Handbook Ideologies in National Socialism, Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals
Introduction: What is National Socialist Ideology?
National Socialism as Theory and Practice
For the last forty years or so, research on National Socialism and the "Third Reich" has been defined by what one scholar has called a "return of ideology". Inspired by both the "cultural turn" in the humanities and the perceived limitations of "functionalist" explanations for Nazi mass crimes, this has resulted in considerable attention being paid to the mentalities, rituals, and ideas said to have underpinned those crimes. Yet, for all of the recent focus on ideology, there is as yet no concrete definition of the term. For the most part, Nazi ideology is simply assumed to have existed as a vague combination of different ideas and belief systems, which are generally said to hold the key to understanding the "Third Reich’s" barbarism and what brought people to participate in it.
Surveying the vast literature on National Socialism, however, we can see that Nazi ideology is mostly treated in theoretical or praxiological terms: either as a worldview comprising different idea sets and beliefs, or as a range of practices and actions said to be in service of those beliefs. Indeed, the papers presented at the annual Ideologies in National Socialism conference series, along with the contributions received for this handbook, have confirmed this, with numerous papers and essays treating ideology as either theory or practice.
The aim of this present volume – Ideology and Individuals – is to examine ideology through the prism of biography: to highlight both the ideological influences and developments that shaped people’s beliefs and behaviours during the period of National Socialism, and the different behaviours which served those beliefs. Since some of those influences both predated and outlived the "Third Reich", however, it also sheds light on people whose ideas inspired the Nazi worldview and who were inspired by it. Biography has long been a fruitful means for such a task, arguably providing the methodological foundations on which the "return of ideology" rests. For belief and thought are innately human phenomena, however much some sociologists have tried to argue otherwise. It should thus come as no surprise that recent scholarly interest in ideology emerged at roughly the same time as what one historian has called the "biographical turn".
Nor is it surprising that biography has offered some of the most revealing exposés of Nazism, particularly as theory. Recent studies of Hitler, for example, the man whose beliefs and fears charted the course of the "Third Reich", have revealed the evolving and often vague intellectual foundations on which his movement was founded. Biographical studies of Alfred Rosenberg, Dietrich Eckart, and Joseph Goebbels, moreover, have paid specific attention to the racist and antisemitic theories that legitimised Nazi rule, while studies of people like Carl Schmitt and Hans Frank have shown how legal theories were bent to justify its excesses. Research on Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the like has helped situate Nazi theories in their long-term context, showing how they strongly resembled nineteenth century völkisch thought, just as biographies of non-Nazi thinkers such as Oswald Spengler have shown that the grievances Nazi ideology played on, and to which it was supposed to provide answers, also predated Hitler.
There have been some attempts to examine National Socialism as theory independently of its theoreticians, to synthesise the thoughts of Nazi thinkers and present them as a coherent ideological belief structure – most notably by Johann Chapoutot and Carl Müller Frøland. But biography has always been and remains a valuable method for exploring Nazism’s theoretical underpinnings, especially when considering its lack of an established canon and how it was open to widely differing interpretations.
The same is also true of ideology as a praxiological phenomenon, with biography – both individual and collective – providing the most vivid examples of National Socialism as practice. Scholars like Ulrich Herbert, Michael Wildt, and Christian Ingrao, to name but a few, have all expertly shown how for the leadership cadre of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, RSHA) National Socialism was a brutal programme of mass murder which they ruthlessly helped implement. Others, like Hans-Christian Jasch, have shown how for senior civil servants like Wilhelm Stuckart it was the creation of legislative and legal frameworks which ultimately enabled that programme. Complicity in the crimes of the "Third Reich" is Nazi ideology as practice according to many scholars, who maintain that the best way to understand it is from the perspective of its practitioners.
Read the Introduction in full length here
