The 'intellectual' contents of National Socialism (I)

The theory behind the evil

This is the first excerpt from a research chapter examining the intellectual strands that combined to form the basis of National Socialism. National Socialism (Nazism) emerged in a particular context, both in terms of material causes, but also - and in an often underexplored way - intellectual causes. The essay attempts, therefore, to explain how the intellectual sources of Nazism emerged and were, in places, perverted to justify the Nazi regime: first, the intellectual framework of Michael Freeden’s morphological approach to ideology is explained; subsequently, the components of Nazism are established, specifically: Nietzschean philosophy; Schmitt’s concept of the political; the ideology of fascism; and the emergence of Teutomania.

This essay shall seek to identify and explain the relationship between the intellectual contents of National Socialism. I shall do this by employing the terminology of Michael Freeden’s ideological morphology (1998) to explain the interrelated nature of the concepts that occupy the conceptual core of National Socialism. As I argue, these concepts can be identified as: Nietzschean philosophical concepts of the “will to power” and the struggle it produces (1977), and the Übermensch theory (2005); Carl Schmitt’s theory of the ‘concept of the political’ as a method of understanding both the emergence of mass political bodies, and his theory of sovereignty as proving the significance of the leader figure (2007; 2005); ‘fascism’ understood as a synthesising concept that reconciled the otherwise contradictory doctrines of Schmitt’s concept of the political and Nietzsche’s will to power thesis (Howse, 1998; Gottfried: 2016); and finally, ‘Teutomania’, a racially-defined interpretation of the polysemic signifiers of “the people” and “the State” referred to in fascist thought (Burleigh and Wipperman, 1991).

(L-R) Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and Rudolf Hess

I wish to clarify two points, the significance of which shall become more obvious throughout the essay: the first is that, despite employing language of ideological analysis, I am not analysing National Socialism as an ideology, but instead as a system of thought which drew its content from the objects of intellectuals. In doing so, it becomes pertinent to recognise that objects of intellectual content can be understood, as Richard Shorten has detailed, either as “affinities” or “influences”, as this allows us to accept that National Socialism may have intentionally misrepresented the objects it lays claim to (2012: 77-78).

The second point to clarify is that, despite its presence in the name ‘National Socialism’, “socialism” as a concept has been left deliberately absent from the above list of intellectual contents. This is because, as the section on fascism shall show, ‘fascism’ has been understood to be merely a reinterpreted “socialism” that applies the struggle between monolithic, antagonistic camps (bourgeoisie and proletariat) to the national arena (bourgeois nations and proletarian nations) (Carston, 1967).

Finally, I shall conclude that it was the alignment of these four concepts that created a unique conception of politics in the movement known as National Socialism, especially in the hermeneutical inter-definition each concept played on the others. Furthermore, with each concept, some misrepresentation – deliberate or accidental – was necessary to align otherwise incompatible concepts.

Section One - The Problem of Nietzsche