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List of Nazi ideologues

List of Nazi ideologues


This is a list of people whose ideas became part of Nazi ideology. The ideas, writings, and speeches of these thinkers
were incorporated into what became Nazism, including antisemitism, eugenics, racial hygiene, the concept of the
master race, and lebensraum. The list includes people whose ideas were incorporated, even if they did not live in the
Nazi era.

Philosophers and sociologists


Alfred Baeumler (18871968), German philosopher in Nazi Germany. He was a leading interpreter of Friedrich
Nietzsche's philosophy as legitimizing Nazism. Thomas Mann read Baeumler's work on Nietzsche in the early
1930s, and characterized passages of it as "Hitler prophecy."[1]
Alfred Rosenberg (18931946), considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including the
racial policy of Nazi Germany, antisemitism, Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition
to degenerate art. He is also known for his rejection of Christianity, while playing a role in the development of
Positive Christianity. At Nuremberg he was tried, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging as a war
criminal.[2]
Martin Heidegger (18891976), German philosopher who was politically involved with National Socialism. The
relations between Martin Heidegger and Nazism remain controversial. He was a member of the Nazi party, he
joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 three weeks after being appointed rector of the University of Freiburg.
Heidegger resigned the rectorship one year later, in April 1934, but remained a member of the NSDAP until the
end of World War II. His first act as rector was to eliminate all democratic structures, including those that had
elected him rector. There were book burnings on his campus, though he successfully stopped some of them. There
was also student violence. [3]
Herman Schmalenbach (18851950), who refined the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Bund.[4]
Lothrop Stoddard (18831950), American political theorist, historian, eugenicist, and anti-immigration advocate
who wrote a number of prominent books on scientific racism. He developed the concept of the untermensch.

Scientists and physicians


Hans Friedrich Karl Gnther (18911968), German race researcher and eugenicist in the Weimar Republic and
the Third Reich, also known as "Rassengnther" (Race Gnther) or "Rassenpapst" (Race Pope). He is considered
to be a major influence on National Socialist racialist thought, and was a member of the Nazi party.[5]
Alfred Ploetz (18601940), German physician, biologist, and eugenicist who introduced the concept of racial
hygiene in Germany. He was a member of the Nazi party.[6] His brother Ernst Rdin, also a committed National
Socialist, praised him in 1938 as a man who "by his meritorious services has helped to set up our Nazi
ideology."[7]
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (18961969), German human biologist and eugenicist primarily concerned with
racial hygiene and twin research.

Theologians and spiritual leaders


Ludwig Mller (1883-1945), was a theologian and church leader who played a major role in the Nazi party's
attempt to misdirect the Protestant, mainly Lutheran churches of Germany toward a basis in Aryan ideology and
away from its Jewish origins. He had a leading part in the Nazi, Gleichschaltung, the plan to unite the previously
independent Protestant churches into a single Church of the New Order, which is part of longer history of an
attempt to unify the churches under the German Evangelical Church, see Reichskirche. [8] Withholding baptism
from non-Aryans was enforced in most churches during the Nazi period, though not without some protest.

List of Nazi ideologues


Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (18811962), German Indologist and religious studies writer. He was the founder of the
German Faith Movement.[9]

Others
Richard Walther Darr (18951953), one of the leading Nazi blood and soil ideologists. He served as Reich
Minister of Food and Agriculture from 1933 to 1942.
Anton Drexler (18841942), German Nazi political leader of the 1920s. He joined the Fatherland Party during
World War I. He was a poet and a member of the vlkisch agitators who, together with journalist Karl Harrer,
founded the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich with Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart in 1919.
Lanz von Liebenfels (18741954), monk and theologian who influenced Nazi ideology by inventing a blend of
theology and biology called theozoology.
Dietrich Eckart (18681923), who developed the ideology of a "genius higher human", based on writings by Lanz
von Liebenfels. He was a member of the Nazi party.[10][11]
Gottfried Feder (18831941), economist and one of the early key members of the Nazi party. He was their
economic theoretician. It was his lecture in 1919 that drew Hitler into the party.[12][13]
Gregor Strasser (18921934) Involved in the Kapp Putsch he formed his own vlkischer Wehrverband ("popular
defense union") which he merged into the NSDAP in 1921. Initially a loyal supporter of Adolf Hitler, he took part
in the Beer Hall Putsch and held a number of high positions in the Nazi Party. Soon however, Strasser became a
strong advocate of the socialist wing of the party, arguing that the national revolution should also include strong
action to tackle poverty and should seek to build working class support.
Julius Streicher (18851946), the founder and publisher of Der Strmer newspaper, which became a central
element of the Nazi propaganda machine. His portrayal of Jews as subhuman and evil played a critical role in the
dehumanization and marginalization of the Jewish minority in the eyes of common Germans creating the
necessary conditions for the later perpetration of the Holocaust. He was a member of the Nazi party.[14]

Intellectuals indirectly associated with Nazism


Some writers came before the Nazi era and their writings were (sometimes falsely) incorporated into Nazi ideology:
Madame Blavatsky (18311891), founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society. Guido von List took up
some of Blavatsky's racial theories, and mixed them with nationalism to create Ariosophy, a precursor of Nazi
ideology. Ariosophy emphasized intellectual expositions of racial evolution. The Thule Society was one of
several German occult groups drawing on Ariosophy to preach Aryan supremacy. It provides a direct link
between occult racial theories and the racial ideology of Hitler and the emerging Nazi party.[15]
Emile Burnouf (18211907) was a racialist whose ideas influenced the development of theosophy and
Aryanism.[16]
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (18551927) was a British-born author of books on political philosophy, and
natural science. His two-volume book Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Foundations of the 19th.
Century) (1899) became a manual for Nazi racial philosophy including the concept of the master race.[17]
Bernhard Frster (18431889), German antisemite teacher who wrote on the Jewish question, where he
characterizes Jews as constituting a "parasite on the German body".[18]
Arthur de Gobineau (18161882) was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who developed the racialist
theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (18531855). De
Gobineau is credited as being the father of modern racial demography.[19]
Madison Grant (18651937), American lawyer, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist.
As a eugenicist, Grant was responsible for one of the most widely read works of scientific racism, and played an
active role in crafting strong immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.[20][21]

List of Nazi ideologues


Paul de Lagarde (18271891) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. His Deutsche Schriften (18781881)
became a nationalist text.[22]
Guido Karl Anton List (18481919), his concept of renouncing Christianity and returning to the paganism of the
ancient Europeans found supporters within the Nazi party. He created Ariosophy, a precursor of Nazi ideology.
Martin Luther (14831546), German theologian who wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543.[23] He argued
that the Jews were "devil's children".[24] He wrote that the synagogue was a "defiled bride ... an incorrigible
whore and an evil slut".[25] and Jews were full of the "devil's feces... which they wallow in like swine."[26] He
advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing
Jews' property and money, smashing up their homes, and ensuring that these "poisonous envenomed worms" be
forced into labor or expelled "for all time."[27] He also seemed to sanction their murder,[28] writing "We are at
fault in not slaying them."[29] His statements that Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned,
money confiscated and liberty curtailed were revived and used in propaganda by the Nazis in 19331945.[30]
Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic. Johannes
Wallmann argues that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries, and
that there is no continuity between Luther's thought and Nazi ideology.[31]
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (18801936), German historian and philosopher. He is best known for his
book The Decline of the West and the cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations. He wrote extensively
throughout World War I and the interwar period, and supported German hegemony in Europe. The National
Socialists held Spengler as an intellectual precursor but he was ostracized after 1933 for his pessimism about
Germany and Europe's future, and his refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial superiority.
Adolf Stoecker (18351909), court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm and an antisemitic German theologian who
founded one of the first antisemitic political parties in Germany, the Christian Social Party. He proposed severely
limiting the civil rights of Jews in Germany. In September 1879 he delivered a speech entitled "What we demand
of modern Jewry", in which he spelled out several demands of German Jews.[32]
Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900), German philosopher who developed the concept of bermensch.[33] The Nazi
regime's ideas of the German superman were similar to those expressed by Nietzsche.[34]

References
[1] Thomas Mann und Alfred Baeumler, Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1989, p. 185
[2] Richard J. Evans (2004). The Coming of the Third Reich (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=unXu2Ygk2AgC& pg=PA178& dq=This+ was+
intended+ to+ provide+ the+ Nazi+ Party+ with+ a+ major+ work+ of+ theory). London: Penguin Books. pp.178179. ISBN0-141-00975-6.
. "This was intended to provide the Nazi Party with a major work of theory. The book had sold over a million copies by 1945 and some of its
ideas were not without influence."
[3] Hannah Arendt/Martin Heidegger - E Ettinger - Yale University Press - 1995 - ISBN 0300072546 (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?hl=en&
lr=& id=1UaRXIFHULcC& oi=fnd& pg=PR9& dq="Martin+ Heidegger"+ Nazi& ots=Prehnw5sKp&
sig=tRwa3wfIPz74bmhBs3Aw08ifYL0)
[4] Herman Schmalenbach on Society and Experience (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=OSl-WCUm3o0C& pg=PA14& dq=his+ ideas+ were+
incorporated+ into+ nazi+ philosophy). University of Chicago Press. 1977. ISBN0226738655. . "Some of the terms that he had earlier refined
such as Gemeinschaft and Bund, were incorporated into the Nazi ideology. ..."
[5] Christopher Hale. Himmler's Crusade: the True Story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition into Tibet Bantam, 2004. ISBN 978-0553814453
[6] "Die Tchtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen", 1893, p. 141, 142. cited by Massimo Ferari Zumbini: The roots of evil.
Grnderjahre des Antisemitismus: Von der Bismarckzeit zu Hitler, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 2003, ISBN 3-465-03222-5, p.406
[7] Ernst Ruedin: "Honor of Prof. Dr. Alfred Ploetz", in ARGB, Bd 32 / S.473-474, 1938, p.474
[8] Kenneth Barnes, "Nazism, Liberalism and Christianity", University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky 1991.
[9] Carl G. Jung (1970); Collected Works, Volume 10; Routledge and Kegan Paul, London; ISBN 0 7100 1640 9; p 190-191.
[10] "Dietrich Eckart" (http:/ / www. jewishvirtuallibrary. org/ jsource/ biography/ Eckart. html). Jewish Virtual Library. . Retrieved 2009-01-04.
"Later on, he developed an ideology of a 'genius higher human,' based on earlier writings by Lanz von Liebenfels; he saw himself in the
tradition of Arthur Schopenhauer and Angelus Silesius, and also became fascinated by Mayan beliefs, but never had much sympathy for the
scientific method. Eckart also loved and strongly identified with Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt."
[11] Nazi Ideology: Some Unfinished Business - BM Lane - Central European History, 1974 - jstor.org (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ pss/ 4545691)

List of Nazi ideologues


[12] Munich 1923, John Dornberg, Harper & Row, New York, 1982. pg 344
[13] Henry Friedlander (1977). The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide. "Gottfried Feder gave technocratic ideology a racist twist.
... arouses interest because he helped to shape Nazi ideology during the early 1920's. ..."
[14] The Number One Nazi Jew-baiter: A Political Biography of Julius Streicher, Hitler's Chief Anti- WP Varga - 1981 - Carlton Press
[15] Jackson J. Spielvogel (1986). "Hitler's Racial Ideology: Content and Occult Sources." (http:/ / motlc. wiesenthal. com/ site/ pp.
asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG& b=395043). Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 3. . Retrieved 2007-08-22.
[16] DN BLMLERNN TARHES - Dr. Jacques WAARDENBURG - 2004/1 (281-295 s.) (http:/ / 66. 102. 1. 104/ scholar?hl=en& lr=&
q=cache:ly6V5prfMDUJ:sbe. erciyes. edu. tr/ dergi/ sayi_16/ 16_adibelli. pdf?ref=SaglikAlani. Com+ "Emile+ Burnouf"+ Nazi)
[17] Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1959, p.105 of 1985 Bookclub Associates Edition.
[18] Friedrich Nietzsche - Antisemit oder Judenfreund? - T Hanke - 2003 - GRIN Verlag (http:/ / www. grin. com/ e-book/ 34198/
friedrich-nietzsche-antisemit-oder-judenfreund)
[19] Essai sur lingalit des races humaines - A de Gobineau, H Juin - 1940 - uqac.ca. (http:/ / 66. 102. 1. 104/ scholar?hl=en& lr=&
q=cache:KrHRnpW8xgwJ:www. uqac. ca/ zone30/ Classiques_des_sciences_sociales/ classiques/ gobineau/ essai_inegalite_races/
essai_inegalite_races_1. pdf+ "Arthur+ de+ Gobineau"+ nazi)
[20] The New Race Consciousness: Race, Nation, and Empire in American Culture, 1910-1925 Matthew Pratt Journal of Word History
Volume 10, Number, Fall 1999 pp.307-352. (http:/ / muse. jhu. edu/ journals/ journal_of_world_history/ toc/ jwh10. 2. html)
[21] Norman Solkoff (2001). Beginnings, Mass Murder, and Aftermath of the Holocaust (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=sCJnAAAAMAAJ&
q). University Press of America. ISBN0761820280. . "The book by the American lawyer Madison Grant ... was turned on its head by Nazi
ideology. ..."
[22] Stern, Fritz The Politics of Cultural Despair: a study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, 1961 (see Chapter I, "Paul de Lagarde and a
Germanic Religion").
[23] Michael, Robert. Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 110.
[24] Martin Luther (1543). [[On the Jews and their Lies (http:/ / www. preteristarchive. com/ Books/ 1543_luther_jews. html)]]. . "Our Lord also
calls them a "brood of vipers"; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: "If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did....
You are of your father the devil. It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to
hear this today."
[25] Michael, Robert. Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 112.
[26] Obermann, Heiko. Luthers Werke. Erlangen 1854, 32:282, 298, in Grisar, Hartmann. Luther. St. Louis 1915, 4:286 and 5:406, cited in
Michael, Robert. Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 113.
[27] Luther, Martin. "On the Jews and Their Lies", Luthers Werke. 47:268-271.
[28] Michael, Robert. "Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews", Encounter, 46 (Autumn 1985) No.4:343.
[29] Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, cited in Michael, Robert. "Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews", Encounter 46 (Autumn 1985)
No. 4:343-344.
[30] McKim, Donald K. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 58; Berenbaum,
Michael. "Anti-Semitism", Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed January 2, 2007. For Luther's own words, see Luther, Martin. "On the Jews
and Their Lies", tr. Martin H. Bertram, in Sherman, Franklin. (ed.) Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, 47:26872.
[31] Johannes Wallmann, "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th century", Lutheran
Quarterly, n.s. 1 (Spring 1987) 1:72-97.
[32] Journal of Church and State - JC Fout - Adolf Stoecker Antisemitism 1975. (http:/ / scholar. google. com/ scholar?hl=en& lr=&
q=info:MC2YmJt4Y3gJ:scholar. google. com/ & output=viewport& pg=1)
[33] The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany: 1890 -1990 - SE Aschheim - 1992 - University of California Press - ISBN 0520085558 (http:/ / books.
google. com/ books?hl=en& lr=& id=coGtV0CgjIIC& oi=fnd& pg=PP11& dq="Nietzsche"+ Nazi& ots=j7gB2ryHNM&
sig=bgeJuyDYkUke_203uUgmpesh6Rw#PPP1,M1)
[34] The Roots of Evil (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=29u-vt_KgGEC& pg=PA111& dq=Friedrich+ Nietzsche+ "nazi+ ideology"). Cambridge
University Press. 1992. ISBN0521422140. . "Many Nazi beliefs and ideals seem to be highly similar to those expressed by Nietzsche."

Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors


List of Nazi ideologues Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488671552 Contributors: 84.203.39.11a, Alan Liefting, Alansohn, Amwestover, B, BillMasen, Biruitorul, Chatter,
ChildofMidnight, Chris the speller, Chrisch, Colonies Chris, Discospinster, Dougweller, Drmies, Frankie0607, GCarty, Gilliam, Gnfnrf, Harpakhrad11, Hrafn, Irredeemableblogger, Jaque
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