The Holocaust is today viewed as one of the most horrifying and regretful events inflicted upon a mass population of individuals, specifically the Jews. To understand the deliberate extermination of six million Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, which became known as “The Final Solution” to the Jewish problem, we must comprehend the Nazi ideology of racial purity.
The Nazis operating under the radical dictator, Adolf Hitler, wanted a racially pure state in which one nation was deemed superior to all others. To achieve this utopian society, they viewed the Holocaust as the concluding answer to maintaining German national identity and Aryan pure blood while ridding the European nation of all individuals targeted as subhuman, racially subordinate or genetically inferior.
This article examines Hitler’s ideology. It attempts to prove that the Nazi policy of mass annihilation was a complete policy of extermination of all those individuals regarded as racial and ideological enemies, a policy based upon National Socialism.
The Origins – Racial Policy
The fragility of the Jewish civilization and the persecution and murder of other races and cultures during the World War II period stemmed from an ideology based upon National Socialism. National Socialism is rooted in a collection of theoretical components – anti-Liberalism, anti-Marxism and anti-Semitism – which perpetually shaped Hitler’s fundamental thinking while forever changing the future of human progression. It’s a philosophy that “represents the most sound means of assuring the biological and cultural rejuvenation and progression of the White, or Aryan, race.”
Social Darwinism
National Socialism formulates its beliefs from Social Darwinism. Charles Darwin, a biologist, believed “all sorts of groups – nations, races, cultures – were subject to the same laws of natural selection as plants and animals, subject to the same perpetual struggle for existence, the same survival of the stronger, the same elimination of the less fit.”
In other words one race, specifically the Aryan race, will prosper over the others due to their innate biological genes. Those groups considered deviants – the disabled, the Jews and the Gypsies – were deemed less desirable and did not fit in with his ideological quest. Hitler saw the strong as the pure blood whites that will rule the world while subjugating the weak – Jews and other non-Aryans.
Attacking Liberalism
The beliefs of National Socialism attacked the principles expressed in liberalism. Hitler believed that liberalism taught equality among all individuals regardless of race, gender or culture. “The environment and education were the important elements that made men good and valuable…. Therefore liberalism demanded equality for all, the same opportunities for everyone, in particular the Jews, equality and freedom in the economic sphere, etc. …”
This policy was in direct violation of Hitler’s vision of a supreme race bound together by common blood. He wanted to abolish the liberalistic view of brotherhood in which all individuals are one and called for an uprising of the German Reich to position themselves as the dominant racial element.
Attacking Marxism
Marxism was seen as “the most dangerous opponent of our world view” with “its offspring being Bolshevism”. Hitler equated Judaism with Marxism. He believed it was a means for Jews to undermine the German nation and purity of the Aryan race.
Within Marxism, he saw, “…mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism.” He believed Marxism was essentially formed and developed by the Jews.
National Socialism
Therefore, National Socialism underlined Hitler’s intense hatred towards the Jewish race. His anti-Semitic views were directed against the Jews not because of their religion but due to their racial distinctions. He believed the Jews were a united group, who prospered socially and economically thus being blamed for all of the economic and social problems the German population incurred.
Hitler believed that any intermixing with the Jews would threaten the Aryan’s superiority over all other races. A surge of nationalism, protecting German’s pure blood, brought about a new form of Anti-Jewish feelings based upon race. Thus the theoretical implications of National Socialism gave rise to a new Nazi policy which aimed at the physical annihilation of all European Jewry.
Sources:
- Bullock, Alan quoting AdolfHitler (1971) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, New York: Harper Collins, p. 228 – 229
- Der Reichsfuhrer (1943) “German Propaganda Archive: Racial Policy”, CalvinCollege. (Retrieved on 12/30/2010)
- Kleim Jr., MiltonJohn (1994) “National Socialism Primer” (2nd edition), Stormfront. (Retrieved on 12/30/2010)
- Manheim, Ralph (1962) AdolfHitler’s MeinKampf, Boston: Houghton Miflin Company, p. 390 – 395
- Remak, Joachim (1969) The Nazi Years: A Documentary History, EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
