Political views of Adolf Hitler
[6] To that end, Hitler's political motivation consisted of an ideology that combined traditional German and Austrian antisemitism with an intellectualized racial doctrine resting on an admixture of bits and pieces of social Darwinism and the ideas—mostly obtained second-hand and only partially understood—of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Arthur de Gobineau and Alfred Rosenberg as well as Paul de Lagarde, Georges Sorel, Alfred Ploetz and others.
[8] Populists such as mayor Karl Lueger exploited the city's prevalent anti-Semitic sentiment, blamed Jews "for simply anything and everything",[9][c] and also espoused German nationalist notions for political benefit.
[10] Hitler read local newspapers that promoted prejudice, along with pamphlets in relation to philosophers and theoreticians such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon, and Arthur Schopenhauer.
[12][13][d] He became strongly influenced by the ideas of Nordicist philosophers like Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and Houston Stewart Chamberlain who promulgated the theory of "Aryan Herrenvolk" and advocated notions of racial superiority of Nordic peoples.
[20] Describing his experience with the social democrats he encountered in Vienna, Hitler wrote in his manifesto "Mein Kampf": "What most repelled me was its hostile attitude toward the struggle for the preservation of Germanism, its disgraceful courting of the Slavic 'comrade' who accepted this declaration of love in so far as it was bound up with practical concessions, but otherwise maintained a lofty and arrogant reserve, thus giving the obtrusive beggars their deserved reward.
[h] Around this time the German military command released an edict that the army's main priority was to "carry out, in conjunction with the police, stricter surveillance of the population ... so that the ignition of any new unrest can be discovered and extinguished.
Under his influence, the party adopted a modified swastika, a well-known good luck charm that had previously been used in Germany as a mark of volkishness and "Aryanism", along with the Roman salute used by Italian fascists.
[68] Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Ludendorff to try to seize power in Munich (the capital of Bavaria) in an attempt later known as the Beer Hall Putsch of 8–9 November 1923.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler speaks at length about his youth, his early days in the Nazi Party and general ideas on politics, including the transformation of German society into one based on race, with some passages implying genocide.
[87] While Hitler was incarcerated at the Landsberg prison writing Mein Kampf, he had routine visits from the respected First World War veteran, Major General Dr. Karl Haushofer, who was the chair of the military science and geography department at the University of Munich.
[89] More importantly, Haushofer believed that nations which rested their power upon command of the sea and maritime trade routes were doomed to fail, since any such control "would soon be broken", writing that human history stood "at the great turning-point in the favourable position of the island empires".
[97] In Mein Kampf, Hitler categorized human beings by their physical attributes, claiming German or Nordic Aryans were at the top of the hierarchy, while assigning the bottom orders to Jews and Romani.
When he re-emerged upon release from Landsberg Prison, his importance to the movement was obvious and he came to believe that he was the realization of völkisch nationalistic ideals in a sort of near messianic narcissism which included his conviction to shake off the restrictive Treaty of Versailles and to "restore Germany's might and power", creating a reborn German nation as the chosen leader of the Nazi Party.
[107] Antisemitism remained a key component of the völkisch movement and a permanent undercurrent throughout conservative parties in German history and after many years culminated with the view that the Jews were the only thing standing in the way of the ideal society.
[108] As Germany's newfound völkisch nationalist leader, Hitler initiated a policy of ethnic nationalism replete with directives to eliminate Jews and other identified enemies as Nazism ultimately became the religion of the movement and the "irrational became concrete" under the terms of its "ideological framework".
[112] The Nazis strongly discouraged and in some cases outright rejected the following behaviors, namely the use of cosmetics, premarital sex, prostitution, pornography, sexual vices, smoking and excessive drinking.
[116]Hitler raved against what he considered to be tasteless and morally destructive art on display throughout Germany in Mein Kampf, calling some of it morbid and declaring that "people would have benefited by not visiting them at all".
[116] Convinced that it was necessary to show the German people what comprised, "degenerate art" so as to protect them in the future, Hitler arranged for a formally commissioned exhibit in July 1937 of specially selected carvings, sculptures, and paintings.
[119] Moreover, Hitler found the practice counter to proper family development and displayed a puritanical view in Mein Kampf, writing: Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity and cannot be removed simply by charitable or academic methods.
[122] Hitler's social conservatism was so extreme towards homosexuals that he deemed them "enemies of the State" and grouped them in the same category as Jews and communists; a special department of the Gestapo was formed to deal with the matter.
[123] Hitler's general perception about women was ultra-conservative and patriarchal, with their foremost task being a domestic one as a mother of children who worked contentedly at home, ensuring it remained clean and orderly.
[136] The ill-fated Weimar democracy's inability to provide economic relief to the German people during the Great Depression further enhanced its image as an ineffectual system of government amid the masses.
[142] When the British tried negotiating with Hitler in 1935 by including Germany in the extension of the Locarno Pact, he rejected their offer and instead assured them that German rearmament was important in safeguarding Europe against communism,[143] a move which clearly showed his anti-communist proclivities.
[144] When Hitler finally ordered the attack against the Soviet Union, it was the fulfillment of his ultimate goal and the most important campaign in his estimation, as it comprised a struggle of "the chosen Aryan people against Jewish Bolsheviks".
Hitler's push for eastward expansion ("Drang nach Osten") of German territories, outlined in "Mein Kampf", was driven significantly by his hatred and contempt of Slavs and Jews alike, both groups well-represented in the East.
[153] There were also deeply antisemitic and anti-Slavic elements among German scholars, particularly by the twentieth-century concerning the need for Lebensraum, who opined that the vast natural resources of the East were "wasted on racially “inferior” peoples like Slavs and Jews".
[164] What Kershaw was referencing was the absence of any clear political directives accompanied by Hitler's signed authorization (primary source documents) regarding the atrocities carried out by his Nazi underlings.
Given the abounding circumstantial evidence in Hitler's speeches, writing in Mein Kampf, administrative meeting notes taken by subordinates and the recollections of those in or near his inner-circle, it seems that his political intention was for Jews, Slavs and other "enemies" of the Nazi state to be persecuted without mercy in lieu of how gradual the process actually developed.
[172] German historian Klaus Hildebrand insisted that Hitler's moral responsibility for the Holocaust was the culmination of his pathological hatred of the Jews and his ideology of "racial dogma" formed the basis of Nazi genocide.
[176] Taking the scale of the logistical operations that the Holocaust comprised in the middle of a war into consideration alone, it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that the extermination of so many people and the coordination of such an extensive effort could have occurred in the absence of Hitler's authorization.
