Germany and the Germans - Essay Example

This sense of commonality of the people fit the objectives for Hitler and the Third Reich. In speeches, they appealed to the betterment and welfare of the people seeking to bring back Volkish culture. Germans wanted a clearly defined distinction between Germans and the other peoples of Europe. This discussion analyzes the influence of nationalist thought in the shaping of Nazi policies beginning with a historical definition of the term ‘Volk’ and the reasons for its integration into German society of the 1800’s.

It will also address how the Nazi party utilized these precepts as an idealistic tool, why they established these concepts and how effective this tactic was in congregating the people. The ideas intended to unify a nation advanced by nationalist philosophies evolved for over a century into a national impression of superiority. The Third Reich did not expose the German people to beliefs to which they were not originally pre-disposed. The regime had to be supported by the German people for it to have experienced the heights of popularity that it achieved during the 1930’s and this support came from a nationalistic narcissism.

Nazi ideology was not an overnight event. It had evolved for over a century with a beginning in Volkish beliefs. . This draw to unify inspired a considerable interest in the German people’s common culture, myths, legends and folksongs. “This idea found many adherents, reacting to both the Napoleonic conquest of Germany from 1806 to 1811 and the rationalism and scientific advances of the English and the French later in the century” (Iggers 1988). Though still not politically united, Germans were learning to take pride in their cultural accomplishments.

There was, unfortunately, a dark aspect to unification. The tendency for cultural nationalism produced cultural superiority and intolerance, which, when combined with racism, was a powerful political force of nineteenth-century Europe. Volkish writers, in-step with the people of the mid to late 1800’s Germany were becoming increasingly intolerant of cultures other than their own. In the mid-1800’s, the term ‘semitic’ became widely adopted by as a result of German philologist Wilhelm Marr’s foundation of the Anti-Semitic League.

In 1879, he determined the Hebrew language was ‘semitic’ and not Indo-European (Wegner 2002 p. 2) “The mysticalized, Volkish linguistic foundation for the Aryan myth was a popular concept in the mid-1800s that both Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, among others, had argued vociferously for, to overflowing university classrooms and in their voluminous writings” (Wegner 2002 pp. 8-9). This linguistic difference provided a means for those of nationalist thought to further identify themselves as different from and superior to anyone of Jewish descent well before the Nazis came to power.

It was widely held that the true German spirit was rooted in nature. The people perceived the rural culture