The Nazi Dictatorship ; The Holocaust

The term totalitarianism appeared in 1923, coined by Giovanni Amendola, as a description

of the Fascist regime in Italy. The term extended in 1933 to the German National Socialism,
after the Nazi seizure of power. For Schulze, seizure of power is equal to eliminating
competitors and gaining control over the instruments of governmental authority, which is
based on the bureaucracy and the military. Hannah Arendt wrote extensively on
totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism, which remains a work of reference in the
study of non-democratic regimes. Fascism spread from Italy to Central and Eastern European
countries with the exception of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia. Totalitarian movements are
possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another have acquired the appetite
for political organization. Masses are not held together by a consciousness of common
interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined,
limited and obtainable goals.1
Characteristic for the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist
movements in Europe after 1930 is that they recruited their members from this mass of
apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too
stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of
people who never before had appeared on the political scene. The success of totalitarian
movements among the masses meant the end of two illusions of democratically ruled
countries in general and of European nation-states and their party system in particular.
Another approach on totalitarian regimes is that of Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski in
their work from 1956, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, who define totalitarianism as
a six-point syndrome. According to them, the six central features of totalitarian systems are:
1. An all-encompassing ideology
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

A single mass party, usually led by one man a dictator

Application of random, mass terror
Monopoly control over the media, over all information present and past
Monopoly of arms
Central control of economy

1 Hannah ARENDT, The origins of Totalitarianism, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland 2
Ohio, 1958
1

However, the German political scientist and historian Karl Dietrich Bracher, who studied how
liberal democracy decayed into totalitarian dictatorship, criticizes this model as being static
and argues that the core principle that differentiates totalitarian regimes from authoritarian
regimes is revolutionary dynamic. In his view, totalitarianism means total claim to rule, the
leadership principle, the exclusive ideology, the fiction of identity of rulers and ruled and
furthermore, he promotes a basic distinction between an open and a closed understanding
of politics. Bracher claims that Hitler was the centerpiece of the Nazi dictatorship and the
rejection of totalitarianism as a concept and viewing Nazism just as a variant of Fascism is a
mistake, an underestimation just as big as the underestimation of Hitler by his contemporaries.
The purpose of this essay is to check whether the six-point syndrome can be applied to the
Nazi dictatorship between 1933 and 1945.

I.

Ideology

An ideology is a coherent description of the world, it has a scientific dimension, it is final and
it is omnipresent, in all aspects and levels of life. As stated by Hannah Arendt, ideologies have
only reached their true potential in the 20 th century and the term ideology suggests that an
idea could become the subject matter of a science2, but actually it is the logic of an idea3; it
deals with the development of events that follow a certain law. For the Nazis, the central
idea was race and they saw themselves as following the law of nature, along with the law of
history, as they placed themselves in a historical necessity. Historical matters are explained by
nature.
The first point of Friedrich and Brzezinskis model requires the existence of an official
elaborate ideology, covering all vital aspects of peoples lives, which rejects the existing
society and aims for a perfect future one through world conquest. We shall see that the Nazi
ideology is exactly that.
Along with the revolutionary socialist ideology, the Nazi ideology is an utopian one. It is an
attempt at rebuilding society up to perfection, a perfection based on the Aryan race which

2 Hannah ARENDT, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd edition, Meridian Books, Cleveland, 1962,
pp. 468
3 Idem 1, pp. 469
2

required the extinction of the Jews (primarily) and that of other impure and inferior races
such as the Roma or the Slavs.
By taking pride in his ice-cold reasoning, Hitler only accepted a radical solution for the
Jewish question and managed to make of this attribute the last support in a world of
loneliness for the people who cannot trust one another and see no other option than to turn to
his ideology and either actively embrace it or passively endure it.
According to Hitler, the Germans, the purest of races (even though he was Austrian by
origins, he felt that Austria was the long-lost sister of Germany and they had to be reunited
and form Great Germany, a plan developed by him in prison in 1924 and thoroughly depicted
in his work, Mein Kampf), must seek Lebensraum4 in Eastern Europe, a space actually which
should be theirs due to their superiority. The Germans would be the masters of the inferior
races, while the Jews had to be exterminated and the only way to do this was waging war.
Hitler dreamed of a European New Order or a thousand-year Reich. The beginning of a
new era held a certain charm, as the old order seemed to collapse due to the harsh
conditions imposed to Germany after losing the First World War that led to economic and
financial crisis.
The main reason for starting World War II was not that of avenging the humiliation suffered
from the loss of the Great War or pure imperialistic desires, but that of cleansing Europe of
the Jewish race and creating a Reich for the pure race, one that would have enough resources
to sustain in. The Soviet Union had to be defeated, in Hitlers view, because its government
was infiltrated with Jewish influence. To quote the Fuehrer himself, the purpose of war with
the USSR was initiation of the final stage of battle against the mortal enemy of JewishBolshevism5.
The Nazis had great plans for the future: Berlin was to be rebuilt as Germania, a huge world
capital city, a giant railway network was supposed to link the Urals to the West and enormous
monuments to the dead were to be built all these in the midst of the Second World War.
4 Lebensraum = living space/ spazio vitale its Italian Fascist equivalent; one of the major ideas
of Hitler and a fundamental element of Nazi ideology; it involved relocation of the population of East
and Central Europe; it served as justification for various actions of the Third Reich, such as the
invasions of Poland and the USSR, resettlement and evacuation and even the Holocaust
5 Hagen SCHULZE, Germany: A New History, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998,
pp. 273
3

If we are to look at the Nazi ideology as a set of symbols and myths and as a language and
discourse, then we should have in mind the slogan Germany Awake!, the swastika as a
symbol of mythical regeneration, the racist discourse and Hitlers conviction that he was
destined to lead the German people into a whole new world.
The slogan Germany Awake! was one of Hitlers favorites, sometimes used with another
slogan Perish Judah!, meaning that the German nation had to awake to the Jewish menace
that would destroy it from within.
The swastika was Hitlers gift to the Party, its symbol, along with the well-known salute
Heil!. It was already associated with anti-Semitic discourse and Aryanism and it was favored
by Hitler due to its ancient aura that served quite well the purpose of validating his regime.
Arriving at the matter of the Fuehrer himself, one is compelled to take a detour from the issue
of ideology per se and present a debatable topic: Ian Kershaw in The Nazi Dictatorship
Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation discusses the centrality of Hitler or lack thereof
(a sort of go with the flow) in the events of the Third Reich. Thus, we are presented with
two divergent approaches: on one hand, Norman Rich considers Hitler the master of the
Third Reich, while on the other hand, Hans Mommsen describes him as unwilling to take
decisions, frequently uncertain, exclusively concerned with upholding his prestige and
personal authority, influenced in the strongest fashion by his current entourage, in some
aspects a weak dictator. Kershaws personal opinion is a more balanced one, namely that
Hitler was neither a weak dictator, nor omnipotent master of the Third Reich.
The ones who support the utmost importance of Hitlers personality, ideas (therefore
ideology) and strength of will, view Germanys National Socialism as Hitlerism, a much
disputed term; however, a common ground exists concerning the studies that focus on Hitlers
person, that being the idea that the Fuehrer had a programme he followed from the 1920s up
to his death. His future program was announced by his work, Mein Kampf, but few people
have read it and even them did not take him seriously. This programmatic type of
interpretation can be reduced to a simple equation:
The Third Reich directed by Hitler

Hitlers ideology =
government policy

Hitler directed by his ideological obsessions

Karl Dietrich Bracher, Eberhard Jackel and Klaus Hildebrand are among those who fancy the
centrality of Hitler in the development of the Third Reich.
The other approach to this matter is a structuralist, functionalist and revisionist one, as it
focuses on the structures of Nazi rule, the functional nature of the decision-making process
and revises the overemphasis on Hitlers role as it considers him only one of the elements
of the multidimensional power-structure of Nazi Germany.
In this sense, Martin Broszat states that Hitlers Weltanschauung 6 had a functional role and
Hans Mommsen considered Hitler a propagandist.
Speaking of propaganda (the deliberate attempt to convince in regards to political ideologies
and gain political influence), the Nazis came to the conclusion that propaganda is all about the
communication of images and symbols and the exploitation of emotions. The
propagandization of leisure accompanied the Nazification of education, which of course
offered the main means of reaching young minds. From early years, anti-Semitic themes were
introduced into the imagery and the texts of school textbooks. The great events of the Nazi
calendar, such as the Munich Putsch, were introduced into the teaching of history. Biology
lessons and textbooks offered endless scope for indoctrination with Nazi ideas about race.
Religious instruction was downgraded.
The Nazi regime was highly successful in winning supporters, as it presented a certain
fascination and appealed to all categories. The blue collar workers were given jobs, benefits
and recreation departments; the retail merchants were lured by the fact that their competition
was subject to higher taxation; members of the skilled trades, farmers, industrialists, all of
them were favored by various policies. Staging political events, celebrations of the grandeur
of the nation and appeals to tradition made Hitlers regime very popular.

II. A single mass party led by a dictator

In March 1918, approaching the end of the First World War, at Bremen, emerged the
Committee For a Just German Peace. In the aftermath of the war, this Committee has
transformed into a party, under the name of the German Workers Party and in 1921 it took the
6 Total understanding; Karl Manheim, in his non-Marxist interpretation of ideology supports the idea
of a basic distinction between particular ( level of more or less conscious manipulation, even deceit)
and total (it refers to what he calls the mind of an era or of a group) understanding of ideology
Karl MANHEIM, Ideology and Utopia, 1929
5

name of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). In July 1919, at a party
meeting, one of those present stands out due to his strong critics towards the Bavarian
separatism. He was awarded the Iron Cross First Class for personal cold-blooded bravery
and continuous readiness to sacrifice himself during the Great War, by his Jewish battalion
commander. The man is invited to join the party and shortly after, he becomes a member of
the Leading Committee. His name was Adolf Hitler. In 1923 he is recognized as leader by all
of the extreme right wing organizations. The events were without doubt favorable to Hitler,
and he knew how to remove his enemies.
In 1919, the Workers Party had approximately 60 members, and in the next year the party
reached 3000 members. Hitlers dynamism and ability enabled his party to absorb other
groups.
The coup dtat from 1923 fails and Hitler is arrested. In that period he and his party thought
that they are closer to success but they were far away from that. Hitler was condemned to five
years in prison and the National-Socialist Party was dissolved. But Hitler is released after less
than a year and on February 27, 1925 the National-Socialist Party is re-founded. Hitlers
return coincides with the years of the economic crisis which was announced since 1927 and
which began in 1929.
We can demonstrate that the period of relative equilibrium and economic growth between
1924 and 1928 was not so good for Nazis. The economic crisis favored them massively and
the biggest score was 37,4 %. After some months, they drop a little with a 33,1% score in
elections, but they already reached their limits, having a percentage bigger than socialists and
communists together. Below we have the percentage of votes won by the Nazis in the
legislative elections from 1924 to 1933:
May 1924 6,5 %
December 1924 3 %
May 1928 2,6 %
September 1930 18,3 %
July 1932 37,4 %
November 1932 33,1 %
6

March 1933 43,9 %7

After several attempts of Hindenburg to form a government without the National Socialists,
he finally made Hitler the Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Democracy helped
Hitler a lot; without universal suffrage and large political liberties, the Nazis wouldnt have
come to power. The fact that Hitler didnt have a majority in Germany until he became the
master of the Reich still remains and the elections from March 1933 are significant: 43,9 % ,
less than a half, in conditions of intimidation, even terror against the political enemies.
The fixed ideas of Hitler, from Mein Kampf (1925-1926) meant the extinguishing of Jews and
the expansion of Germany closer to the East, through the destruction of Russia. The racism
and anti-Semitism, the core of Nazis ideology, were considered as counterproductive as
electoral themes. Nothing more true. From 1920 to 1930, through successive adds, the
program was changed step by step. In 1920, when the revolutionary fever ended, the program
was socializing. When Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, the expansionism and imperialism problems
won priority. In the creation of the quasi-unanimously facade around the Nazi project, the
annihilation of the opposition was important as well. The political leaders or leaders of
opinion, socialists, liberals, communists, Jews, were sent to prison, concentration camps or
exile.
A more theoretical than historical approach is made by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew
Brzezinski. They said that the whole idea of a totalitarian dictatorship rests on the claim that
the power of decision is completely concentrated in a single leader. Legislative bodies
are there to acclaim decision made by the leader. Crucially to the role of the party is to
provide a following for the dictator with which he can identify. The party is bureaucratic and
intertwined with, or superior to the state bureaucracy, with party loyalty being the main
criterion for promotion, position and authority within the bureaucratic hierarchy. The
totalitarian party is elitist, undemocratic, more like a club or exclusive brotherhood. There is
no open recruitment and membership would not be allowed to exceed 10 per cent of the
population. The discipline required within the party Friedrich and Brzezinski relate to both the
ideology and the infallible leadership, which leads through science or intuition towards the
utopian apocalypse. Power is entirely centralized and the party is the hub of a wider
movement aimed particularly at the recruitment of future members. Youth movements, such

7 Richard J. EVANS, The Third Reich, 3 vol., London, 2003-2008, pp.528

7

as the Hitler Youth8, are set up for the purposes of indoctrinating the next generation of party
members.
The Nazis do fulfill the second criterion of the six-point syndrome as well; the last multiparty
elections in Germany are those of March 1933. Shortly after, the government is given the
right to decree laws without the participation of the Reichstag. The opposition is eliminated,
either killed or sent to concentration camps. By mid-1933 only one party remains in Germany;
a party-state. The party also takes control over the bureaucratic apparatus.

III. Application of random, mass terror

Hitler cleared the ground from the very beginning of his reign. After almost a month of his
election as chancellor, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag burned in flames, a sign of what
was to come. Not that Hitler was much of a fan of Parliamentary sessions anyway. The
communists were blamed for the fire and Hitler urged Hindenburg to ensue the Decree for
the Protection of the People and the State, which suspended the civil liberties guaranteed by
the Weimar Constitution and allowed Hitler to get rid of the opposition, within a legal
framework. The same SA that was used to hunt down the communists also removed the Social
Democratic Party from the Reichstag.
When the SA and its chief of staff, Ernst Rhm became a problem, Hitler decided that the
Reichswehr 9 was more important and allowed the army to eliminate the storm troopers, along
with Rhm ( a real soldier, with war experience, but who tried to transform the Nazi regime
into a military dictatorship, a goal not desired by Hitler )and other opponents of Hitler. The
event came to be known as the Rhm Putsch of June 30, 1934. The ones within the Nazi
Party that regarded the paramilitary troops as an illegal enlargement of the army, which was
limited by the Peace Treaty of Versailles, had to go away. In Rhms place Hitler chose
Himmler, a man who lacked knowledge in military matters, but who would reorganize the SS
in a way favored by the Fuehrer.

8 the National Socialist youth organization in Germany between 1926 and 1945; alongside the
home and the school, it was regarded as the third source of education
9 Official name for the military forces of Germany between 1919 and 1935, when it was renamed
Wehrmacht
8

The instruments of terror and repression the Nazi elite formations were primarily innerparty organizations, used for arbitrary violence and murder. These formations were constantly
changing and evolving, adding new branches or merging with ones that already existed.
The Secret State Police, the Gestapo, founded and headed by Hermann Goering in Prussia in
1933, soon came under the influence of Heinrich Himmler, who already directed the SS and
who had gained control of the political police departments in other parts of the Reich. In April
1936 he also controlled the Gestapo de jure, and, later that year, merged it with the
Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Investigation Police) under the new name of Sicherheitspolizei
(abbreviated Sipo, for Security Police). Three years later, the Sipo was joined with the
Sicherheitsdienst (abbreviated SD, for Security Service), an intelligence branch of the
military, the new institution then called the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Security
Central Office) and commanded by Reinhard Heydrich up to the time of his assassination in
late May 1942. Recruited from professional police officers, the Gestapo had the official task
of investigating and combating all tendencies said to be dangerous to the state. To implement
its goals the Gestapo relied heavily on a measure called Schutzhaftbefehl (protective custody
order), by which they imprisoned people without judicial proceedings, most often in
concentration camps, where the prisoners were tortured or murdered. In February 1936 a new
legal basis for the Gestapo came into force which declared that such actions were not
restricted by judicial review. Beyond the elimination of political opponents, the primary target
groups of intimidation and persecution were Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals. During World
War II the Gestapo played an important role in exerting terror in the countries occupied by the
Nazis; especially as part of the Einsatzgruppen of the SS, its members participated in the
huge-scale maltreatment and killings of Jews, gypsies, communists, and partisans. The
Gestapo was deeply implicated in the attempted extermination of European Jewry, forcing the
Jews into ghettos and arresting them to be deported to the extermination camps. As the
prospect of defeat loomed ever larger, members of the Gestapo even intensified their
murderous activities from the autumn of 1944 in many parts of Germany, and went over to
murdering foreign laborers, killing prisoners of war as well as Wehrmacht deserters, and
lynching Allied pilots shot down over Germany. At the Nuremberg Trials the entire
organization was indicted and convicted of crimes against humanity.
The previous-discussed SA (Sturmabteilung) or the storm troopers, was the first Nazi
formation that was supposed to be more militant than the Party itself. It emerged in 1922 and
had the official role to protect the Nazi meetings. They were also known as the Brownshirts.
9

The SA provoked bloody clashes with the leftist worker parties and, after 1933, established
the first concentration camps in which political opponents were tortured and murdered. The
SA is also primarily involved in the boycott of Jewish merchants of April 1, 1933 and the
Reichkristallnacht10 of November 9, 1938.
The SS (Schutzstaffel) at first appeared as an elite formation of the SA, in 1926, with the
official purpose of protecting the Nazi leaders; it was the embodiment of the ideology and
practice of its master-race worldview. In 1929 it was separated from the SA and put under
Himmlers command. Members of the SS swore unquestioning loyalty to Hitler (My honor
is loyalty). They were selected according to their height (above 6 feet) and had to submit an
Ariernachweis (proof of Aryan descent), including an account of their ancestry back to the
year 1750. It was Himmlers aim to give the SS the character of an elite community similar to
an order. In 1931 he decreed that every SS member had to ask for a marriage allowance; by
controlling the intimate partnerships of Hitlers elite he aimed at the creation of a German
Nordic kinship group free of hereditary illness. The mentality of the SS was characterized by
blind idealism toward its leadership, drastic discipline, loyalty and by the exercise of brutal
and merciless force against those classified as racially inferior. Himmler further developed
the SS: the Shock Troops and the Death Units (the guard units of the concentration camps),
which later merged to form the Armed SS ( Waffen SS) special unit of the SS at the disposal
of the Fuehrer, the Security Service ( the ideological intelligence service of the Party and its
executive arm for the negative population policy) and the Office for Questions of Race and
Resettlement, all part of the General SS, which was supposed to safeguard the National
Socialist idea and protect the members of all special SS cadres from becoming detached from
the movement itself.
Therefore, the secret police and adjacent units support and in the same time supervise the
party. Physical and psychological terror is used, in a close connection with propaganda (as a
means of disseminating ideology), carried out through the media which in its turn is under the
control of the regime. These features are intertwined and strengthen each other, while
weakening the population and most importantly, the opposition.

10 The night of shattered glass; a series of attacks against the Jewish population
of Germany and Austria; some were killed and approximately 30,000 Jewish men
were taken to concentration camps
10

The ones who were declared enemies for the regime stood no chance against these formations.
Liberal, democratic, socialist intellectuals, artists, professors and faculty members were
persecuted, taken to concentration camps, resettled and their works were burned as they were
un-German. All the cultural life was distorted and it was only useful as long as it served the
Nazi regime.
The persecution of the Jews was one of the Nazis ultimate ideological goals. The laws
imposed by the regime became increasingly harsher. The Law for Restoration of the
Professional Civil Service dismissed the Jewish officials and replaced them with Nazis; on
May 21, 1935, the Defense Law excluded Jews from military service and on September 15,
1935 the Nurnberg Laws made proof of Aryan descent a prerequisite for exercising the rights
of citizens or holding elective office, deprived Jews of full citizenship and prohibited
marriage between Jews and non-Jews.
Ethnic cleansing and concentration camps are probably the most striking features of the Nazi
regime. During WWII, the Gestapo and the Security Service disregarded international law and
attacked civilians, mainly Jews and gypsies. The Polish upper classes were systematically
killed and millions of Jews were deported. Soviet officials were killed by the Wehrmacht,
with the support of the Security Service.
According to Eberhard Jackel, an internationalist historian, the entourage of Hitler was rather
uncomfortable about the developing decision to mass-murder the Jews. A group of young
German historians who were working with Ulrich Herbert at the University of Freiburg came
with an important correction to our knowledge about the Holocaust. Herbert and his coauthors
present examples from eastern Galicia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland and France to show how
local initiatives led to the mass execution of Jews in late 1941 and early 1942.
The pain suffered by the victims of the Holocaust is difficult to describe and many writers,
artist, poets, dramatists and philosophers will forever grapple with the problem of articulating
it and as far as it is concerned, the Holocaust is certainly not unique, because
indescribable human suffering is forever there.
To define the Holocaust, we need to compare it with other similar events. Only by comparison
we can answer to the question of whether it is unprecedented and has features not found in
similar events. In the Armenian genocide, arguably the closest parallel to the Holocaust, the
motivation was political and chauvinistic, that is, it had a pragmatic basis. The Jemiyet
11

(committee for Union and Progress) of Talaat and Enver and their clique, the so-called Young
Turks, wanted to establish a Pan-Turkic empire stretching from Edirne, in European Turkey,
to Kazakhstan, an empire dominated by Turkic-speaking people. The Armenians, an alien
nation, occupied stretches of Anatolia, the heartland of Turkey. The Armenians before, during
and after WW I were killed in huge numbers and their genocide served the pragmatic
purposes of political expansion, acquisition of land, confiscation of riches, elimination of
economic competition, and the satisfaction of chauvinistic impulses of the revolutionary core
of the dominant ethnic group, impulses exacerbated by feeling of utter frustration and
humiliation in a crisis-ridden and disintegrating empire. Similar examples are in the case of
the Tutsis in Rwanda the dominant clique of Hutus, led by a French-educated intelligentsia in
which the genocide was again a pragmatically motivated one, or in the Cambodian genocide
in which were three groups of victims: ethnic Khmer, Chams and Muslims, Vietnamese living
in Cambodia. Even in the case of the Roma (Gypsies) the pragmatic aspect stands out. A racist
ideology demanding their complete removal in Germany, was different outside the Reich;
Nazi policy toward Roma was hazy.
Another reason why the Holocaust is unprecedented is its global, universal character. The
other genocides were limited geographically and in the most cases the targets lived in a well
defined geographic locale.
A third element sets the Holocaust apart from other genocides: its intended totality. The Nazis
were looking for Jews, for all Jews. Its extremeness makes it unprecedented.
Novel in its extremity was the Nazi use of camp inmates against other camp inmates, a
complete dehumanization. On the other hand, although the Nazis did not invent the
concentration camp, they developed it in new ways probably the most extreme form of
humiliation.
The fourth and fifth elements which make the Holocaust so genuine are on the first hand the
location of the Jews at the bottom of the hell that was the Nazi concentration camp, they were
the victims of an unprecedented crime of total humiliation and fared worse than others who
were victims of the same crime. And on the other hand the regime from which the Holocaust
sprang is the kind of its revolution. All the revolutions before National Socialism that aimed at
organizing humanity were made in the name of class, nation or religion. National Socialist
rebellion against humanism, liberalism, democracy, socialism, conservatism, pacifism, and so

12

on, was the most radical attempt at charging the world that history has recorded to date: the
most novel and the most revolutionary.
The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a refugee Polish-Jewish lawyer in the US,
in late 1942 or early 1943. Lemkins definition is contradictory. He defines on the first hand
the genocide as the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic groupgenerally speaking,
genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation. It is intended rather
to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential
foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the group themselves.
But in the preface of the same book he says that the practice of extermination of nations and
ethnics groupsis called genocide. In conclusion he describes two distinct alternatives: the
first is a radical and murderous denationalization accompanied by mass murder, which
destroys the group, buy many components of it remains alive; the other alternative is that the
murder of every single individual of the targeted group.
The author suggests retaining the term genocide for partial murder and the term Holocaust
for total destruction. Holocaust is a radicalization of genocide: a planned attempt to physically
annihilate every single member of a targeted ethnic, national or racial group.
The tremendous treatment applied to the Jews constitutes in present the most raised chapter in
the history of the Third Reich. But the Jews were not alone, there must be eliminated those
like handicapped people, homosexuals or gypsies. The ascension of Jews in the heart of
Germany made from them the ideal scapegoats for the all failures since the end of the First
World War to the coming at the power of Hitler. We must admit that in a first stage, the
Nazism was less exterminator than communism of Lenin and Stalin. The Nazism was
influenced by its own conception and impulse, in an occidental society, where, was kept a
legality tradition which never existed in Russia. Before the war , the intention of Hitler was to
make the life of the Jews unsupportable to make them to leave the country. They were
excluded from universities, schools, public functions and step by step from all activity sectors.
When one reads Nazi sources it is impossible to avoid a centrally important conclusion: that
Jews were, in Nazi eyes, the central enemy, the incarnation of the Devil. The Nazis hierarchy
of races were based on Christian precedents like the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors
from Spain in 1492, individuals aspiring to certain important position in the Spanish kingdom
had to prove their limpieza de sangre.

13

Until the 1st September 1939, approximate 400 000 Jews left Germany, which means a half
from their population. Once with the invasion of Poland and its annexation, almost 2 millions
of Polish Jews enter into the borders of the Great Reich. There were scenarios like the
resettlement of these Jews to the East (but before that they must conquer Russia) or further in
Madagascar, a part of already defeated colonial France territory. In waiting for a solution, they
were forced to stay in ghettos, in incredible miserable conditions, where many died.
To the end of 1941, the defeat in front of Moscow ruined the illusion of Blitzkrieg. Germany
now doesnt deny a possible unfavorable end and in these conditions they must think what to
do with the almost 5 million Jews which now were inside the borders of Germany after the
occupation of East Poland, Ukraine and Occidental Russia. After the Jews, in the Nazis
project were Slavs, Polish or Russians.
With the exception of the extermination camps, the alimentary regime was calculated in so
way to permit to the prisoners to live average 9 months. We wont describe here the gas
chambers, or crematorium ovens or the other terrifying instruments specific to the Nazis
camps, which are good known today. Was calculated that after 1939, the whole camp system
could close a million of people in the same time. An approximate number of the victims was
calculated at a number between 7 and 9 millions of people.

IV. Monopoly control over the media, over all information present and past
Like their Soviets counterparts, the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler regarded the press as a
means of disseminating propaganda, contemptuously rejecting the liberal notion of the press
popularized in the 19th century by thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, according to which its
was a useful arena for public debate over issues of importance to society. When Mussolini
(himself an experienced and successful journalist) came to power in 1922, the press was still
the only significant means of propaganda available, but by the 1930s radio broadcasting and
cinema newsreels had grown in importance and were exploited with particular success by
Hitlers regime. A years after the inauguration of Mussolinis rule, the government took wide
powers to confiscate or close publications regarded as constituting a threat to national
interests , and that measure was reinforced in 1926, when the Communist and Socialist party
newspapers were closed down. The Nazi regime in Germany also took measures to convert
the press into a propaganda arm. In Nazi propaganda prior to their assumption of power in
1933 and before they were able to control it, the press was regularly associated with
Jewishness ; the Jewish press was an expression they were fond of. Branding the press in
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this way came naturally to a mentality steeped in conspiracy theories, and it offered a means
of explaining why the press might be critical of themselves. The paper that acted as a direct
mouthpiece for the regime was the Volkischer Beobachter , which broke new ground in
becoming something close to a national daily (with circulation of more than a million by
1941) in a country that previously had only a regional press.
The Italian Fascist and German Nazi leadership were among the first in the political arena to
grasp the opportunities offered by new media and communication technologies for the rapid
dissemination of ideas and by development of techniques of persuasion on a mass level. They
not only realized that the new mass media were there to be used but they also understood how
to use them. They saw that a symbolic event like the nationwide burning of books in
Germany, communicated at a mass level through the medium of newspaper and magazine
pictures and newsreel clips, had more impact than a hundred printed explanations of the Nazi
philosophy. In other words, they understood that propaganda is all about the communication
of images and symbols and the exploitation of emotion. Events like the carefully orchestrated
and choreographed Nuremberg Rallies had an immediate emotional impact on those who took
part, generating a sense of huge excitement in participants, a dramatic sense of being involved
in an unprecedented national adventure with limitless potential under the magic leadership of
the Fuehrer. If the German people believed in Nazism, it was in no small part because of the
skillful manipulation to which they were subjected through newsreel, newspaper, and radio.
Their propagandistic drive penetrated much further into the psyche of their citizens by the
enforcement of gestures used daily, such as the Heil Hitler! greeting, which meant that the
Fuehrers name was on everybodys lips many timed each day. All of this went according to
plan, and the plans were those of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitlers minister for public
enlightenment and propaganda. Goebbels was a man with a Ph.D. and a very powerful mind,
a keen student of U.S. advertising methods.
But the mass rallies, powerful though they were, represented only a part of Goebbelss
propaganda expertise. He had also grasped the power of the slogan. His slogans appeared on
banners, on newspaper mastheads, in pamphlets, and in graffiti all over Germany. One of the
most widely propagated was the slogan Die Juden sind unser Ungluck! The Jews are our
misfortune. Another of his favorite slogans was Volk ohne Raum ( A people without space)
suggesting as a fact that Germany was somehow straitjacketed in her territory and was
therefore justified in adopting a belligerent policy of expansionism. And always the slogans
were accompanied by the omnipresent swastika.
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The rise of Italian Fascism and Nazism in the early 20 th century coincided also with a golden
age of radio. As the tool of choice for propagandists radio also dominated mass
communications in the domestic sphere. The marriage of totalitarianism and radio
broadcasting was an important marker of the shift from elite to mass society. Political
mobilization of the masses was facilitated by their mobilization behind the new medium. State
radio was to have a monopoly of audience time and attention. There were severe penalties for
unauthorized listening to foreign broadcasts, access to short-wave radio was restricted, and
many foreign stations were jammed. Radio played a crucial role in the prelude to war in
Central Europe during the late 1930s. Initial Nazi efforts focused on German-speaking
populations across European frontiers where Hitler had irredentist claims. Germanys
medium-wave transmitters were ideal for broadcasting over short distances. Moreover, the
message frequently fell on receptive ears. Because of their chauvinist tone, fascist external
services were more successful in reaching German or Italian cultural communities abroad
than at persuading foreigners. Germany therefore directed concerted broadcast campaigns at
the Saar region, which was disputed with France, at Austria, at Sudeten Germans in
Czechoslovakia, and at Germans in Poland.
The reason why ideology is perceived as so fundamentally important to totalitarian
dictatorship stems from the role given to propaganda directed ultimately to the maintenance
in power of the party controlling it. The party requires unanimity. Propaganda and education
training are viewed as the means for achieving the total ideological integration of the
people. Any group which disagrees must be removed. One of the most important roles of
propaganda is to create stereotypes of the enemy. This use of propaganda, however, they
argue, leads to the use of terror because propaganda creates what they term the vaccum. The
vaccum comes to surround the leadership, rendering it out of touch with ordinary peoples
views and also creating problems of effective communication inside the party hierarchy.
Propaganda, they contend, leads in the end to disbelief and rumors. The absence of alternative
sources of information, such as a free press, is crucial in this, because without genuine
information people as a whole tend to become indifferent, whereas within the hierarchy
officials become more concerned to say that they think wants to be heard rather than what
may be the truth.

V. Monopoly of arms

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After the Nazis took power in 1933, they immediately made use of two laws passed by the
liberal Weimar Republic: a law authorizing the suspension of civil liberties [the Reichstag fire
being the pretext] and the Gun Control Act of 1928.11
They searched in a massive operations for unlicensed firearms, ostensibly to repress
Communists but in fact to disarm politcal opponents and Jews.
The Weimar law allowed police to deny firearm ownership to any unreliable person. A
Gestapo permission was introduced as obligatory in order to carry a weapon for Jews on Dec.
16, 1935 by the second commander of Gestapo. Hitler signed an amended Gun Control Act in
March 1938, broadening exemptions to include Nazi party members and barring Jews from
the firearms industry. Nazis spent hours searching in houses of Jews for arms, smashing
furniture as Victor Klemperers diary describes. Heinrich Himmler decreed that Jews were
forbidden to possess weapons and violators would be sent to a concetration camp and
imprisoned for a period of up to 20 years.
The German Jews were not disarmed to make their homes safer for children or to reduce
crime, but to provent any defense against the repression that would later culminate in
genocide.
Some favor a world in which all private individuals, not just disfavored groups, are disarmed
and only the military and police are armed.
Hitler said in Hitlers Secret Conversations : the most foolish mistake we could possibly
make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all concquerors
who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so
doing..
After the consolidation of power, the Nazis introduced a decree which authorized the
government to suspend the constitutional guarantees of personal liberty, free expression of
opinion, freedom of the press, and the rights to assmeble and to form associations. Secrecy of
postal and telephonic communication was suspended, and the government was authorized to
conduct, search and seizure operation of homes. 12 It provided that whoever commits the
offenses defined in the Penal Code as severe rioting or sever breach of public peace by
11 The Darker Side of Gun Control ,Stephen P. Halbrook,Published in National Law Journal,
May 24, 2004, p.39

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using weapons or in conscious and intentional cooperation with an armed person...shall be

sentenced to death or, if the offense wasnot previously punishable more severly, to the
penitentiary for life or to the penitentiary for up to 15 years. Since the terms riot and
breach of peace could be applied to a protest march by political opponents, the mere
keeping or bearing of a weapon might have become a capital offense.

VI. Central control of economy

As Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski said, the totalitarian dictatorships share in
common a centrally directed and controlled economy. Economic success is seen as vital to
political success. The authors make it quite clear, however, that their arguments are not about
the outward structures of the economy but about the role of economic planning and its effects.
They readily concede that the differences between the fascist type of industrial arrangement
and the communist one are many and obvious. They accept that in fascist economies private
enterprises are mostly formally left in place with big businessmen presiding over board
meetings, whereas in the communist economies the state owns and runs industry. It is, then
economic planning which Friedrich and Brzezinski argue to be crucial to totalitarian
dictatorships, and it is the leader who makes the basic decision about the organization of the
plan. In Nazi Germany it was that of eliminating unemployment and preparing for war.
They specifically mention the five-years plans in the USSR and China and the importance of
this plan and the four-year plan in Nazi Germany, begun in 1936 and taken over by Speer in
1942.
They argue, however, that plans do not have to succeed when the dictator and party have
control over information. As they explain, Planning in Germany never became effective due
to Goerings incompetence and Hitlers lack of understanding of economic problems. They
also stress central control over trade unions and the destruction of workers independent
representation and control over their conditions of work and eventually conditions of life.
Trade unions become the agents of governments, not the agencies of representation of
workers needs.
Friedrich and Brzezinski also argue that totalitarian regimes try to extend control over
peasants and farmers. Arguing that agricultural production is, by its nature, unsuited to large12 Reichsverordnung zum Schutz von Volk und Staat [Ordinance of the ReichPresident for the Protection of the People and
the State], Reichsgesetzblatt 1933, I, 83,
1.

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scale organization and control and viewing it as the Achilles heel of fascist regimes, they
link Hitlers policy of living space to the drive for additional land as a way out of the
difficulties involved in making the available land more productive. This ideology, they
argue, reinforces the totalitarians propensity to foreign conquest.
Confronted with the bourgeois "brandishing his contracts and his statistics, 2 + 2
makes...NOUGHT, the fascist barbarian replies, smashing his face in". As these words of
Georges Valois, leader of Le Faisceau (French fascist movement of the 1920s) make clears
interwar fascism had little time or respect for economics. Fascist denied that what happened in
the economy was the motor of historical and social change; they wanted their revolution to
be understood not as a fundamental change in socioeconomic relation but rather as a
spiritual revolution, a transformation of consciousness, a moral regeneration of individual in
a collective, national context. The agencies of the Nazi Four Year Plan Office, with the same
goal of directing the economy toward autarky and rearmament, had the same private and
public mix, recruiting personnel indiscriminately among Nazi party men, civil servants, armed
forces officers, private industrialists, and managers to the vast cartels responsible for price
controls and the allocation of labor, materials, and currency in key economic sectors.

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