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"'National' and 'Social' are two identical conceptions. It was only the Jew who succeeded, through falsifying the social idea and turning it into Marxism, not only in divorcing the social idea from the national, but in actually representing them as utterly contradictory. That aim he has in fact achieved. At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it 'National Socialist.' We said to ourselves that to be 'national' means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly to be 'social' means so to build up the state and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it."
 
- Adolf Hitler, speech of April 12th, 1922 in Munich.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Nazi (also the cognates Nazism and Neo-Nazism) is a political epithet invented by Konrad Heiden (7 August 1901 – 18 June 1966) during the 1920s as a means of denigrating the NSDAP and National Socialism.[1] Heiden was a journalist and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, whose mother was a Jewess.

 

The word itself derives from the German word for National Socialism: "Nationalsozialismus". It was coined for its negative sound and connection, as the word "sozi" had previously been used to refer to Marxists in Germany, particularly those of the Social Democratic Party of Germany - "Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands". It is also a political pun similar to an Austro-Bavarian word for "simpleton".[2] It was then popularised abroad by various individuals, including Heiden himself, who fled the country after the NSDAP gained power.

 

Usage

The word was and is used almost exclusively by opponents.

 

The NSDAP briefly adopted the word in attempt to give it a more positive sense but soon gave up this effort and generally avoided it while in power.[2] A rare example of its usage by a NSDAP member can be taken from a 1931 work by Joseph Goebbels called The Nazi-Sozi: Questions and Answers for National Socialists.

 

In the Soviet Union, the terms National Socialist and Nazi were said to have been forbidden after 1932, presumably to avoid any taint to the word "socialist". Soviet literature instead referred to fascists.[2]

 

George Lincoln Rockwell reluctantly adopted the use of word in 1959 when he founded the American Nazi Party. He chose to use it for its publicity and shock value.

 

As an example of popular political correctness and political bias compare the usage of the term "Soviet Union" with "Commie Russia", cheap name calling.

 

Despite this, using "Nazi" or "Nazism" instead of "National Socialist" or "National Socialism" is extremely common. For example Wikipedia routinely uses "Nazi" despite not using "Commie".

 

Today the term is widely used as ad hominem against a wide variety of politically incorrect individuals who are not National Socialists.

 

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Konrad Heiden


Konrad Heiden
 

Konrad Heiden, the son of a union organizer and Jewess mother, was born in Munich, Germany, on 7th August 1901. While at the University of Munich he led protests against Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). The historian, Richard Overy, has pointed out: "Heiden was a young socialist student in Munich when he first saw Hitler speak. It was 1923, the year of inflation and political chaos in Germany. Heiden was not impressed by what he saw: a self-centred demagogue at the head of what he calls the army of uproated and disinherited." Heiden later recalled: "In 1923, as the leader of a small democratic organization in the University of Munich, I tried, with all the earnestness of youth, and with complete lack of success, to annihilate Hitler by means of protest parades, mass meetings, and giant posters."

 

 

Konrad Heiden and Hitler

 

After leaving university he became a journalist and worked for Frankfurter Zeitung and the Vossischen Zeitung. He was also a member of the German Social Democrat Party (SDP) and remained an active opponent of Hitler. In 1932 he published History of National Socialism. In the book he claimed that Henry Ford gave money to the NSDAP. In the book he recorded he first time he met Hitler. "He came... in a very decent blue suit and with an extravagantly large bouquet of roses, which he presented to his hostess as he kissed her hand. While he was being introduced, he wore the expression of a public prosecutor at an execution. I remember being struck by his voice when he thanked the lady of the house for tea or cakes, of which, incidentally, he ate an amazing quantity. It was a remarkably emotional voice, and yet it made no impression of conviviality or intimacy but rather of harshness. However, he said hardly anything but sat there in silence for about an hour; apparently he was tired. Not until the hostess was so incautious as to let fall a remark about the Jews, whom she defended in a jesting tone, did he begin to speak and then he spoke without ceasing. After a while he thrust back his chair and stood up, still speaking, or rather yelling, in such a powerful penetrating voice as I have never heard from anyone else. In the next room a child woke up and began to cry. After he had for more than half an hour delivered a quite witty but very one-sided oration on the Jews, he suddenly broke off, went up to his hostess, begged to be excused and kissed her hand as he took his leave. The rest of the company, who apparently had not pleased him, were only vouchsafed a curt bow from the doorway."

 

 

Geli Raubal

 

On the morning of Saturday, 19th September, 1931, Geli Raubal, the niece of Adolf Hitler, was found on the floor of her room in the flat. She had been killed by a Walther 6.35 pistol that was owned by Hitler. Konrad Heiden was one of those journalists who suggested that Hitler had murdered Geli. Heiden was one of the first to suggest that Hitler was having a sexual relationship with Geli: "One day parental relations to his niece Geli ceased to be parental. Geli was a beauty on the majestic side ... simple in her thoughts and emotions, fascinating to many men, well aware of her electric effect and delighting in it.... Her uncle's affection, which in the end assumed the most serious form, seems like an echo of the many marriages among relatives in Hitler's ancestry in its borderline incestuousness." He also claimed that Hitler was a "sexual pervert" and obtained pleasure from undinism.

 

Konrad Heiden expelled from Nazi Germany

 

In his book, History of National Socialism (1932), Heiden tried to explain why Hitler became so popular in Germany: "His utterly logical way of thought is Hitler's strength. There seems to be no other German politician of the present day who has the moral courage that he possesses to draw the inevitable conclusions from any given situation, to announce them despite the mockery of those who think they know better, and above all, to act on them. It is this gift of logic which makes Hitler's speeches so convincing."

 

It was later claimed that Heiden was a propagandist. The New York Times reported: "To the leaders of the Third Reich. Heiden was a hated and sought-after enemy. One of the Nazis' acts upon taking over a country was always to ban and burn his books. The writer was a propagandist of a special kind-one who used objectivity and documents to destroy the object of his derision.... In 1932 his first book, History of National Socialism was publicly burned by the Nazis, who were then on the brink of gaining power. When they took over... In 1933, he fled."

 

Heiden also attempted to explain why Hitler was so popular with the German people: "The true aim of political propaganda is not to influence, but to study, the masses. The speaker is in constant communication with the masses; he hears an echo, and senses the inner vibration. In forever setting new and contradictory assertions before his audience, Hitler is tapping the outwardly shapeless substance of public opinion with instruments of varying metals and varying weights. When a resonance issues from the depths of the substance, the masses have given him the pitch; he knows in what terms he must finally address them. Rather than a means of directing the mass mind, propaganda is a technique for riding with the masses. It is not a machine to make wind but a sail to catch the wind. The mass, however, is a phenomenon of deepest world importance - this levelled conglomeration of fools and wise men, heroes and cowards, proud and humble, the unusual and the average. This mass, with its anonymous intellectual pressure, its unexpected moods and unconscious desires, mirrors and echoes the commanding force of prevailing conditions; it embodies and personifies the necessities and resistances of the objective world; it expresses the silent command of Fate in a mysterious murmur. It is the art of the great propagandist to detect this murmur and translate it into intelligible utterance and convincing action. If he can do this, his utterances and actions may be full of contradictions - because the contradictions lie in the things themselves; they may be deceptive and misleading. The lies of propaganda reveal the deeper truth of the whole world's cynicism and dishonesty. By his lies the great propagandist involuntarily shows himself to be an honest, self-revealing prophet of the Devil."

 

 

Adolf Hitler's "Biographer"

 

Heiden was forced to flee from Nazi Germany after Hitler gained power. While he was in exile in Switzerland he published Birth of the Third Reich (1934) and Hitler: A Biography (1936). In his book, One Man Against Europe (1937) Heiden argued: "He (Hitler) is a mirror of our time, for his strange personality, with its contradictions of pathos and unbridled passion, revolt and submission, greatness and depression, is the extreme type of modern man; technically, highly developed; and socially, profoundly unsatisfied."

 

Heiden then moved to Paris where he published The New Inquisition (1939). After the invasion of France in May 1940 he fled to Lisbon before finally settling in the United States where he published Der Führer – Hitler's Rise to Power (1944). Richard Overy has argued that the book is a masterpiece: "His (Hitler) account of the seizure of power and the Nazi economic revival and political consolidation is remarkably modern in tone... Heiden's biography is not intended to be an academic account of the life of Hitler. It has about it an extraordinary literary power, reflected with exemplary success in the translation. Few accounts of Hitler can match the vivid imagination and metaphorical richness of Heiden's text."

 

Konrad Heiden died in New York City on 18th June, 1966.

 

 

Burial
 
East Orleans, Barnstable County, Massachusetts, USA
Memorial ID 54714117

 

 

 

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Finland used the swastika before the Nazis. Why do they still?

Why We Wrote This

 

The symbols we choose to represent ourselves are always laden with meaning. But when a symbol we legitimately see as virtuous is fairly viewed by everyone else as villainous, should we make a change?

 

September 10, 2018


When guests, particularly foreigners, enter the soaring hangar of the Finnish Air Force Museum and find themselves confronted by a menagerie of aircraft adorned with swastikas, they are often taken aback.

 

“We hasten to explain to visitors, our swastika has nothing to do with the Nazi swastika,” says Kai Mecklin, museum director and a former pilot in the Finnish Air Force (FAF). “The Finnish Air Force adopted the swastika as its logo long before Hitler and the Nazis did.”

 

And while the FAF’s practice of putting swastikas on its aircraft ended decades ago, it is still easy enough to find swastikas on FAF shoulder badges and at the Finnish Air Force Academy.

 

For Mr. Mecklin, like many Finns, that is as it should be. “To us the swastika is a symbol of freedom and independence,” he says. But some see the persistence of the swastika in Finnish culture as problematic, particularly with Finland situated between two regions for whom the swastika symbolizes not freedom, but its Nazi opposite. And as Finland’s far right becomes increasingly restive, it could force Finns to change the way they consider the symbol’s place in their modern society.

 

Finland’s adoption of the swastika predates its association with National Socialism. Mecklin tells the tale of how in 1918, the Swedish count Eric von Rosen had a swastika painted on the wings of an aircraft which he donated to the Finnish White Army, which was then fighting against Soviet-backed Red Guards to establish an independent Finland – a battle which the Whites ultimately won.

 

The swastika became the official symbol of the Finnish Air Force, and remained so until Finland and the Soviet Union – which had just fought a successful war with the United States to eradicate Nazidom – signed a postwar armistice. As part of the new relationship it was understood that Finnish military aircraft would no longer carry the swastika.

 

But the swastika can still be found in the emblem of the FAF and at least one Finnish army unit today. And Teivo Teivainen, a professor at the University of Helsinki who often finds himself explaining the numerous swastikas on wartime monuments around the Finnish capital to baffled foreign students, argues that needs to change.

 

What particularly bothers Professor Teivainen is how the armed forces’ continued use of the swastika could create difficulties for Finland if and when a war breaks out with Russia, and Finland is forced to turn to their NATO partners. “How do you think people in the German parliament or French cabinet or the Dutch general public, for whom the swastika means only one thing, might feel?” he asks.

 

“Let’s say a decision needs to be made very quickly in, say, a Dutch cabinet meeting, and someone flashes a picture of the swastika as the official Air Force symbol of Finland, would this be likely to increase the Netherlands’ kinship with us?” says Teivainen.   “There’s always the chance it will send the wrong signal.”

 

The question of when, where, and how the swastika should be seen in public has become more sensitive with the rise of a small, but increasingly vociferous, right-wing movement in Finland.

 

Spearheaded by the so-called Finnish Resistance Movement, which the government is currently seeking to ban, the Finnish far right does not use the swastika as its logo. But there’s always the chance that a swastika pops up at a movement rally. If that happens, the question of the Finnish armed forces’ use of the same symbol as Hitler’s Nazis – even if the Germans adopted it later, in the 1920s – could become an explosive one.

 

Finnish aviation historian Carl-Fredrik Geust writes that such concerns are overblown. “The reason why we still have our FINNISH swastikas in use – and very limited use, mind you – is due to our unique respect for historical traditions and memories – and not just our own.” He points out that even though Finns in general have no love lost for Russia, Russian tourists are still astonished to find a statue of Czar Alexander II in Helsinki’s Senate Square.

 

“Tradition means something to us,” writes Mr. Geust.

 

He also points out that the swastika has been used as an ornament and magical symbol since ancient times, and that many Western countries used it as a symbol of good luck during the beginning of the 20th century. It was for that reason that von Rosen, who many consider the godfather of the Finnish Air Force, decided to paint the swastika on the plane he gave to the Finns.

 

(While von Rosen’s introduction of the swastika to Finland had no relation to National Socialism, van Rosen himself in later years did. In 1923, his sister married Hermann Göring, and he had ties to Swedish national socialist parties in the 1930s.)

 

Whether the swastika brings the Finnish Air Force, which celebrated its centenary this year, good luck or controversy remains to be seen.

 

In the meantime, as far as Finnish authorities are concerned, the question is a closed one. “At present time the Ministry of Defense has no plans to restrict or review the use of the swastika,” says Kristian Vakkuri, the ministry spokesperson.

 

The same, it would seem, goes for the Finnish people. “If they think about it, or are asked about the swastika, it’s perceived as different: a different symbol from that which was used by the Nazis, a different history and a different meaning,” says Eddy Hawkins, an American journalist who has studied the subject. “But most people don’t think about it.”

 

Maybe they ought to, says Teivainen.

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