Nazism is not an original creation from a sick mind, but a phenomenon whose roots lie deeper in Europe than the Interwar period. Guest on the show Tout un monde, historian Johann Chapoutot traces the conditions of its emergence. Immerse yourself in a past of sometimes disturbing contemporaneity.
How did the NSDAP, the Nazi party, a simple small group like many others, come to power in Germany, causing the deaths of tens of millions of people and then leaving Europe in ruins in its defeat?
“We tend to present the Nazi phenomenon as a sort of fireball which emerges from nothing and hits the Earth without us being able to understand why,” begins French historian Johann Chapoutot at the microphone of Tout un monde. In the work “The Nazi World”, which has just been published, he analyzes this political regime, its roots, its practices and its deadly consequences with his co-authors Christian Gros and Nicolas Patin.
Not very new ideas
However, there is nothing fundamentally new in Nazi ideas, except that they will be pushed to extreme radicalism. “It is a historical, social and intellectual phenomenon located in a sort of cultural bath which is that of Europe and the West in the second half of the 19th century”, places Johann Chapoutot.
This is where the fundamentals are put in place: racism, “which arms European colonization”, anti-Semitism, moreover “no more virulent in Germany than elsewhere”, social Darwinism, or the idea according to which social hierarchies are derived from natural hierarchies, eugenics, imperialism and also “capitalism as we have known it since the 1850s, that is to say without any pity either for individuals or for ‘environment”.
Rallying the working world
At the end of the First World War, the Nazi Party was only a small group among the dozens that formed in Germany within the extreme right in the “völkisch” movement, an intellectual and political current which took birth in the end of the 19th century, mixture of populism and nationalism. “The term is derived from the word people, but in the ethno-nationalist sense of the term: it is not the people of the French Revolution, of the contract, of free choice, of free adhesion, but a people defined by a necessity, a natural biological determination. All the fundamental ideas resulting from the French Revolution were defeated,” explains the historian.
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From the beginning of the 1920s, the Nazi party was financed by the Bavarian bourgeoisie to take the wind out of the sails of the Revolution, by capturing proletarian energy.
These parties claim to be sensitive to the working conditions, to the point of adopting names that reflect this affinity (“National Socialist German Workers’ Party” for the NSDAP). “These are in reality lures which aim to reorient potentially revolutionary popular masses […] from communist internationalism towards the strictest nationalism”, explains Johann Chapoutot.
Several factors explain why the Nazi party, rather than any other, emerged from this nebula of far-right formations, starting with its monetary resources: “From the beginning of the 1920s, it was financed by the Munich Bavarian bourgeoisie to take the wind from the sails of the Revolution, by capturing proletarian energy”, image the specialist in contemporary history. It is also very professionalized, with an internal administrative apparatus which, quite early on, functions very well “thanks to Goebbels, the little genius of this group of founders”.
Cutting-edge marketing
Joseph Goebbels thinks of political reality in terms of marketing. “It will segment the German population into various groups – teachers, lawyers, athletes, soldiers, etc. – to whom we will address in a differentiated and adapted manner, with a device dedicated to that”, explains Johann Chapoutot. It is a success: the Nazis manage to attract an increasingly numerous electorate into their nets.
Using Hitler’s rhetorical force, Goebbels very skillfully constructed the figure of a kind of messianic genius. Because speaking is the only thing Hitler knows how to do well
The Nazi Party is also distinguished by its brilliant use of new technologies. Radio and cinema, of course, but also airplanes. “In the almost permanent electoral campaigns which took place from 1929 in Germany, Hitler used it to be in three places almost at the same time, with this idea of brilliant ubiquity,” notes the historian.
“By using Hitler’s rhetorical force, Goebbels very skillfully constructed the figure of a kind of messianic genius. Speaking is the only thing Hitler knows how to do well. He manages, on stage, to capture and then express all the deep affects of the German population: hope, rage, hatred, fear, anger…”, continues the guest of Tout un monde, who summarizes: “Goebbels, very clearly and very consciously, constructed a marketing product with all the resources of contemporary technology”.
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A victimization that allows everything
Very quickly, the Nazi party took over the streets, a new political space, which it occupied with violence, while presenting itself as a victim party. “It’s a characteristic that we find in the contemporary extreme right: we ourselves are a bunch of thugs, but on the other hand, we can’t say anything, we are victims of political correctness. This is found in a structural way at Trump today,” he notes. “It’s a kind of self-deploration, a permanent lament.”
Presenting itself as the victim of a plot aimed at exterminating the Germanic race, Germany always places itself in a position of self-defense, and therefore in a legitimate position of violence
Thus, the Nazis “claim to fight chivalrously for the cause of national Germany and to be victims of the odious ‘pilferage’ of the social democrats, the communists and, behind all that, the Jews. Their conception of history follows the same pattern : Germany, which created all civilization and only wants good, is always the victim of a centuries-old Judeo-Bolshevik plot which aims to exterminate the Germanic race. According to them, Germany is. always in a position of self-defense, and therefore in a legitimate position of violence.”
On the rubble of 1918
The defeat of 1918 was another catalyst for the rise of Nazism. It is refused by German nationalists and the military, who speak of a stab in the back: the army would have been defeated not in the trenches, but because of the republicans and Jewish socialists behind. “This defeat is not at all understood by the German population. On November 11, 1918, the German army was still in the suburbs of Reims [à 130 km de Paris, ndlr]therefore very advanced in French territory. It’s hard to get through,” confirms Johann Chapoutot.
The Treaty of Versailles, whose conditions were harsh for Germany, did not help anything. “It’s a real trauma, especially since there are 2.5 million dead if we count civilians, and there is nothing to give meaning to the defeat. We cannot call ourselves dead for the Reich, because the Reich no longer exists. Dead for the Kaiser? He left without leaving an address. Germany is in the process of dechristianization in these conditions. The Nazis will respond” to this devastation, he analyzes.
The Great Depression, fertile ground
From the crisis of 1929, very hard felt in Germany because the economy was almost under a drip of American capital which disappeared after the crash, the Nazi discourse became even more effective. Johann Chapoutot paints a portrait of desolation: “It is a Germany which is once again experiencing famine, where old pathologies – tuberculosis, scabies, etc. – are reappearing.”
In a Germany which is once again experiencing famine, where old pathologies – tuberculosis, scabies, etc. – are present. – reappear, the Nazis manage to express the feeling, or the resentment, of a part of the German population
But it was also fertile ground for the Nazi party, which managed to express German feeling – or resentment. “You are victims. We are here to explain to you the rationality behind it. There is a plot. We have hidden enemies and we are going to fight them”, paraphrases the historian, for whom Nazi skill is twofold: “Not only do we offer you a total hermeneutic of reality, an interpretation that allows you to understand everything, but we also offer you a sort of compendium of recipes to get you out of this.”
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Adaptation web: Vincent Cherpillod
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