Nazi Party
The Nazi Party,[b] officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [c] or NSDAP), was a far-right[10][11][12] political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist ("Völkisch nationalist"), racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany.[13] The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.[14] Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti–big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric; it was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders. By the 1930s, the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes.[15] The party had little popular support until the Great Depression, when worsening living standards and widespread unemployment drove Germans into political extremism.[12]
This article is about the political party that existed in Germany from 1920 to 1945. For the ideology, see Nazism. For Germany under their control, see Nazi Germany. For other uses, see Nazi Party (disambiguation).
National Socialist German Workers' Party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
NSDAP
Anton Drexler
(24 February 1920 – 29 July 1921)[1]
Adolf Hitler
(29 July 1921 – 30 April 1945)
Martin Bormann
(30 April 1945 – 2 May 1945)
24 February 1920
10 October 1945
Brown House, Munich, Germany[2]
- Fewer than 60 (1920)
- 8.5 million (1945)[4]
- Anti-Young Plan campaign (1929)[a]
- Harzburg Front (1931)[8]
- Black White Red
(official, German Imperial colours) - Brown (customary)
Deutschland erwache!
("Germany, awake!") (unofficial)
Central to Nazism were themes of racial segregation expressed in the idea of a "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft).[16] The party aimed to unite "racially desirable" Germans as national comrades while excluding those deemed to be either political dissidents, physically or intellectually inferior, or of a foreign race (Fremdvölkische).[17] The Nazis sought to strengthen the Germanic people, the "Aryan master race", through racial purity and eugenics, broad social welfare programs, and a collective subordination of individual rights, which could be sacrificed for the good of the state on behalf of the people. To protect the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to disenfranchise, segregate, and eventually exterminate Jews, Romani, Slavs, the physically and mentally disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political opponents.[18] The persecution reached its climax when the party-controlled German state set in motion the Final Solution – an industrial system of genocide that carried out mass murders of around 6 million Jews and millions of other targeted victims in what has become known as the Holocaust.[19]
Adolf Hitler, the party's leader since 1921, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933, and quickly seized power afterwards. Hitler established a totalitarian regime known as the Third Reich and became dictator with absolute power.[20][21][22][23]
Following the military defeat of Germany in World War II, the party was declared illegal.[24] The Allies attempted to purge German society of Nazi elements in a process known as denazification. Several top leaders were tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trials, and executed. The use of symbols associated with the party is still outlawed in many European countries, including Germany and Austria.
Name
The renaming of the German Worker's Party (DAP) to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was partially driven by a desire to draw upon both left-wing and right-wing ideals, with "Socialist" and "Workers'" appealing to the left, and "National" and "German" appealing to the right.[25] Nazi, the informal and originally derogatory term for a party member, abbreviates the party's name (Nationalsozialist [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪst]), and was coined in analogy with Sozi (pronounced [ˈzoːtsiː]), an abbreviation of Sozialdemokrat (member of the rival Social Democratic Party of Germany).[d][26] Members of the party referred to themselves as Nationalsozialisten (National Socialists), but some did occasionally embrace the colloquial Nazi (so Leopold von Mildenstein in his article series Ein Nazi fährt nach Palästina published in Der Angriff in 1934). The term Parteigenosse (party member) was commonly used among Nazis, with its corresponding feminine form Parteigenossin.[27]
Before the rise of the party, these terms had been used as colloquial and derogatory words for a backward peasant, or an awkward and clumsy person. It derived from Ignaz, a shortened version of Ignatius,[28][29] which was a common name in the Nazis' home region of Bavaria. Opponents seized on this, and the long-existing Sozi, to attach a dismissive nickname to the National Socialists.[29][30]
In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power in the German government, the usage of "Nazi" diminished in Germany, although Austrian anti-Nazis continued to use the term.[26] The use of "Nazi Germany" and "Nazi regime" was popularised by anti-Nazis and German exiles abroad. Thereafter, the term spread into other languages and eventually was brought back to Germany after World War II.[30] In English, the term is not considered slang and has such derivatives as Nazism and denazification.
History
Origins and early years: 1918–1923
The Nazi Party grew out of smaller political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In 1918, a league called the Freier Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden (Free Workers' Committee for a good Peace)[31] was created in Bremen, Germany. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, formed a branch of this league in Munich.[31] Drexler was a local locksmith who had been a member of the militarist Fatherland Party[32] during World War I and was bitterly opposed to the armistice of November 1918 and the revolutionary upheavals that followed. Drexler followed the views of militant nationalists of the day, such as opposing the Treaty of Versailles, having antisemitic, anti-monarchist and anti-Marxist views, as well as believing in the superiority of Germans whom they claimed to be part of the Aryan "master race" (Herrenvolk). However, he also accused international capitalism of being a Jewish-dominated movement and denounced capitalists for war profiteering in World War I.[33] Drexler saw the political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes.[33] Drexler emphasised the need for a synthesis of völkisch nationalism with a form of economic socialism, in order to create a popular nationalist-oriented workers' movement that could challenge the rise of communism and internationalist politics.[34] These were all well-known themes popular with various Weimar paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps.