The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (New Studies in European History)

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Historian Adam Tooze explains that Hitler believed that lebensraum was vital to securing American-style consumer affluence for the German people. In this light, Tooze argues that the view that the regime faced a " guns or butter" contrast is mistaken. While it is true that resources were diverted from civilian consumption to military production, Tooze explains that at a strategic level "guns were ultimately viewed as a means to obtaining more butter". [162] I stress Aufbau’s pivotal role in guiding National Socialists and White émigrés in a joint anti-Entente, anti-Weimar Republic, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-Semitic struggle. While National Socialism developed largely in the framework of the völkisch movement, White émigré Aufbau members significantly influenced Hitler’s political, military, and ideological views. Aufbau shaped early National Socialist strategies for combating both the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union. The conspiratorial organization under Scheubner-Richter, who served as Hitler’s close counselor and foreign policy advisor, sought to form an international alliance headed by nationalist and even National Socialist Germans and Russians (actually Russians, Ukrainians, and Baltic peoples) against the Entente, the Weimar Republic, and “Jewish Bolshevism.” Aufbau goaded a doomed putsch against the Weimar Republic under Hitler and Ludendorff. Finally, Aufbau warned the early National Socialist movement that “Jewish Bolshevism” posed an apocalyptic danger that threatened to engulf Germany, Europe, and even the entire world. Finally, I thank my father John and my mother Carolyn for their editing advice and emotional support. While I tend more towards Nolte’s views than those of Goldhagen, I defend a middle position between Goldhagen’s German-specific explanation of National Socialism’s murderous development and Nolte’s Bolshevik-centered analysis of National Socialism’s crimes. National Socialism had both German and Russian roots. The National Socialist movement developed primarily as a synthesis of radical right German and Russian movements and ideas. National Socialism arose out of a radical right post-World War Ⅰ Munich milieu of vengeful völkisch Germans and rancorous White émigrés. Several of the latter despised Bolshevism and yet admired the determination of its leaders as well as its practices of subversion followed by strict centralization, thorough militarization, and the ruthless elimination of political enemies. The Russian Roots of Nazism - White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 - by Michael Kellogg

Prior to the Nazi ascension to power, Hitler often blamed moral degradation on Rassenschande ("racial defilement"), a way to assure his followers of his continuing antisemitism, which had been toned down for popular consumption. [117] Prior to the induction of the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935 by the Nazis, many German nationalists such as Roland Freisler strongly supported laws to ban Rassenschande between Aryans and Jews as racial treason. [117] Even before the laws were officially passed, the Nazis banned sexual relations and marriages between party members and Jews. [118] Party members found guilty of Rassenschande were severely punished; some party members were even sentenced to death. [119] As I demonstrated in a recent study of the Kremlin’s relationship with Russian fascists, these linkages made possible a bold experiment to create a pro-Putin neo-Nazi movement.

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Mr. Putin alluded to that history in a speech on May 9 for the Russian holiday commemorating victory over Nazi Germany. “You are fighting for our motherland so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II,” he said to a parade of thousands of Russian soldiers. “So that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis.” The origins of this relationship date to the late 1990s, when Russia was shaken by a wave of racist violence committed by neo-Nazi skinhead gangs. After Putin’s accession to the presidency in 2000, his regime exploited this development in two ways. Moving Together, a pro-Putin youth organisation notorious for its campaign against postmodernist literature, made the first move by reaching out to OB88, the most powerful skinhead gang in Russia.

In 1929, Hitler gave a speech to a group of Nazi leaders and simplified 'socialism' to mean, "Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism." [36] What has received less coverage is the Putin regime’s own record of collaboration with far-right extremists. Even as Russian diplomats condemned “fascists” in the Baltic states and Kremlin propagandists railed against imaginary “Ukronazis” in power in Kyiv, the Russian state was cultivating its own homegrown Nazis. The roots of neo-Nazism in Putin’s Russia Hitler’s most important individual contribution to the theory and practice of Nazism was his deep understanding of mass psychology and mass propaganda. He stressed the fact that all propaganda must hold its intellectual level at the capacity of the least intelligent of those at whom it is directed and that its truthfulness is much less important than its success. According to Hitler:But they could not ignore the arrest on murder charges of Nikita Tikhonov, an ex-skinhead and cofounder of RO. Tikhonov was the leader of BORN (“Fighting Organisation of Russian Nationalists”), a terrorist group that committed a string of murders of public figures and antifa militants. Hitler expressed opposition to capitalism, regarding it as having Jewish origins and accusing capitalism of holding nations ransom to the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class. [65] He also expressed opposition to communism and egalitarian forms of socialism, arguing that inequality and hierarchy are beneficial to the nation. [66] He believed that communism was invented by the Jews to weaken nations by promoting class struggle. [67] After his rise to power, Hitler took a pragmatic position on economics, accepting private property and allowing capitalist private enterprises to exist so long as they adhered to the goals of the Nazi state, but not tolerating enterprises that he saw as being opposed to the national interest. [51] Others have served the Kremlin as “ monitors” who applaud the conduct of fraudulent elections. Meanwhile, Rinaldo Nazzaro, an American, has been quietly running The Base, the international neo-Nazi terrorist organisation, from an apartment in St Petersburg. Nazi anthropologists attempted to scientifically prove the historical admixture of the Slavs who lived further East and leading Nazi racial theorist Hans Günther regarded the Slavs as being primarily Nordic centuries ago but he believed that they had mixed with non-Nordic types over time. [192] Exceptions were made for a small percentage of Slavs who the Nazis saw as descended from German settlers and therefore fit to be Germanised and considered part of the Aryan master race. [193] Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need for a master". [194] Himmler classified Slavs as "bestial untermenschen" and Jews as the "decisive leader of the Untermenschen". [195] These ideas were fervently advocated through Nazi propaganda, which had a massive impact on the indoctrination of the German population. " Der Untermenschen", a racist brochure published by the SS in 1942, has been regarded as one of the most infamous pieces of Nazi anti-Slavic propaganda. [196] [197] Oswald Spengler, a German cultural philosopher, was a major influence on Nazism, although after 1933 he became alienated from Nazism and was later condemned by the Nazis for criticising Adolf Hitler. [131] Spengler's conception of national socialism and a number of his political views were shared by the Nazis and the Conservative Revolutionary movement. [132] Spengler's views were also popular amongst Italian Fascists, including Benito Mussolini. [133]