I several of my previous articles I have outlined how propaganda misleads people about the actual nature of different ideologies. How capitalism, depicted by USSR, was nothing like market economy practiced by Western Europe and the US. In the same league socialism, as depicted by Americans, was nothing like actual socialism. That was about ideologies that managed to exist for a long time and influenced many countries.
I am not writing it to advocate in favor of Nazism, but simply in the interest of truth. Many of the misconceptions about Nazis are much worse than the actual Nazis were. If people keep believing that actually happened, they might try to imitate certain aspects of pseudo-Nazism in real life, thinking that if Hitler could do it, so can we. That way of thinking is dangerous in itself and doubly so if they will try it with something Nazis never actually did.
Misconceptions
The biggest number of misconceptions about any ideology out there is of course about National Socialism (Nazism). Popular idea depicts it as some sort of Star Wars Evil Empire level movie villain ideology. Some so called "modern nazis" claim it's a social Darwinist ideology that practiced Social Darwinism in real life. Finally, a lot see them as white supremacists who discriminate based on skin color.
In reality of course none of this is true.
Nazi Germany was not just mindless Evil Empire ideology where countless stormtroopers would sacrifice their lives for a villainous leader, as much as modern history likes to depict it as such. Idea that something like this can exist in reality is unrealistic to begin with.
Neither it was a Social Darwinist ideology. Army could not work if soldiers would have to compete with each other and even kill each other for access to rations and promotions. So, people who came out of army would not advocate or practice Social Darwinism. If anything, USSR was much more Socially Darwinist compared to Nazis. Stalin spend considerable amount of time in prison with regular nonpolitical criminals (murderers and thieves) before he became leader of the USSR.
As an offshoot of Social Darwinist theory, there was another misconception that Nazis would kill off weak and only let strong live, like fictional and possibly real Sparta. That is incorrect as well. Nazis did had criteria of racial purity, but it did not concern itself with physical strength as all, just with blood proximity towards the majority of Germans.
Finally, it was not white supremacist, many of the German allies were non-white, for example Japanese. Nazi racial theories did place some ethnicities over others and considered certain ethnicities undesirable. However, color of the skin was not the criteria they used. Once again proximity of blood to that of Germany and well as number of similarities between any given culture and German culture was a determiner on where an ethnicity would be ranked. Unlike the stereotypes, German culture is not overly militaristic and cultures they ranked high, such as Japanese, Iranian or Muslim are not that militaristic or brutal either. I wrote a separate article about just this question alone. If I were to summaries the criteria in one word, it would be level of civility and absence of raw animalistic instincts that would place any given culture high.
Military Origin of Values of National Socialism
National Socialism was created by former soldiers and carries with itself ethos and values of a common soldier who spend 4 years in trenches of WWI, serving his country only to return back towards indifferent nations who wishes they all would just disappear. Anger and resentment of veterans over their post war treatment and perceived betrayal of the military by civilians shaped National Socialism into what it actually was.
As such National Socialism had two main pillars. One is loyalty to one's country (Nationalism) and the other common good and common wellbeing of people of said nation (Socialism). I will cover each aspect separately.
First is Nationalism. Soldiers are expected to fight for one country and kill nationals of the foreign nations. There is a tendency to strictly and clearly divide the world into us vs them and have different attitudes towards your side and the enemy side. One cannot fraternize with the enemy, help them in any way and so on. Helping enemy over one's own side would be considered a capital crime of high treason. After all enemy is out there to kill you and your comrades, you cannot let them do it. If you help them or even simply let them, get away without good reason, they can come back to kill someone on your side.
Second is Socialism. Army works together as a team. Everyone has to make concerted effort for the good of the whole. Military is inherently collectivist and hierarchical. For that reason, National Socialism was both willing to look after the wellbeing of each individual citizen, but also expect them to contribute to the joint effort. So long as citizen remained loyal and did not commit any offences against martial law style NatSoc regime, they could expect to be supported and cared for. National Socialists, who believed that civilians betrayed them at the end of WWI would not want to betray hopes and expectations of Germans who are loyal to their country.
How that Affected their Policies
National Socialist took this military worldview into the mainstream politics. Their policies clearly distinguished between loyal and disloyal people. Nazis did believe that people who are not sufficiently invested into success of the German Reich are committing high treason and was willing to severely punish them for that. They applied to civilians' high treason principle from the material law. The list of internal traitors initially included Communists and Jews, but later expanded towards many other social and ethnic groups. Persecution against these groups is often cited as example of abusiveness of Nazi regime. However, it was limited only to those whom they could suspect of disloyalty.
The same logic applied towards external enemies. Nazis were fully determined to win for German race (German nationals) and then exploit the conquered nations as spoils of war. Conquered civilians were treated much like enemy soldiers, POW at best. However, it was German national interests that led to them starting the wars and nor the racial hatred or believe that weak nations have to die. Nazis wanted Polish lands for themselves and not extermination of Polish people per se. Of-course in order to resettle the lands with Germans, Poles has to be either expelled or exterminated, but that was an effect rather than cause of the action. If anything, USSR did the same in reversed order when annexed lands east of Oder-Neisse line, they expelled ethnic Germans from these lands and resettled them with Poles.
On the other hand, Nazis did have many allies of many different ethnicities, even Russians were willing to join them to fight against abuses of Stalinist Soviet system in the USSR. That alone should show someone with some critical thinking that Nazis were not complete villains, the propaganda makes them out to be. People will not fight to be exterminated in gas chambers. They would only fight if they thought they will be better off with this side winning.
When it comes to Socialist side of National Socialist policies then their domestic policies had much in common with FDR in the US. Hiter interfered in economy in order to create many new jobs and make everyone gainfully employed and well paid. Much like FDR he started many mega-projects very soon eliminated poverty and unemployment, a problem more moderate parties were unable to solve for 4 years prior. A lot of this effort was aimed at military production though.
Hitler also wanted every German to be able to afford a private car and first insisted that Ferdinand Porche created an affordable car and then run a scheme where workers could pay for their car in installments off their regular salary. The car was aptly named Volkswagen (people's car). Later it became known as Volkswagen Beetle. It's still popular nowadays among various leftists who hate Nazis despite driving car designed by them. Such an irony.
Conclusion
I hope this article would help one understand that reality of National Socialism was much more prosaic, and it was not some esoteric lunatical ideology some make out it to be. It is time we stopped believing in propaganda cliches and stated to assess the actual reality.
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