Nationalism Anti-Semitism Anti Communism

- Believed that Germany has lost s position of
greatness after WWI
- Spoke of a need for national revival
- Determined to make a great Germany, uniting
all German-speaking people in Europe to create a
greater Reich, populated mostly by pure German
people
- Jews threatened racial purity and were
communists, seeking to destroy the German state
- Hitler had a racist view of world history
- Protection and Expansion of the German race was the highest priority
- The Aryan was the master race (earlier Indo-European race from which
Germans descended)
- Jews were the absolute contrast, they threatened the purity of the Aryan
race
- Believed civilisations declined only when racial purity is ruined
- Controlled the lives of ordinary people, telling them who can and can’t
marry and banning the sick, unhealthy and weak from having children
and ‘infecting’ the race
- Saw it as a movement that would spread its
influence throughout the world
- Linked this hatred with hatred of the Jews,
seeing them as part of the international threat
of communism
- Saw it as part of a Jewish world conspiracy

Democracy and the State The Quest for Living Space

- Expressed his contempt for the idea of parliamentary democracy
- Democracy was weak and ineffective and it played no part in
Hitler’s world view
- The emphasis was on the nation, with the individual finding
fulfilment through submission to the nation
- Said the system and its leaders betrayed Germany
- Hitler’s obsession with race and the ‘pure racial state’ shaped his
view of Germany’s future role in the world
- His destiny for German was for it to create a Reich that would
dominate Europe
Mein Kampf - The German people had to acquire territory and dominate the
‘inferior’ races and make them their slaves
- It would last for 1000 years

Social Darwinism The ‘socialism’ of National Socialism The Leadership Principle

- Idea of struggle
- Charles Darwin had explained how some
species with favourable variations survived
better than others when the environment
changed
- Social Darwinism suggested that the strong
races prevail over the weak races
- Nationalisation of business, profit sharing and increased protection
of the needy
- Some National Socialists took these social goals very seriously and
formed what the ‘left-wing of the Nazi movement’
- Very difficult to accept by some
- Hitler focused on the quest for power
- Hitler’s idea of socialism: all Germans, regardless of class or
income, working together for national good
- All racially pure Germans belonged to the German people
- The will of the leader who would interpret
the needs of the people and lead the nation
- Germany had lost the war because of inner
rottenness, cowardice and lack of character
rather than military defeat
- Strong leader would emerge who would
lead the nation absolutely and without
restraint and be the total focus of loyalty