The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (New Studies in European History)

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Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic. [35] Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism took several forms. The death of First Lieutenant Max von Scheubner-Richter, Aufbau's de facto leader and Hitler's closest political advisor, in the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch served as an example of heroic sacrifice for the National Socialist cause. White émigrés continued to raise significant funds for the NSDAP after 1923. In the vein of Aufbau, Hitler continued to use White émigrés, especially Ukrainian nationalists, to destabilize Soviet rule after the failure of the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch. Hitler's preoccupation with winning the Ukraine for Germany along the lines of Aufbau policy led him to divert powerful armed forces away from Moscow in 1941, thereby diminishing German chances of victory in World War II.

The Nazi notion of Slavs as inferior served as a legitimisation of their desire to create Lebensraum for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe, where millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into once those territories were conquered, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed or enslaved. [198] Nazi Germany's policy changed towards Slavs in response to military manpower shortages, forcing it to allow Slavs to serve in its armed forces within the occupied territories in spite of the fact that they were considered "subhuman". [199] As part of its preparations to confront a potential democratic uprising in Russia, Nashi enlisted football gang members, whose subculture overlapped with the neo-Nazi underground. Further information: Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, German Christians (movement), German Faith Movement, Kreuz und Adler, Positive Christianity, Religious aspects of Nazism, Anti-Masonry §Nazi_Germany_and_occupied_Europe, and Religious views of Adolf Hitler Members of the German Christians organisation celebrating Luther Day in Berlin in 1933. A speech is given by Bishop Hossenfelder. Hitler in 1935 with Cesare Orsenigo, the Catholic Church's nuncio to Germany Historians should discard the notion of a linear German Sonderweg (special path) that led directly to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The American scholar Daniel Goldhagen in particular presents an overly simplistic version of the Sonderweg thesis in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners. He asserts, “The Holocaust was a sui generis event that has a historically specific explanation,” notably “enabling conditions created by the long-incubating, pervasive, virulent, racist, eliminationist antisemitism of German culture.” Instead of focusing solely on alleged German peculiarities in the vein of Goldhagen, historians should understand the genesis and development of National Socialism in the context of cross-cultural interaction between defeated groups from World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution: alienated völkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans and vengeful White émigrés. While the National Socialist movement largely developed in a völkisch framework, many White émigrés made crucial political, military, financial, and ideological contributions to National Socialism.While unmarried until the very end of the regime, Hitler often made excuses about his busy life hindering any chance for marriage. [231] Among National Socialist ideologues, marriage was valued not for moral considerations but because it provided an optimal breeding environment. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler reportedly told a confidant that when he established the Lebensborn program, an organisation that would dramatically increase the birth rate of "Aryan" children through extramarital relations between women classified as racially pure and their male equals, he had only the purest male "conception assistants" in mind. [232] Main article: Left–right political spectrum Left to right: Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, and Rudolf Hess Nazis alongside members of the far-right reactionary and monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP) during the brief NSDAP–DNVP alliance in the Harzburg Front from 1931 to 1932

First, it used the neo-Nazi threat to justify the adoption of anti-extremism legislation, a longstanding demand of some Russian liberals. Ultimately, this legislation would be used to prosecute Russian democrats. Mr. Putin alluded to that history in a speech on May 9 for the Russian holiday commemorating victory over Nazi Germany. “You are fighting for our motherland so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II,” he said to a parade of thousands of Russian soldiers. “So that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis.” The positions of Goldhagen and Nolte represent opposing views of German and foreign influences on National Socialism. In Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Goldhagen argues for the peculiarly German nature of National Socialism and the Holocaust. He emphasizes what he terms the “eliminationist mind-set” of “German antisemitism” to the exclusion of virtually all other factors. He asserts that it is “not essential to discuss German antisemitism comparatively.” He nevertheless concludes, “No other European country came close” to equaling Germany’s anti-Semitism. “The unmatched volume and the vitriolic and murderous substance of German antisemitic literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alone indicate that German antisemitism was sui generis.” 23 Goldhagen thus avoids a sufficient comparative analysis in his treatment of supposedly unequaled German anti-Semitism.MICHAEL KELLOGG is an independent researcher and a past recipient of the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant. Hitler’s intellectual viewpoint was influenced during his youth not only by these currents in the German tradition but also by specific Austrian movements that professed various political sentiments, notably those of pan-Germanic expansionism and anti-Semitism. Hitler’s ferocious nationalism, his contempt of Slavs, and his hatred of Jews can largely be explained by his bitter experiences as an unsuccessful artist living a threadbare existence on the streets of Vienna, the capital of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although he opposed communist ideology, Hitler publicly praised the Soviet Union's leader Joseph Stalin and Stalinism on numerous occasions. [71] Hitler commended Stalin for seeking to purify the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of Jewish influences, noting Stalin's purging of Jewish communists such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Karl Radek. [72] While Hitler had always intended to bring Germany into conflict with the Soviet Union so he could gain Lebensraum ("living space"), he supported a temporary strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to form a common anti-liberal front so they could defeat liberal democracies, particularly France. [71]