interests of the German ‘Volk’ (people) more completely than any
democratic process could do. It was also, in rhetoric at least, anti-
capitalist – with capitalism seen as a Jewish conspiracy to rob the Volk
of its birthright. The state was seen as the embodiment of the public
good and clearly had the responsibility to organise the economy, the
educational system and the whole of social and cultural life. A major
emphasis of the movement was on the mobilisation of the German
people through a single party using the modern technology of mass
communication.
In practice Nazism was dominated by the urge for power of its elite
and their commitment to xenophobia, racism and nationalism. The
urge to right the perceived wrong of the Versailles settlement of 1919
and strong nationalist feelings (shared by many Germans) was
elaborated into a nightmare doctrine. The right of an ‘Aryan’ master
race to ‘living space’ to the East and to cleanse itself of ‘alien’
elements such as Gypsies and Jews as well as to eliminate any
mentally or physically defective specimens of their own race was
asserted. The attempt to implement a state based on these doctrines
resulted in the deaths of millions across the whole planet (the
Holocaust).
Hitler’s views, articulated in Mein Kampf(‘My Struggle’), built in
many ways upon more orthodox conservative German political
theorists and philosophers. Hegel [1770–1831], for instance, had
stressed the importance of a strong state, its role in defining culture
and the existence of a logic (or dialectic) of history which justified war
by superior states upon inferior ones. Schopenhauer [1780–1860]
glorified Will over Reason. Nietzsche [1844–1900] believed in the
creation of a race of superior individuals. Views like these were
combined with carefully selected ‘scientific’ findings about natural
selection and the nature of human racial divisions to create an
ideology which had a powerful appeal in the politically volatile
atmosphere of an economically depressed Germany in the 1930s.
Italian fascism, by contrast, although drawing upon many of the
same causes of social and political discontent and using many of the
same methods to achieve power – street warfare and mass rallies for
instance – placed much less emphasis on racism. As an alternative to
democracy the appeal of the leader was combined with an attempt to
create a corporatist structure of representation in which bodies such
as the Church, the army and employers’ associations and even
IDEOLOGIES 75