Introduction to Political Theory

By the beginning of 1942 over 500,000 Jews in Poland and Russia had been

killed by the SS, and at the Wannsee Conference in 1942, a final solution was

proposed which led to the systematic termination of Jewry. It has been estimated

that between 1942 and 1945 around 18 million people were sent to extermination

camps. Of these, it has been suggested that between 5 and 11 million were killed.

Statism, women and colonialism

The Nazis extolled the principle of oneness. The party was Germany, with a single

will, faith, flag and leader. Although the Nazis opposed organised religion, a

Chapter 13 Fascism 291

It is worth noting that before 1933 Streicher’s virulently anti-Semitic Der Stürmerwas opposed by
some Nazis and it was only after taking office that its circulation reached half a million. As is
argued in the Comenius History Project, a survey of NSDAP members and their reason for joining
found that 60 per cent of respondents made no reference at all to anti-Semitism, while 4 per cent
openly expressed disapproval of it.

Analysis of Nazi posters in the period from 1928 to 1932 has revealed the following:

Enemy groups targeted by NSDAP posters, 1928–32

Total no. of posters Percentage
The ‘system’ 15 12.1
November-parties 25 20.1
SPD/Marxism 39 31.5
Centre Party/allies 10 8.1
KPD 6 4.8
Jews 6 4.8
Miscellaneous 23 18.6

The subjects chosen for front-page headlines in the official daily, the Volkische Beobachter,
between the crucial July 1932 election and Hitler’s installation in power, confirms the picture.
Between 1932 and 1933 anti-Semitism only featured in just over 3 per cent of the cases: the paper
was much more concerned with the ‘threat’ of Bolshevism, Marxism and the trade unions, and the
economic problems facing people (http://www.stevenson.ac.uk/comenius/articles/totalitarianism/
uk_dg/naz_1h.htm).

By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary

mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of

Nature.

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence small, but their power of

forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these faults, all effective propaganda must be limited

to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans.

(Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf(1925) London: Radius Books/Hutchinson, pp. 24, 165)

Anti-Semitic propaganda