TIARA POLITE

The Society of Hitler: The Nazi Ideology and The Mind of Its Followers, 1933-1945
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"May the general public simply go on seeing me as a bloodthirsty beast, the cruel sadist,

the murderer of millions, because the broad masses cannot conceive the Kommandant of

Auschwitz in any other way. They would never able to understand that he also had a heart and

that he was not evil." 1Rudolf Höss maintained in his autobiography that despite his central role

in the "Final Solution," he still was a moral, decent person. Understanding how the Holocaust

occurred without looking at the perpetrators of the crimes, is not possible.

The Nazi Party was able to control all political, social, and cultural activities throughout

Germany, essentially. The Nazi Party being extremely organized and strategic, was the largest

political party in the German Parliament in 1932 with 230 representatives.2 Hitler appealed to

Germany’s top civil servants, teachers, lawyers, police officers, doctors, which allowed him to

implement his ideology through all avenues. Nazism was able to expand and strengthen due to

the support of lawyers, doctors, and other groups of people who were of high and respected

standing in society. To know exactly how many people were involved with the Nazi Party is

impossible considering the fact that the majority of ordinary Germans supported the Nazis in one

way or another, whether it was behind the scenes or in the front lines. The more intriguing

question is to understand how Hitler appealed to so many ordinary Germans, and how so many

contributed to one of the biggest genocides of the 20th century. Many became devoted, with

unwavering loyalty, to Nazism due to National Socialist idealogues providing justifications for

race policy and emphasizing, decency, dignity, honor, duty, and unity.

1
​United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Auschwitz Through the Lens of the SS.”
USHMM.org.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz-through-the-lens-of-the-ss-frankfurt
-trial?series=18613 (accessed December 3, 2018).
2
​Ibid.
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Nazi Salute →Heil Hitler!

The years from 1925 until the Great Depression of Germany in 1929, the Nazi Party was

a small radical right-wing party in the German political spectrum. In the parliament, or

Reichstag, e​ lections of May 2, 1928, the Nazis received only 2.6 percent of the national vote,

which was a decline from 1924, when the Nazis received 3 percent of the vote.3 As a result of the

election, a "Grand Coalition" of Germany's Social Democratic, Catholic Center, German

Democratic, and German People's parties governed ​Weimar Germany​ into the first six months of

the economic downturn. During the years of 1930 through 1934, Germany experienced a severe

economic depression. Unemployment skyrocketed with millions out of work, and millions of

Germans started to link the Depression to Germany’s humiliating defeat in World War I. Then,

Germans began to perceive the parliamentary government coalition as weak and unable to

resolve the economic crisis. Feelings of economic distress, fear, anger, and impatience, spread

throughout Germany, along with distrust in the government, gave Hitler fuel to start his

movement.

Hitler is known for his powerful public speaking abilities, and by tapping into the anger

and vulnerability of the voters, he was able to attract a large number of voters who were

desperate for change. Hitler and other Nazi speakers offered promises that appealed to each

audience, such as emphasizing military buildup and returning the territories lost after Versailles,

when addressing soldiers and veterans. As the economic depression went on, the Nazi Party

gained steam and won 18.3 percent of the vote in the September 1930 election, becoming the

second largest political party in the country. By the July 1932 elections, the Nazi Party became

3
​William Shirer, ​The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (​New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.),
80-84
 3

the largest political party in Germany winning 37.3 percent of the popular vote. In the following

elections in November 1932, the Nazis lost some ground with only winning 33.1 percent of the

vote, and the Communists gaining, winning 16.9 percent of the popular vote.4As a result of the

November 1932 elections, President Hindenburg and his advisers believed that the Nazi party

was the only hope to prevent Germany from being taken over by the Communists. On January

30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was officially appointed chancellor of Germany. To say Hitler won by an

electoral victory, is false. Hitler won as a result of conservative German politicians who have

given up on parliamentary rule. The goal of these conservative German politicians was to use

Hitler’s popularity to reinforce a return to authoritarian rule, but instead the Nazis went ahead

and integrated a radical dictatorship that was completely under Hitler’s rule.

After the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor on January 30, 1933, the

Nazi state quickly became a regime in which citizens had no guaranteed basic rights. The Nazi

rise to power brought an end to the German parliamentary democracy established after World

War I. In 1933, the regime established the first concentration camps, and imprisoned political

opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others classified as “dangerous.”

Propaganda was used to spread the Nazi Party’s racist ideology and goals. During the first six

years of Hitler’s dictatorship, German Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and

regulations, such as the Nuremberg Laws, that restricted all aspects of their public and private

lives. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Over the next year, Nazi Germany and

its allies conquered much of Europe. German officials confiscated Jewish property, in many

places required Jews to wear armbands with a Jewish star, and established ghettos and

4
​Shirer, ​The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, ​60.
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forced-labor camps. In June 1941, Germany turned on the Soviet Union. With local civilian and

police support the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units, followed the German army and carried

out mass shootings as it advanced into Soviet lands. Gas vans also appeared on the eastern front

in late fall of 1941.

The years of 1942 through 1945 was a period of ruthless fighting on both the eastern and

western fronts of World War II. Nazi Germany also enforced the “Final Solution.” During this

period there were systematic deportations of millions of Jews to increasingly efficient killing

centers using poison gas. By the end of the war in the spring of 1945, the Germans and their Axis

partners were pushed back on both fronts and Allied troops revealed the full extent of crimes

committed during the Holocaust. By May of 1945, the Germans and their collaborators had

murdered six million European Jews as part of a systematic plan of genocide. When Allied

troops entered the concentration camps, they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human

ashes. Soldiers also found thousands of survivors who were Jews and non-Jews suffering from

starvation and disease. By the end of the war, more than half of the Jewish population of Europe

had been killed in the Holocaust, in the span of four years.

Fear is the Mother of Morality

National Socialist idealogues emphasized decency, dignity, honor, and duty which was

used to validate the ideology as being morally correct. Nazism also established a biopolitical

radicalization of Social Darwinism. By combining both morality with laws of science and life,

the Nazi ideology more reasonable in an era that believed in science and technology heavily. The

Nazi movement gave the impression that it was based on moral principles and values, making it

more convincing for ordinary Germans to follow.

 5

Nazi cultural principles were consistent, in that they stressed protecting the German race.

In Nazi Germany, the government initiated and enforced policies and legislation that sanctioned

racial discrimination. The Nazis sought to unite all Germans, as defined by law, in the so-called

“National Community.” The state would then provide Germans with the best education, health

care, social programs, and recreational opportunities available. The state served no other purpose

than the preservation and expansion of the National Community.

In Nuremberg in September 1935, the Nazi leaders announced new laws which

institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. These Nuremberg Laws

defined: Germans to be persons of German ethnicity who had four Christian grandparents, and

Jews as someone having three or four grandparents who were members of the Jewish religious

community. The state denied that Jews residing in Germany were in any way German. Their

ethnicity, individual identity, or nationality did not matter. The state assumed Jews were hostile

to Germany and therefore needed to be watched, controlled, and eventually removed from the

country. After September of 1935, the Nazi state also prohibited intermarriages and sexual

relationships between Jews and Germans. The children of such unions became subject to varying

degrees of persecution.

A famous ideologue, Hans Friedrich Karl Günther, was a German physician, writer, and

eugenicist​ in the ​Weimar Republic​ and the Nazi regime. He was also known as ​Race Pope.​

Günther is considered to have been a major influence on ​Nazi​ racialist thought. He taught at the

universities of ​Jena​, ​Berlin​, and ​Freiburg​, writing numerous books and essays on racial theory.

Günther's ​Short Ethnology of the German People​, was a popular exposition of ​Nordicism​. In

May of 1930, he was appointed to a new chair of racial theory at Jena. He joined the ​Nazi Party
 6

in 1932 as the only leading racial theorist to join the party before it assumed power in 1933.

Günther wrote, “A race shows itself in a human group which is marked off from every other

human group through its own proper combination of bodily and mental characteristics, and in

turn produces only its like.”5 This definition of race was used throughout Nazi propaganda.

Another ideologue, Alfred Ploetz, was a ​German​ ​physician​, ​biologist​, ​eugenicist​ known for

creating the term ​racial hygiene​ and promoting the concept in Germany. In Ploetz’ book, ​The

efficiency of our race and the protection of the weak​, he described a society that applied eugenic

ideas. In Ploetz’ ideal society, the moral and intellectual capacity of citizens would be examined

to decide on marriage and the permitted number of children. The society may also include a

prohibition on reproduction. Also, disabled children are aborted, the sick and weak, twins and

children whose parents Ploetz considers too old or young, are "eliminated.” Along with many

other eugenicists, Ploetz believed in the superiority of the ​Nordic race​. His writings were a major

influence on Nazi ideology.

Lastly, Eugen Fischer was a German professor of ​medicine​, ​anthropology​, and ​eugenics​,

and a member of the ​Nazi Party​. He served as director of the ​Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of

Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics​, and also served as rector of the ​Frederick

William University of Berlin​. Fischer's ideas informed the ​Nuremberg Laws​ of 1935 which

served to justify the Nazi Party's belief in German racial superiority. ​Adolf Hitler​ read Fischer's

work while he was imprisoned in 1923 and he used Fischer's eugenical notions to support the

ideal of a pure ​Aryan society​ in his autobiography, ​Mein Kampf.​ Under the Nazi regime, Fischer

5
​ unther, Hans F. K., ​The Racial Elements of European History​, (Methuen & Co. LTD:
G
London, 1927.), 3.
 7

developed the physiological specifications used to determine racial origins and developed the

so-called ​Fischer–Saller scale​. 6

Most of Nazi perpetrators emphasized the belief to have acted within the framework of

their own moral order, and to have behaved morally. Some Nazi perpetrators even considered

their violations to human rights and the destruction of European Jewry as necessary and morally

correct. Nazis like Rudolph Hoss, describe themselves as decent and moral human beings.

Martin Luther, was a German professor of ​theology​, amd he argued that the Jews were no longer

the chosen people but "the devil's people.” Citing Deuteronomy 13, wherein ​Moses​ commands

the killing of idolaters and the burning of their cities and property as an offering to God, Luther

called for a "sharp mercy" against the Jews "to see whether we might save at least a few from the

glowing flames." Luther advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayer books,

forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their

homes, so that these "envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time.”

Luther's words "We are at fault in not slaying them" amounted to a sanction for murder.​ ​Luther

also stated, "that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse, while sharp mercy will reform

them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!" Luther was the most widely read author

of his generation, and within Germany he acquired the status of a prophet. According to various

historians, Luther’s anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of

antisemitism in Germany

6
​David Cesarani, ​The Final Solution : Origins and Implementation​ ( London: Routledge, 1996.),
24-29.
 8

The justification for Nazi programs involving involuntary euthanasia, forced sterilisation,

eugenics and human experimentation were strongly influenced by views about human dignity.

Social Darwinism was foremost amongst the philosophies impacting views of human dignity in

the decades leading up to Nazi power in Germany. Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory was

quickly applied to human beings and social structure. The term 'survival of the fittest' was

invented and seen to be applicable to humans. In Nazi Germany, the belief in the inherent dignity

of all humans was rejected by Social Darwinists. Influential authors proclaimed that an

individual's worth and value were to be determined functionally and materialistically. This

ideology prepared German doctors and nurses to accept Nazi social policies promoting survival

of only the fittest humans. Nazi racial thought and policy was visionary as well as scientistic. A

leading medical administrator for the regime reported that he had joined the Nazi party the day

after hearing a speech by Rudolf Hess in which the deputy party leader had declared, “National

Socialism is nothing but applied biology.” 7Another more malignant comment was made by a

Nazi doctor in Auschwitz when asked by a prisoner physician how he could reconcile the

smoking crematoria they viewed in the distance with his Hippocratic oath: “Of course I am a

doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a

gangrenous appendix from a diseased body.” Both of those statements are visionary in the

extreme: one being a claim to have discovered the means to reduce all political and historical

process to biological principles, while the other invokes a purpose to justify the mass murder of

Jews.

7
​Robert Lifton and Eric Markusen, ​The Genocidal Mentality (​ New York: Basic Books, 1990.),
54.
 9

Schools also played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas. While some books were

removed from classrooms by censors, other textbooks, newly written, were brought in to teach

students blind obedience to the party, love for Hitler, and antisemitism. After-school meetings of

the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls trained children to be faithful to the Nazi party.
8
In school and out, young people celebrated such occasions as Adolf Hitler's birthday and the

anniversary of his taking power In the classroom and in the Hitler Youth, instruction aimed to

produce race-conscious, obedient, self-sacrificing Germans who would be willing to die for

Führer and Fatherland. Devotion to Adolf Hitler was a key component of Hitler Youth training.

German young people celebrated his birthday for membership inductions. German adolescents

swore allegiance to Hitler and pledged to serve the nation and its leader as future soldiers.9

German educators introduced new textbooks that taught students love for Hitler, obedience to

state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism. From their first days in school, German

children were imbued with the cult of Adolf Hitler. His portrait was a standard fixture in

classrooms. Textbooks frequently described the thrill of a child seeing the German leader for the

first time. Many Hitler Youths regarded Hitler as their Führer-god and even recited

pseudo-prayers to him such as:​ "Führer, my Führer, give me by God. Protect and preserve my

life for long. You saved Germany in time of need. I thank you for my daily bread. Be with me

for a long time, do not leave me, Führer, my Führer, my faith, my light, Hail to my Führer!" A

portrait of Hitler hung in every classroom. Particular emphasis was paid to the subject of history,

which was rewritten to emphasize Nazi themes of racial struggle and German pride.

8
​Susan Bartoletti, ​Hitler Youth : Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow​ (New York: Scholastic
Nonfiction, 2005.), 4..
9
​ .
​Bartoletti, ​Hitler Youth, 7
 10

The main duty of Nazis were to unify Germany and preserve the Aryan race, and to

eliminate everyone else. Women were central to Adolf Hitler’s plan to create an ideal “Aryan”

Community. Hitler valued women for both their activism in the Nazi movement and their

biological power as generators of the race. In Nazi thinking, a larger, racially purer population

would enhance Germany’s military strength and provide settlers to colonize conquered territory

in eastern Europe. The Third Reich’s aggressive population policy encouraged “racially pure”

women to bear as many children as possible. The National Socialist Women's Union and German

Women's Agency used Nazi propaganda to encourage women to focus on their roles as wives

and mothers. Besides increasing the population, the regime also sought to enhance its "racial

purity" through "species upgrading," notably by enforcing laws prohibiting marriage between

"Aryans" and "non-Aryans" while preventing those with handicaps and certain diseases from

marrying at all. Girls were taught to embrace the role of mother and obedient wife in school and

through compulsory membership in the Nazi League of German Girls, which started at the age of

ten years old.

In the Nazi state, the SS, or Protection Squadrons, assumed leading responsibility for

security, identification of ethnicity, settlement and ​population policy​, and intelligence collection

and analysis. 10The SS controlled the German police forces and the ​concentration camp system​.

he SS had the following duties: protecting Hitler and other Nazi leaders and speakers, providing

security for political meetings, and soliciting subscribers to the Nazi party newspaper, The

Race-Conscious Observer. 11On January 20, 1929, at a time when the SS numbered 280 men,

10
​Wolfgang Bialas and Lothar Fritze, ​Nazi Ideology and Ethics​ (​Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2014.​), 11.
11
​Bialas, ​Nazi Ideology and Ethics, 1​ 2.
 11

Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler Reich Leader of the SS. As SS chief, Himmler received

authority directly from Hitler to carry out ideological policies that the laws of the state might not

permit. This “Führer authority,” enabled authorization of indefinite incarceration in the

concentration camp system and mass murder. Killing as a project took on the quality of a

religious ordeal, as expressed by Himmler in his infamous speech at Posen in October 1943:

“Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lie side by size, or five hundred, or a

thousand. To have stuck this out and excepting in cases of human weakness, to have kept our

integrity, this is what has made us hard. In our history, this is an unwritten and

never-to-be-written page of glory.” 12Himmler, the architect of genocide, transformed the SS into

an elite guard composed of the best available German “racial material” with an absolute loyalty

to Hitler's leadership of the Nazi movement and the German nation and Hitler's vision of the

long-term future for the Third Reich.

Interviews of former German soldiers further solidify that Nazism appealed to them

because of the basic principles. Hans Bernhard, former Waffen-SS volunteer, emphasizes, “Our

guiding principles were duty, loyalty, honour, Fatherland and comradeship.” Another Waffen-SS

volunteer, Hans-Joachim Lindow, matter of factly explains how joining the Waffen-SS was the

right thing to do. Digging deeper, Lindow started off as a Hitler Youth leader before joining the

SS. Many of the German soldiers under the Nazi regime, had a family history of soldiers and

officers in Guards regiments, which only made them want to join the Guards under Hitler. Being

a German soldier was honorable, but being part of the Waffen-SS was seen as being part of the

elite group. According to SS soldier, Jurgen Girgensohn, training was extremely difficult,

12
​ Lifton, ​The Genocidal Mentality, 5​ 8.
 12

sometimes using very brutal methods. “There were some who wanted to get out. The only way

was suicide.” 13Soldiers were trained to be hard, and to obey without question. Some did try to

escape, and ended up hanging themselves. Under the Nazi regime, the soldiers went to a Junker

Cadet School, where the principles and ideas of National Socialism were taught. As an elite unit,

members of the SS were proud of that. Every European that fought under the regime, was

regarded as an equal. There were no such thing as differences. Duty was to the fatherland, no

individual needs. SS divisions had a common belief that they were the best of the master race,

and felt a sense of unity because of that.

Many became devoted, with unwavering loyalty, to Nazism due to National Socialist

idealogues providing justifications for race policy and emphasizing, decency, dignity, honor,

duty, and unity. Most legal professionals at the time sincerely believed in the rule of law, even if

the law supported a social order that was racist and a political order that was dictatorial. As for

other Nazi perpetrators, most of them emphasized the belief to have acted within the framework

of their own moral order, and to have behaved normally. Some even considered their violations

to human rights and the destruction of European Jewry as necessary and morally correct. Many

may think that Nazis had psychological disorders, when really only in exceptional cases Nazis

may be supposed to have been pathological criminals. Most of the soldiers were not sadists, they

were normal people who were programmed to obey with no objections. Hitler was able to gain

lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, as his followers. Because of Hitler’s use of intellectual

13
Rees and Megan Callaway, ​Auschwitz : Inside the Nazi State (​ Television Station :
​Laurence
Los Angeles, CA.), 229-231.
 13

justifications in his ideology, and having his followers feel as if they were doing the right thing

to protect their homeland, was he able to have so many ordinary Germans devoted to Nazism.
 14

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