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

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In the conclusion of his work, Nolte provocatively asserts that by holding the Jews responsible for the menace of Bolshevism, Hitler and Reichsführer SS (State Leader SS) Heinrich Himmler “carried the original Bolshevik concept of destruction to a new dimension.” Nolte further maintains: “The Gulag Archipelago is more original than Auschwitz and...a causal nexus exists between them.” 25 Nolte’s views contain merit in that National Socialists fiercely resisted Bolshevism at the same time that it awed them. Nolte’s arguments, however, can lead one to consider National Socialism’s Final Solution as a mere reaction to foreign developments. For Russia, it was a perfect opportunity,” Dr. Doroshenko said. “It was like, ‘We’ve been smearing them for so long and they’re still there, they’re still fighting, so we can justify our tactics of destroying Mariupol because we need to destroy these Nazis.’” Russian authorities only admitted to possessing files looted from Germany and declassified them in 1991 after the Soviet Union had collapsed. Historians were allowed to investigate the huge archival collection at the Center for the Preservation of Historical-Documentary Collections, which had become part of the Russian State Military Archives by the time I examined materials there in 1999–2001. 35 I was temporarily denied access to the former Center in March 2001, likely as part of the chilled American–Russian relations that arose after the February 2001 arrest of the FBI operative Robert Hanssen as a double agent for both the Soviets and the Russians. 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 Historians should discard the notion of a linear German Sonderweg (special path) that led directly to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The American scholar Daniel Goldhagen in particular presents an overly simplistic version of the Sonderweg thesis in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners. He asserts, “The Holocaust was a sui generis event that has a historically specific explanation,” notably “enabling conditions created by the long-incubating, pervasive, virulent, racist, eliminationist antisemitism of German culture.” Instead of focusing solely on alleged German peculiarities in the vein of Goldhagen, historians should understand the genesis and development of National Socialism in the context of cross-cultural interaction between defeated groups from World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution: alienated völkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans and vengeful White émigrés. While the National Socialist movement largely developed in a völkisch framework, many White émigrés made crucial political, military, financial, and ideological contributions to National Socialism.

Further information: Women in Nazi Germany Obligations of Polish workers in Germany, warning them of the death penalty for any sexual relations between Germans and Poles Nazism, totalitarian movement led by Adolf Hitler as head of the Nazi Party in Germany. In its intense nationalism, mass appeal, and dictatorial rule, Nazism shared many elements with Italian fascism. However, Nazism was far more extreme both in its ideas and in its practice. In almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and atheoretical movement, emphasizing the will of the charismatic dictator as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation, as well as a vision of annihilation of all enemies of the Aryan Volk as the one and only goal of Nazi policy. The roots of NazismFormer Tsentr khraneniia istoriko-dokumentalnych kollektsii (Center for the Preservation of Historical-Documentary Collections, now part of RGVA, Moscow). Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors ... But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms. [33] When asked in an interview on 27 January 1934 whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", Hitler claimed that Nazism was not exclusively for any class and he indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps" by stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism." [37]

The historical roots of Nazism are to be found in various elements of European political culture which were in circulation in the intellectual capitals of the continent, what Joachim Fest called the "scrapheap of ideas" prevalent at the time. [75] [76] In Hitler and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, historian Martin Broszat points out that A relatively detailed work examining White émigré influences on National Socialism only appeared in 1998 with the publication of Johannes Baur’s Die russische Kolonie in München 1900–1945: Deutsch–russische Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert ( The Russian Colony in Munich 1900–1945: German–Russian Relations in the Twentieth Century). Baur asserts that White émigrés influenced Hitler’s conception of the Bolshevik Revolution. Moreover, the “anti-Semitic prophets of the emigration” helped to form National Socialist ideology by combining extreme anti-Bolshevism with anti-Semitism. These White émigrés exhibited the “intention to destroy entire segments of the population and peoples.” Baur nonetheless minimizes the extent of the “interaction between the Munich segment of the Russian monarchical right with the National Socialists.” He maintains that the cooperation between these two groups was limited to a short period of time, with ideological and political differences extant from the beginning. 33 Historians regard the equation of Nazism as "Hitlerism" as too simplistic since the term was used prior to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. In addition, the different ideologies incorporated into Nazism were already well established in certain parts of German society long before World War I. [38] The Nazis were strongly influenced by the post–World War I far-right in Germany, which held common beliefs such as anti-Marxism, anti-liberalism and antisemitism, along with nationalism, contempt for the Treaty of Versailles and condemnation of the Weimar Republic for signing the armistice in November 1918 which later led it to sign the Treaty of Versailles. [39] A major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. [39] Initially, the post–World War I German far-right was dominated by monarchists, but the younger generation, which was associated with völkisch nationalism, was more radical and it did not express any emphasis on the restoration of the German monarchy. [40] This younger generation desired to dismantle the Weimar Republic and create a new radical and strong state based upon a martial ruling ethic that could revive the "Spirit of 1914" which was associated with German national unity ( Volksgemeinschaft). [40] From 1928 onward, the Nazi Party's growth into a large national political movement was dependent on middle class support, and on the public perception that it "promised to side with the middle classes and to confront the economic and political power of the working class." [214] The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism. [215] Although the Nazis continued to make appeals to "the German worker", historian Timothy Mason concludes that "Hitler had nothing but slogans to offer the working class." [216] Historians Conan Fischer and Detlef Mühlberger argue that while the Nazis were primarily rooted in the lower middle class, they were able to appeal to all classes in society and that while workers were generally underrepresented, they were still a substantial source of support for the Nazis. [217] [218] H.L. Ansbacher argues that the working-class soldiers had the most faith in Hitler out of any occupational group in Germany. [219]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. Adolf Hitler himself along with other members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) were greatly influenced by several 19th- and early 20th-century thinkers and proponents of philosophical, onto-epistemic, and theoretical perspectives on ecological anthropology, scientific racism, holistic science, and organicism regarding the constitution of complex systems and theorization of organic-racial societies. [77] [78] [79] [80] In particular, one of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the 19th-century German nationalist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose works had served as an inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi Party members, and whose ideas were implemented among the philosophical and ideological foundations of Nazi-oriented Völkisch nationalism. [78] While Aufbau clearly played a formative role in shaping early anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic National Socialist ideology, the historian Walter Laqueur has minimized the heritage that Aufbau left to National Socialism after 1923. In his work Russia and Germany, Laqueur asserts that National Socialism did not need White émigré support after it had become a mass movement in the course of the 1920s. While National Socialist–White émigré collaboration did decrease markedly in the aftermath of the failed Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch of November 1923, Aufbau nonetheless bequeathed a powerful political, financial, military, and ideological legacy to National Socialism. National Socialism was not primarily an ideological and programmatic, but a charismatic movement, whose ideology was incorporated in the Führer, Hitler, and which would have lost all its power to integrate without him. ... [T]he abstract, utopian and vague National Socialistic ideology only achieved what reality and certainty it had through the medium of Hitler.

Part of what makes accusations of Nazism so useful to Russian propagandists is that Ukraine’s past is entangled with Nazi Germany. MICHAEL KELLOGG is an independent researcher and a past recipient of the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant. 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]The overall cohesion of this book is aided by the fortunate circumstance that a surprisingly stable core group of White émigré adventurers repeatedly conspired with völkisch German colleagues, including National Socialists, in various anti-Bolshevik and anti-Weimar Republic schemes from 1918 to 1923. Moreover, with the notable exceptions of Scheubner-Richter, who was killed in 1923, and Vinberg, who moved to Paris the same year, this central group of Aufbau White émigrés, including Biskupskii, Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Shabelskii-Bork, Rosenberg, and others who will be introduced below, went on to serve the National Socialist cause after Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933. The Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schutzstaffel (SS) functioned as the paramilitary organisations of the Nazi Party. Using the SS for the task, Hitler purged the party's more socially and economically radical factions in the mid-1934 Night of the Long Knives, including the leadership of the SA. After the death of President Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, political power was concentrated in Hitler's hands and he became Germany's head of state as well as the head of the government, with the title of Führer und Reichskanzler, meaning "leader and Chancellor of Germany" (see also here). From that point, Hitler was effectively the dictator of Nazi Germany – also known as the Third Reich – under which Jews, political opponents and other "undesirable" elements were marginalised, imprisoned or murdered. During World War II, many millions of people—including around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe—were eventually exterminated in a genocide which became known as the Holocaust. Following Germany's defeat in World War II and the discovery of the full extent of the Holocaust, Nazi ideology became universally disgraced. It is widely regarded as immoral and evil, with only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, describing themselves as followers of National Socialism.