Was Nazism Conservative and Reactionary?

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Clarissa

December 28, 2013

Anthony Beevor says that Spanish fascism differed from Nazism “in its profoundly conservative nature” and in being “fundamentally reactionary.”

Unless by “conservative and reactionary” Beevor means only and exclusively “religious”, then I have no idea what he is saying. Hitler came up with the 4 Ks that were supposed to define a woman’s role in society: Kinder, Kuche (sorry, there needs to be an um-laut to preserve the meaning), Kirche and whatever is the German for dresses. How do you get any more conservative and reactionary than this?

Or do British historians still hold on to the geriatric canard about the modernist impulse at the core of the Soviet Communism and German Nazism?

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7 responses to “Was Nazism Conservative and Reactionary?”

cliff arroyo

December 28, 2013

“whatever is the German for dresses”

Kleider (though technically it’s ‘clothes’)

According to the grandfather of all knowledge (aka wikipedia) the nazis didn’t actually use the KKK(K) expression which predated them by decades. But they did have a view of women that wasn’t that far aay from traditional conservative (not necessariy reactionary) attitudes.

I think what’s going on is that many British academics are so alienated from their own history and culture (like so many in western europe) that any identification whatsoever with a mainstream Christian church seems hopelessly conservative and reactionary. The nazis didn’t have any official ties with a given branch of christianity so they’re not conservative and reactionary (though IIRC many described themselves as Gottglauber – believers in God).

Also bear in mind the centuries old enmity between Britain and Spain (and the looooong tradition of belitting and ignoring Spanish achievements – I once had a professor who called it ‘writing the Spanish out of history’)

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 28, 2013
  
  ” The nazis didn’t have any official ties with a given branch of christianity so they’re not conservative and reactionary (though IIRC many described themselves as Gottglauber – believers in God).”
  
  – I didn’t want to suspect this historian of this really simplistic approach, but this is the only explanation for what he is saying.
  
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2. Patrick Allen Foster
  
  December 30, 2013
  
  “Also bear in mind the centuries old enmity between Britain and Spain (and the looooong tradition of belitting and ignoring Spanish achievements…”
  
  Antony Beevor is a British historian, but I don’t think it’s fair to lump him in with the tradition you identify. His history of the Spanish Civil War is one of the best English-language one-volume introductions to that subject around (imho), and he devotes some space there to detailing (1) how the British Royal Navy effectively helped the Nationalists (due in no small part to the pro-Nationalist and anti-socialist leanings of the Royal Navy officer corps) and (2) how British diplomacy vis-a-vis the embattled legitimate government was clumsy at best and malicious at worst.
  
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musteryou

December 28, 2013

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J. Otto Pohl

December 29, 2013

Regarding the last sentence it is not just British historians that claim that Naziism had a modernist impulse. There are also US, German, and Israeli historians who make this argument. I would say that the central position of race and exterminationist anti-semitism also differentiate German National Socialism from Franco’s Spain.

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Patrick Allen Foster

December 30, 2013

The Third Reich believed that they were helping to establish a New World Order, based on crackpot 20th Century racial science. To my knowledge, Franco’s regime never made any grandiose claims of this character. That is probably the heart of what Beevor is driving at.

How do you get any more conservative and reactionary than this?

In a word: monarchism. Franco laid the groundwork for restoring the Bourbon-Hapsburg dynasty in Spain (after his death); Hitler and his cabal went to great efforts to stomp out any movement to restore the Hohenzollern monarchy to rule in Germany.

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Patrick Allen Foster

December 30, 2013

Another thought: the word “fundamentally” may be doing a lot of work in the operative quote: the argument may be, e.g., that the reactionary, return-Spain-to-its-feudal roots mishmash was more central to Francoism than the reactionary aspects of Nazism were to the German regime.

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