![]() The Nazis believed that races were biological entities, that there was something inherent in the blood of each "race" that had a direct impact on its ability to create or destroy something as vague as “true culture.” According to Nazi ideology, only the so-called Aryan race, Germans especially but also including related white northern Europeans like the Danes, the Norwegians, and the English, had ever created culture or been responsible for scientific progress. What made Nazi ideology distinct from that of their Italian Fascist counterparts was its emphasis on biology. ![]() Under Hitler’s leadership, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party (“Nazi” is derived from the German word for “national”), and it adopted the swastika, long a favorite of racist pseudo-historians looking for the ancient roots of the fabricated “Aryan” race, as its symbol. He swiftly rose in the ranks of the Nazis, becoming the Fuhrer ("Leader") of the party thanks to his outstanding command of oratory and his ability to browbeat would-be political opponents - he unceremoniously ejected the party’s founder in the process. His “investigation” immediately transformed into enthusiasm, finding like-minded conservatives who loathed the Weimar Republic and blamed socialism and something they called “international Jewry” for the defeat of Germany in the war. His assignment was to investigate a small right-wing group, the German Workers Party. He trimmed his moustache to its (in)famous length during the war in order to be able to securely wear a gas mask.Īfter the war, he was sent by the army to the southern German city of Munich, which was full of angry, disenchanted army veterans like himself. ![]() Figure 9.5.1: Hitler, on far right, and some of his fellow soldiers in his infantry regiment early in WWI. Unlike most veterans of the war, Hitler experienced combat and service in the trenches as exhilarating and fulfilling, and he was completely without compassion - he would later shock his own generals during World War II by his callousness in spending German lives to achieve symbolic military objectives. Much to his delight, World War I broke out when he was already in Germany he enthusiastically volunteered for the German army and served at the western front, surviving both a poison gas attack and shrapnel from an exploded shell. He hated the weak Austrian government and fled to Germany rather than serve his required military service in Austria. Hitler regarded the fact that Germany and Austria were separate countries as a terrible historical error. The first groups he held enraptured by his improvised speeches about German greatness and the Jewish (and Slavic) peril were his fellow flophouse residents. It was in Vienna that he discovered his own talent for oratory, as well. Likewise, he read popularized works derived from racist pseudo-scholarship that glorified a fabricated version of German history. Hitler spent his days drifting around Vienna, absorbing the rampant anti-Semitism of Austrian society and developing his own theories about Jews and other “foreign” influences. Listless and lazy, but convinced from adolescence of his own greatness, Hitler invented the idea that the rejection was due not to his own lack of talent, but because of a shadowy conspiracy that sought to undermine his rise to prominence.įor several years before the outbreak of World War I, Hitler lived in Vienna in flophouses, cheap hotels for homeless men, and there he discovered right-wing politics and his own talents for oratory. He dreamed of being an artist as a young man, but was rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts in the Austrian capital of Vienna – many of his works survive, depicting boring, uninspired, and moderately well-executed Austrian landscapes. Hitler was born in Austria in 1889, a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nothing about Hitler’s biography would seem to suggest his rise to power, however. His obsession with a racialized, murderous vision of German power translated directly into both the Holocaust of the European Jews and World War II itself. Hitler was also one of the three "greatest" murderers of the twentieth century, along with Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union and Mao Tse-Tung of China. His unquestionable powers of public speaking and political maneuvering transformed the Nazis from a small fringe group to a major political party, and while he was largely ineffective as a practical decision-maker, he remained central to the image of strength, vitality, and power that the Nazis associated with their state. It is impossible to overstate Hitler's importance to Nazism: his own private obsessions became state policy and were used as the justification for war and genocide. \)Īny discussion of the Nazis must start with Adolf Hitler.
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