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152-635: The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue ) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi seizure of power , the Gaue increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany. At the head of each Gau stood a Gauleiter , a position which became increasingly more powerful, especially after

304-536: A Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European language family by this time. The inequality of races and the notion of a "superior race" was universally accepted by the scholars of this era, therefore race was referred to "national character and national culture" beyond biological confinement. In 1853, Arthur de Gobineau published An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races , in which he originally identified

456-650: A fascist party with similar policies and objectives came into power in Italy, the National Fascist Party , under the leadership of the charismatic Benito Mussolini . The Fascists, like the Nazis, promoted a national rebirth of their country, as they opposed communism and liberalism; appealed to the working-class; opposed the Treaty of Versailles ; and advocated the territorial expansion of their country. Hitler

608-594: A foreign race ( Fremdvölkische ). The Nazis sought to strengthen the Germanic people, the " Aryan master race ", through racial purity and eugenics , broad social welfare programs, and a collective subordination of individual rights, which could be sacrificed for the good of the state on behalf of the people. To protect the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to disenfranchise, segregate, and eventually exterminate Jews , Romani , Slavs ,

760-622: A "physical-genetic species" rather than an ethnolinguistic category. Encyclopedias and textbooks of historiography, ethnography, and anthropology from this era, such as Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , Brockhaus Enzyklopädie , Nordisk familjebok , H. G. Wells 's A Short History of the World , John Clark Ridpath 's Great Races of Mankind , and other works reinforced European racial constructions developed on now-pseudoscientific concepts such as racial taxonomy , Social Darwinism , and scientific racism to classify human races. The term Aryan

912-505: A "racially pure" Aryan. Party members could not be related either directly or indirectly to a so-called "non-Aryan". Even before it had become legally forbidden by the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, the Nazis banned sexual relations and marriages between party members and Jews. Party members found guilty of Rassenschande ("racial defilement") were persecuted heavily. Some members were even sentenced to death. Hitler quickly became

1064-579: A "return to the origins". Various writers in the newspaper Zhar-Ptitsa showed interest in a purported manuscript—the Book of Veles —which supposedly dated to the first century BCE. F. A. Izenbek, a White Army officer, alleged the discovery of this manuscript during the Russian Civil War . However one of Izenbek's friends, Iurii Miroliubov, had forged the manuscript, and used the term " Vedism " to describe Russian neo-paganism; he later appropriated

1216-472: A Catholic monarch; and Westphalia , along with working-class "Red Berlin", were always the Nazis' weakest areas electorally, even during the Third Reich itself. The areas of strongest Nazi support were in rural Protestant areas such as Schleswig-Holstein , Mecklenburg , Pomerania and East Prussia . Depressed working-class areas such as Thuringia also produced a strong Nazi vote, while the workers of

1368-590: A bystander lay dead. Hitler, Ludendorff and a number of others were arrested and were tried for treason in March 1924. Hitler and his associates were given very lenient prison sentences. While Hitler was in prison, he wrote his semi-autobiographical political manifesto Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"). The Nazi Party was banned on 9 November 1923; however, with the support of the nationalist Völkisch-Social Bloc ( Völkisch-Sozialer Block ), it continued to operate under

1520-612: A clear foreign policy (abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, a Greater Germany , Eastern expansion and exclusion of Jews from citizenship) and among his specific points were: confiscation of war profits , abolition of unearned incomes, the State to share profits of land and land for national needs to be taken away without compensation. In general, the manifesto was antisemitic , anti-capitalist , anti-democratic , anti-Marxist and anti-liberal . To increase its appeal to larger segments of

1672-466: A desire to draw upon both left-wing and right-wing ideals, with "Socialist" and "Workers'" appealing to the left, and "National" and "German" appealing to the right. Nazi , the informal and originally derogatory term for a party member, abbreviates the party's name ( Nationalsozialist [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪst] ), and was coined in analogy with Sozi (pronounced [ˈzoːtsiː] ), an abbreviation of Sozialdemokrat (member of

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1824-527: A development which was formally documented by the merger of the offices of Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police on 17 June 1936, as the position was held by Heinrich Himmler who derived his authority directly from Hitler. The Sicherheitsdienst (SD, formally the "Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS") that had been created in 1931 as an intraparty intelligence became

1976-454: A form of economic socialism , in order to create a popular nationalist-oriented workers' movement that could challenge the rise of communism and internationalist politics . These were all well-known themes popular with various Weimar paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps . Drexler's movement received attention and support from some influential figures. Supporter Dietrich Eckart ,

2128-417: A heated argument with a visitor, Professor Baumann, who questioned the soundness of Gottfried Feder 's arguments against capitalism; Baumann proposed that Bavaria should break away from Prussia and found a new South German nation with Austria . In vehemently attacking the man's arguments, Hitler made an impression on the other party members with his oratorical skills; according to Hitler, the "professor" left

2280-436: A high elevation in central Asia, speaking a proto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages, which later branched off in two directions: one moved towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran, eventually splitting again with one group invading north-western India and conquering the dark-skinned dasas of Scythian origin who lived there. The northern Aryans of Europe became energetic and combative, and they invented

2432-483: A ministerial-level post at any level in Germany. In 1931 the Nazi Party altered its strategy to engage in perpetual campaigning across the country, even outside of election time. During 1931 and into 1932, Germany's political crisis deepened. Hitler ran for president against the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg in March 1932, polling 30% in the first round and 37% in the second against Hindenburg's 49% and 53%. By now

2584-856: A misreading of the Sanskrit text, and indicate that the Rig Vedic opposition between ārya and dasyu is distinction between "disorder, chaos and dark side of human nature" contrasted with the concepts of "order, purity, goodness and light", and " dark and light worlds ". In other contexts of the Vedic passages the dinstiction between ārya and dasyu refers to those who had adopted the Vedic religion , speaking Vedic Sanskrit, and those who opposed it. However, increasing number of Western writers of this era, especially among anthropologists and non-specialists influenced by Darwinist theories, contrasted Aryans as

2736-555: A month later. In January 1923, France occupied the Ruhr industrial region as a result of Germany's failure to meet its reparations payments. This led to economic chaos, the resignation of Wilhelm Cuno 's government and an attempt by the German Communist Party (KPD) to stage a revolution. The reaction to these events was an upsurge of nationalist sentiment. Nazi Party membership grew sharply to about 20,000, compared to

2888-579: A nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I . In 1918, a league called the Freier Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden (Free Workers' Committee for a good Peace) was created in Bremen , Germany. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler , an avid German nationalist, formed a branch of this league in Munich . Drexler was a local locksmith who had been a member of

3040-522: A new political party should be formed, based on the political principles that he endorsed, by combining his branch of the Workers' Committee for a good Peace with the Political Workers' Circle. On 5 January 1919, Drexler created a new political party and proposed it should be named the "German Socialist Workers' Party", but Harrer objected to the term "socialist"; so the term was removed and

3192-465: A new, imagined biological category: "a tall, light-complexioned, blonde, blue-eyed race" - supposed phenotypic traits of Nordic race . The anglicized term "Aryan" then developed into a purely racialist meaning implicating Nordic racial type. However, modern scholarship of Indo-European studies use "Aryan" and "Indo-Aryan" in their original senses referring to Indo-Iranian and Indic branch of Indo-Europeans. Classification of human races based on

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3344-546: A particular people or even a particular 'racial' group but all those who had joined the tribes speaking Vedic Sanskrit and adhering to their cultural norms (such as ritual, poetry, etc.)". Scholars state that the historical Aryans, the Vedic period Bronze Age tribes who lived in Iran , Afghanistan , and the northern Indian subcontinent —composers of the Rig Veda and Avesta—were unlikely to be blond or blue-eyed, contrary to

3496-615: A process known as denazification . Several top leaders were tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trials , and executed. The use of symbols associated with the party is still outlawed in many European countries, including Germany and Austria. The renaming of the German Worker's Party (DAP) to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was partially driven by

3648-510: A protest, but had now drawn back from the prospect of actually putting him into power. The Nazis interpreted the result as a warning that they must seize power before their moment passed. Had the other parties united, this could have been prevented, but their shortsightedness made a united front impossible. Papen, his successor Kurt von Schleicher and the nationalist press magnate Alfred Hugenberg spent December and January in political intrigues that eventually persuaded President Hindenburg that it

3800-575: A revival of the intellectual quest for "the German language and traditions" and a desire to "discard the cold, artificial logic of Enlightenment ". After Darwin 's 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species and publicization of the theorized model of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), the Romantics convicted that language was a defining factor in national identity , combined with the new ideas of Darwinism . The German nationalists misemployed

3952-419: A significant role in various neo-pagan movements. The Russian Slavophile movements borrowed various discrete ideas of a presumed "prestigious Aryan origin" of Europeans from Nazi Germany. Although Russian Orthodoxy was the primary religious influence on Russian nationalists, the primacy of Christianity was treated skeptically by these groups, who later began searching for an ancient text to rationalize

4104-659: A state—who are descendants of a Volk domiciled in Europe in a closed tribal settlement and are closely related to German racial community. The Nazi concept of " Volksgemeinschaft " racially unified ethnic Germans, including those living outside the German Reich, propounding only the members of the racial community be considered Aryan. Members of the SS deemed Aryans could be selected from populations of Volksdeutsche across Europe to create "master race". Nazi Party established

4256-571: A suicide attempt, was shot by his adjutant on 8 May 1945. Hoffmann, the last Gauleiter of Westphalia-South, initially went into hiding after the war. Arrested in October 1945 he was called as a witness in a number of trials and imprisoned for almost five years. He died in West Germany in 1972 after a successful business career, not charged with any further crimes committed during the Nazi era. Near

4408-486: A theory rejected by modern scholarships. "Aryan" then came to be used by scholars of the 19th century to refer to Indo-Europeans. The now-discredited and chronologically reconstructed North European hypothesis was endorsed by such scholars who situated the PIE homeland in northern Europe, which led to the association of " Proto-Indo-Europeans ", originally a hypothesized linguistic population of Eurasian PIE speakers, with

4560-424: A traitor to the party. In the following days, Hitler spoke to several packed houses and defended himself and Esser to thunderous applause. Hitler's strategy proved successful; at a special party congress on 29 July 1921, he replaced Drexler as party chairman by a vote of 533   to   1. The committee was dissolved, and Hitler was granted nearly absolute powers in the party as its sole leader. He would hold

4712-634: A way out of this impasse. The electoral result was the same, with the Nazis and the Communists winning 50% of the vote between them and more than half the seats, rendering this Reichstag no more workable than its predecessor. However, support for the Nazis had fallen to 33.1%, suggesting that the Nazi surge had passed its peak—possibly because the worst of the Depression had passed, possibly because some middle-class voters had supported Hitler in July as

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4864-648: A well-to-do journalist, brought military figure Felix Graf von Bothmer , a prominent supporter of the concept of "national socialism", to address the movement. Later in 1918, Karl Harrer (a journalist and member of the Thule Society ) convinced Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiter-Zirkel (Political Workers' Circle). The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism directed against Jewish people. In December 1918, Drexler decided that

5016-565: Is a brilliant speaker, we can hold out the prospect of an extremely exciting evening". Over the following months, the party continued to attract new members, while remaining too small to have any real significance in German politics. By the end of the year, party membership was recorded at 2,000, many of whom Hitler and Röhm had brought into the party personally, or for whom Hitler's oratory had been their reason for joining. Hitler's talent as an orator and his ability to draw new members, combined with his characteristic ruthlessness, soon made him

5168-548: Is considered the founding Nazi ideologues of Slavic Neopaganism . With the rise of first-wave feminism , various authors of the Goddess movement cast the ancient Indo-Europeans as a "patriachal, warlike invaders who destroyed a utopian prehistoric world of feminine peace and beauty" in various archaeological dramas and books such as Riane Eisler 's The Chalice and the Blade (1987) and Marija Gimbutas 's Civilization of

5320-543: Is controversial within white nationalist circles. Many white supremacist neo-Nazi groups and prison gangs , notably in the United States, view themselves as part of an Aryan race, including the Aryan Brotherhood , Aryan Nations , Aryan Guard , Aryan Republican Army , White Aryan Resistance , Aryan Circle , Aryan Brotherhood of Texas , and others . Indo-European history, real and feigned, plays

5472-698: Is described as "one of the most important proto-Nazi texts", The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century , in which he theorized an existential struggle to the death between a superior German-Aryan race and a destructive Jewish-Semitic race. In 1916, Madison Grant published The Passing of the Great Race , a polemic against interbreeding between "Aryan" Americans, the original Thirteen Colonies settlers of British-Scots-Irish-German origin, with immigrant "inferior races", which according to him were, Poles , Czechs , Jews, and Italians . The book

5624-705: The Reichswehr (army) by Captain Mayr , the head of the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) in Bavaria . Hitler was assigned to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the DAP. While Hitler was initially unimpressed by the meetings and found them disorganised, he enjoyed the discussion that took place. While attending a party meeting on 12 September 1919 at Munich's Sterneckerbräu , Hitler became involved in

5776-601: The Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in München . Such was the significance of this particular move in publicity that Karl Harrer resigned from the party in disagreement. It was in this speech that Hitler enunciated the twenty-five points of the German Workers' Party manifesto that had been drawn up by Drexler, Feder and himself. Through these points he gave the organisation a much bolder stratagem with

5928-607: The Reichswehr remained impartial. Nazi power over Germany remained virtual, not absolute. The Nazis embarked on a campaign of Gleichschaltung (coordination) to exert their control over all aspects of German government and society. During June and July 1933, all competing parties were either outlawed or dissolved themselves and subsequently the Law Against the Formation of Parties of 14 July 1933 legally established

6080-466: The 1935 Nuremberg Laws , and the racist doctrines of Adolf Hitler considered Jews , Roma and Slavs , including Poles , Czechs , Russians and Serbs , "racially inferior sub-humans" ( German : Untermensch , lit.   'sub-human'); the term was also applied to " Mischling " (persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry) and black people . A definition of Aryan that included all non-Jewish Europeans

6232-615: The Aryan " master race " ( Herrenvolk ). However, he also accused international capitalism of being a Jewish-dominated movement and denounced capitalists for war profiteering in World War I. Drexler saw the political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes. Drexler emphasised the need for a synthesis of völkisch nationalism with

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6384-635: The Bolsheviks , resonated with wide sections of the electorate. At the September 1930 Reichstag elections , the Nazis won 18% of the votes and became the second-largest party in the Reichstag after the Social Democrats. Hitler proved to be a highly effective campaigner, pioneering the use of radio and aircraft for this purpose. His dismissal of Strasser and his appointment of Goebbels as

6536-467: The Golden Party Badge number one. Anton Drexler drafted a letter to Hitler in 1940—which was never sent—that contradicts Hitler's later claim: No one knows better than you yourself, my Führer, that you were never the seventh member of the party, but at best the seventh member of the committee... And a few years ago I had to complain to a party office that your first proper membership card of

6688-507: The Great Depression , when worsening living standards and widespread unemployment drove Germans into political extremism. Central to Nazism were themes of racial segregation expressed in the idea of a "people's community" ( Volksgemeinschaft ). The party aimed to unite "racially desirable" Germans as national comrades while excluding those deemed to be either political dissidents, physically or intellectually inferior, or of

6840-544: The Northern Europeans " in self-congratulatory studies. Subsequently, the German Romantics' quest for a "pure" national heritage led to the interpretation of the ancient speakers of PIE language as the distinct progenitors of a "racial-linguistic-national stereotype". The term " Aryan " was originally used as an ethnocultural self-designative identity and epithet of "noble" by Indo-Iranians and

6992-649: The Proto-Indo-European language were distinct progenitors of a superior specimen of humankind, and that their descendants up to the present day constitute either a distinctive race or a sub-race of the Caucasian race , alongside the Semitic race and the Hamitic race . This taxonomic approach to categorizing human population groups is now considered to be misguided and biologically meaningless due to

7144-685: The Ruhr and Hamburg largely remained loyal to the Social Democrats , the Communist Party of Germany or the Catholic Centre Party . Nuremberg remained a Nazi Party stronghold, and the first Nuremberg Rally was held there in 1927. These rallies soon became massive displays of Nazi paramilitary power and attracted many recruits. The Nazis' strongest appeal was to the lower middle-classes—farmers, public servants, teachers and small businessmen—who had suffered most from

7296-561: The SS and worked for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology publishing theories of Nazi eugenics and racial evolution, claimed the Nordic race as a highly evolved race, and Aboriginal Australians as being the lowest rank in the racial hierarchy . Hans F. K. Günther was considered to be the most influential Nazi anthropologist, although he was not professionally trained. Günther's racist writings on Nordicism

7448-413: The SS organization Ahnenerbe ( German : Deutsches Ahnenerbe ) for conducting archaeological investigations of a presumed "Germanic expansion in pre-history". Nazi scholars endorsed the now-discredited North European hypothesis in an effort to prove PIE was originally spoken by an "Aryan master race", and associated the Semitic languages with "inferior races". Historical revisionism around race

7600-437: The close genetic similarity and complex interrelationships between these groups . The term was adopted by various racist and antisemitic writers during the 19th century, including Arthur de Gobineau , Richard Wagner , and Houston Stewart Chamberlain , whose scientific racism influenced later Nazi racial ideology . By the 1930s, the concept had been associated with both Nazism and Nordicism , and used to support

7752-573: The de facto intelligence agency of Nazi Germany. It was put under the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in 1939, which then coordinated SD, Gestapo and criminal police , therefore functioning as a hybrid organisation of state and party structures. Officially, Nazi Germany lasted only 12 years. The Instrument of Surrender was signed by representatives of the German High Command at Berlin , on 8 May 1945, when

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7904-525: The disabled . Nazi Germany introduced the Anti-Jewish legislation that systemically discriminated against Jews by requiring Aryan certification for a German Reich citizen. After Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany , the public policies of Nazi Germany became increasingly hostile towards supposed "inferior types", particularly Jews, who were considered to be the highest manifestation of

8056-460: The lexical similarities between Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages such as Persian , Gothic , Greek , and Latin , and concluded that Sanskrit—as a descendant language —belonged to the same proto- or parent-language in the language family —that is PIE, as the other Indo-European languages, in his Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus (1786). However, the linguistic homeland of

8208-477: The original speakers of Proto-Indo-European was a politicized debate among the archaeologists and comparative historical linguists since the start, entangling in chauvinistic causes. Some European nationalists and dictators , most notably the Nazis, later attempted to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland in their country or region as racially superior. According to Leon Poliakov ,

8360-541: The physically and mentally disabled , homosexuals , Jehovah's Witnesses , and political opponents. The persecution reached its climax when the party-controlled German state set in motion the Final Solution – an industrial system of genocide that carried out mass murders of around 6 million Jews and millions of other targeted victims in what has become known as the Holocaust . Adolf Hitler ,

8512-599: The scientific theory of natural selection for the rationalization of the supposed fitness of some races over others, although Darwin himself never applied his theory of fitness to vague entities such as races or languages. The "unfit" races were suggested as a source of genetic weakness, and a threat that might contaminate the superior qualities of the "fit" races. The misleading mixture of pseudoscience and Romanticism produced new racial ideologies which used distorted Social Darwinist interpretations of race to explain "the superior biological-spiritual-linguistic essence of

8664-423: The white supremacist ideology of Aryanism that portrayed the Aryan race as a " master race ", with non-Aryans regarded as racially inferior ( Untermensch , lit.   ' subhuman ' ) and an existential threat that was to be exterminated . In Nazi Germany , these ideas formed an essential part of the state ideology that led to the Holocaust . In the late 18th century, Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

8816-404: The "Night of the Long Knives"), Hitler disempowered the SA's leadership—most of whom belonged to the Strasserist (national revolutionary) faction within the NSDAP—and ordered them killed. He accused them of having conspired to stage a coup d'état , but it is believed that this was only a pretense to justify the suppression of any intraparty opposition. The purge was executed by the SS, assisted by

8968-458: The "master race" ( German : Herrenrasse ). Recent archaeogenetic studies contradict these ideas, and instead suggest that Proto-Indo-European speaking peoples probably had brown eyes and hair, and intermediate skin complexion. After the death of Kossinna, Heinrich Himmler , and other Nazi figures such as Alfred Rosenberg , adopted his nationalistic theories of Germanic peoples and methodologies, including settlement archaeology, and founded

9120-446: The Aryan identity as asserted in the Rig Veda was cultural , religious , and linguistic , not racial; nor do the Vedas contemplate racial purity . The Rig Veda affirms a ritualistic barrier : an individual is considered Aryan if they sacrifice to the right gods, which requires performing traditional prayer in the traditional language, and does not connote a racial barrier. Michael Witzel states that term Aryan "does not mean

9272-459: The Aryan race as the white race, and the only civilized one, and conceived cultural decline and miscegenation as intimately intertwined. He argued that the Aryans represented a superior branch of humanity, and attempted to identify the races of Europe as Aryan and associated them with the sons of Noah , emphasizing superiority, and categorized non-Aryan as an intrusion of the Semitic race . According to him, northern Europeans had migrated across

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9424-446: The Aryans". Following Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II , various neo-Nazi and racial nationalist movements developed a more inclusive definition of Aryan claiming to Western European peoples, with Nordic and Germanic peoples being the most "racially pure". However, in the United States , most white nationalists define whiteness broadly as people of European ancestry , and some consider Jews to be white although this

9576-442: The Control Council Law no. 2 Providing for the Termination and Liquidation of the Nazi Organization specified the abolition of 52 other Nazi affiliated and supervised organisations and outlawed their activities. The denazification was carried out in Germany and continued until the onset of the Cold War. Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazi Party led regime, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries,

9728-450: The DAP advocated the belief that through profit-sharing instead of socialisation Germany should become a unified "people's community" ( Volksgemeinschaft ) rather than a society divided along class and party lines. This ideology was explicitly antisemitic. As early as 1920, the party was raising money by selling a tobacco called Anti-Semit . From the outset, the DAP was opposed to non-nationalist political movements, especially on

9880-595: The DAP, bearing the signatures of Schüssler and myself, was falsified, with the number 555 being erased and number 7 entered. Although Hitler initially wanted to form his own party, he claimed to have been convinced to join the DAP because it was small and he could eventually become its leader. He consequently encouraged the organisation to become less of a debating society, which it had been previously, and more of an active political party. Normally, enlisted army personnel were not allowed to join political parties. In this case, Hitler had Captain Karl Mayr 's permission to join

10032-437: The DAP. Further, Hitler was allowed to stay in the army and receive his weekly pay of 20 gold marks a week. Unlike many other members of the organisation, this continued employment provided him with enough money to dedicate himself more fully to the DAP. Hitler's first DAP speech was held in the Hofbräukeller on 16 October 1919. He was the second speaker of the evening, and spoke to 111 people. Hitler later declared that this

10184-500: The German government, the usage of "Nazi" diminished in Germany, although Austrian anti-Nazis continued to use the term. The use of " Nazi Germany " and "Nazi regime" was popularised by anti-Nazis and German exiles abroad. Thereafter, the term spread into other languages and eventually was brought back to Germany after World War II. In English, the term is not considered slang and has such derivatives as Nazism and denazification . The Nazi Party grew out of smaller political groups with

10336-455: The Gestapo and Reichswehr units. Aside from Strasserist Nazis, they also murdered anti-Nazi conservative figures like former chancellor von Schleicher. After this, the SA continued to exist but lost much of its importance, while the role of the SS grew significantly. Formerly only a sub-organisation of the SA, it was made into a separate organisation of the NSDAP in July 1934. Upon the death of President Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Hitler merged

10488-401: The Indian religious scripture, the Vedas , to aggrandize the manuscript. Nationalistic white Russian émigrés and neo-Pagans consider the manuscript to be an authentic historical source of Slavic antiquity, who claim a direct link between "ancient Aryans" and themselves as Slavs. However, the manuscript is declared literary forgery by scholars. Alexey Dobrovolsky , a Russian neo-Nazi ,

10640-424: The Nazi Party might never have come to power had it not been for the Great Depression and its effects on Germany. By 1930, the German economy was beset with mass unemployment and widespread business failures. The Social Democrats and Communists were bitterly divided and unable to formulate an effective solution: this gave the Nazis their opportunity and Hitler's message, blaming the crisis on the Jewish financiers and

10792-404: The Nazi Party's monopoly. On 1 December 1933, the Law to Secure the Unity of Party and State entered into force, which was the base for a progressive intertwining of party structures and state apparatus. By this law, the SA—actually a party division—was given quasi-governmental authority and their Stabschef became a cabinet minister without portfolio . By virtue of the 30 January 1934 Law on

10944-754: The Reconstruction of the Reich , the Länder (states) lost their sovereignty and were demoted to administrative divisions of the Reich government. Effectively, they lost most of their power to the Gaue that were originally just regional divisions of the party, but took over most competencies of the state administration in their respective sectors. During the Röhm Purge of 30 June to 2 July 1934 (also known as

11096-530: The SA had 400,000 members and its running street battles with the SPD and Communist paramilitaries (who also fought each other) reduced some German cities to combat zones. Paradoxically, although the Nazis were among the main instigators of this disorder, part of Hitler's appeal to a frightened and demoralised middle class was his promise to restore law and order. Overt antisemitism was played down in official Nazi rhetoric, but

11248-725: The SA retained some autonomy. Being composed largely of unemployed workers, many SA men took the Nazis' socialist rhetoric seriously. At this time, the Hitler salute (borrowed from the Italian fascists ) and the greeting "Heil Hitler!" were adopted throughout the party. The Nazis contested elections to the national parliament (the Reichstag ) and to the state legislature (the Landtage ) from 1924, although at first with little success. The " National Socialist Freedom Movement " polled 3% of

11400-552: The Semitic race, and segregation of Jews in ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question . The state-sponsored persecution systematically murdered over 6 million Jews, 5.7 million Slavs, 1.8–3 million Poles, 270,000 disabled people, among other victims , including children through mass shooting , gas chamber , gas van , and concentration camps , in

11552-622: The Weimar Republic government. Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. The Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933 gave Hitler a pretext for suppressing his political opponents. The following day he persuaded the Reich's President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree , which suspended most civil liberties . The NSDAP won the parliamentary election on 5 March 1933 with 44% of votes, but failed to win an absolute majority. After

11704-520: The approximate 6,000 at the beginning of 1923. By November 1923, Hitler had decided that the time was right for an attempt to seize power in Munich, in the hope that the Reichswehr (the post-war German military) would mutiny against the Berlin government and join his revolt. In this, he was influenced by former General Erich Ludendorff , who had become a supporter—though not a member—of the Nazis. On

11856-587: The authors of the oldest known religious texts of Rig Veda and Avesta within the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European language family—Sanskrit and Iranian , who lived in ancient India and Iran . Although the Sanskrit ā́rya- and Iranian *arya- descended from a form *ā̆rya-, it was only attested to the Indo-Iranian tribes. Benjamin W. Fortson states that there may have been no term for self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and no such morphemes has survived. J. P. Mallory et al. states although

12008-399: The concept of the Aryan race was deeply rooted in philology, based on the work of Sir William Jones' claiming that Sanskrit was related to Greco-Roman (European) languages. Other thinkers invented secularized origins for European civilization that were not based on the biblical genealogies from which Europe's aristocracy had long claimed descent. The influence of Romanticism in Germany saw

12160-667: The discredited Social Democrats and the Zentrum, whose leader, Heinrich Brüning , headed a weak minority government. The inability of the democratic parties to form a united front, the self-imposed isolation of the Communists and the continued decline of the economy, all played into Hitler's hands. He now came to be seen as de facto leader of the opposition and donations poured into the Nazi Party's coffers. Some major business figures, such as Fritz Thyssen , were Nazi supporters and gave generously and some Wall Street figures were allegedly involved, but many other businessmen were suspicious of

12312-453: The dominant figure. However, while Hitler and Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin in June 1921, a mutiny broke out within the party in Munich. Members of its executive committee wanted to merge with the rival German Socialist Party (DSP). Upon returning to Munich on 11 July, Hitler angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised that his resignation would mean the end of

12464-403: The economic and political situation had stabilised and the extremist upsurge of 1923 had faded, so there was no prospect of further revolutionary adventures. Instead, Hitler intended to alter the party's strategy to achieving power through what he called the "path of legality". The Nazi Party of 1925 was divided into the "Leadership Corps" ( Korps der politischen Leiter ) appointed by Hitler and

12616-420: The election, hundreds of thousands of new members joined the party for opportunistic reasons, most of them civil servants and white-collar workers. They were nicknamed the "casualties of March" (German: Märzgefallenen ) or "March violets" (German: Märzveilchen ). To protect the party from too many non-ideological turncoats who were viewed by the so-called "old fighters" (alte Kämpfer) with some mistrust,

12768-563: The end of World War II, the Gau was invaded by the western allies, who would gradually capture its territory until the end of the war. The timeline of the allied advance is detailed in the table below. Nazi Party Final solution Parties The Nazi Party , officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( German : Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei   or NSDAP ),

12920-504: The extreme nationalist tendencies of the Nazis and preferred to support the traditional conservative parties instead. In 1930, as the price for joining a coalition government of the Land (state) of Thuringia , the Nazi Party received the state ministries of the Interior and Education. On 23 January 1930, Wilhelm Frick was appointed to these ministries, becoming the first Nazi to hold

13072-613: The formation of a majority government impossible. The result was weak ministries governing by decree. Under Comintern directives, the Communists maintained their policy of treating the Social Democrats as the main enemy, calling them " social fascists ", thereby splintering opposition to the Nazis. Later, both the Social Democrats and the Communists accused each other of having facilitated Hitler's rise to power by their unwillingness to compromise. Chancellor Franz von Papen called another Reichstag election in November, hoping to find

13224-705: The general membership ( Parteimitglieder ). The party and the SA were kept separate and the legal aspect of the party's work was emphasised. In a sign of this, the party began to admit women. The SA and the SS members (the latter founded in 1925 as Hitler's bodyguard, and known originally as the Schutzkommando ) had to all be regular party members. In the 1920s the Nazi Party expanded beyond its Bavarian base. At this time, it began surveying voters in order to determine what they were dissatisfied with in Germany, allowing Nazi propaganda to be altered accordingly. Catholic Bavaria maintained its right-wing nostalgia for

13376-483: The hall acknowledging unequivocal defeat. Drexler encouraged him to join the DAP. On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party and within a week was accepted as party member 555 (the party began counting membership at 500 to give the impression they were a much larger party). Among the party's earlier members were Ernst Röhm of the Army's District Command VII; Dietrich Eckart, who has been called

13528-461: The idea of a nation, while the southern Aryans of Iran and India were passive and meditative and focussed on religion and philosophy. Though he occasionally used the term "Aryan race" afterward, Müller later objected to the mixing of the linguistic and racial categories, and was "deeply saddened by the fact that these classifications later came to be expressed in racist terms". In his 1888 lecture at Oxford , he stated, "[the] science of Language and

13680-509: The inflation of the 1920s, so who feared Bolshevism more than anything else. The small business class was receptive to Hitler's antisemitism, since it blamed Jewish big business for its economic problems. University students, disappointed at being too young to have served in the War of 1914–1918 and attracted by the Nazis' radical rhetoric, also became a strong Nazi constituency. By 1929, the party had 130,000 members. The party's nominal Deputy Leader

13832-480: The late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping . The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan , used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological , historical , and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept. The concept derives from the notion that the original speakers of

13984-712: The left, including the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Members of the DAP saw themselves as fighting against " Bolshevism " and anyone considered a part of or aiding so-called " international Jewry ". The DAP was also deeply opposed to the Treaty of Versailles . The DAP did not attempt to make itself public and meetings were kept in relative secrecy, with public speakers discussing what they thought of Germany's present state of affairs , or writing to like-minded societies in Northern Germany . The DAP

14136-512: The method and advocacy for the ideology of a Germanic master race . Max Müller popularized the term Aryan in his writings on comparative linguistics , and is often identified as the first writer to mention an Aryan race in English. He began the racial interpretation of the Vedic passages based upon his editing of the Rigveda from 1849 to 1874. He postulated a small Aryan clan living on

14288-415: The militarist Fatherland Party during World War I and was bitterly opposed to the armistice of November 1918 and the revolutionary upheavals that followed. Drexler followed the views of militant nationalists of the day, such as opposing the Treaty of Versailles , having antisemitic , anti-monarchist and anti-Marxist views, as well as believing in the superiority of Germans whom they claimed to be part of

14440-522: The name "German Party" ( Deutsche Partei or DP) from 1924 to 1925. The Nazis failed to remain unified in the DP, as in the north, the right-wing Volkish nationalist supporters of the Nazis moved to the new German Völkisch Freedom Party , leaving the north's left-wing Nazi members, such as Joseph Goebbels retaining support for the party. Pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court, Hitler

14592-472: The night of 8 November, the Nazis used a patriotic rally in a Munich beer hall to launch an attempted putsch ("coup d'état"). This so-called Beer Hall Putsch attempt failed almost at once when the local Reichswehr commanders refused to support it. On the morning of 9 November, the Nazis staged a march of about 2,000 supporters through Munich in an attempt to rally support. The two groups exchanged fire, after which 15 putschists, four police officers, and

14744-477: The now-pseudoscientific study of phenotypical differences developed during the nineteenth century and evidence in support of such theories were sought from the study of language and reconstructions of language families. Scholars of this era established the ethnological term "Aryan" as the race that had spoken the Proto-Indo-European language, and in this context, the term was often used as a synonym for "Indo-Europeans". Scholars point out that, even in ancient times,

14896-757: The offices of party leader, head of state and chief of government in one, taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler by passage of the Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich . The Chancellery of the Führer , officially an organisation of the Nazi Party, took over the functions of the Office of the President (a government agency), blurring the distinction between structures of party and state even further. The SS increasingly exerted police functions,

15048-513: The organization NSDAP/AO to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the ethnic German minorities considered Volksdeutsche in central and eastern Europe. Nazi racial theories considered the "purest stock of Aryans" the Nordic people , identified by physical anthropological features such as tallness, white skin, blue eyes, narrow and straight noses, doliocephalic skulls , prominent chins, and blond hair, including Scandinavians , Germans , English and French , with Nordic and Germanic people being

15200-720: The outbreak of the Second World War , with little interference from above. Local Gauleiters often held government positions as well as party ones and were in charge of, among other things, propaganda and surveillance and, from September 1944 onward, the Volkssturm and the defense of the Gau. The position of Gauleiter in Westphalia-South was held by Josef Wagner from January 1931 to November 1941, followed by Paul Giesler from November 1941 to January 1943 and Albert Hoffmann from January 1943 to May 1945. Wagner

15352-646: The party issued a freeze on admissions that remained in force from May 1933 to 1937. On 23 March, the parliament passed the Enabling Act of 1933 , which gave the cabinet the right to enact laws without the consent of parliament. In effect, this gave Hitler dictatorial powers. Now possessing virtually absolute power, the Nazis established totalitarian control as they abolished labour unions and other political parties and imprisoned their political opponents, first at wilde Lager , improvised camps, then in concentration camps . Nazi Germany had been established, yet

15504-638: The party treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz and business manager Max Amann . The party had a capable propaganda head in Gregor Strasser , who was promoted to national organizational leader in January 1928. These men gave the party efficient recruitment and organizational structures. The party also owed its growth to the gradual fading away of competitor nationalist groups, such as the German National People's Party (DNVP). As Hitler became

15656-504: The party was named the German Workers' Party ( Deutsche Arbeiterpartei , DAP). To ease concerns among potential middle-class supporters, Drexler made clear that unlike Marxists the party supported the middle-class and that its socialist policy was meant to give social welfare to German citizens deemed part of the Aryan race. They became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany. Like other völkisch groups,

15808-546: The party were always German nationalist expansionism and antisemitism . These two goals were fused in his mind by his belief that Germany's external enemies—Britain, France and the Soviet Union—were controlled by the Jews and that Germany's future wars of national expansion would necessarily entail a war of annihilation against them. For Hitler and his principal lieutenants, national and racial issues were always dominant. This

15960-562: The party's leader since 1921, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933, and quickly seized power afterwards. Hitler established a totalitarian regime known as the Third Reich and became dictator with absolute power . Following the military defeat of Germany in World War II , the party was declared illegal. The Allies attempted to purge German society of Nazi elements in

16112-492: The party's most active orator, appearing in public as a speaker 31 times within the first year after his self-discovery. Crowds began to flock to hear his speeches. Hitler always spoke about the same subjects: the Treaty of Versailles and the Jewish question . This deliberate technique and effective publicising of the party contributed significantly to his early success, about which a contemporary poster wrote: "Since Herr Hitler

16264-505: The party's propaganda chief were major factors. While Strasser had used his position to promote his own leftish version of national socialism, Goebbels was completely loyal to Hitler, and worked only to improve Hitler's image. The 1930 elections changed the German political landscape by weakening the traditional nationalist parties, the DNVP and the DVP, leaving the Nazis as the chief alternative to

16416-475: The party. Hitler announced he would rejoin on condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed, and he rejoined the party on 26 July as member 3,680. Hitler continued to face some opposition within the NSDAP, as his opponents had Hermann Esser expelled from the party and they printed 3,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking Hitler as

16568-407: The physically and mentally disabled. The National Socialist Programme was a formulation of the policies of the party. It contained 25 points and is therefore also known as the "25-point plan" or "25-point programme". It was the official party programme, with minor changes, from its proclamation as such by Hitler in 1920, when the party was still the German Workers' Party, until its dissolution. At

16720-509: The population, on the same day as Hitler's Hofbräuhaus speech on 24 February 1920, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ("National Socialist German Workers' Party", or Nazi Party). The name was intended to draw upon both left-wing and right-wing ideals, with "Socialist" and "Workers'" appealing to the left, and "National" and "German" appealing to

16872-497: The post for the remainder of his life. Hitler soon acquired the title Führer ("leader") and after a series of sharp internal conflicts it was accepted that the party would be governed by the Führerprinzip ("leader principle"). Under this principle, the party was a highly centralised entity that functioned strictly from the top down, with Hitler at the apex. Hitler saw the party as a revolutionary organisation, whose aim

17024-467: The process known as the Holocaust . The ethnic Germans considered Volksdeutsche joined the local SS organizations under NSDAP/AO and participated in Nazi-sponsored pogroms in eastern and central Europe during the Holocaust, including seizures of Jewish property. The Aryan race belief was used by the Nazis to justify the persecution, depicting the victims as the "antipode and eternal enemy of

17176-415: The proponents of Aryanism and Nordicism. The racial interpretation of Aryans stems from the now-discredited culture-historical archaeology theory of Gustaf Kossinna , who asserted a one-to-one correspondence between archaeological culture and archaeological race . According to Kossinna, the continuity of a "culture" exposits the continuity of a "race" which lived continuously in the same area, and

17328-431: The recognised head of the German nationalists, other groups declined or were absorbed. In the late 1920s, seeing the party's lack of breakthrough into the mainstream, Goebbels proposed that instead of focusing all of their propaganda in major cities where there was competition from other political movements, they should instead begin holding rallies in rural areas where they would be more effective. Despite these strengths,

17480-451: The resemblance of a culture in a younger layer to a culture from an older layer indicates that the autochthonous tribe from the homeland had migrated. Kossinna developed an ethnic paradigm in archaeology called settlement archaeology and practiced the nationalistic interpretation of German archaeology for the Third Reich . The obsolete North European hypothesis was endorsed by Kossinna and Karl Penka , including German nationalists, which

17632-400: The right. The word "Socialist" was added by the party's executive committee (at the suggestion of Rudolf Jung ), over Hitler's initial objections, in order to help appeal to left-wing workers. In 1920, the Nazi Party officially announced that only persons of "pure Aryan descent [ rein arischer Abkunft ]" could become party members and if the person had a spouse, the spouse also had to be

17784-506: The rise of the party, these terms had been used as colloquial and derogatory words for a backward peasant , or an awkward and clumsy person. It derived from Ignaz, a shortened version of Ignatius , which was a common name in the Nazis' home region of Bavaria . Opponents seized on this, and the long-existing Sozi , to attach a dismissive nickname to the National Socialists. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power in

17936-530: The rival Social Democratic Party of Germany ). Members of the party referred to themselves as Nationalsozialisten (National Socialists), but some did occasionally embrace the colloquial Nazi (so Leopold von Mildenstein in his article series Ein Nazi fährt nach Palästina published in Der Angriff in 1934). The term Parteigenosse (party member) was commonly used among Nazis, with its corresponding feminine form Parteigenossin . Before

18088-670: The science of Man cannot be kept too much asunder [...] it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar", and in his Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888), he writes, "[the] ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes, and hair, is a great sinner as a linguist [...]". European scholars of 19th century interpreted the Vedic passages as depicting battle between light-skinned Aryan migrants and dark-skinned indigenous tribes, but modern scholars reject this characterization of racial division as

18240-413: The spiritual father of National Socialism; then- University of Munich student Rudolf Hess ; Freikorps soldier Hans Frank ; and Alfred Rosenberg , often credited as the philosopher of the movement. All were later prominent in the Nazi regime. Hitler later claimed to be the seventh party member. He was, in fact, the seventh executive member of the party's central committee and he would later wear

18392-460: The term "Aryan" takes on an ethnic meaning attesting to Indo-Iranians, there is no grounds for ascribing this semantic use to the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction of lexicon *h₂eryós i.e. there is no evidence that the speakers of proto-language referred to themselves as "Aryans". However, in the 19th century, it was proposed that ā́rya- was not only the tribal self-designation of Indo-Iranians, but self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves,

18544-439: The top of the Nazi Party was the party chairman (" Der Führer "), who held absolute power and full command over the party. All other party offices were subordinate to his position and had to depend on his instructions. In 1934, Hitler founded a separate body for the chairman, Chancellery of the Führer , with its own sub-units. Aryan race The Aryan race is a pseudoscientific historical race concept that emerged in

18696-480: The vote in the December 1924 Reichstag elections and this fell to 2.6% in 1928 . State elections produced similar results. Despite these poor results and despite Germany's relative political stability and prosperity during the later 1920s, the Nazi Party continued to grow. This was partly because Hitler, who had no administrative ability, left the party organisation to the head of the secretariat, Philipp Bouhler ,

18848-716: The war ended in Europe. The party was formally abolished on 10 October 1945 by the Allied Control Council , followed by the process of denazification along with trials of major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg. Part of the Potsdam Agreement called for the destruction of the Nazi Party alongside the requirement for the reconstruction of the German political life. In addition,

19000-513: The world and founded the major civilizations, before being diluted through racial mixing with indigenous populations described as racially inferior, leading to the progressive decay of the ancient Aryan civilizations. In 1878, German American anthropologist Theodor Poesche published a survey of historical references attempting to demonstrate that the Aryans were light-skinned blue-eyed blonds. In 1899, Houston Stewart Chamberlain published what

19152-520: Was Gauleiter of Franconia , where he published his antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer . Beneath the Gauleiter were lower-level officials, the Kreisleiter ("county leaders"), Zellenleiter ("cell leaders") and Blockleiter ("block leaders"). This was a strictly hierarchical structure in which orders flowed from the top and unquestioning loyalty was given to superiors. Only

19304-572: Was Rudolf Hess , but he had no real power in the party. By the early 1930s, the senior leaders of the party after Hitler were Heinrich Himmler , Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring . Beneath the Leadership Corps were the party's regional leaders, the Gauleiters , each of whom commanded the party in his Gau ("region"). Goebbels began his ascent through the party hierarchy as Gauleiter of Berlin-Brandenburg in 1926. Streicher

19456-484: Was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism . Its precursor, the German Workers' Party ( Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist (" Völkisch nationalist "), racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against communist uprisings in post– World War I Germany. The party

19608-579: Was a backlash against socialist and liberal politics in Bavaria as Germany's economic problems deepened and the weakness of the Weimar regime became apparent. The party recruited former World War I soldiers, to whom Hitler as a decorated frontline veteran could particularly appeal, as well as small businessmen and disaffected former members of rival parties. Nazi rallies were often held in beer halls, where downtrodden men could get free beer. The Hitler Youth

19760-558: Was a best-seller at the time. While the Aryan race theory remained popular, particularly in Germany , some authors opposed it, in particular Otto Schrader , Rudolph von Jhering and the ethnologist Robert Hartmann , who proposed to ban the notion of Aryan from anthropology. The term was also adopted by various occultists and esoteric ideological systems of this era, such as Helena Blavatsky , and Ariosophy . Final solution Parties The racial policies of Nazi Germany ,

19912-407: Was a comparatively small group with fewer than 60 members. Nevertheless, it attracted the attention of the German authorities, who were suspicious of any organisation that appeared to have subversive tendencies. In July 1919, while stationed in Munich , army Gefreiter Adolf Hitler was appointed a Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance unit) of

20064-413: Was adopted by various racist and antisemitic writers such as Arthur de Gobineau , Theodor Poesche , Houston Chamberlain , Paul Broca , Karl Penka and Hans Günther during the nineteenth century for the promotion of scientific racism , spawning ideologies such as Nordicism and Aryanism . The connotation of the term Aryan was detached from its proper geographic and linguistic confinement as

20216-713: Was also praised by Alfred Ploetz, founder of the German Society for Racial Hygiene , who made him an honorary member of the eugenic organization. In 1938, the Reich Ministry of Education released the German biology curriculum which reflected the curriculum developed by the National Socialist Teachers League and emphasized the Social Darwinst interpretation of the evolution of human races. Hans Weinert , who had joined

20368-706: Was constructed as the hypothesized common proto-language of the Indo-European languages . Sir William Jones , who was acclaimed as the "most respected linguist in Europe" for his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), was appointed one of the three justices of the Supreme Court of Bengal . Jones, who arrived in Calcutta and began his study of Sanskrit and the Rig Veda , was astonished by

20520-401: Was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti– big business , anti- bourgeois , and anti-capitalist rhetoric; it was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders. By the 1930s, the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes. The party had little popular support until

20672-603: Was deemed unacceptable, and the Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy of 1933 brought together important Nazi intellectuals Alfred Ploetz , Fritz Thyssen , and Ernst Rüdin to plan the course of Nazi racial policy, defining an Aryan as one who was "tribally related to the German blood and descendant of a Volk ". The term " Volksdeutsche " was used by Nazis to indicate "ethnic Germans" who did not hold German Reich citizenship; Volksdeutsche further consist of "racial groups"—minorities within

20824-462: Was disseminated through the Nazi think tank Ahnenerbe. Hitler regularly invoked Social Darwinist concepts of Ernst Haeckel such as higher evolution ( German : Höherentwicklung ), struggle for existence ( German : Existenzkampf ), selection ( German : Auslese ), struggle for life ( German : Lebenskampf ), in his Nazi racial ideology, which is the central theme in the chapter "Nation and Race" of Mein Kampf . Haeckel's Social Darwinism

20976-504: Was encouraged, while the "inferior races" and people with physical or mental illness were deemed " life unworthy of life " ( German : lebensunwertes Leben , lit.   ' lives unworthy of life ') and many were interned in concentration camps . The culmination of Nazi eugenicist and racial hygiene programs of sterilization and extermination aimed at creating an " Aryan master race " and eliminating "inferior non-Aryan types" such as Jews, Slavs, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and

21128-576: Was formed for the children of party members. The party also formed groups in other parts of Germany. Julius Streicher in Nuremberg was an early recruit and became editor of the racist magazine Der Stürmer . In December 1920, the Nazi Party had acquired a newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter , of which its leading ideologist Alfred Rosenberg became editor. Others to join the party around this time were Heinrich Himmler and World War I flying ace Hermann Göring . On 31 October 1922,

21280-503: Was inspired by Mussolini and the Fascists, beginning to adopt elements of their program for the Nazi Party and himself. The Italian Fascists also used a straight-armed Roman salute and wore black-shirted uniforms; Hitler would later borrow their use of the straight-armed salute as a Nazi salute . When the Fascists took control of Italy through their coup d'état called the " March on Rome ", Hitler began planning his own coup less than

21432-659: Was later used by the Nazis to condone their genocidal and racist state policies. Kossinna identified the Proto-Indo-Europeans with the Corded Ware culture , and placed the Proto-Indo-European homeland in Schleswig-Holstein . He argued a diffusionist model of culture, and emphasised the racial superiority of Germanic peoples over Romans ( Roman Empire ) and French , whom he described as destroyers of culture as compared to Germanics. Kossinna's ideas have been heavily criticised for its inherent ambiguities in

21584-582: Was never far from the surface. Germans voted for Hitler primarily because of his promises to revive the economy (by unspecified means), to restore German greatness and overturn the Treaty of Versailles and to save Germany from communism. On 24 April 1932, the Free State of Prussia elections to the Landtag resulted in 36% of the votes and 162 seats for the NSDAP. On 20 July 1932, the Prussian government

21736-479: Was not exclusively for any class and indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps" by stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism". The votes that the Nazis received in the 1932 elections established the Nazi Party as the largest parliamentary faction of

21888-545: Was ousted by a coup, the Preussenschlag ; a few days later at the July 1932 Reichstag election the Nazis made another leap forward, polling 37% and becoming the largest party in parliament by a wide margin. Furthermore, the Nazis and the Communists between them won 52% of the vote and a majority of seats. Since both parties opposed the established political system and neither would join or support any ministry, this made

22040-537: Was released from prison on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections. On 16 February 1925, Hitler convinced the Bavarian authorities to lift the ban on the NSDAP and the party was formally refounded on 26 February 1925, with Hitler as its undisputed leader. It was at this time Hitler began referring to himself as " der Führer ". The new Nazi Party was no longer a paramilitary organisation and disavowed any intention of taking power by force. In any case,

22192-418: Was responsible for the deaths of at least eleven million people, including 5.5 to 6 million Jews (representing two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe), and between 200,000 and 1,500,000 Romani people . The estimated total number includes the killing of nearly two million non-Jewish Poles , over three million Soviet prisoners of war , communists , and other political opponents, homosexuals,

22344-493: Was safe to appoint Hitler as Reich Chancellor, at the head of a cabinet including only a minority of Nazi ministers—which he did on 30 January 1933. In Mein Kampf , Hitler directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany. However, a majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as being a far-right form of politics. When asked in an interview in 1934 whether the Nazis were "bourgeois right-wing" as alleged by their opponents, Hitler responded that Nazism

22496-654: Was stripped of his Gauleiter position in 1941 and expelled from the Nazi Party. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 died in May 1945 under unclear circumstances. Giesler, a well connected member of the top-hierarchy of Nazi Germany, held a number of high offices during the era, last of those as the German Minister of the Interior in the final days of the war. He was involved in the repression of the German resistance and, after

22648-512: Was suffused with the ideas of Gobineau, who believed the Nordic race had originated in northern Europe and spread through conquest; this had expressed approval of the Nazi eugenics policies and had critical influence on scientific racism. Günther's theories gained acclamation from Hitler, who later included his books as a recommended reading material for the Nazi Party members . After the Nazis came to power, selective breeding for supposed Aryan traits such as athleticism, blond hair and blue eyes

22800-444: Was symbolised by the adoption as the party emblem of the swastika . In German nationalist circles, the swastika was considered a symbol of an " Aryan race " and it symbolised the replacement of the Christian Cross with allegiance to a National Socialist State. The Nazi Party grew significantly during 1921 and 1922, partly through Hitler's oratorical skills, partly through the SA's appeal to unemployed young men, and partly because there

22952-403: Was the overthrow of the Weimar Republic , which he saw as controlled by the socialists, Jews and the " November criminals ", a term invented to describe alleged elements of society who had 'betrayed the German soldiers' in 1918. The SA ("storm troopers", also known as "Brownshirts") were founded as a party militia in 1921 and began violent attacks on other parties. For Hitler, the twin goals of

23104-428: Was when he realised he could really "make a good speech". At first, Hitler spoke only to relatively small groups, but his considerable oratory and propaganda skills were appreciated by the party leadership. With the support of Anton Drexler, Hitler became chief of propaganda for the party in early 1920. Hitler began to make the party more public, and organised its biggest meeting yet of 2,000 people on 24 February 1920 in

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