Concept in Definition ABC

Nazism was one of the most complex and dark historical phenomena of the 20th century, born in the Germany of between the wars and exalted under the power of a racist and highly exterminating character such as Adolf Hitler

Political trend established by Hitler and based on an exercise of authoritarian power and a segregationist policy against the Jewish community

Nazism was based on policies of racial segregation directed especially against Jews (although the objective was slowly fading) and by economic and social policies that sought to establish the Aryan might of Germany in Europe and the world. Its name comes from the party to which Hitler belonged, the National Socialism.

Origins and essential features

Nazism arose as a consequence of the complex situation that existed in Germany after the First World War. The economic and political failure of the Weimar Republic, as well as the high costs imposed on the nation for generating the first conflict warlike, they made the region extremely chaotic. The social, economic and political isolation that the Germans suffered between the two wars facilitated the arrival of an authoritarian leader like Hitler who promised to resurface the Aryan nation from among his ashes.

Thus, Hitler organized a complex infrastructure Social, politics, economic, police and military that aimed to recover the lost greatness of Germany and establish the region as the power of Europe and the world. Hitler came to power through popular suffrage, but along the way his exercise of power became more and more authoritarian and totalitarian, going to centralize in his person all the decisions and Projects. This is verified from the fact that when Hitler died, Nazism as a political system disappeared.

Meanwhile, one of the essential features of Nazism was the absolute intervention of the state in the life of society.
Everything that the German citizens did was determined, allowed or prohibited by the state headed by their leader Hitler.

The means of production, education, the press, culture were controlled by the state and of course freedom of expression and plurality Politics did not exist in those times and any hint of them was severely punished.

Meanwhile, to impose all his imprint and make sure that there was no dissent, he set up a tremendous propaganda system whose maxim was to promote the benefits of belonging to Nazism.

Propaganda was the most powerful tool when promoting the political party and its program, and of course when controlling everything that was said.

Because the mission was to publicize the "benefits" of the regime and prevent dissident voices from manifesting. Behind her was Paul Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's closest collaborators and who was would serve as Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda between the peak years of Nazism (1933-1945).

The regulation of the press, movie theater, of music, of broadcasting, the theater and any other type of art was in the hands of Goebbels, a character as sinister as his political boss Hitler and who supported until the last moment the hatred for the Jews and their cruel extermination in the camps of concentration.

One of the most painful and dark elements of Nazism was the propaganda for Jewish extermination that took place. Here a deep identity problem arose in the Germany of the time since the German Jews for not being pure and for possessing wealth that actually belonged to the Germans Aryans.

The extermination campaign extended throughout the entire Nazi regime, which officially lasted from 1933 to 1945, and became known worldwide after the end of the war. from the discovery of the death and torture camps such as Auschwitz, undoubtedly the most emblematic for the cruelty with which it operated for those years.

The Nuremberg trials, because they took place precisely in that German city, were the procedures judicial proceedings promoted by the allied nations once Nazism fell and which had the objective of judging and punishing those responsible for the atrocity that was the Holocaust.

Even with Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide, the chain of complicities was fantastic, and then these processes managed to punish more than twenty Nazi leaders who survived and were captured.