Nazi Germany Ideology

The turbulence of the early and mid-20th century spawned some of the most extremist ideologies to ever guide major world powers. On the left, the Soviet Union gripped eastern Europe with its militant enforcement of communism. On the right, Nazi Germany sought to assert its rule of racial hierarchy across the continent. The struggle for these states to achieve their respective ideals of utopia manifested in death tolls that reached millions. While many contemporary scholars point to the differences in ideology and stated goals of these two states in an effort to distinguish them, the substantive differences between them are slim; governance by either of the extreme poles of the political spectrum often result in similar consequences. Despite
Prior to 1941 it was German policy to round up droves of minorities, most notably the Jews, and relocate them in distant ghettos in order to create a racially pure nation, later in the war graduating to the atrocities of genocide that occurred in the Holocaust. While Nazi Germany rightfully receives condemnation for its horrific treatment of racial minorities, it would be misleading to claim that it was the only state in its period of history that was responsible for monumental human rights abuses against its minority population. The Marxist thinking of the USSR clearly rejected and condemned ideology based upon racial hierarchies. During the Stalin era racial dogma were characterized as “Zoological” thinking, rejected as tools of degenerate bourgeois societies. The doctrine of “friendship of the peoples” was touted as a slogan celebrating the numerous nationalities that had been united under a single federated state. Despite these noble declarations, this rhetoric did not reflect the actions of the Soviet regime. In practice the USSR was a participant in the pervasive global trends of racialized persecution that characterized the early 20th
While Soviet issues of ethnicity were developmental policies limited to the periphery of politics, ideals of racial hierarchy and cleansing were the foundation of National Socialist thought. The goal of Nazi Germany was to create the idealized notion of Volksgemeinschaft -- a national community defined by race. Due to this aspiration for a racially “pure” nation, young couples were enthusiastically urged by literature such as the Handbook for the German Family to “wish for as many children as possible,” so long as both parents were of “sound stalk.” However, the pursuit of a unified racial community not only included encouraging Germans to begin large families, but actively suppressing minorities as well. The justification for the harsh treatment of minority populations within the Reich, most notably Jews, was an ideology of racial superiority bolstered by pseudoscience that simply did not exist in the Soviet Union. This scientifically enforced hierarchy allowed Germans to categorically deem minority groups as internal biological enemies that were to be regarded as subjects as opposed to citizens. Moreover, in the later years of World War II the Nazis began to prioritize the extermination of Europe’s Jewish population above all other pursuits, becoming what Weitz refers to as a genocidal