Essays on National Socialism

Fascism and National Socialism

Political theorists, historians and and scholars have long tried interpreting and defining fascism but the definitions have either been too narrow or too wide as each interpretation of fascism is distinct and based on the ideological and political leanings and thoughts of the scholar or the theorist. According to Roger Griffin, fascism is "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra nationalism". He goes on to say that the fascist ideology has three core components- the myth of rebirth, decadence and populist ultranationalism. Paxton in his book, The ...

Book Review

Tilman Allert the author of “The Hitler Salute: One the Meaning of a Gesture” is a sociology as well as social psychology professor at the UF the (University of Frankfurt). “The Hitler Salute: One the Meaning of a Gesture” is the Tilman’s first book to written in English. In the book, Allert Tilman employs the Nazi transformation, the greeting, one of the ordinary human interactions to reveal how National Socialism initiated submission, as well as conformity of the entire society.

The Hitler salute as made mandatory in the year 1933 and became a daily reflex within few months, quickly the ...

Introduction

Overview of Nazism National Socialism or Nazism is a political ideology which was the doctrine of political leadership in Germany at the time of the Third Reich, and in several other countries. According to many political propagandists has much in common with fascism and communism and usually classified as one of its variants. The term "fascism" is used to refer to a wide range of political movements that have existed in different countries, while the term "national socialism" is used most often in connection with the Nazi Party and the Third Reich. The first systematic and critical analysis of Nazism ...

Introduction

Henry Kissinger was perhaps one of the most active and important Secretaries of State. His forceful intervention in several questions such as the Vietnam War as well as his propping up of General Gustavo Augusto Pinochet makes him a reviled figure amongst those who have democracy at heart (Bass, p 275). This paper seeks to argue that Kissinger should indeed be hauled in front of an International War Crimes Tribunal largely due to his intervention, covert or non-covert in several mass genocides. Two of these are those in Bangladesh in 1971 where the Pakistani Army was given US backing to ...

The Nazis’ desire to purify the German nation turned out to be a tragedy for all non-Aryan people. The people considered “different” were penalized not only by concentrations camps but morally as well. All minorities that did not match Nazi criteria of “purity” were treated severely in concentration camps, however the distinctive place in the Nazis’ racial policy belonged to homosexuals. Homosexuality was a criminal offense in Germany as early as 1871, under section 175 of the Criminal Code of the German Empire so the system of Nazi persecution of homosexuals did not appear out of nowhere. And yet, before the ...

Hitler’s (Surprising) Table-Talk Statements

This essay reviews three “surprising” statements made by Adolf Hitler in his book Table-Talk (original title Tischgespräche), that he wrote between 1941 and 1944. First statement: “I don’t want to force National Socialism on anybody”. The main reason I find this statement surprising is that – at least on the face of it – the Nazi regime under the National Socialist Workers’ Party has historically been viewed as anything but conciliatory to views, beliefs and creeds other than their own. Germany had become very much a police state in which opposition was crushed. More particularly, Hitler himself was known ...