numbers were included at the end of each.<ref name="AC2" /> Upon Desmond reliving [[Ezio Auditore da Firenze|Ezio Auditore]]'s later memories, Shaun discovered the numbers to correspond to further coordinates in [[Rome]]; where ten [[Rifts]] were hidden.<ref name="Brotherhood">''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood]]''</ref> |
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| 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 obeyed the goals of the Nazi state, but if a capitalist private enterprise resisted Nazi goals, he sought to destroy it.<ref name="Michael Mann 2004. p. 183"/> Upon the Nazis achieving power, Röhm's SA began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction, without Hitler's authorization to do so.<ref name="Nyomarkay, Joseph 1967 p. 130"/> Hitler considered Röhm's independent actions to be violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardizing the regime by alienating the conservative President [[Paul von Hindenburg]] and the conservative-oriented German army.<ref name="Joseph Nyomarkay 1967. p. 133">Nyomarkay, Joseph, ''Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party'' (Minnesota University Press, 1967), p. 133</ref> This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA.<ref name="Joseph Nyomarkay 1967. p. 133"/>
| | These rifts could only be seen with [[Eagle Vision]], and needed to be climbed into, rather than simply being found and scanned. Behind each was one of ten Cluster puzzles that, when completed, unlocked a small video clip that displayed a series of seemingly corrupted data with unintelligible words on the top left corner.<ref name="Brotherhood" /> |
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| Alhough he opposed communist ideology, Hitler on numerous occasions publicly praised the [[Soviet Union]]'s leader [[Joseph Stalin]] and [[Stalinism]].<ref name="François Furet 1999. pp. 191-2">Furet, François, ''Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century'' (Chicago, Illinois' London, England: University of Chicago Press, 1999), ISBN 0-226-27340-7, pp. 191-12.</ref> 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]], [[Grigory Zinoviev]], [[Lev Kamenev]] and [[Karl Radek]].<ref>Furet, François, ''Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century'' (Chicago, Illinois' London, England: University of Chicago Press, 1999), ISBN 0-226-27340-7, p. 191.</ref> While Hitler always intended to eventually bring Germany into territorial expansionist conflict against the Soviet Union to gain ''[[Lebensraum]]'' ("living space"), Hitler supported a temporary strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to form a common anti-liberal front to crush liberal democracies, particularly [[France]].<ref name="François Furet 1999. pp. 191-2"/>
| | Immediately after solving the final cluster, a short video was unlocked that stated ''"The miracle is in the execution"'' while the ultrasound of an unborn child was shown. At this point, [[Rebecca Crane]] noted that (unlike the Truth video) the Cluster puzzles actually concealed an executable file.<ref name="Brotherhood" /> |
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| ==Origins==
| | Upon accessing the file, Desmond was then uploaded to an unknown area within the Animus, where he was free to run through a somewhat long virtual maze similar to those within the [[Animus Virtual Training Program]]. At the end of the maze, Desmond found a hologram (partially broken and made of computing code) of Subject 16, who told Desmond that all hope was lost, and that he must go to Eden to find a woman named Eve.<ref name="Brotherhood" /> |
| {{See also|Early timeline of Nazism}}
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| [[File:Stab-in-the-back postcard.jpg|thumb|250px|A 1919 Austrian postcard depicting the [[Stab-in-the-back legend|"stab-in-the-back" legend]], which blamed Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I.]]
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| On 5 January 1919, the locksmith [[Anton Drexler]], and five other men, founded the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP — [[German Workers' Party]]), the predecessor of the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (NSDAP — National Socialist German Workers' Party).<ref name=NaziYV>"February 24, 1920: Nazi Party Established" (history), [[Yad Vashem]], The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, 2004, webpage: [http://yad-vashem.org.il/about_holocaust/chronology/before_1933/chronology_before_1933_8.html YV-Party].</ref><ref name=NaziEB>"Nazi Party" (overview), ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 2006, Britannica.com webpage: [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9055111/Nazi-Party Britannica-NaziParty].</ref> In July 1919, the ''[[Reichswehr]]'' intelligence department despatched Corporal [[Adolf Hitler]], as a ''Verbindungsmann'' (police spy) to infiltrate and subvert the DAP. His oratory so impressed the DAP members, they asked him to join the party, and, in September 1919, the police spy Hitler became the party's [[propaganda|propagandist]].<ref name=NaziYV/><ref name=NaziNSW>"Australian Memories of the Holocaust" (history), Glossary, definition of ''Nazi'' (party), N.S.W. Board of Jewish Education, [[New South Wales]], [[Australia]],[http://www.holocaust.com.au/glossary.htm HolocaustComAu-Glossary]</ref> On 24 February 1920, the DAP was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, against Hitler's preferred "Social Revolutionary Party" name.<ref name=NaziYV/> Later, in consolidating his control of the NSDAP, Hitler ousted Drexler from the party and assumed leadership on 29 July 1921.<ref name=NaziYV/>
| | Before leaving, Sixteen instructed Desmond to find him in the darkness. The program ended with the ground collapsing from under Desmond's feet, and a loading screen showing Desmond in free fall.<ref name="Brotherhood" /> |
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| The post-war crises of [[Weimar Germany]] (1919–33) consolidated Nazism as an [[ideology]]: military defeat in the World War I (1914–18), capitulation with the [[Treaty of Versailles]], [[economic depression]], and the consequent societal instability. In exploiting, and excusing, the military defeat, Nazism proffered the political ''[[Dolchstosslegende]]'' ("Legend of the Dagger-stab in the Back") <ref name="DSLspeak">"Lexicon: Dolchstosslegende" (definition), www.icons-multimedia.com, 2005, webpage: [http://www.icons-multimedia.com/ClientsArea/HoH/LIBARC/LEXICON/LexEntry/Dolchsto.html DolchSL].</ref> claiming that the [[Imperial Germany|Imperial German]] war effort was internally sabotaged, by [[Jew]]s, [[Socialism|socialists]], and [[Bolshevism|Bolsheviks]]. Proposing that, because the ''Reichwehr'''s defeat did not occur in Germany, the sabotage included a lack of patriotism among their political antagonists, specifically the [[Social Democrats]] and the Ebert Government, whom the Nazis accused of treason.
| | ===Conversation=== |
| | [[File:inthedarkness.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Subject 16, as he appears in the Miracle.]] |
| | *'''Animus Voice:''' ''Compiling sub systems. Infrastructure. Tendons. Heart.'' |
| | *'''Subject 16:''' ''Voice.'' |
| | *'''Desmond:''' ''Subject Sixteen?'' |
| | *'''Subject 16:''' ''Yes, yes, Subject Seventeen.'' |
| | *'''Desmond:''' ''You’re dead. I saw [[Cryptic Messages|your blood]].'' |
| | *'''Subject 16:''' ''No time. It is far later than you know. Too late to save them.'' |
| | *'''Desmond:''' ''Who?'' |
| | *'''Subject 16:''' ''[[Lucy Stillman|She]] is not who you think she is. Everything you hope to become. Everything you hold dear. It's already gone.'' |
| | *'''Desmond:''' ''Explain. Please.'' |
| | *'''Subject 16:''' ''Eden, she... in Eden, find Eve. The key, her DNA.'' |
| | *'''Desmond:''' ''Tell me.'' |
| | *'''Subject 16:''' ''I cannot... the sun, your son... too weak. Must replenish energy.'' |
| | *'''Desmond:''' ''Don't go!'' |
| | *'''Subject 16:''' ''I am with you, until the end. Find me in the darkness.'' |
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| ===German nationalism=== | | == Trivia == |
| The seminal ideas of Nazism originated in the German cultural past of the ''[[Völkisch]]'' (folk) movement and the superstitions of [[Ariosophy]], an occultism that proposed the [[Germanic peoples]] as the purest examples of the [[Aryan race]], whose cultures feature [[Rune|runic symbols]] and the [[swastika]]. From among the Ariosophs, only the ''[[Thule-Gesellschaft]]'' (Thule Society) in Munich, features in the origin of Nazism; they sponsored the DAP.<ref name=NaziYV/> | | [[File:Eden-kilamanjaro resemblance.jpg|thumb|300px|Mount Kilimanjaro bears a strong resemblance to the mountain in the Truth video.]] |
| | *The mountain in the Truth bears a striking resemblance to [[Wikipedia:Mount Kilimanjaro|Mount Kilimanjaro]], thus placing the scene in Africa. This would make sense, as humanity is said to originate from Africa (specifically mid-Africa, the rough location of Kilimanjaro). |
| | **The [[Codex]] map also shows that a Piece of Eden was located in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro. |
| | **Lucy Stillman mentions that Dr. [[Warren Vidic]] tags several memories in ancient Africa. |
| | *The Truth video seems to take place immediately before the human rebellion and [[Human-First Civilization War|subsequent war]]. As Adam and Eve seem to have taken the Apple without permission, and are probably trying to escape with it, one can assume that they had started the rebellion. |
| | *It is clear that [[Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad]] has seen this video too in some shape or form, since, in the Codex, he mentions the buildings and mountain that are in the video. In the pages, he is clearly horrified by what he has seen. |
| | *The viewing angle of the camera suggests that the video is a recording of one of Subject 16's Animus sessions. This in turn would indicate a direct lineage of Sixteen with Adam and/or Eve. |
| | *The silhouette figure holding the Apple in The Truth appears to be female. The flowing cloth coming from various parts of her body indicates that this is Minerva (who appears later in the same game), rather than Juno. |
| | *The music being played during Adam and Eve's escape is the same music that plays while Desmond and Lucy are escaping Abstergo at the beginning of ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', and when Ezio is running away from the guards after the Auditore execution. |
| | **It is also the "Open Conflict" song of [[Forlì]], and it is entitled "Wetlands Escape" on the [[Assassin's Creed II soundtrack|''Assassin's Creed II'' Original Game Soundtrack.]] |
| | *In the PS3 version, Eve does not say "Look out!" At that point, it is silent and the binary for "Eden" appears. |
| | *On a wall in the Miracle's obstacle course, the climbing cubes form the [[Assassin insignia]]. |
| | *In the Miracle Video, Subject 16 tells Desmond to search for him in the darkness, which is accurate, as in ''Revelations'' he appears on Animus Island, also known as the [[Black Room]]. |
| | *The DLC pack ''[[The Lost Archive]]'', which follows the story of Subject 16, contains a mission titled "The Truth". |
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| Phillip Wayne Powell writes that "in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a powerful surge of German patriotism was stimulated by the disdain of Italians for German cultural inferiority and barbarism, which led to a counter-attempt, by German humanists, to laud German qualities."<ref>{{Cite book|first=Phillip Wayne |last=Powell |year=1985 |title=Tree of Hate |page=48 |isbn=0-465-08750-7 |publisher=Ross House Books |location=Vallecito, Calif. }}</ref> M.W. Fodor wrote in ''The Nation'' in 1936, "No race has suffered so much from an inferiority complex as has the German. National Socialism was a kind of [[Émile Coué|Coué method]] of converting the inferiority complex, at least temporarily, into a feeling of superiority".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://newdeal.feri.org/nation/na3656.htm |title=The Spread of Hitlerism |work=[[The Nation]] |first=M.W. |last=Fodor |date=1936-02-05 |accessdate=2008-04-05 |page=156 |publisher=New Deal Network }}</ref>
| | ==Videos== |
| | | <gallery widths="180" position="center" spacing="small" captionalign="center" captiontextcolor="#ffffff"> |
| One of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis came from the German nationalist [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte]], whose works Hitler read, and who was recognized by other Nazi members including [[Dietrich Eckart]] and [[Arnold Fanck]].<ref>Ryback, Timothy W. ''Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life'' (New York; Toronto: Vintage Books, 2010) pp. 129-130.</ref> 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, and stressing the need of action by the German nation to free itself.<ref name=autogenerated18>Ryback, Timothy W. ''Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life'' (New York; Toronto: Vintage Books) 2010. p. 129</ref> Fichte's nationalism was populist and opposed to traditional elites, and spoke of the need of a "People's War" (''Volkskrieg''), putting forward concepts much like those the Nazis adopted.<ref name=autogenerated18 /> Fichte promoted German [[exceptionalism]] and stressed the need for the German nation to be purified. This priority included purging the German language of French words, a policy that the Nazis undertook upon rising to power.<ref name=autogenerated18 />
| | Video:Assassin's Creed II - The Truth Video (HD)|The Truth video. |
| | | Video:Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Walkthrough - The Truth|The Miracle file. |
| ''Völkisch'' nationalism denounced soulless [[materialism]], [[individualism]], and [[secular]]ized [[Urban area|urban]] industrial society, while advocating a "superior" society based on ethnic German "folk" culture and way of life, based upon German "blood".<ref>Cyprian Blamires. ''World Fascism: a Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1''. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006. p. 542.</ref> It also denounced foreigners, foreign ideas and declared that Jews, national minorities, [[Catholic Church|Catholics]], and [[Freemasonry|Freemasons]] were "traitors to the nation" and unworthy of inclusion in the German ''[[Volk]]''.<ref>Keith H. Pickus. ''Constructing modern identities: Jewish university students in Germany, 1815-1914''. Detroit, Michigan, USA: Wayne State University Press, 1999. p. 86.</ref> ''Völkisch'' nationalism saw the world in terms of [[natural law]] and [[romanticism]], viewed societies as organic, it extolled the virtues of [[rural]] life, condemned the neglect of tradition and decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment, and condemned "cosmopolitan" cultures such as Jews and Romani.<ref name="Jonathan Olsen 1999. p. 62">Jonathan Olsen. ''Nature and nationalism: right-wing ecology and the politics of identity in contemporary Germany''. New York, New York, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. p. 62.</ref>
| | </gallery> |
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| During the era of Imperial Germany, ''völkisch'' nationalism was overshadowed by both Prussian patriotism and the federalist tradition of various states within Imperial Germany.<ref name="Nina Witoszek 2002. pp. 89-90">Nina Witoszek, Lars Trägårdh. ''Culture and crisis: the case of Germany and Sweden''. Berghahn Books, 2002. pp. 89-90.</ref> The events of World War I including the end of the Prussian monarchy in Germany, resulted in a surge of revolutionary ''völkisch'' nationalism.<ref> Witoszek, Nina and Lars Trägårdh, ''Culture and crisis: The Case of Germany and Sweden'' (Berghahn Books, 2002), p. 90.</ref> The Nazis supported such revolutionary ''völkisch'' nationalist policies.<ref name="Nina Witoszek 2002. pp. 89-90"/> The Nazis claimed that their ideology was influenced by the leadership and policies of [[Chancellor of Germany|German Chancellor]] [[Otto von Bismarck]], the founder of the [[German Empire]].<ref name=autogenerated14>Gerwarth, Robert, ''The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor'' (Oxford, England; New York, New York: Oxford University Press) p. 150.</ref> 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.<ref>Gerwarth, Robert, ''The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor'' (Oxford, England; New York, New York: Oxford University Press) p. 149.</ref> While Hitler was supportive of Bismarck's creation of the German Empire, he was critical of Bismarck's moderate domestic policies.<ref>Gerwarth, Robert, ''The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor'' (Oxford, England; New York, New York: Oxford University Press) p. 54.</ref> On the issue of Bismarck's support of a ''[[Kleindeutschland]]'' ("Lesser Germany", excluding Austria) versus the pan-German ''[[German question#Later influence|Großdeutschland]]'' ("Greater Germany") of the Nazis, Hitler claimed that Bismarck's attainment of ''Kleindeutschland'' was the "highest achievement" that Bismarck could have achieved "within the limits possible of that time".<ref name=autogenerated12>Gerwarth, Robert, ''The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor'' (Oxford, England; New York, New York: Oxford University Press) p. 131.</ref> In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (''My Struggle''), Hitler presented himself as a "second Bismarck".<ref name=autogenerated12 />
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| ====Aryan superiority====
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| The concept of the [[Aryan race]] that the Nazis used stems from racial theories asserting that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Iranian settlers, people of ancient India and ancient Persia.<ref name=autogenerated6>Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. ''World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1''. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 62.</ref> Proponents of this theory based their assertion on the similarity of European words and their meaning to those of Indo-Iranian languages.<ref name=autogenerated6 /> [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] argued that the Germanic peoples held close racial connections with the ancient Indians and ancient Persians, who he claimed were advanced peoples possessing a great capacity for wisdom, nobility, restraint, and science.<ref name=autogenerated6 /> Contemporaries of Herder utilized the concept of the Aryan race to draw a distinction between what they deemed "high and noble" Aryan culture versus that of "parasitic" Semitic culture.<ref name=autogenerated6 />
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| Notions of [[white supremacy]] and Aryan racial superiority combined in the nineteenth century, with white supremacists maintaining that [[white people]] were members of an Aryan "master race" that is superior to all other races, and particularly superior to the Semitic race, which they associated with "cultural sterility".<ref name=autogenerated6 /> [[Arthur de Gobineau]], a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ''ancien régime'' in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued destroyed the purity of the Aryan race.<ref name=autogenerated8>Stackelberg, Roderick; Winkle, Sally Anne. ''The Nazi Germany sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts'' (London: Routledge, 2002) p. 11.</ref> Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany,<ref name=autogenerated8 /> emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable [[polarity in international relations|polarity]] between Aryan and Jewish cultures.<ref name=autogenerated6 />
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| Aryan [[mysticism]] claimed that [[Christianity]] originated in Aryan religious tradition and that Jews had usurped the legend from Aryans.<ref name=autogenerated6 /> [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain]], an English proponent of racial theory, supported notions of Germanic supremacy and anti-Semitism in Germany.<ref name=autogenerated4>Stackelberg, Roderick; Winkle, Sally Anne, ''The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts'' (London: Routledge, 2002) p. 11.</ref> Chamberlain's work, ''[[Foundations of the Nineteenth Century]]'' (1899) praised Germanic peoples for their creativity and idealism while asserting that the Germanic spirit was threatened by a "Jewish" spirit of selfishness and [[materialism]].<ref name=autogenerated4 /> Chamberlain used his thesis to promote [[Monarchism|monarchical]] [[conservatism]] while denouncing [[democracy]], [[liberalism]], and [[socialism]].<ref name=autogenerated8 /> The book became popular, especially in Germany.<ref name=autogenerated8 /> Chamberlain stressed the need of a nation to maintain racial purity in order to prevent degeneration, and argued that racial intermingling with Jews should never be permitted.<ref name=autogenerated8 /> In 1923, Chamberlain met Hitler, whom he admired as a leader of the rebirth of the free spirit.<ref>Blamires, Cyprian and Paul Jackson, ''World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1''. (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006) p. 126.</ref>
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| ===Antisemitism===
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| [[File:Antisemitic caricature 1873.jpg|thumb|right|125px|[[Antisemitism|Antisemitic]] caricature shortly after the [[Panic of 1873|stock market crash]] of 1873]]
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| Beginning in the 1870s, German [[Völkisch movement|''völkisch'' nationalism]] began to adopt anti-Semitic and racist themes and was adopted by a number of radical right political movements.<ref>Nina Witoszek, Lars Trägårdh. ''Culture and crisis: the case of Germany and Sweden''. Berghahn Books, 2002. Pp. 89.</ref>
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| ''[[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'' (1912) was an anti-Semitic forgery created by police of the Russian Empire. Anti-Semites believed it was real and the Protocol surged in popularity after World War I.<ref>Roderick Stackelberg, Sally Anne Winkle. ''The Nazi Germany sourcebook: an anthology of texts''. New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002. Pp. 45.</ref> ''The Protocols'' claimed that there was a secret international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.<ref>Ian Kershaw. ''Hitler, 1936-45: nemesis''. New York, New York: USA: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2001 Pp. 588.</ref> Hitler had been introduced to ''The Protocols'' by [[Alfred Rosenberg]], and from 1920 onward Hitler focused his attacks on claiming that Judaism and Marxism were directly connected and that Jews and [[Bolshevik]]s were one and the same and that Marxism was a Jewish ideology.<ref>David Welch. ''Hitler: profile of a dictator''. 2nd edition. New York, New York, USA: UCL Press, 2001. Pp. 13-14.</ref> Hitler believed that ''The Protocols'' were authentic.<ref>David Welch. ''Hitler: profile of a dictator''. 2nd edition. New York, New York, USA: UCL Press, 2001. Pp. 16.</ref>
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| Radical anti-Semitism was promoted by prominant advocates of ''völkisch'' nationalism including [[Eugen Diederichs]], [[Paul de Lagarde]], and [[Julius Langbehn]].<ref name="Jonathan Olsen 1999. p. 62"/> De Lagarde called the Jews a "[[bacillus]], the carrier of decay...who pollute every national culture...and destroy all faith with their materialistic liberalism" and he called for the extermination of the Jews.<ref name="Jack Fischel 1998. Pp. 5">Jack Fischel. ''The Holocaust''. Westport, Connecticut, USA: Greenwood Press, 1998. Pp. 5.</ref> Langbehn called for a war of annihilation of the Jews and Langbehn's genocidal policies were published by the Nazis and given to soldiers on the front during [[World War II]].<ref name="Jack Fischel 1998. Pp. 5"/>
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| [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte]] accused [[Jews]] in Germany of having been, and inevitably continuing to be a "state within a state" in Germany that was a threat to German national unity.<ref name=autogenerated18 /> Fichte promoted two options to address this: the first was the creation of a Jewish state in [[Palestine]] to impel the Jews to leave Europe.<ref>Ryback, Timothy W. ''Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life''. New York; Toronto: Vintage Books, 2010. p. 130.</ref> The other option was violence against Jews, saying that the goal would be "To cut off all their heads in one night, and set new ones on their shoulders, which should not contain a single Jewish idea".<ref>Ryback, Timothy W., ''Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life''. (New York; Toronto: Vintage Books, 2010) p. 130</ref>
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| 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.<ref name=autogenerated14 /> Using the "stab in the back" legend, the Nazis accused German Jews, and other populaces it considered non-German, of possessing extra-national loyalties, thereby exacerbating German [[Antisemitism|anti-semitism]] about the ''[[Jewish question|Judenfrage]]'' (the Jewish Question), the perennial [[far right]] political canard popular when the ethnic [[Völkisch movement]] and their politics of [[Romantic nationalism]] for establishing a ''[[German question#Later influence|Großdeutschland]]'' were strong.<ref name="PostWWIAntisemitism">"Florida Holocaust Museum - Antisemitism - Post World War 1" (history), www.flholocaustmuseum.org, 2003, webpage: [http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/history_wing/antisemitism/post_ww1.cfm Post-WWI Antisemitism].</ref><ref name="JFrage">"THHP Short Essay: What Was the Final Solution?". Holocaust-History.org, July 2004, webpage: [http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/final-solution.shtml HoloHist-Final]: notes that [[Hermann Göering]] used the term in his order of July 31, 1941 to [[Reinhard Heydrich]] of Reich Main Security.</ref>
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| ===Scientific racism===
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| {{further|Scientific racism}}
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| Nazism's racial policy positions were also developed from the views of important biologists of the 19th century, including French [[biologist]] [[Jean-Baptiste Lamarck]] and the father of [[genetics]], German [[botanist]] [[Gregor Mendel]]. [[Lamarckism]] was an important influence on Nazism.<ref name="Peter J. Bowler 1989. Pp. 304-305">Peter J. Bowler. ''Evolution: the history of an idea''. 2nd edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. 304-305.</ref> In particular the variant developed by [[Ernst Haeckel]], was utilized by the Nazis.<ref>Peter J. Bowler. ''Evolution: the history of an idea''. 2nd edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1989. p. 304-305.</ref> Unlike Darwinian theory, Lamarckian theory officially ranked races in a hierarchy of evolution from [[ape]]s while Darwinian theory did not grade races in a hierarchy of higher or lower evolution from apes, simply categorizing humans as a whole of all as having progressed in evolution from apes.<ref>Peter J. Bowler. ''Evolution: the history of an idea''. 2nd edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1989. p. 304.</ref> Many Lamarckians viewed "lower" races as having been exposed to debilitating conditions for too long for any significant "improvement" of their condition in the near future.<ref>Peter J. Bowler. ''Evolution: the history of an idea''. 2nd edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. 305.</ref> Haeckel utilized Lamarckian theory to describe the existence of interracial struggle and put races on a hierarchy of evolution, ranging from being wholly human to [[subhuman]].<ref name="Peter J. Bowler 1989. Pp. 304-305"/>
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| [[Mendelian inheritance|Mendelism]] was supported by the Nazis and also mainstream eugenics proponents at the time were Mendelian.<ref name="Denis R. Alexander 2010. Pp. 209">Denis R. Alexander, Ronald L. Numbers. ''Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins''. Chicago, Illinois, USA; London, England, UK: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. 209.</ref> Mendelian theory of inheritance declared that genetic traits and attributes were passed from one generation to another.<ref name="Denis R. Alexander 2010. Pp. 209"/> Proponents of eugenics used Mendelian inheritance theory to demonstrate the transfer of biological illness and impairments from parents to children, including mental disability; others also utilized Mendelian theory to demonstrate the inheritance of social traits, with racialists claiming a racial nature of certain general traits such as inventiveness or criminal behaviour.<ref>Henry Friedlander. ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution''. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Pp. 5.</ref>
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| ===Fascism===
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| [[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 who less than a month after the March had begun to model himself and the [[Nazi Party]] upon Mussolini and the Fascists.<ref>Ian Kershaw. Hitler, 1889–1936: hubris. New York, New York, USA; London, England, UK: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. Pp. 182.</ref> After the March on Rome, Hitler presented the Nazis as a German fascism.<ref name="Fulda, Bernhard 2009. p. 65">Fulda, Bernhard. ''Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic''. Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 65.</ref><ref name="Carlsten, F.L 1982. p. 80">Carlsten, F.L. The Rise of Fascism. 2nd ed. University of California Press, 1982. p. 80.</ref> The Nazis attempted a "March on Berlin" modelled upon the March on Rome that resulted in the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in [[Munich]] in November 1923.<ref>David Jablonsky. ''The Nazi Party in dissolution: Hitler and the Verbotzeit, 1923–1925''. London, England, UK; Totowa, New Jersey, USA: Frank Cass and Company Ltd., 1989. Pp. 20–26, 30</ref> Although Hitler strongly admired Mussolini and fascism, other Nazis — especially more radical Nazis such as [[Gregor Strasser]], Joseph Goebbels and [[Heinrich Himmler]] — rejected Italian Fascism, accusing it of being too conservative or capitalist.<ref>Stanley G. Payne. ''A history of fascism, 1914-1945''. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. pp. 463-464.</ref> [[Alfred Rosenberg]] condemned Italian Fascism for being racially confused and having influences from philo-Semitism.<ref>Stanley G. Payne. ''A history of fascism, 1914-1945''. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. p. 463.</ref> Strasser criticized the policy of ''[[Führerprinzip]]'' as being created by Mussolini, and considered its presence in Nazism as a foreign import.<ref name="Stanley G. Payne 1995. p. 464">Stanley G. Payne. ''A history of fascism, 1914-1945''. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. p. 464.</ref> Throughout the relationship between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a number of lower-ranking Nazis scornfully viewed fascism as a conservative movement that lacked a full revolutionary potential.<ref name="Stanley G. Payne 1995. p. 464"/>
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| ===National Socialism===
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| During World War I, 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]]).<ref name="Martin Kitchen 2006. p. 205">Kitchen, Martin, ''A History of Modern Germany, 1800-2000'' (Malden, Massaschussetts, USA; Oxford, England, UK; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, Inc., 2006),p. 205.</ref> According to Plenge, 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.<ref name="Martin Kitchen 2006. p. 205"/> Plenge believed that ethnic solidarity (''[[volksgemeinschaft]]'') would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain.<ref name="Martin Kitchen 2006. p. 205"/> He believed that the "Spirit of 1914" manifested itself in the concept of the "People's League of National Socialism".<ref name="Bernd-Rüdiger Hüppauf 1997. p. 92">Hüppauf, Bernd-Rüdiger ''War, Violence, and the Modern Condition'' (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1997), p. 92.</ref> This National Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state.<ref name="Bernd-Rüdiger Hüppauf 1997. p. 92"/> This National Socialism was opposed to capitalism due to the components that were against "the national interest" of Germany, but insisted that National Socialism would strive for greater efficiency in the economy.<ref name="Bernd-Rüdiger Hüppauf 1997. p. 92"/> Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical [[Technocracy|technocratic]] state.<ref name="Thomas Rohkrämer 2007. p. 130">Rohkrämer, Thomas, "A Single Communal Faith?: the German Right from Conservatism to National Socialism", ''Monographs in German History''. Volume 20 (Berghahn Books, 2007), p. 130</ref>
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| Plenge's arguments at the time were recognized by a diverse group of people as an important argument in favour of social justice promoted within a strong state, including: right-wing Social Democrats [[Konrad Haenisch]], [[Heinrich Cunow]], Paul Lench and [[Kurt Schumacher]]; Conservative Revolutionaries including [[Arthur Moeller van den Bruck]] and Max Hildebert Boehm; and Nazis including [[Ernst Krieck]], [[Gottfried Feder]] and [[Eduard Stadtler]].<ref name="Thomas Rohkrämer 2007. p. 130"/> Plenge's ideas formed the basis of Nazism.<ref name="Martin Kitchen 2006. p. 205"/>
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| [[Oswald Spengler]], a German cultural philosopher, was a major influence on Nazism, although after 1933 Spengler became alienated from Nazism and was later condemned by the Nazis for criticizing Adolf Hitler.<ref name=autogenerated16>Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. ''World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1''. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 628.</ref> Spengler's conception of nationali socialism and a number of his political views were shared by the Nazis as well as the [[Conservative Revolutionary movement]].<ref name=autogenerated7 /> Spengler's views were also popular amongst [[Italian fascism|Italian Fascists]], including [[Benito Mussolini]].<ref>Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. ''World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1''. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 629.</ref>
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| Spengler's book ''[[The Decline of the West]]'' (1918) written during the final months of [[World War I]], addressed the claim of [[decadence]] of modern European civilization, whicht he claimed was caused by atomizing and irreligious individualization and [[cosmopolitanism]].<ref name=autogenerated16 /> In ''Decline of the West'', Spengler's major thesis was that a law of historical development of cultures existed involving a cycle of birth, maturity, aging, and death when it reaches its final form of civilization.<ref name="Cyprian Blamires 2006. p. 628"> Blamires, Cyprian and Paul Jackson, ''World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia'', vo. 1 (Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006), p. 628.</ref> Upon reaching the point of civilization, a culture will lose its creative capacity and succumb to [[decadence]] until the emergence of "[[barbarian]]s" create a new epoch.<ref name="Cyprian Blamires 2006. p. 628"/> Spengler considered the [[Western world]] as having succumbed to decadence of intellect, money, [[cosmopolitanism|cosmopolitan]] urban life, irreligious life, [[wiktionary:Atomization|atomized]] [[individualism|individualization]], and the end of biological fertility as well as "spiritual" fertility.<ref name="Cyprian Blamires 2006. p. 628"/> He believed that the "young" German nation as an imperial power would inherit the legacy of [[Ancient Rome]] and lead a restoration of value in "[[Bloodline|blood]]" and instinct, while the ideals of rationalism would be revealed as absurd.<ref name="Cyprian Blamires 2006. p. 628"/>
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| In ''[[Preussentum und Sozialismus]]'' ("Prussiandom and Socialism", 1919), Spengler described "socialism" outside of a [[class conflict]] perspective, saying: "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. That is ''our'' freedom, freedom from the economic despotism of the individual."<ref name=autogenerated7>Winkler, Heinrich August and Alexander Sager, "Germany: The Long Road West", English ed. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 414.</ref> Spengler utilized the anti-English ideas addressed by Plenge and Sombart during World War I that condemned English liberalism and English parliamentarianism while advocating a national socialism that was free from [[Marxism]] that would connect the individual to the state through [[Corporatism|corporatist]] organization.<ref name="autogenerated16"/> Spengler claimed that socialistic Prussian characteristics existed across Germany, including creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity, and self-sacrifice.<ref>Weitz, Eric D., ''Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy'' (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 336-337.</ref>
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| Spengler's definition of socialism did not advocate a change to property relations.<ref name=autogenerated7 /> He denounced [[Marxism]] for seeking to train the proletariat to "expropriate the expropriator", the capitalist, and then to let them live a life of leisure on this expropriation.<ref name="H. Stuart Hughes 1992. p. 108">Hughes, H. Stuart, ''Oswald Spengler'' (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1992), p. 108.</ref> He claimed that "Marxism is the capitalism of the working class" and not true socialism.<ref name="H. Stuart Hughes 1992. p. 108"/> True socialism, according to Spengler, would be in the form of corporatism, stating that "local corporate bodies organized according to the importance of each occupation to the people as a whole; higher representation in stages up to a supreme council of the state; mandates revocable at any time; no organized parties, no professional politicians, no periodic elections."<ref>Hughes, H. Stuart, ''Oswald Spengler'' (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1992) p. 109.</ref>
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| In ''Preussentum und Sozialismus'' Spengler prescribed war as a necessity, saying "War is the eternal form of higher human existence and states exist for war: they are the expression of the will to war."<ref>Weitz, Eric D., ''Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy'' (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007). p. 336.</ref>
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| ==Ideology==
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| [[File:Nazi Germany.svg|thumb|right|250px|Greater Germany in 1943, including annexed or occupied territories of other countries]]
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| The Nazis advocated a strong, central government under the [[Führer]], for defending Germany and the German nation, the ''Volk'', against [[communism]] and Jewish subversion. To the end of establishing ''[[German question#Later influence|Großdeutschland]]'' (Greater Germany), the German peoples must acquire ''[[Lebensraum]]'' (living space) from Russia.<ref name=Kershaw>[[Ian Kershaw]], ''Hitler: A Profile in Power'', (London, 1991, rev. 2001), first chapter.</ref>
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| [[File:Generalplan Ost map.tiff|thumb|Europe, with pre-WW2 borders, showing the extension of ''[[Generalplan Ost]]'', i.e., the massive depopulation and ethnic cleansing within German ''Lebensraum''.]]
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| [[File:Adolf Hitler.png|thumb|left|175px|Hitler, the ''Führer'' of [[Nazi Germany]]]]
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| The original National Socialists, the 1919 [[German Workers' Party]] (DAP) said there would be no program binding upon them, thus rejecting any ''[[World view|Weltanschauung]]''. Nonetheless, when [[Adolf Hitler]] assumed command of its successor, the Nazi Party, political substance of Nazism concorded with [[Hitler's political beliefs|his political beliefs]] — man and idea as political entity, the ''Führer''.
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| Hitler had concluded that [[ethnic]] and [[linguistics|linguistic]] diversity had weakened the Austro–Hungarian Empire, and had resulted in contemporary political dissent. He disliked [[democracy]] because it allowed political power to [[ethnic minorities]] and to liberal political parties, who "weakened and destabilized" the empire with internal division. Hitler's cultural, historical, and political beliefs were tempered in combat during [[World War I]]; by Germany's loss of the war, and by the [[Bolshevism|Bolsheviks']] successful [[October Revolution]] of 1917 that installed Marxist [[communism]] in Russia. From 1920 to 1923, Hitler formulated his ideology, then published it in 1925–26, as ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', a two-volume, biography and political manifesto.<ref>Ian Kershaw, 1991, chapter I.</ref>
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| During the 1920s and 1930s, Nazism was ideologically heterogeneous, comprising two sub-ideologies, those of [[Otto Strasser]] and of Hitler. As leftists, the [[Strasserism|Strasserites]] fell afoul of Hitler, who expelled Otto Strasser from the Nazi Party when he failed to establish the [[Black Front]], an oppositional, anti-capitalist bloc, in 1930. Though Hitler for "tactical" reasons had rhetorically declared a 1920 party platform with [[Socialism|socialist]] platitudes "unshakable," actually "many paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans...Point 11, for example...Point 12...nationalization...Point 16...communalization.... put in at the insistence of Drexler and Feder, who apparently really believed in the 'socialism' of National Socialism."<ref name="William L. Shirer 1990 41">{{cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sY8svb-MNUwC&pg=PA41&dq=socialist+AND+communalization+AND+embarrassing+AND+%22These+demands+had+been+put+in+at+the+insistence+of+Drexler+and+Feder,+who+apparently+really+believed+in+the+socialism%22+AND+%22rise+and+fall+of+the+third+reich%22&hl=en&ei=HvVcTrXxKIaCgAfVoPT2AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false|title=The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (3 ed.,1960)|author=William L. Shirer|year=1990|publisher=Simon and Schuster|page=41|isbn=0-671-72868-7|accessdate=August 30, 2011}}</ref> In actual practice, such points were mere slogans, "most of them forgotten by the time the party came to power.... the Nazi leader himself was later to be embarrassed when reminded of some of them."<ref name="William L. Shirer 1990 41"/> Historian Conan Fischer argues that the Nazis were sincere in their use of the adjective ''socialist'', which the saw as inseparable from the adjective ''national'', and meant it as a socialism of the [[master race]], rather than the socialism of the "underprivileged and oppressed seeking justice and equal rights."<ref>''The Rise of the Nazis'', Conan Fischer, Manchester University Press (2002), ISBN 0-7190-6067-2, p. 53</ref>
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| The conflicting philosophies of leading Nazis of the early years were visible at times: in 1930 "Strasser, Feder and Frick introduced a bill in the [[Reichstag (Weimar Republic)|Reichstag]] on behalf of the Nazi Party calling for (interest rate limits, [[expropriation]] of large bank-holdings)... and the nationalization of the big banks.... Hitler was horrified; this was not only [[Bolshevik|Bolshevism]], it was financial suicide for the party."<ref>{{cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sY8svb-MNUwC&pg=PA144&dq=industrialists+AND+%22nationalization+of+the+big+banks%22+AND+%22Hitler+was+horrified%22+AND+%22rise+and+fall+of+the+third+reich%22&hl=en&ei=nfhcTvLOLpDqgQfAwJyEAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false|title=The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (3 ed.,1960)|author=William L. Shirer|year=1990|publisher=Simon and Schuster|page=144|isbn=0-671-72868-7|accessdate=August 30, 2011}}</ref> Many Strasserites who remained in the Nazi Party, mostly in the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' (SA), were assassinated in the [[Night of the Long Knives]] purge.
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| ===Militarism===
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| Nazi [[militarism]] was based upon the belief that great nations grow from military power which maintains their position in the world pecking-order. The Nazi Party exploited [[irredentism|irredentist]] and [[revanchism|revanchist]] sentiments, and cultural aversions to aspects of [[Modernism]], (despite the ''Reich'' embracing many elements of modernism in the shape of modern technology). The regime combined nationalism and militarism as necessary ingredients for establishing ''Großdeutschland'' (Greater Germany).
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| ===Social class===
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| In 1922, Adolf Hitler discredited other nationalist and racialist political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower- and [[working class|working-class]] young people:
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| {{quote|The racialists were not capable of drawing the practical conclusions from correct theoretical judgements, especially in the Jewish Question. In this way, the German racialist movement developed a similar pattern to that of the 1880s and 1890s. As in those days, its leadership gradually fell into the hands of highly honourable, but fantastically naïve men of learning, professors, district counsellors, schoolmasters, and lawyers — in short a bourgeois, idealistic, and refined class. It lacked the warm breath of the nation's youthful vigour.<ref>Burleigh, Michael. 2000. ''The Third Reich: A New History.'' New York, USA: Hill and Wang. pp. 76-77.</ref>}}
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| Despite many working-class supporters and members, the appeal of the [[Nazi Party]] to the working class was neither true{{dubious|date=March 2012}} nor effective, because its politics mostly appealed to the [[middle class]], as a stabilizing, pro-business{{dubious|date=March 2012}} political party, not a revolutionary workers' party.<ref name="Burleigh, 2000. p. 77">Burleigh, 2000. p. 77.</ref><ref name="Burleigh, 2000. p. 77"/> Moreover, the financial collapse of the [[White-collar worker|white collar]] middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism, thus the great percentage of declared middle-class support for the Nazis.<ref name="Burleigh, 2000. p. 77"/> In the poor country that was the [[Weimar Republic]] of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their socialist policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless — later recruited to the Brownshirt ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' (SA — Storm Detachment).<ref name="Burleigh, 2000. p. 77"/>
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| ===Sex and gender===
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| {{Further2|[[Women in the Third Reich]]}}
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| Nazi ideology advocated excluding women from political involvement and confining them to the spheres of "[[Kinder, Küche, Kirche]]" (Children, Kitchen, Church). Many women voted in favour of the [[Nazi Party]], but once in power, the party introduced legislation that limited women's legal rights. Women's organizations and associations that had been permitted before the Nazi regime were banned, and the Nazi Party set up its own women's organizations.
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| Some women participated in Nazi [[war crime]]s, including the operation of [[concentration camps]], and were convicted after [[World War II]]. [[Gertrud Scholtz-Klink]] had much influence as the head of the [[NS-Frauenschaft]], the women's wing of the Nazi Party. [[Magda Goebbels]], the wife of Minister of Propaganda [[Josef Goebbels]], was on friendly terms with [[Adolf Hitler]] and was known as "the First Lady of the Reich". She often attended Nazi Party events, providing a feminine face to the regime.
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| ====Opposition to homosexuality====
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| {{further2|[[Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust]]}}
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| [[File:Berlin Pink Triangle.JPG|thumb|right|150px|''Homophobia:'' Berlin Memorial to Homosexual Victims of the Holocaust; ''Totgeschlagen—Totgeschwiegen'' (Struck Dead—Hushed Up)]]
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| Initially, Adolf Hitler had protected [[Ernst Röhm]] — the homosexual leader of the [[Sturmabteilung]] (SA) — from Nazis who considered his homosexuality a violation of the Party's anti-homosexual policy. In late February 1933, as the influence of Röhm diminished, the Nazi Party purged the [[homophile]] clubs, where gay, lesbian and bisexual Berliners congregated. It also outlawed academic and pornographic sexual publications.
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| In March 1933, [[Kurt Hiller]], organizer of the ''[[Institut für Sexualwissenschaft]]'' (Institute of Sex Research), was imprisoned to a [[concentration camp]]. On 6 May 1933, [[Nazi Youth|Hitler Youth]] members attacked the institute and publicly burned its books, journals and other documents. They also seized the institute's rosters of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender patients.
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| When Röhm proved to be a politically viable challenger to Hitler's leadership of the Nazi Party, Hitler ordered that he be assassinated in 1934, along with other Nazi political opponents. This purge became known as the [[Night of the Long Knives]]. To suppress outrage in the SA ranks, the Nazi leaders justified Röhm's killing on the basis that he was homosexual.
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| [[Schutzstaffel]] (SS) Chief [[Heinrich Himmler]], initially a supporter of Röhm, defended him against charges of homosexuality, arguing that they were the fabrications of a [[Jews|Jewish]] character assassination conspiracy. After the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler promoted Himmler, who then zealously suppressed homosexuality, saying: "We must exterminate these people root and branch ... the homosexual must be eliminated."<ref>Plant, 1986, p. 99.</ref> In 1936, Himmler established the "Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung" ("Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion").<ref>{{Cite book|last=Pretzel|first=Andreas|chapter=Vom Staatsfeind zum Volksfeind. Zur Radikalisierung der Homosexuellenverfolgung im Zusammenwirken von Polizei und Justiz|editor-last=Zur Nieden|editor-first=Susanne|publisher=Campus Verlag|location=Frankfurt/M.|title=Homosexualität und Staatsräson. Männlichkeit, Homophobie und Politik in Deutschland 1900-1945|year=2005|page=236|url=http://books.google.de/books?id=HaZwHeBm2lkC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236#v=onepage&q=&f=false|isbn=978-3-593-37749-0}}</ref> The Nazis officially declared that homosexuality was contrary to "wholesome popular sentiment", identifying gay men as "defilers of German blood". The Nazi régime incarcerated some 100,000 homosexuals during the 1930s.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n14142669|title=Holocaust: Gay activists press for German apology|last=Bennetto|first=Jason|date=1997-11-01|work=[[The Independent]]|accessdate=2008-12-26}} {{Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref> As concentration camp prisoners, homosexual men were forced to wear [[pink triangle]] badges.<ref>''The Holocaust Chronicle'', Publications International Ltd., p. 108.</ref><ref>Plant, Richard, ''The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals'', Owl Books, 1988, ISBN 0-8050-0600-1.</ref>
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| Nazi anti-homosexual laws did not persecute [[lesbian]]s as much because the Nazis considered female homosexuals easier to persuade or to compel to conformity with the heterosexual mores of [[patriarchy]]. Nonetheless, the Nazis considered lesbians to be a cultural threat to family values, and officially identified them as anti-social. Concentration camp prisoners who were lesbian were forced to wear [[Black triangle (badge)|black triangle]] badges.
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| ===Racial policy===
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| {{further2|[[Nazism and race]]|[[Racial policy of Nazi Germany]]}}
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| {{Cleanup-reorganize|section|date=April 2010}}
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| [[File:NordischNordic.JPG|thumb|150px|right|The Master Race: the ''Meyers Blitz-Lexikon'' ([[Weimar Republic|Leipzig, 1932]]) depicts German war hero [[Karl von Müller]] as an exemplar Nordic type of the [[Herrenvolk]].]]
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| [[File:Buchenwald Corpses 60623.jpg|thumb|right|300px|A wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium in [[Buchenwald concentration camp]]. The Nazis sought the extermination of the Jewish people through the genocide known as the [[Holocaust]].]]
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-177-1465-16, Griechenland, Soldaten der "Legion Freies Arabien".jpg|thumb|right|300px|Soldiers of the [[Turkic, Caucasian, Cossack, and Crimean collaborationism with the Axis powers#Arabian_volunteers|Free Arabian Legion]] of the German Army in Greece, September 1943.]]
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-295-1561-09, Frankreich, Turkestani in der Wehrmacht.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Captured Soviet soldiers of [[Soviet Central Asia|Turkestani]] backgrounds were drafted in large numbers into the ''[[Ostlegionen]]'' of the Wehrmacht. France, 1943.<ref>Robert L. Canfield, ''Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective'' (p.212) – "The majority of [[Soviet Central Asia|Central Asia]]n soldiers taken prisoner opted for the enemy – a fact still hidden from the Soviet public today – although systematic starvation and cruel treatment in German hands, which resulted in appalling losses, must have been one of the major inducements to change sides. As Turkistanis they joined the so-called "[[Ostlegionen|Eastern Legions]]," which were part of the Wehrmacht and later the Waffen SS, to fight the Red Army (Hauner 1981:339-57). The estimates of their numbers vary between 250,000 and 400,000, which include the [[Kalmyks]], the [[Tatars]] and members of the [[Peoples of the Caucasus|Caucasian]] ethnic groups (Alexiev 1982:33)."</ref>]]
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1987-004-09A, Amin al Husseini und Adolf Hitler.jpg|right|thumb|[[Haj Amin al-Husayni]] meeting with [[Adolf Hitler]] in December 1941.]]
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| Hitler viewed race as being in a hierarchy, and spoke of the "aristocratic idea of nature" in which there existed an inequality of races where the superior and higher values of the Aryan race was the basis of all civilization.<ref name="Joseph W. Bendersky 2007. Pp. 32">Joseph W. Bendersky. ''A concise history of Nazi Germany''. Plymouth, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Pp. 32.</ref> Through struggle and proper "breeding", the "strong" would subdue the "weak" and rise to dominance.<ref name="Joseph W. Bendersky 2007. Pp. 32"/> Nazi policy since 1920 emphasized that only people of "German blood" could be considered German citizens while no one of Jewish descent could be a German citizen.<ref>Joseph W. Bendersky. ''A concise history of Nazi Germany''. Plymouth, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Pp. 33.</ref> To maintain the purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to [[Genocide|exterminate]] Jews, [[Romani people|Romani]], and the [[Physical disability|physically]] and [[Developmental disability|mentally disabled]].<ref name="Simone Gigliotti 2005. Pp. 14"/> Other groups deemed "[[Degeneration|degenerate]]" and "[[Asociality|asocial]]" who were not targeted for extermination, but received [[Social exclusion|exclusionary treatment]] by the Nazi state, included: [[Homosexuality|homosexuals]], [[Black people|blacks]], [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] and political opponents.<ref name="Simone Gigliotti 2005. Pp. 14"/> The number of German blacks was low, but there were some instances of them being enlisted within Nazi organisations like the [[Hitler Youth]] and later the Wehrmacht.<ref>Clarence Lusane. ''Hitler's black victims: the historical experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi era''. Routledge, 2002. Pp. 112-113; 189.</ref>
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| The racist subject of Nazism is ''[[Volk|Das Volk]]'', the German people living under continual cultural attack by [[Judeo-Bolshevism]], who must unite under Nazi Party leadership, and, per the spartan [[Nationalism|nationalist]] tenets of Nazism: be stoic, self-disciplined and self-sacrificing until victory.<ref name=autogenerated17>[[Ian Kershaw]], ''Hitler: A Profile in Power'', first chapter "The power of the idea" (London, 1991, rev. 2001).</ref> Adolf Hitler's political biography, ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' formulates the ''Weltanschauung'' of Nazism with the ideologic trinity of: [[history]] as a struggle for world supremacy among the human races, conquered only by a [[Master Race|master race]], the ''Herrenvolk''; the decisive, [[Autocracy|autocratic]] ''[[Führerprinzip]]'' (leader principle); and [[anti-Semitism]] targeting the Jews as the universal source of socio-cultural and economic discord.
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| The Jewish–Bolshevism [[conspiracy theory]] derives from anti-Semitism and [[anti-communism]]; Adolf Hitler claimed to have first developed his worldview from living and observing Viennese life from 1907 to 1913, concluding that the [[Austria-Hungary|Austro–Hungarian Empire]] comprised racial, religious, and cultural hierarchies; per his interpretations, atop were the "Aryans", the ultimate, white master race, whilst Jews and [[Romani people|Gypsies]] were at bottom.<ref name=Kershaw/>
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| However, recent research strongly suggests that Hitler's virulent antisemitism was mostly a post war development, product of influences from the [[Russian civil war]] and that in his Vienna years it played little part in his thinking.<ref>Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship by Brigitte Hamann New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 347-359.)</ref> The idea of the Russian roots of Nazism has been explored by [[Walter Laqueur]]<ref>Russia and Germany, A Century of Conflict by Walter Laqueur London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1965.) p76</ref> and more recently filled out in much more detail by Michael Kellogg<ref>The Russian Roots of Nazism White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 * Michael Kellogg, Cambridge 2005</ref> from archive material only available since the fall of [[communism]]. [[Aufbau Vereinigung]] was a organisation of White Russian émigrés and early National Socialists which exerted a critical influence upon Hitler and Nazi ideology in the years before the [[Beer Hall Putsch|Hitler Ludendorff putsch]] in 1923.
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| Fundamental to Nazism is the unification of every [[Germanic tribe|German tribe]] that was "unjustly" divided among different [[nation state]]s The [[Racialism|racialist]] philosophy of Nazism derived from the seminal [[White supremacy|white supremacist]] works of: the French [[Arthur de Gobineau]] (''[[An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races]]''); the Briton [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain]] (''[[The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century]]''); and of the American [[Madison Grant]] (''[[The Passing of the Great Race|The Passing of The Great Race: or, The Racial Basis of European History]]'').
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| Their ideas were synthesized by the Reichstag Secretary, [[Alfred Rosenberg]], in ''[[The Myth of the Twentieth Century]]'', a [[Pseudoscience|pseudoscientific]] treatise proposing that: "[F]rom a northern centre of creation which, without postulating an actual submerged Atlantic continent, we may call [[Atlantis]], swarms of warriors once fanned out, in obedience to the ever-renewed and incarnate [[Nordic race|Nordic]] longing for distance to conquer and space to shape".<ref>Alfred Rosenberg: Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit, 1-34. Aufl., München 1934</ref> According to Terrence Ball and Richard Bellamy, ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' is the second-most important book to Nazism, after ''Mein Kampf''.<ref>Ball, Terence and Bellamy, Richard (2003). ''The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56354-2</ref>
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-F0918-0201-001, KZ Treblinka, Lageplan (Zeichnung) II.jpg|thumb|left|220px|Sketch plan of [[Treblinka extermination camp]]. Between the years 1942 and 1943, more than 850,000 Jews were murdered there and only 54 survived.]]
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| In establishing Nazi German racial superiority, Adolf Hitler defined "the Nation" as the highest creation of a race, and that that great nations were the creations of homogeneous populations of great races working together. These nations developed cultures that naturally grew from races with "natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits". Whereas the weakest nations were those of "impure" or "mongrel races", because they were disunited. Hitler claimed that lowest races were the parasitic ''[[Untermensch]]en'' (subhumans), principally the Jews, who were living ''[[lebensunwertes Leben]]'' ("life-unworthy life") owing to racial inferiority, and their wandering, nationless invasions of greater nations, such as Germany — thus, either permitting or encouraging national plurality is an obvious mistake.
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| Hitler declared that racial conflict against Jews was necessary to save Germany from suffering under them and dispensed concerns about such conflict being inhumane or an injustice, saying:
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| <blockquote>We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have achieved the greatest deed in the world. We may work injustice, but if we rescue Germany then we have removed the greatest injustice in the world. We may be immoral, but if our people is rescued we have opened the way for morality.<ref>Richard A. Koenigsberg. Nations have the right to kill: Hitler, the Holocaust, and war. New York, New York, USA: Library of Social Science, 2009. Pp. 2.</ref></blockquote>
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| During [[World War II]], when faced with occupying too much territory with too-few German soldiers, Nazism expanded the [[Herrenvolk|Master Race]] definition to include [[Dutch people|Dutch]] and [[Scandinavia]]n men as superior, German-stock ''Herrenvolk'', in order to recruit them into the ''[[Schutzstaffel]]'' ([[SS]]).
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| [[File:Wir stehen nicht allein.png|thumb|175px|Nazi eugenics: "We Do Not Stand Alone" (1936).]]
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| Hitler argued that nations who could not defend their territories did not deserve a country. He said that "slave races", such as the [[Slavic peoples]], had less of a right to life than did the master races — especially concerning ''[[Lebensraum]]''. He claimed that the ''Herrenvolk'' had the right to vanquish inferior [[Indigenous peoples|indigenous races]] from their countries.<ref name="Lebensraum">"BBC - History - Hitler and 'Lebensraum' in the East" (history), www.bbc.co.uk, 2004, webpage: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/hitler_lebensraum_01.shtml Lebensraum].</ref>
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| Hitler argued that "races without homelands" were "parasitic races", and that the richer the parasite race, the more virulent their parasitism. A master race could, therefore, easily strengthen themselves by killing the parasite races in the ''[[Heimat]]''. The ''Herrenvolk'' philosophic tenet of Nazism rationalized ''Die Endlösung'' (the [[Final Solution]]), [[Genocide|extermination]] of Jews, [[Romani (people)|Gypsies]], [[Czechs]], [[Poles]] and other [[Slavs]] (''[[Generalplan Ost]]''), the mentally retarded, the crippled, the handicapped, homosexuals and others deemed undesirable. During [[the Holocaust]], the [[Waffen-SS]], [[Wehrmacht]] soldiers, and right-wing paramilitary civilian militias killed some 11 million people in Nazi-occupied lands via [[concentration camp]]s, [[prisoner-of-war]] camps, [[labor camp]]s, and death camps, such as the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]] and the [[Treblinka extermination camp]].
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| [[File:Flag Schutzstaffel.svg|thumb|150px|left|Schutzstaffel insignia: white [[Sig rune|Sig Runes]] on a black background]]
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| In Germany, the master-race populace was realised by purifying the ''Deutsches Volk'' via (see: [[Nazi eugenics|eugenics]]; the culmination was [[involuntary euthanasia]] of disabled people, and the [[compulsory sterilization]] of the mentally retarded. The ideologic justification was [[Adolf Hitler]]'s consideration of [[Sparta]](11th c.–195 BC) as the original ''Völkisch'' state; he praised their dispassionate destruction of congenitally deformed infants in maintaining racial purity:<ref>{{Cite book|author=[[Adolf Hitler|Hitler, Adolf]]|title=[[Hitler's Secret Book]] | year=1961 | publisher=Grove Press | location=New York | isbn=0-394-62003-8 | oclc=9830111| pages=8–9, 17–18 | quote=Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |author=Mike Hawkins |title=Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: nature as model and nature as threat | year=1997 | publisher=Cambridge University Press | isbn=0-521-57434-X | oclc = 34705047 | page=276 | url=http://books.google.com/?id=SszNCxSKmgkC&pg=PA276&dq=Hitler%27s+Secret+Book+sparta | quote=}}</ref> "[[Sparta]] must be regarded as the first ''[[Völkisch]]'' State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent, and, in truth, a thousand times more humane, than the wretched insanity of our day, which preserves the most pathological subject."
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| Nazi cultural perception of the Jews, based upon the [[Anti-semitism|anti-Semitic]] ''[[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'', emphasized that Jews throve on fomenting division among Germans, and among nation-states. Yet Nazi anti-Semitism was also physical and [[Racism|racial]]. Nazi propagandist [[Joseph Goebbels]] said: "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."<ref name="thosedamnednazis">Goebbels, Joseph; Mjölnir (1932). ''Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken''. Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger. English translation: ''[http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/haken32.htm Those Damned Nazis]''.</ref>
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| [[Nazi Germany]] was ideologically based upon the [[Racialism|racially defined]] ''Deutsche Volk'' (German People), which denied the limitations of nationalism.<ref>Called "transnational" Michael Mann, see references.</ref> The [[Nazi Party]] and the German people were consolidated in the ''[[Volksgemeinschaft]]'' (People's Community), a late-nineteenth-century neologism defining the citizens' communal duty is to the ''[[Reich]]'', rather than to civil society, the citizen-nation basis of Nazism; the ''[[socialism]]'' would be realized via common duty to the ''volk'', by service to the [[Third Reich]] in establishing ''[[German question#Later influence|Großdeutschland]]'', the embodying locus of the peoples' will. Hence, Nazism encouraged ultra-nationalism, to establish a world-dominating, Aryan ''Volksgemeinschaft''. The précis of this central tenet of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' is the motto ''Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer'' (One People, One Empire, One Leader).
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| ===Church and State===
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| {{Refimprove section|date=September 2010}}
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| {{Further|Religious aspects of Nazism|Religion in Nazi Germany|Positive Christianity}}
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| [[File:Orsen.jpg|thumb|300px|Hitler receives the papal nuncio [[Cesare Orsenigo]], on January 1, 1935]]
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| Point 24 of the [[National Socialist Program|Nazi Party Programme]] of 1920 guaranteed freedom for all religious denominations not inimical to the State and endorsed [[Positive Christianity]] to combat “the Jewish-materialist spirit”.<ref>J Noakes and G Pridham, Documents on Nazism, 1919-1945, London 1974</ref>
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| The anti-communism of the mainstream churches and desire to preserve institutional autonomy in the face of likely political co-ordination ([[Gleichschaltung]]) smoothed the way for accommodation and co-operation with the regime after its [[Machtergreifung|"seizure of power"]] in 1933. | |
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| Relations between the Nazi state and the Catholic Church were regulated by the [[Concordat]] signed in July of that year, an agreement upheld by both parties despite breaches which were criticized in 1937 in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical ''With Burning Anxiety (Mit brennender Sorge)''.<ref>K Hildebrand, The Third Reich, London 1984, p.39</ref> The Lutheran tradition of obedience to state authority and long association with German patriotism resulted in a more enthusiastic reception of Nazi beliefs by the Evangelical, i.e. Protestant churches (Lutheran, Reformed, United).
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| While the fundamental incompatibility of Christian teachings and Nazi ideology appear obvious today, the issues were not so clear-cut for contemporaries. The historian Joachim Remak thought that political innocence and misjudgement of the Nazis' true aims played their parts in the churches' acceptance of the new regime.<ref>J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.95</ref> Traditional Christianity in Germany had also been undermined by racist and pagan ideologues in the 19th century who had progressively stripped Christianity of its "Jewish" features" and attempted to remould the biblical Christ into an "Aryan" superman.<ref>K Fischer, Nazi Germany, A New History, London 1995, p.358</ref> The composer [[Richard Wagner]], for example, portrayed the main character of his last music drama ''[[Parsifal]]'' as a Christ-like redeemer and spear-carrying Germanic warrior performing a blood purification ritual in a parody of the Catholic Mass.<ref>R W Gutman, Richard Wagner, The Man, His Mind and His Music, London 1971</ref>
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| The Nazi Party and the churches co-existed uneasily throughout the period of the [[Nazi Germany|Third Reich]]. The regime avoided direct public attacks on the churches. There was no equivalent of Bismarck’s [[Kulturkampf]]. Hitler respected the power of the Catholic Church and was wary of the negative effect any open confrontation might have on German public opinion.<ref name="J Remak 1969, p.105">J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.105</ref> Hitler saw the churches as embodying a socially conservative element that could not be replaced by party ideology.<ref name="A Speer 1970, p.95">A Speer, Inside The Third Reich, London 1970, p.95</ref> He was prepared to tolerate them as long as they recognised the supremacy of the State and did not interfere in secular affairs.<ref>A Hitler, ed. Trevor-Roper, Hitler's Table-Talk, OUP 1988, p.143</ref> Bormann, who represented the more aggressively anti-Christian and neo-pagan element in the Party, thought Hitler had always been religious,<ref>A Hitler, ed. Trevor-Roper, Hitler's Table-Talk, OUP 1988, p.203</ref> He employed religious vocabulary in his everyday conversation and often invoked the "Lord" and the "Almighty" in his public speaking.
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| Much of the evidence of Church and State relations in [[Nazi Germany]] appears contradictory. Despite voicing his contempt for Christianity in private, Hitler wanted to maintain good relations with the churches and secure their support. He forbade Goebbels to leave the Church and intended to remain Catholic himself.<ref name="A Speer 1970, p.95"/> Speer reported Hitler as believing that the churches would in time adapt to the goals of the Nazi state.<ref name="A Speer 1970, p.95"/>
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| Dissenting voices were heard in both mainstream churches, especially on the question of the regime's policy of euthanasia.<ref name="K Fischer, Nazi Germany 1995, p.363">K Fischer, Nazi Germany, A New History, London 1995, p.363</ref> In the case of the Catholic Church opposition was expressed by individual priests and bishops who were punished by internment in concentration camps.<ref name="J Remak 1969, p.105"/> Goebbels retaliated to growing criticism by orchestrating occasional smear campaigns in the press against priests and monks, often "arraigned in the courts on trumped-up charges ranging from financial malfeasance to sexual aberrations".<ref name="K Fischer, Nazi Germany 1995, p.363"/>
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| [[File:Gedenktafel Wilhelmstr 36 (Kreuz) Bekennende Kirche.JPG|thumb|upright|Memorial tablet on the YMCA building in Berlin-Kreuzberg commemorating meetings of Confessing Church activists]]
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| Dissent manifested itself in a more organised form in the Evangelical churches. Perceiving the Nazis as a threat to religion, many pastors resisted Nazification by establishing the Confessing Church (''Bekennende Kirche'') in 1934 as a counterweight to the pro-Nazi 'German Christians'. This movement within the Evangelical churches announced its rejection of Nazi racial [[Völkisch movement|(völkisch)]] ideology in 1935. The historian Klaus Hildebrand gives a figure for 1937 of 800 members of the Confessing Church being arrested for their opposition.<ref>K Hildebrand, The Third Reich, London 1984, p.40</ref>
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| Official harassment of the churches ceased on the outbreak of war.<ref>L L Snyder, Encyclopedia Of The Third Reich, Wordsworth 1978, p.292</ref> While party fanatics like Bormann continued to press for a campaign against the churches (''Kirchenkampf''), Hitler wanted this postponed until after the war.<ref>A Speer, Inside The Third Reich, London 1970, p.123</ref><ref>J Goebbels, ed. L P Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, Doubleday 1948, p.163</ref> He recognised the value of traditional religion in maintaining morale in the armed forces and providing solace to the bereaved families of soldiers killed in action. Both mainstream churches continued to supply chaplains to the armed forces and offered prayers for the Führer from their pulpits.<ref>J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.94</ref> By the war's end the relationship between the Nazi state and the churches was still a "major unresolved issue".<ref>J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.</ref>
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| The American historian Klaus Fischer has described the collective moral failure of the churches to resist Hitler as an "institutional failure of nerve", but acknowledges that "few believers realized that their Christian faith was fundamentally at odds with Nazi ideology". He writes of a moral myopia, both individual and collective, concluding that the failure to resist Hitler "will forever be a stain on the historical record of Christianity", for when confronted with "unmistakable evidence of Nazi evil", the churches "chose to respond with feeble protests rather than aroused mass protests".<ref name="K Fischer, Nazi Germany 1995, p.363"/>
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| ====Thule Society====
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| Several of the founders and leaders of the Nazi Party were members of the ''[[Thule-Gesellschaft]]'' (Thule Society), who romanticized Aryan race superstitions with ritual and theology.<ref>Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 149 and 2003: 114.</ref> Originally, derived from the ''[[Germanenorden]]'', the Thule Society shared the racist superstitions of [[Ariosophy]] that were common to such pan-German groups; [[Rudolf von Sebottendorf]], and a man named Wilde, lectured the Thule Society on occultism.<ref>per the diary of Johannes Hering; Goodrick-Clarke (2002), ''[[Black Sun (Goodrick-Clarke book)|Black Sun]]'', pp. 116-17.</ref> Generally, the society's lectures and excursions comprised [[anti-Semitism]] and Germanic antiquity, yet it is historically notable for having fought as a paramilitary militia against the [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]].<ref>Goodrick-Clarke (2002), pp. 114, 117.</ref> [[Dietrich Eckart]], an associate of the Thule Society, coached Adolf Hitler as a public speaker, and Hitler later dedicated ''Mein Kampf'' to Eckart.<ref>Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 117.</ref> The DAP was initially supported by the Thule Society — but Hitler quickly excluded them in favour of a mass movement political party, by denigrating their superstitious approach to politics.<ref>Goodrick-Clarke (1985), pp. 150–51.</ref> In contrast, SS Chief [[Heinrich Himmler]] was much interested in the occult.<ref name=StG>Steigmann-Gall 2003.</ref>
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| ====Luther and Nazi propaganda====
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1997-011-24, Julius Streicher.jpg|thumb|100px|right|Julius Streicher]]
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| The Nazis publicly displayed an original of [[Martin Luther]]'s ''On the Jews and their Lies'' during the annual [[Nuremberg rallies]], and the city also presented a first edition of it to [[Julius Streicher]], the editor of ''[[Der Stürmer]]'', which described Luther's treatise as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published.<ref>Scholarship for [[Martin Luther|Martin Luther's]] 1543 treatise, ''[[On the Jews and their Lies]]'', exercising influence on Germany's attitude:
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| * Wallmann, Johannes. "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century", ''Lutheran Quarterly'', n.s. 1 (Spring 1987) 1:72–97. Wallmann writes: "The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation, and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented anti-Semitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion."
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| * [[Robert Michael|Michael, Robert]]. ''Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; see chapter 4 "The Germanies from Luther to Hitler," pp. 105–151.
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| * Hillerbrand, Hans J. "Martin Luther," ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 2007. Hillerbrand writes: "[H]is strident pronouncements against the Jews, especially toward the end of his life, have raised the question of whether Luther significantly encouraged the development of German anti-Semitism. Although many scholars have taken this view, this perspective puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on the larger peculiarities of German history."</ref><ref>[[Marc H. Ellis|Ellis, Marc H]]. [http://www3.baylor.edu/American_Jewish/everythingthatusedtobehere/resources/PowerPoints/Christian%20Anti-Semitism%20(part%202).ppt "Hitler and the Holocaust, Christian Anti-Semitism"], Baylor University Center for American and Jewish Studies, Spring 2004, slide 14. Also see [http://elsinore.cis.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/04-29-46.htm#herrwerth Nuremberg Trial Proceedings], Vol. 12, p. 318, Avalon Project, Yale Law School, April 19, 1946.</ref> Protestant Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after [[Kristallnacht]]; in the introduction, he approved of the burning of synagogues and mentioned the coincidental date: "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." He urged Germans to heed the words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."<ref>Bernd Nellessen, "Die schweigende Kirche: Katholiken und Judenverfolgung," in Büttner (ed), <cite>Die Deutchschen und die Jugendverfolg im Dritten Reich</cite>, p. 265, cited in Daniel Goldhagen, <cite>''Hitler's Willing Executioners''</cite> (Vintage, 1997)</ref>
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| [[File:1543 On the Jews and Their Lies by Martin Luther.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Luther's tract '''On the Jews and Their Lies'' (1543)]]
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| Scholars debate the extent of Luther's influence and whether it is [[anachronism|anachronistic]] to view his work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the National Socialists. Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic. Biographer [[Martin Brecht]] points out that "There is a world of difference between his belief in salvation and a racial ideology. Nevertheless, Prof. [[Diarmaid MacCulloch]] said that ''On the Jews and Their Lies'' was the blueprint for Kristallnacht.<ref>[[Diarmaid MacCulloch]], ''[[The Reformation: A History|Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490–1700]]''. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 2004, pp. 666–667.</ref> His misguided agitation had the evil result that Luther fatefully became one of the 'church fathers' of anti-Semitism and thus provided material for the modern hatred of the Jews, cloaking it with the authority of the Reformer."<ref>[[Martin Brecht|Brecht]] 3:351.</ref> Theologian Johannes Wallmann, however, said Luther's anti-Semitic tract exercised no continual influence in Germany, that it was mostly ignored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.<ref name=Wallmann1987>Wallmann, Johannes. "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century", ''Lutheran Quarterly'', n.s. 1, Spring 1987, 1:72-97</ref> [[Uwe Siemon-Netto]] agreed, arguing that it was because the Nazis were already anti-Semites that they revived Luther's work.<ref>[[Uwe Siemon-Netto|Siemon-Netto]], ''The Fabricated Luther'', 17–20.</ref><ref name="SiemonNetto2">[[Uwe Siemon-Netto|Siemon-Netto]], "Luther and the Jews," <cite>Lutheran Witness</cite> 123 (2004) No. 4:19, 21.</ref> Hans J. Hillerbrand agreed that to focus on Luther was to adopt an essentially ahistorical perspective of Nazi antisemitism that ignored other contributory factors in [[History of Germany|German history]].<ref name=HillerbrandEB>Hillerbrand, Hans J. "Martin Luther," ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 2007. Hillerbrand writes: "His strident pronouncements against the Jews, especially toward the end of his life, have raised the question of whether Luther significantly encouraged the development of German anti-Semitism. Although many scholars have taken this view, this perspective puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on the larger peculiarities of German history."</ref> {{-}}
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| ===Economics===
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| {{Further|Economy of Nazi Germany}}
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-15750, Ausstellung "Deutsches Volk-Deutsche Arbeit".jpg|thumb|right|thumb|''Deutsches Volk–Deutsche Arbeit:'' German People, German Work, the alliance of worker and work. (1934)]]
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| Nazi economic ideology and practice first concerned the immediate domestic economy of Germany, then [[international trade]]. To eliminate Germany's poverty, domestic policy was narrowly concerned with four major goals: (i) elimination of unemployment, (ii) rapid and substantial [[German re-armament|re-armament]], (iii) fiscal protection against resurgent [[hyper-inflation]], and (iv) expansion of consumer-goods production, to raise middle- and lower-class living standards. The intent was correcting the Nazi-perceived shortcomings of the Weimar Republic, and to solidify domestic support for the Nazi Party.
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| Private property rights were conditional upon the economic mode of use; if it did not advance Nazi economic goals, the state could nationalize it.<ref name="economic573">{{Cite journal | author=Peter Temin | title= | journal=Economic History Review, New Series | volume=44| issue=4 | pages=573–593 | date=November 1991>}}</ref> Nazi government [[Corporation|corporate]] takeovers, and threatened takeovers, encouraged compliance with government production plans, even if unprofitable for the firm. Although the Nazis [[Privatisation|privatised]] public properties and public services, they also increased economic state control.<ref>Guillebaud, Claude W. 1939. The Economic Recovery of Germany 1933-1938. London: MacMillan and Co. Limited.</ref> Under Nazi economics, free competition and self-regulating markets diminished; nevertheless, Adolf Hitler's [[Social Darwinism|social Darwinist]] beliefs made him reluctant to entirely disregard business competition and private property as economic engines.<ref>Barkai, Avaraham 1990. ''Nazi Economics. Ideology, Theory and Policy.'' Oxford Berg Publisher.</ref><ref>Hayes, Peter. 1987 ''Industry and Ideology IG Farben in the Nazi Era.'' Cambridge University Press.</ref>
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| 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. Quotas also were established for industrial goods, such as pig iron, steel, aluminium, magnesium, gunpowder, explosives, synthetic rubber, fuels, and electricity. A law was enacted in 1936, allowing the minister of economics to make existing cartels compulsory and permanent, and compel industries to form cartels where none existed. Although disestablished by decree, by 1943, they were replaced with more authoritarian economic agencies.<ref>{{Cite journal | doi=10.2307/1881766 | author=Philip C. Newman | title=Key German Cartels under the Nazi Regime | journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics | volume=62 | issue=4 | pages=576–595 |date = August 1948| jstor=1881766}}</ref>
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| Despite state control, business had much production and investment planning freedom in a regime that has been described as "command-capitalism".<ref>{{Cite journal | author=Christoph Buchheim | title=The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry | journal=The Journal of Economic History | pages=390–416 | date=27Jun2006}}</ref> In place of ordinary profit incentives guiding the economy, financial investment was regulated as per the needs of the state. The profit incentive for businessmen remained, but was greatly modified; Nazi agencies replaced the profit motive that automatically allocated investment, and the course of the economy.<ref>{{Cite journal | author=Arthur Scheweitzer | title=Profits Under Nazi Planning | journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics | volume=61 | issue=1 | page=5 | date=Nov., 1946}}</ref> Nazi government financing eventually dominated private financial investment and heavy business taxes limited self-financing of firms. The largest firms were mostly exempt from taxes on profits, however, government control was extensive.
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| ====Anti-communism====
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| Historians [[Ian Kershaw]] and [[Joachim Fest]] argue that 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-communism|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|middle class]], its hostility to small businessmen, and its [[atheism]].<ref name=autogenerated20 /> Nazism rejected [[class conflict]]-based [[socialism]] and economic [[egalitarianism]], favouring instead a [[Social stratification|stratified]] economy with [[social class]]es based on merit and talent, retaining [[private property]], and the creation of national solidarity that transcends class distinction.<ref name=autogenerated11 />
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| During the 1920s, Hitler urged disparate Nazi factions to unite in opposition to "[[Jewish Bolshevism|Jewish Marxism]]."<ref>"They must unite, [Hitler] said, to defeat the common enemy, Jewish Marxism." ''A New Beginning,'' Adolf Hitler, ''Völkischer Beobachter.'' February 1925. Cited in: {{Cite book|last=Toland |first=John |year=1992 |title=Adolf Hitler |publisher=Anchor Books |page=207 |isbn=0-385-03724-4 }}</ref> Hitler asserted that the "three vices" of "Jewish [[Marxism]]" were [[democracy]], [[pacifism]] and [[internationalism]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kershaw |first=Ian |year=2008 |title=Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution |publisher=Yale University Press |page=53 |isbn=0-300-12427-9}}</ref>
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| 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".<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 403"/> In 1930, Hitler said: "Our adopted term ‘Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not."<ref>Carsten, Francis Ludwig ''The Rise of Fascism'', 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 1982) p. 137. Quoting: Hitler, A., ''Sunday Express'', September 28, 1930.</ref> In 1931, during a confidential interview with influential editor Richard Breiting of the ''Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten'', a pro-business newspaper, Hitler said: "I want everyone to keep what he has earned, subject to the principle that the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State ... The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners."<ref>Calic, Edouard, ''Ohne Maske'' (''Without a Mask'') (Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, 1968) pp. 11, 32–33. Translated by R.H. Barry as ''Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931'', (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971) ISBN 0-7011-1642-0. Hitler's confidential 1931 interviews were with Richard Breiting, editor of the ''Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten''. Cited in: Bel, Germà (2006). [http://www.ub.es/irea/working_papers/2006/200607.pdf Against The Mainstream: Nazi Privatization In 1930s Germany], Research Institute of Applied Economics 2006 Working Papers 2006/7, p. 14. Also cited in [[Richard Pipes]], ''Property and Freedom'', 1998, p. 416; which is cited in Epstein, Richard Allen, ''Principles for a Free Society'' (De Capo Press) p. 168. ISBN 0-7382-0829-9.</ref>
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| In 1942, Hitler privately said: "I absolutely insist on protecting private property ... we must encourage private initiative".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hitler |first=A. |coauthors=transl. Norman Cameron, R. H. Stevens; intro. H. R. Trevor-Roper |title=Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944: His Private Conversations |publisher=Enigma Books |year=2000 |isbn=1-929631-05-7 |pages=162–163 |chapter=March 24, 1942 }}</ref>
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| During the late 1930s and the 1940s, anti-communist regimes and groups that supported Nazism included the [[Falange]] in [[Spain]]; the [[Vichy France|Vichy regime]] and the [[33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French)]] in France; and the [[Cliveden Set]], [[Lord Halifax]], and associates of [[Neville Chamberlain]] in Britain.<ref>Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966, p. 619.</ref>
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| ====Anti-capitalism====
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| The Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to [[international finance]], the economic dominance of [[big business]], and Jewish influences.<ref name=autogenerated20>Bendersky, Joseph W. ''A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945''. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 72.</ref> Nazi propaganda posters in [[working-class]] districts emphasized anti-capitalism, such as one that said: "The maintenance of a rotten industrial system has nothing to do with nationalism. I can love Germany and hate capitalism."<ref>Bendersky, Joseph W. ''A History of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945''. 2nd ed. (Burnham Publishers, 2000) pp. 58-59.</ref>
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| Hitler, both in public and in private, expressed strong disdain for capitalism, accusing modern capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic [[Cosmopolitanism|cosmopolitan]] [[rentier]] class.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 399"/> He opposed free-market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy in which community interests would be upheld.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 403">Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 403.</ref> He distrusted capitalism for being unreliable, due to its [[Egotism|egotistic]] nature, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the [[Volk]].<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 399">Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 399</ref> Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews."<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 399" /> Hitler said to [[Benito Mussolini]] that "Capitalism had run its course".<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 399"/> Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."<ref>Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 230.</ref> Hitler admired [[Napoleon]] as a role model for his anti-conservative, anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois attitudes.<ref>Hitler's Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl: Confidant of Hitler, Ally of FDR (New York, New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2004) p. 284.</ref> However, Hitler had little tolerance for Goebbels insistence upon adherence to socialist ideas and alliance with leftist and socialist parties as Hitler had abandoned them by the time the party rose to power. In correspondence Goebbels tried to convince Hitler the Nazis and the left share a common enemy in capitalists, however, Hitler disagreed and adamantly stated that capitalists are not the enemy of Nazis.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Nazi_activist|Joseph Goebbels#Nazi activist]</ref>
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| In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', Hitler effectively supported [[mercantilism]], in the belief that economic resources from their respective territories should be seized by force; he believed that the policy of ''[[Lebensraum]]'' would provide Germany with such economically valuable territories.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 402">ROvery, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 402.</ref> He believed that the only means to maintain economic security was to have direct control over resources rather than being forced to rely on world trade.<ref>Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 402</ref> He claimed that war to gain such resources was the only means to surpass the failing capitalist economic system.<ref name="R.J. Overy 2004. p. 402"/>
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| A number of other Nazis held strong revolutionary socialist and anti-capitalist beliefs, most prominently [[Ernst Röhm]], the leader of the [[Sturmabteilung]] (SA).<ref>Nyomarkay, Joseph, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minnesota University Press, 1967) p. 132</ref> Röhm claimed that the Nazis' rise to power constituted a national revolution, but insisted that a socialist "second revolution" was required for Nazi ideology to be fulfilled.<ref name="Nyomarkay, Joseph 1967 p. 130">Nyomarkay, Joseph, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minnesota University Press, 1967) p. 130</ref> Röhm's SA began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction.<ref name="Nyomarkay, Joseph 1967 p. 130"/> Hitler saw Röhm's independent actions as violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardizing the regime by alienating the conservative President [[Paul von Hindenburg]] and the conservative-oriented German army.<ref name="Joseph Nyomarkay 1967. p. 133"/> This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA.<ref name="Joseph Nyomarkay 1967. p. 133"/> Another radical Nazi, Propaganda Minister [[Joseph Goebbels]] adamantly stressed the socialist character of Nazism, and claimed in his diary that if he were to pick between [[Bolshevism]] and capitalism, he said "in final analysis", "it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism."<ref>Read, Anthony ''The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle'', 1st American ed. (New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004) p. 142</ref>
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| =====Strasserism=====
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| [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 119-1721, Gregor Strasser.jpg|100px|thumb|right|[[Gregor Strasser]], founder of Strasserism.]]
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| {{Main|Strasserism}}
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| Before Hitler orchestrated the operation known as the [[Night of the Long Knives]] in 1934, whereby a substantial base of the Nazi Party's [[left-wing politics|left-wing]] block such as the [[Sturmabteilung]] was purged of radical and disruptive elements, two former [[Freikorps]] and [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social Democratic Party]] activists named [[Otto Strasser|Otto]] and [[Gregor Strasser]] united their left-leaning ideals to form a distinctly socialist strand of Nazism known as [[Strasserism]].
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| Strasserist ideology engaged in overt critique of Hitler's [[Führerprinzip]], his affinities to the conservative establishment, and began attacking his policies through the ''National Socialist Newsletters'' and later ideological literature like ''Cabinet Seat or Revolution'', while upholding aggressive [[anti-capitalism|anti-capitalist]] ideals. The Strasser brothers considered capitalism stained by Jewish finance, and called for a [[working-class]], genuinely [[socialism|socialist]] and [[ultra-nationalism|ultra-nationalist]] revolution following Hitler's rise to power (which they called a half-revolution), emphasizing the ''socialist'' component of National Socialism and proposing a cooperative economic ministry to direct Germany's economy in a more left-wing and [[guild socialism|guild]]-based direction.<ref>[[Karl Dietrich Bracher]], ''The German Dictatorship'', 1973, pp. 230-1</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Nolte|first=Ernst|title=[[Three Faces of Fascism]]: Action Française, Italian fascism, National Socialism|year=1965|publisher=Weidenfeld and Nicolson|location=London|authorlink=Ernst Nolte|pages=425–426}}</ref>
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| ==See also==
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| {{div col}}
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| * [[Adolf Hitler in popular culture]]
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| * [[Brown House, Munich, Germany]]
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| * [[Consequences of German Nazism]]
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| * [[Denazification]]
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| * [[Fascism]]
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| * [[Fascism and ideology]]
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| * [[Final Solution]]
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| * [[Functionalism versus intentionalism]]
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| * [[Jingoism]]
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| * [[List of Adolf Hitler books]]
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| * [[Nationalism]]
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| * [[Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen]]
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| * [[Nazi chic]]
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| * [[Nazi Foreign Policy (debate)]]
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| * [[Nazi occultism]]
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| * [[Nazism in Sweden]]
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| * [[Neo-Nazism]]
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| * [[New Order (Nazism)]]
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| * [[State Capitalism]]
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| * [[Statolatry]]
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| * [[Women in the Third Reich]]
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| {{div col end}}
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|
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|
| ==References== | | ==References== |
| ===Bibliography===
| | {{reflist}} |
| {{copy edit|section|date=May 2012}} | |
| * {{Cite book|title=The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922–1945|author=W.S. Allen|year=1965|publisher=Penguin|isbn=0-14-023968-5}}
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| * {{Cite book|author=[[Peter Fritzsche]]|year=1990|title=Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany|location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-505780-5}}
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| * [[Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke]] (1985). ''[[The Occult Roots of Nazism]]: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935''. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4. (Several reprints. Expanded with a new Preface, 2004, I.B. Tauris & Co. ISBN 1-86064-973-4.)
| |
| * {{Cite book|author=[[Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke]]|title=[[Black Sun (Goodrick-Clarke book)|''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity'']]|publisher=New York University Press|year=2002, 2003|isbn=0-8147-3155-4}}
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| * [[Victor Klemperer]] (1947). [[LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii]].
| |
| * {{Cite book|author=[[Ludwig von Mises]]|title=[[Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War]]|publisher=Libertarian Press|year=1985 [1944]|isbn=0-910884-15-3}}
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| * {{Cite book|author=[[Robert O. Paxton]]|title=The Anatomy of Fascism|publisher=London: Penguin Books Ltd|year=2005|isbn=0-14-101432-6}}
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| * David Redles (2005). ''Hitler's Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation''. New York: University Press. ISBN 0-8147-7524-1.
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| * Wolfgang Sauer "National Socialism: Totalitarianism or Fascism?" pages 404–424 from ''The American Historical Review'', Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967
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| * {{Cite book|author=[[Alfred Sohn-Rethel]]|title=Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism|publisher=London: CSE Bks|year=1978|isbn=0-906336-00-7}}
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| * [[Richard Steigmann-Gall]] (2003). ''The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
| |
| * {{cite book|author=[[Detlev Peukert|Peukert, Detlev]]|title=Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life|year=1989|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|isbn=978-0-300-04480-5}}
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| ===Notes===
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| {{Reflist|2}}
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| ==External links==
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| {{Wiktionary|Nazism|Nazi}}
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| {{Commons category|National Socialism}}
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| * [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/nca_v4menu.asp Hitler's National Socialist Party platform]
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| * [http://www.ns-archiv.de/index.php NS-Archiv], a large collection of scanned original Nazi documents.
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| * [http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/23127/wwii-nazi-thugs-and-thinkers WWII: Nazi Thugs and Thinkers] - slideshow by ''[[Life magazine]]''
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| * [http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/10/16/world/20101016_HITLER.html Exhibit on Hitler and the Germans] - slideshow by ''[[The New York Times]]''
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| * Jonathan Meades (1994): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jagoBzZT1q8 Jerry Building - Unholy Relics of Nazi Germany ] (in 4 parts)
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