Questions about Nazism
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What does the word Nazi mean and where does it come from?
"Nazi" was originally a Bavarian slang term for a backward or clumsy peasant, derived from the German name Ignatz. In the 1920s, opponents in the German labour movement applied it mockingly to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) by shortening "Nationalsozialistische". The first use of "Nazi" by the National Socialists themselves appeared in 1926 in a publication by Joseph Goebbels called Der Nazi-Sozi. While in power, the party almost never used the term, preferring "National Socialists".
When was the Nazi Party founded and how did it come to power?
The German Workers' Party, the Nazi Party's precursor, was founded in 1919. It was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1920. By the elections of 1932 it was the largest party in the German parliament. In January 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor at the head of a coalition government, an arrangement proposed by conservative politician Franz von Papen, who believed Hitler could be controlled.
What were the main ideological influences on Nazism?
Nazism drew on pan-German nationalism, the volkisch movement, the racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Madison Grant, the nationalism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and the cultural philosophy of Oswald Spengler. It was also shaped by Italian Fascism; Hitler openly acknowledged in 1941 that "the brown shirt would probably not have existed without the black shirt". American immigration and anti-miscegenation laws directly inspired the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.
What was Lebensraum and why was it central to Nazi ideology?
Lebensraum, meaning "living space", was the Nazi doctrine that Germany required territorial expansion to the east to feed its population and achieve economic security. Hitler stated in Mein Kampf that Lebensraum would be acquired in Eastern Europe, especially Russia. Historian Adam Tooze argues the obsession with land was rooted in the memory of the malnutrition that killed roughly 600,000 people in Germany and Austria during the Allied blockade of World War I, and in the fact that over nine million Germans still worked in agriculture in the early 1930s.
What were the Nuremberg Laws and what did they do?
The Nuremberg Laws, introduced in 1935, were two race laws that codified Nazi racial hierarchy into German statute. The Citizenship Law and the Blood Law stripped Jews of citizenship and banned marriage and sexual relations between Germans and Jews, later extending to Romani people and Black people. These laws were directly inspired by American citizenship and anti-miscegenation statutes, which Hitler cited in Mein Kampf as the only example of volkisch citizenship law in the 1920s.
How did Nazi racial hygiene policies lead to mass sterilisation?
The 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring mandated compulsory sterilisation for people diagnosed with schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington's chorea, "imbecility", and chronic alcoholism. An estimated 360,000 people were sterilised between 1933 and 1939. The programme later escalated to involuntary euthanasia of physically and mentally disabled people, an operation named Action T4 after World War II.