Nazism

Nazism was the ideology held by the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, commonly called NSDAP or the Nazi Party), which was led by its "FÐ"јhrer", Adolf Hitler. The word Nazism is most often used in connection with the dictatorship of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 (the "Third Reich"), and it is derived from the term National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus, often abbreviated NS). Adherents of Nazism held that the Aryan race were superior to other races, and they promoted Germanic racial supremacy and a strong, centrally governed state. Nazism has been outlawed in modern Germany, yet small remnants and revivalists, known as "Neo-Nazis", continue to operate in Germany and abroad.

Originally, Nazi was invented by analogy to Sozi (a common and slightly pejorative abbreviation for socialists in Germany). The original Nazis from the era of the Third Reich probably never referred to themselves as "Nazis" and generally always as "National Socialists", since Nazi was most commonly used as a pejorative term. Currently some Neo-Nazis also use it to describe themselves.

There is a very close relationship between Nazism and Fascism. Since the term Nazism is normally used to refer to the ideology and policies of Nazi Germany alone, while Fascism is used in a broader sense, to refer to a wider political movement that exists or existed in many countries, Nazism is often classified as a particular version of Fascism.

According to Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler developed his political theories after carefully observing the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was born as a citizen of the Empire, and believed that ethnic and linguistic diversity had weakened it. Further, he saw democracy as a destabilizing force, because it placed power in the hands of ethnic minorities, who he claimed "weakened and destabilize" the Empire, by dividing it against itself.

The Nazi rationale was heavily invested in the militarist belief that great nations grow from military power, which in turn grows "naturally" from "rational, civilized cultures." Hitler's calls appealed to disgruntled German Nationalists, eager to save face for the failure of World War I, and to salvage the militaristic nationalist mindset of that previous era. After Austria's and Germany's defeat of World War I, many Germans still had heartfelt ties to the goal of creating a greater Germany, and thought that the use of military force to achieve it was necessary.

Many placed the blame for Germany's misfortunes on those, such as Jews and communists, whom they perceived, in one way or another, to have sabotaged the goal of national victory, by obtaining a stranglehold on the national economy, and using the nation's own resources to control and corrupt it.

Hitler's Nazi theory claimed that non-Slavic white peoples of Scandinavian and Teutonic descent make up the Aryan race, which is a master race, superior to all other races, and which founded and gave knowledge to all of the greatest civilizations of the ancient Central Asia and the Mediterranean. Alfred Rosenberg's racial philosophy wholly embraced the Aryan Invasion Theory, which traced Aryan peoples in ancient Iran invading the Indus Valley Civilization of India, and carrying with them great knowledge and science that had been preserved from the antediluvian world. This "antediluvian world" referred to Thule, the theoretical pre-Flood/Ice Age origin of the Aryan race, and is often tied to Atlantis theories. Most of the leadership and the founders of the Nazi Party was made of members of "Thule Gesselschaft" (the Thule Society), who romanticized the Aryan race through theology and ritual.

Hitler also claimed that a nation is the highest creation of a race, and great nations (literally large nations) were the creation of homogenous populations of great races, working together. These nations developed cultures that naturally grew from races with "natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits." The weakest nations, Hitler said, were those of impure or mongrel races, because they have divided, quarrelling, and therefore weak cultures. Worst of all were seen to be the parasitic Untermensch (Subhumans), mainly Jews, but also Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and so called anti-socials, all of whom were considered lebensunwertes Leben (Life-unworthy life) owing to their perceived deficiency and inferiority, as well as their wandering, nationless invasions ("the International Jew"). The persecution of homosexuals as part of the Holocaust has seen increasing scholarly attention since the 1990s.

The role of homosexuals in the Nazi Party is considered anecdotal by most historians. Some tiny groups, like the International Committee for Holocaust Truth, and authors Scott Lively and Kevin E. Abrams in The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, (ISBN 0964760932), argue that many homosexuals were involved in the inner circle of the Nazi party: Ernst RÐ"¶hm of the SA (whose execution was thinly rationalized as being based on his homosexuality), Horst Wessel, Max Bielas, and others. This perspective is denounced as hateful propaganda by most human rights associations and groups, stirring heated debates and accusations of censorship and "hate-speech" from both sides. Most historians and scholars of fascism do not take the work of Lively and Abrams seriously, and dismiss it as part of a Christian Right campaign against gay rights. Conversely, some Nazi supporters argue that such claims are simply more attempts to discredit Nazi ideology.

Non-Jews of Slavic descent were also seen as culturally inferior