The Nazi Party

The Nazi Party, also known as National Socialist German Workers' Party, German Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, was a political party of the mass movement known as National Socialism. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the party came to power in Germany in 1933 and governed by totalitarian methods until 1945.¹

It was founded by Anton Drexler, a locksmith from Munich. Hitler attended one of its meetings in 1919, and was able to take over the party using his energy and charisma. He ousted the former leaders of the party in 1920 to 1921, and renamed the National Socialism German Workers' Party. That same year, Hitler created a 25-point program that became the permanent basis of the party. It called for the abandonment of the Treaty of Versailles by Germany and for the expansion of German territory. These appeals to nationalistic sentiment was accompanied by strong anti-Semitism rhetoric. The socialist orientation of the Nazi Party was a gimmick to garner support from the working class.

Under Hitler, the Nazi party expanded steadily in its home base of Bavaria. It organized strong-arm groups to protect its rallies and meetings.¹ Much of their members were from war veterans groups and paramilitary organizations.

Adolf Hitler formulated and articulated the ideas that came to be known as Nazi ideology. He believed himself to be a profound thinker, convinced that he had found the key to understanding a complex world. He believed that a person's characteristics, attitudes, abilities, and behavior were determined by his or her so-called racial makeup. In  his view, all groups, races, or peoples (these terms were used interchangeably) carried within them traits that were immutably transmitted from one generation to the next, and could not be surmounted by any individual.²

While formulating their ideology of face, the Nazis, and Hitler, drew upon the ideas of the German social Darwinists of the late 19th century. Like the ones before them, the Nazis believed that humans could be classified collectively as "races", with each bearing distinctive characteristics that are inherited. This idea not only applied this to outward characteristics, but also ways of thinking, creative and organizational abilities, intelligence, cultural preferences, and physical and military prowess.²
The Nazis adopted the social take on the Darwinian theory regarding the "survival of the fittest". For the Nazis, survival of a race depended on its ability to reproduce, accumulating land to support and feed the population, and vigilance in maintaining the "purity" of its gene pool.
The Nazi ideology regarded Jews as a "race" rather than a religion, and attributed a wide myriad of negative stereotypes about Jews and and behviors associated with them to a biologically determined heritage.

While it classified Jews as the main threat, the Nazi ideology regarding race targeted various other groups for persecution, imprisonment, and annihilation. These groups included:
- Roma (Gypsies)
- People with disabilities
- Poles
- Soviet prisoners of war
- Afro-Germans
- Jehovah's Witnesses
- Homosexuals

This was because of their opposition to the Nazi regime, or some characteristic that did not fit the Nazi idea of social norms. They sought to eliminate domestic non-conformists and perceived racial threats through a perpetual self-purge of German society.

The Nazi belief was that superior races had not only the right, but also the obligation to subdue and even exterminate inferior ones.²

The first of the concentration camps was Dachau, built in 1933, just months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Auschwitz on the other hand, was not built until 1940, but it became the largest of all the camps. Auschwitz was both a concentration and death camp, as was Majdanek.³
Some of these camps were closed by the Nazis starting in 1944. Others remained opened until Russian or American troops liberated them.³

Camp	Function	Location	Began	Evacuated	Liberated	Est. Death Toll
Auschwitz	Concentration/Extermination	Oswiecim, Poland (near Krakow)	May 26, 1940	Jan. 18, 1945	Jan. 27, 1945 by Soviets	1,100,000
Belzec	Extermination	Belzec, Poland	March 17, 1942		Liquidated by Nazis December 1942	600,000
Bergen-Belsen	Detention; Concentration (after March 1944)	Near Hanover, Germany	April 1943		April 15, 1945 by British	35,000
Buchenwald	Concentration	Buchenwald, Germany (near Weimar)	July 16, 1937	April 6, 1945	April 11, 1945 Self-liberated and by Americans	56,545
Chelmno	Extermination	Chelmno, Poland	Dec. 7, 1941; reopened June 23, 1944		Closed March 1943, reopened June 23, 1944; Liquidated by Nazis in July 1944	320,000
Dachau	Concentration	Dachau, Germany (near Munich)	March 22, 1933	April 26, 1945	April 29, 1945 by Americans	32,000
Mittelbau-Dora	Sub-camp of Buchenwald; Concentration camp after October, 1944	near Nordhausen, Germany	Aug. 27, 1943	April 1, 1945	April 9, 1945 by Americans	Roughly 20,000
Drancy	Assembly/Detention	Drancy, France (suburb of Paris)	August 1941		Aug. 17, 1944 by Allied Forces	Out of rougly 75,000 sent there, 1,542 remained alive when liberated.
Flossenbürg	Concentration	Flossenbürg, Germany (near Nuremberg)	May 3, 1938	April 20, 1945	April 23, 1945 by Americans	30,000
Gross-Rosen	Sub-camp of Sachsenhausen; Concentration after May 1941	near Wroclaw, Poland	August 1940	Feb. 13, 1945	May 8, 1945 by Soviets	40,000
Janowska	Concentration/Extermination	L'viv, Ukraine	Sept. 1942			Unknown
Kaiserwald/Riga	Concentration After March 1943	Meza-Park, Latvia (near Riga)	1942	July 1944	October 13, 1944 by the Soviet Army	Unknown
Koldichevo	Concentration	Baranovichi	Summer 1942	June 29, 1944		22,000
Majdanek	Concentration/Extermination	Lublin, Poland	Feb. 16, 1943	July 1944	July 22, 1944 by Soviets	360,000
Mauthausen	Concentration	Mauthausen, Austria (near Linz)	Aug. 8, 1938		May 5, 1945 by Americans	120,000
Natzweiler/Struthof	Concentration	Natzweiler, France (near Strasbourg)	May 1, 1941	Sept. 1944		12,000
Neuengamme	Sub-camp of Sachsenhausen; Concentration after June 1940	Hamburg, Germany	December 13, 1938	April 29, 1945	May 1945 by British	56,000
Plaszow	Concentration after January of 1944	Krakow, Poland	Oct. 1942	Summer 1944	Jan. 15, 1945 by Soviets	8,000
Ravensbrück	Concentration	near Berlin, Germany	May 15, 1939	April 23, 1945	April 30, 1945 by Soviets	52,000
Sachsenhausen	Concentration	Berlin, Germany	July 1936	March 1945	April 27, 1945 by Soviets	30,000
Sered	Concentration	Sered, Slovakia (near Bratislavia)	1941-1942		April 1, 1945	Unknown
Sobibor	Extermination	Sobibor, Poland (near Lublin)	March 1942	Revolt on October 14, 1943; Liquidated by Nazis on October 1943	Summer 199 by Soviets	250,000
Stutthof	Concentration after January 1942	near Danzig, Poland	Sept. 2, 1939	Jan 25, 1945	May 9, 1945 by Soviets	65,000
Theresienstadt	Concentration	Terezin, Czech Republic (near Prague)	Nov. 24, 1941	Handed over to Red Cross May 3, 1945	May 8, 1945 by Soviets	33,000
Treblinka	Extermination	Treblinka, Poland (near Warsaw)	July 23, 1942	Revolt on April 2, 1943; Liquidated by Nazis April 1943		700,000-900,000
Vaivara	Concentration/Transit	Estonia	Sept. 1943	Jun 28, 1944		Unknown
Westerbork	Transit	Westerbork, Netherlands	Oct. 1939		April 12, 1945, the camp was handed over to Kurt Schlesinger	Unknown

These statistics are from http://history1900s.about.com/od/camps/fl/Concentration-and-Death-Camps-Chart.htm

During their imprisonments at the camps, prisoners were executed, tortured, experimented on, and forced to do labor until many died of starvation, disease, exhaustion, and despair. This came to be known as the Holocaust.

On July 14, 1933, Hitler's government declared the Nazi Party to be the only political party in Germany. When Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler took the titles of "Führer", the German word for "leader" or "guide". Membership for the Nazi party became mandatory for all higher civil servants and bureaucrats. The gauleiters became powerful figures in the state governments as a result. Hitler destroyed the Nazi Party's socialist wing in 1934, executed Ernst Röhm and other rebellious Sturmabteilung leaders.¹

As a result, Hitler became an undisputed leader, controlling virtually all political, social, and cultural activities in Germany. Its hierarchy was structured like a pyramid, with party-controled mass organizations for youth, women, and workers at the bottom, party members and officials in the middle, and Hitler and his closest associates at the top wielding undisputed authority.¹

Sources:
1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nazi-Party
2. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007457
3. http://history1900s.about.com/od/camps/fl/Concentration-and-Death-Camps-Chart.htm