Nazism

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In 1936, the German American Bund<ref>"Bund" (pronounced "booned") is German for "federation".</ref> (also known as "Deutsche amerikanische Bund" {DAB} or as it called itself, Amerikadeutscher Volksbund  {AV}") was founded after the dissolution of a smaller pro-Nazi group, Friends of New Germany (which itself was founded by the merger of two even smaller groups, Gau-Nord Amerika and the Free Society of Teutonia). Led by German-born Fritz Julius Kuhn<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Kuhn No relation to the German Green Party politician with a similar name.]</ref>, a naturalized US citizen, it attracted attention to itself by holding marches with members in Nazi uniforms displaying Nazi banners, organizing boycotts of Jewish businesses, and running resort camps in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania used for both pro-Nazi rallies and training the children of members in an Americanized version of the Hitler-Jugend ("Hitler Youth").<ref>A fictionalized version of the Bund was depicted in the 1939 film ''Confessions of a Nazi Spy''.</ref> While the organization is not known to have received any funds from Nazi Germany, they did reportedly receive propaganda literature through the German Railway Agency, which had offices in the USA. The height of the group's organization was a 1939 rally in Madison Square Garden, billed as a "Mass Demonstration for True Americanism", where an estimated 20,000 people attended. An estimated 2,000 protesters, many being Jewish war veterans and German-Americans who opposed the Nazi regime, held a demonstration outside. (One of the Jewish war veterans was attacked by Bund goons when he rushed the stage during Kuhn's speech.) Despite the arrest of Fritz Kuhn for embezzlement of the Bund's funds shortly after the rally, he was still held in high regard by his followers. It wasn't until the US entry into WW2 that the group finally disbanded. Kuhn was arrested as an enemy agent after serving his sentence for embezzlement, and held in an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas for the duration of the war. His U.S. citizenship was later revoked and he was deported to West Germany, later dying in Munich in 1951 at age 55.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund Wikipedia listing: German American Bund]</ref> <ref>[http://youtu.be/Iw4_xmUgo3w YouTube: Footage of German American Bund activity]</ref> <ref>[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005684 US Holocaust Memorial Museum: German American Bund]</ref>
 
In 1936, the German American Bund<ref>"Bund" (pronounced "booned") is German for "federation".</ref> (also known as "Deutsche amerikanische Bund" {DAB} or as it called itself, Amerikadeutscher Volksbund  {AV}") was founded after the dissolution of a smaller pro-Nazi group, Friends of New Germany (which itself was founded by the merger of two even smaller groups, Gau-Nord Amerika and the Free Society of Teutonia). Led by German-born Fritz Julius Kuhn<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Kuhn No relation to the German Green Party politician with a similar name.]</ref>, a naturalized US citizen, it attracted attention to itself by holding marches with members in Nazi uniforms displaying Nazi banners, organizing boycotts of Jewish businesses, and running resort camps in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania used for both pro-Nazi rallies and training the children of members in an Americanized version of the Hitler-Jugend ("Hitler Youth").<ref>A fictionalized version of the Bund was depicted in the 1939 film ''Confessions of a Nazi Spy''.</ref> While the organization is not known to have received any funds from Nazi Germany, they did reportedly receive propaganda literature through the German Railway Agency, which had offices in the USA. The height of the group's organization was a 1939 rally in Madison Square Garden, billed as a "Mass Demonstration for True Americanism", where an estimated 20,000 people attended. An estimated 2,000 protesters, many being Jewish war veterans and German-Americans who opposed the Nazi regime, held a demonstration outside. (One of the Jewish war veterans was attacked by Bund goons when he rushed the stage during Kuhn's speech.) Despite the arrest of Fritz Kuhn for embezzlement of the Bund's funds shortly after the rally, he was still held in high regard by his followers. It wasn't until the US entry into WW2 that the group finally disbanded. Kuhn was arrested as an enemy agent after serving his sentence for embezzlement, and held in an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas for the duration of the war. His U.S. citizenship was later revoked and he was deported to West Germany, later dying in Munich in 1951 at age 55.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund Wikipedia listing: German American Bund]</ref> <ref>[http://youtu.be/Iw4_xmUgo3w YouTube: Footage of German American Bund activity]</ref> <ref>[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005684 US Holocaust Memorial Museum: German American Bund]</ref>
  
The first serious pro-Nazi group in post-WW2 USA was the American Nazi Party (originally "World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists"), later known as the National Socialist White People's Party, founded in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell, a U.S. Navy veteran of both WW2 and the Korean War, who had worked as a commercial artist, sign painter, cartoonist, photographer, advertising agent, and magazine publisher. Rockwell's group, which never had more than an estimated 200 dues-paying members, made a splash in the media with rallies and marches of men in Nazi uniforms, as well as professionally designed propaganda (often the work of Rockwell himself) that promoted the party's vehemently racist and anti-Semitic philosophy, which included one the earliest accounts of [[Holocaust denial]]. His popularity in the media included an interview for ''Playboy'' magazine in 1966, given by future author of ''Roots'', Alex Haley<ref>[http://archive.org/details/1966PlayboyInterview 1966 Playboy interview of George Lincoln Rockwell]</ref>, and an extensive speaking tour at American colleges, where he was invited to speak about his extremist views. Rockwell's two attempts of running for public office (as a Write-in candidate for President in 1964 and an independent candidate for Governor of Virginia in 1965) ended in embarrassing defeats.<ref>[http://youtu.be/u_zsbpfyL8E YouTube: George Lincoln Rockwell 1965 Virginia Gubernatorial Promotional film] (Warning: Racist language)</ref> <ref>His 1964 write-in campaign for the Presidency netted 212 votes, and he finished fourth out of four candidates in his 1965 Virginia run with only 5,730 votes, or 1.02% of the popular vote. He ran as an Independent because the Virginia electoral officers refused to allow the terms "Nazi" or "National Socialist" to be used on the ballot.</ref> He was fatally shot in 1967 at age 49 by a purged ex-member of his party<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Patler Wikipedia listing: John Palter]</ref> in an Arlington, Virginia laundromat parking lot. Without Rockwell's leadership, the party eventually fractured into a number of smaller groups, but his writings still influence Neo-Nazis of today.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lincoln_Rockwell Wikipedia listing: George Lincoln Rockwell]</ref>
+
The first serious pro-Nazi group in post-WW2 USA was the American Nazi Party (originally "World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists"), later known as the National Socialist White People's Party, founded in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell, a U.S. Navy veteran of both WW2 and the Korean War, who had worked as a commercial artist, sign painter, cartoonist, photographer, advertising agent, and magazine publisher. Rockwell's group, which never had more than an estimated 200 dues-paying members, made a splash in the media with rallies and marches of men in Nazi uniforms, as well as professionally designed propaganda (often the work of Rockwell himself) that promoted the party's vehemently racist and anti-Semitic philosophy, which included one the earliest accounts of [[Holocaust denial]]. His popularity in the media included an interview for ''Playboy'' magazine in 1966, given by future author of ''Roots'', Alex Haley<ref>[http://archive.org/details/1966PlayboyInterview 1966 Playboy interview of George Lincoln Rockwell]</ref>, and an extensive speaking tour at American colleges, where he was invited to speak about his extremist views. Rockwell's two attempts of running for public office (as a Write-in candidate for President in 1964 and an Independent candidate for Governor of Virginia in 1965) ended in embarrassing defeats.<ref>[http://youtu.be/u_zsbpfyL8E YouTube: George Lincoln Rockwell 1965 Virginia Gubernatorial Promotional film] (Warning: Racist language)</ref> <ref>His 1964 write-in campaign for the Presidency netted 212 votes, and he finished fourth out of four candidates in his 1965 Virginia run with only 5,730 votes, or 1.02% of the popular vote. He ran as an Independent because the Virginia electoral officers refused to allow the terms "Nazi" or "National Socialist" to be used on the ballot.</ref> He was fatally shot in 1967 at age 49 by a purged ex-member of his party<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Patler Wikipedia listing: John Palter]</ref> in an Arlington, Virginia laundromat parking lot. Without Rockwell's leadership, the party eventually fractured into a number of smaller groups, but his writings still influence Neo-Nazis of today.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lincoln_Rockwell Wikipedia listing: George Lincoln Rockwell]</ref>
  
 
==Nazism in Europe today==
 
==Nazism in Europe today==

Revision as of 01:06, 25 April 2013

Automatons led by a lunatic who looked like Charlie Chaplin

Nazism

link=:category:
Notable figures
The Third Reich
Neo-Nazism

Nazism refers to the political beliefs held by the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP, "Nazi Party"). Nazism resembled the contemporary doctrine of fascism in many particulars, such as its authoritarianism and ethnic nationalism, although Nazism had a much stronger emphasis on race.

Communists of that time lumped all their authoritarian enemies together under the label "fascist." Today, continuing this usage, many people use the terms Nazi and fascist interchangeably. Since very few true Nazis are still living (although there are a few neo-Nazi groups), the term is often used more generally in reference to various authoritarians, especially those who focus on hate, racism or grammar; though brandishing the term Nazi around to anyone who disagrees with you in a haphazard fashion rather diminishes the atrocities committed in the name of the Nazi Party.

Contents

Origin

The myriad influences leading up to the rise to power of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) are well documented but there are also many topics which are hotly debated. Oswald Spengler's historical determinist book The Decline of the West is cited as an intellectual influence although his work was later banned by the Nazis because he dared to criticize them, and because he rejected anti-Semitism. Spengler also rejected racism and found the idea of racial superiority laughable, since the work that the Nazis loved had 8 dominate cultures (called 'High Cultures'), only two of which were actually European[1]Germanic romanticism and national mysticism, as expressed in Wagner's operas, the Wandervögel youth counterculture movement, and German occultist movements like Ariosophy, are also cited as precursors. More hotly debated (and disputed) is the extent to which Nietzsche may have been an influence.

A more immediate precursor was the state of Germany after World War I, when the country experienced hyper-inflation and economic collapse during the Weimar Republic period, and suffered under the international sanctions imposed after the war. Hitler came to power promising to restore Germany's might after this period of national pessimism, and effectively manipulated the recent popularity of Germanic romanticism to his advantage. This proved to be irresistable to some segments of society who were quick to fall for demagoguery blaming "the Jews" and other sinister forces for Germany's plight. The NSDAP's brand of "national socialism" was seen as a favorable alternative to Bolshevism which many businessmen feared might overtake Germany. The actual influence of socialism within the NSDAP is also hotly debated. There was a faction within the party, the Strasserites, that took the "socialism" part of National Socialism seriously, but they were violently purged from the party soon after Hitler consolidated his power.

On the other hand, the claim of certain religious right nutjobs like Scott Lively that Nazism emerged out of a homosexual subculture is almost universally discredited, except among homophobes.

Legacy

The legacies of Nazism are many and complex. The flagrant way in which this complex legacy is often reduced and simplified in order to score a cheap point has led to the necessity of Godwin's Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
[2]

Nazis and occult craziness

The Nazis were also proponents of Horbiger's Cosmic Ice theory,[3] which held that the stars were made of ice. They also imagined they had superior intelligence, which seems a bit at odds with the previous sentence.

They contended that the novel "Dawn in Atlantis" by Edmund Kiss was based on truth - that the Aryan race was descended from the crew of a crashed alien space craft and established Atlantis (or if it was not Atlantis then it had to be something similar and northern called Thule), which was later overrun by inferior races. The SS (the Nazi government's enforcers) employed a team of archaeologists searching for proof of these theories, similar to that featured in the Indiana Jones films.

Religion in National Socialism

The role of religion in the National Socialist ideology has been a much discussed and controversial question. Hitler made a distinction between "Master religions" and "Slave religions". According to Hitler, Master religions would help the Aryan master race to dominate other races. Religions which preached love and tolerance would hinder the master race in dominating others.

Hitler extended his rationalizations into religious doctrine, claiming that those who agreed with and taught his "truths," were "true" or "master" religions, because they would "create mastery" by avoiding comforting lies. Those that preach love and tolerance, "in contravention to the facts," were said to be "slave" or "false" religions. The man who recognizes these "truths," Hitler continued, was said to be a "natural leader," and those who deny it were said to be "natural slaves." "Slaves," especially intelligent ones, he claimed were always attempting to hinder masters by promoting false religious and political doctrines. [4]

Basically people either had to agree with Nazi type religion or had to be treated as slaves, so-called slave religions were persecuted. [5]

The claim by some that Nazism is an atheist ideology can be rejected out of hand. Nazism includes many near-mystical elements drawn from several different types of religion, and the early Nazi party was also involved in several direct conflicts with atheist and freethinker groups in Germany as early as the 1920s. This hostility continued after Hitler took power in 1933 when atheist movements were banned in Germany.

On the other hand the opposing view that Nazism is essentially based on Christianity is not very credible either, although this is a much more complex issue. Elements and themes drawn from Christianity often figured prominently in Nazi propaganda, but these were invariably twisted to fit with the National Socialist context. Overall, it is probably better to see Christianity as carrying out a legitimizing function for Nazism, rather than as a part of its ideological foundations. Eventually, however, a specifically National Socialist brand of Christianity evolved, known as Positive Christianity.

On a more practical level, the Nazi ascension to power in 1933 resulted in the unification of the Protestant regional churches in each of the 28 federal states into one church known as the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche (German Evangelical Church). This new church was from the beginning dominated by the strongly pro-Nazi Deutsche Christen movement, whose leader, the theologian Ludwig Müller, was also appointed as the first Reichsbishof. However, strong political and theological conflicts inside the Church and waning interest from the Nazi leadership prevented the DEK from ever assuming any prominent role in the Third Reich, and it had faded from significance by 1935.

Many smaller Protestant churches remained outside the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche, and in 1934, many of these joined together in the movement known as the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), which aimed especially at opposing the influence of the Deutsche Christen. Although many of its members were against the unification of the churches for theological or confessional reasons rather than anti-Nazi as such, the Bekennende Kirche were seen as an opposition group by the Nazi government and were eventually persecuted, especially after 1937.

Some Roman Catholic Church clergy attempted, ineffectively, to oppose the Nazi regime.[6] Other clergy, the "Brown Priests" or braune Pfarrer were party members.[7] Catholic Center members of parliament voted for the crucial 1933 Enabling Act that gave Hitler dictatorial powers, after Hitler gave a speech praising the role of religion in the German state. Despite all this, some people seem dead-set on convincing themselves that the Catholic Church in general or Pope Pius XII were somehow complicit in the Nazi crimes - for some reason.[8][9]

Hitler seems to have used a mixture of beliefs to justify National Socialism, depending on what suited him at the time. This mixture included more or less conventional Christianity, borrowings from Nordic mythology, pseudoscience, and a belief in Germany's and his own personal spiritual predestination for greatness. While he was disdainful of religion in his private life, he did make substantial efforts to accommodate Christian belief as a way of reconciling the German establishment to Nazism. Indeed, he referred to himself publicly as a Christian. On a personal level he didn't really care about theology - he was mainly interested in fulfilling his ordained role in history as Führer.

Most interestingly, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS, thought that Islam was compatible with Nazi ideology. He stated that "It's a religion that promotes the warrior and the war- and it promises sex in the afterlife."[10] Many Bosnian Muslims, Arabs, Africans, and Indians joined the Waffen-SS and fought for the Germans throughout the war.[10]

The case against Nazi racism

The horrors of the Holocaust are obvious evidence that Nazism causes harm. The destruction and death of the Second World War is similar evidence. Another argument is that Nazis have never shown any reason why one group of humans is more “evolved” than another, however evolved is defined.

Yet another argument is that favorable mutations can clearly occur in all human populations. "Racial mixing" can therefore benefit mankind because those mutations can be spread throughout the species.

Allegation of US and church cooperation

It has been alleged that the Catholic Church and maybe even the US intelligence helped members of the Nazi party escape after World War II [11]. John Cornwell examined the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Nazi party in his controversial 1999 book Hitler's Pope.

Nazism in the United States

In 1936, the German American Bund[12] (also known as "Deutsche amerikanische Bund" {DAB} or as it called itself, Amerikadeutscher Volksbund {AV}") was founded after the dissolution of a smaller pro-Nazi group, Friends of New Germany (which itself was founded by the merger of two even smaller groups, Gau-Nord Amerika and the Free Society of Teutonia). Led by German-born Fritz Julius Kuhn[13], a naturalized US citizen, it attracted attention to itself by holding marches with members in Nazi uniforms displaying Nazi banners, organizing boycotts of Jewish businesses, and running resort camps in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania used for both pro-Nazi rallies and training the children of members in an Americanized version of the Hitler-Jugend ("Hitler Youth").[14] While the organization is not known to have received any funds from Nazi Germany, they did reportedly receive propaganda literature through the German Railway Agency, which had offices in the USA. The height of the group's organization was a 1939 rally in Madison Square Garden, billed as a "Mass Demonstration for True Americanism", where an estimated 20,000 people attended. An estimated 2,000 protesters, many being Jewish war veterans and German-Americans who opposed the Nazi regime, held a demonstration outside. (One of the Jewish war veterans was attacked by Bund goons when he rushed the stage during Kuhn's speech.) Despite the arrest of Fritz Kuhn for embezzlement of the Bund's funds shortly after the rally, he was still held in high regard by his followers. It wasn't until the US entry into WW2 that the group finally disbanded. Kuhn was arrested as an enemy agent after serving his sentence for embezzlement, and held in an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas for the duration of the war. His U.S. citizenship was later revoked and he was deported to West Germany, later dying in Munich in 1951 at age 55.[15] [16] [17]

The first serious pro-Nazi group in post-WW2 USA was the American Nazi Party (originally "World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists"), later known as the National Socialist White People's Party, founded in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell, a U.S. Navy veteran of both WW2 and the Korean War, who had worked as a commercial artist, sign painter, cartoonist, photographer, advertising agent, and magazine publisher. Rockwell's group, which never had more than an estimated 200 dues-paying members, made a splash in the media with rallies and marches of men in Nazi uniforms, as well as professionally designed propaganda (often the work of Rockwell himself) that promoted the party's vehemently racist and anti-Semitic philosophy, which included one the earliest accounts of Holocaust denial. His popularity in the media included an interview for Playboy magazine in 1966, given by future author of Roots, Alex Haley[18], and an extensive speaking tour at American colleges, where he was invited to speak about his extremist views. Rockwell's two attempts of running for public office (as a Write-in candidate for President in 1964 and an Independent candidate for Governor of Virginia in 1965) ended in embarrassing defeats.[19] [20] He was fatally shot in 1967 at age 49 by a purged ex-member of his party[21] in an Arlington, Virginia laundromat parking lot. Without Rockwell's leadership, the party eventually fractured into a number of smaller groups, but his writings still influence Neo-Nazis of today.[22]

Nazism in Europe today

The Nazi party, the swastika and essentially everything associated with Nazism and racist ideology, such as the Celtic cross, are currently illegal and banned in Germany as well as in several surrounding countries such as Austria and the Netherlands. Buildings in Germany that once displayed swastikas or other Nazi symbols have been extensively cleansed of such imagery.[23] The exhibition and distribution of Nazi propaganda films, such as Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) and Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), is prohibited in Germany, with the exception for use in academic situations, and exhibitors must have formal education in "media science and the history of the Holocaust". The sale of such films is prohibited in Germany, Austria, Italy, and France.

Germany has even changed the official lyrics of its National Anthem "Deutschlandlied" ("Song of Germany"). Instead of the lyrics proclaiming "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles/Über alles in der Welt" ("Germany, Germany above everything/Above everything in the world"), only the third stansa is used, beginning with "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit/Für das deutsche Vaterland" ("Unity and justice and freedom/For the German fatherland").[24] The Nazi party anthem, "Horst-Wessel-Lied" ("The Horst Wessel Song"), also known as "Die Fahne hoch" ("The Flag on High"), once performed throughout Nazi Germany, is now banned in both Germany and Austria, except for educational purposes.[25]

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. Those high cultures were specifically the Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican (Mayan/Aztec), Classical (Greek/Roman), Arabian, Western or "European-American" societies
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
  3. See Wikipedia
  4. http://www.nazism.net/about/ideological_theory/
  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi#Religion
  6. Besier, Gerhard and Francesca Piombo: The Holy See and Hitler's Germany (2007)
  7. Kevin P. Spicer: Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (2008)
  8. See, for example, this biased and selective website.
  9. John Cornwell's disaster hack job book Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII is probably the most prominent example.
  10. 10.0 10.1 [1], Hitler's Renegades, by Christer Jorgensen, published by The History Press.
  11. http://org.law.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/articles/RJLR_3_1_2.pdf
  12. "Bund" (pronounced "booned") is German for "federation".
  13. No relation to the German Green Party politician with a similar name.
  14. A fictionalized version of the Bund was depicted in the 1939 film Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
  15. Wikipedia listing: German American Bund
  16. YouTube: Footage of German American Bund activity
  17. US Holocaust Memorial Museum: German American Bund
  18. 1966 Playboy interview of George Lincoln Rockwell
  19. YouTube: George Lincoln Rockwell 1965 Virginia Gubernatorial Promotional film (Warning: Racist language)
  20. His 1964 write-in campaign for the Presidency netted 212 votes, and he finished fourth out of four candidates in his 1965 Virginia run with only 5,730 votes, or 1.02% of the popular vote. He ran as an Independent because the Virginia electoral officers refused to allow the terms "Nazi" or "National Socialist" to be used on the ballot.
  21. Wikipedia listing: John Palter
  22. Wikipedia listing: George Lincoln Rockwell
  23. Geoff Walden's website "Third Reich In Ruins"
  24. Wikipedia:Deutschlandlied
  25. Wikipedia: Horst-Wessel-Lied
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