Abstract

National Socialism. The Career of an Ideology

National socialism was to be the German way into modernity. The National Socialists modernized the German welfare state, but it was an anti-modern modernity aimed at a corporatist model that wanted to make man part of a people's whole. The integral nationalism of the Empire was further increased by the National Socialists to a highly aggressive expansive ideology, whose reference value was no longer the nation but an ethnically pure national community. The goal was not equality, but homogeneity. National Socialism created the vision of a popular community of national socialism that carried the destructive potential of an exclusive nationalism and the formative violence of an authoritarian social utopia. By combining socialism and nationalism, he gained a significant part of his ideological impact and attractiveness.

In view of the catastrophe of the Holocaust, National Socialism cannot be connected. But through the detour of the Conservative Revolution ideologies of national socialism are once again surprisingly popular today. This can be seen not least in the increasing recourse of AfD politicians to the Nazi terminology and elements of the politics of the Nazi regime.

Programme: Panel 1, Wednesday, 5 September 2018, 14:30-16:00