Many non-Americans gave me valuable assistance in carrying out this project. German academics who considerably aided my research include Michael Hagemeister and Karl Schlögel of Europe University-Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder, Heinrich Winkler of Humboldt University in Berlin, Hermann Beyer-Thoma of the East European Institute in Munich, and Dr. Johannes Baur of Munich. In Moscow, Vasily Tsvetkov of Moscow State Pedagogical University alerted me to important archival materials, and Natasha Petina and Ludmilla Novikova helped me to translate difficult Russian texts. Joanna Grynczuk of Berlin translated Polish intelligence files for me. Dominika Plümpe of Berlin gave me helpful insights into my work. The Welsh journalist and historian Michael Joseph offered me a valuable critique. Völkisch nationalism denounced soulless materialism, individualism and secularised urban industrial society, while advocating a "superior" society based on ethnic German "folk" culture and German "blood". [87] It denounced foreigners and foreign ideas and declared that Jews, Freemasons and others were "traitors to the nation" and unworthy of inclusion. [88] Völkisch nationalism saw the world in terms of natural law and romanticism and it viewed societies as organic, extolling the virtues of rural life, condemning the neglect of tradition and the decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment and condemned "cosmopolitan" cultures such as Jews and Romani. [89] In 2014, RO’s Aleksandr Matyushin helped to terrorise supporters of the Ukrainian state in Donetsk on the eve of Russia’s proxy war in eastern Ukraine. He went on to become a major field commander. Experts said this history makes it easy for the Russian media to draw connections between real Nazis and modern far-right groups to give the impression that the contemporary groups are larger and more influential than they are. Wilhelm Stapel, an antisemitic German intellectual, used Spengler's thesis on the cultural confrontation between Jews as whom Spengler described as a Magian people versus Europeans as a Faustian people. [139] Stapel described Jews as a landless nomadic people in pursuit of an international culture whereby they can integrate into Western civilisation. [139] As such, Stapel claims that Jews have been attracted to "international" versions of socialism, pacifism or capitalism because as a landless people the Jews have transgressed various national cultural boundaries. [139]

The Nazi Party won the greatest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, making them the largest party in the legislature by far, albeit still short of an outright majority ( 37.3% on 31 July 1932 and 33.1% on 6 November 1932). Because none of the parties were willing or able to put together a coalition government, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 by President Paul von Hindenburg through the support and connivance of traditional conservative nationalists who believed that they could control him and his party. With the use of emergency presidential decrees by Hindenburg and a change in the Weimar Constitution which allowed the Cabinet to rule by direct decree, bypassing both Hindenburg and the Reichstag, the Nazis soon established a one-party state and began the Gleichschaltung. As part of its preparations to confront a potential democratic uprising in Russia, Nashi enlisted football gang members, whose subculture overlapped with the neo-Nazi underground. German business leaders disliked Nazi ideology but came to support Hitler, because they saw the Nazis as a useful ally to promote their interests. [68] Business groups made significant financial contributions to the Nazi Party both before and after the Nazi seizure of power, in the hope that a Nazi dictatorship would eliminate the organised labour movement and the left-wing parties. [69] Hitler actively sought to gain the support of business leaders by arguing that private enterprise is incompatible with democracy. [70] I stress Aufbau’s pivotal role in guiding National Socialists and White émigrés in a joint anti-Entente, anti-Weimar Republic, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-Semitic struggle. While National Socialism developed largely in the framework of the völkisch movement, White émigré Aufbau members significantly influenced Hitler’s political, military, and ideological views. Aufbau shaped early National Socialist strategies for combating both the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union. The conspiratorial organization under Scheubner-Richter, who served as Hitler’s close counselor and foreign policy advisor, sought to form an international alliance headed by nationalist and even National Socialist Germans and Russians (actually Russians, Ukrainians, and Baltic peoples) against the Entente, the Weimar Republic, and “Jewish Bolshevism.” Aufbau goaded a doomed putsch against the Weimar Republic under Hitler and Ludendorff. Finally, Aufbau warned the early National Socialist movement that “Jewish Bolshevism” posed an apocalyptic danger that threatened to engulf Germany, Europe, and even the entire world.

Nolte, on the other hand, stresses the crucial influence of the Bolshevik seizure and consolidation of power in Russia on the National Socialist movement. He is known for arguing that scholars must “historicize” the Final Solution by comparing it with other mass slaughters, most notably those committed under Soviet rule. 24 In The European Civil War 1917–1945, Nolte argues that resistance to Bolshevism formed National Socialism’s “most fundamental point.” He downplays the importance of German anti-Semitism in the genesis and development of National Socialism. He argues that National Socialism’s essence existed “neither in criminal tendencies nor in anti-Semitic obsessions.” Rather, the “fear and hate-filled relation to Communism was in fact the moving center of Hitler’s feelings and of Hitler’s ideology.” Nolte further stresses: “Bolshevism was both nightmare and example for National Socialism.” MICHAEL KELLOGG is an independent researcher and a past recipient of the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant. As I demonstrated in a recent study of the Kremlin’s relationship with Russian fascists, these linkages made possible a bold experiment to create a pro-Putin neo-Nazi movement. Moving Together, a pro-Putin youth organisation notorious for its campaign against postmodernist literature, made the first move by reaching out to OB88, the most powerful skinhead gang in Russia. Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors ... But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms. [33]

Hitler’s most important individual contribution to the theory and practice of Nazism was his deep understanding of mass psychology and mass propaganda. He stressed the fact that all propaganda must hold its intellectual level at the capacity of the least intelligent of those at whom it is directed and that its truthfulness is much less important than its success. According to Hitler:In 1929, Hitler gave a speech to a group of Nazi leaders and simplified 'socialism' to mean, "Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism." [36] Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Property, Berlin).

Finally, I thank my father John and my mother Carolyn for their editing advice and emotional support.Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt-SS, Verwaltung Prag (SS Race and Settlement Main Office, Prague Administration). Historian Adam Tooze explains that Hitler believed that lebensraum was vital to securing American-style consumer affluence for the German people. In this light, Tooze argues that the view that the regime faced a " guns or butter" contrast is mistaken. While it is true that resources were diverted from civilian consumption to military production, Tooze explains that at a strategic level "guns were ultimately viewed as a means to obtaining more butter". [162] Russian authorities only admitted to possessing files looted from Germany and declassified them in 1991 after the Soviet Union had collapsed. Historians were allowed to investigate the huge archival collection at the Center for the Preservation of Historical-Documentary Collections, which had become part of the Russian State Military Archives by the time I examined materials there in 1999–2001. 35 I was temporarily denied access to the former Center in March 2001, likely as part of the chilled American–Russian relations that arose after the February 2001 arrest of the FBI operative Robert Hanssen as a double agent for both the Soviets and the Russians. 36 While unmarried until the very end of the regime, Hitler often made excuses about his busy life hindering any chance for marriage. [231] Among National Socialist ideologues, marriage was valued not for moral considerations but because it provided an optimal breeding environment. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler reportedly told a confidant that when he established the Lebensborn program, an organisation that would dramatically increase the birth rate of "Aryan" children through extramarital relations between women classified as racially pure and their male equals, he had only the purest male "conception assistants" in mind. [232] From 1920 to 1923, Adolf Hitler collaborated with a conspiratorial far right German-White émigré organization, Aufbau (Reconstruction). Aufbau allied with Nazis to overthrow the German government and Bolshevik rule through terrorism and military/paramilitary schemes. This organization’s warnings of the monstrous “Jewish Bolshevik” peril helped to inspire Hitler to launch an invasion of the Soviet Union and to initiate the mass murder of European Jews. This book uses extensive archival materials from Germany and Russia, including recently declassified documents, and it will prove invaluable reading for anyone interested in the international roots of National Socialism.

Further information: Economics of fascism Deutsches Volk–Deutsche Arbeit: German People, German Work (1934) – an example of reactionary modernism In the conclusion of his work, Nolte provocatively asserts that by holding the Jews responsible for the menace of Bolshevism, Hitler and Reichsführer SS (State Leader SS) Heinrich Himmler “carried the original Bolshevik concept of destruction to a new dimension.” Nolte further maintains: “The Gulag Archipelago is more original than Auschwitz and...a causal nexus exists between them.” 25 Nolte’s views contain merit in that National Socialists fiercely resisted Bolshevism at the same time that it awed them. Nolte’s arguments, however, can lead one to consider National Socialism’s Final Solution as a mere reaction to foreign developments. The victims included the renowned human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova. Tikhonov was convicted of their murders in 2011.Further information: Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, German Christians (movement), German Faith Movement, Kreuz und Adler, Positive Christianity, Religious aspects of Nazism, Anti-Masonry §Nazi_Germany_and_occupied_Europe, and Religious views of Adolf Hitler Members of the German Christians organisation celebrating Luther Day in Berlin in 1933. A speech is given by Bishop Hossenfelder. Hitler in 1935 with Cesare Orsenigo, the Catholic Church's nuncio to Germany In 1922, Hitler disparaged other nationalist and racialist political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower and working-class young people: A host on Russia’s NTV, which has been under state control since 2001, juxtaposes images of a far-right rally in Ukraine with historic footage of a Nazi rally during a broadcast on April 3. This groundbreaking book examines the overlooked topic of the influence of anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic Russian exiles on Nazism. White émigrés contributed politically, financially, militarily, and ideologically to National Socialism. This work refutes the notion that Nazism developed as a peculiarly German phenomenon. National Socialism arose primarily from the cooperation between völkisch The first trial of the Nazis in Europe, which took place in Kaunas in 1935. The accused claimed that the Klaipėda Region should be part of Germany, not Lithuania, and spread propaganda, prepared for an armed uprising. [158]