Revolutionary Nazism

The actual progress of the National Socialist Revolution is a topic of debate within the Nazi movement. In private, loyal National Socialists often ask whether their ideology has gone far enough to reshape social relations. The typical answer is a stiff negative and a resolution to drive harder, to accept no compromise. The so-called revolutionary answer is to rage against the compromises even other Nazis make.

Revolutionary Nazism is a tendency within National Socialism that advocates for an uncompromised ideological vision. The NSDAP would become the mobilizing force of a mass revolutionary-reactionary movement that would break down class barriers and completely remake social and economic life. So-called conservative forces would be destroyed and replaced by the Party-state; market systems, the Church and non-Party army and civil service staff would disappear. Large private businesses would turn to vapor in pursuit of the corporatist ideal, rearticulated and nationalized. The state-controlled corporatist economy, the Ständestaat, would enclose the activities of small and medium businesses and their middle-class managers. Every aspect of social and economic life would orbit the party-state, the subject and object of the National Socialist Revolution.

Revolutionary Nazism largely died off after 1934. The Röhm purge and other developments consigned it to a seemingly permanent malaise, but Revolutionary Nazism lives on in a handful of fervent Gauleiters, SA men and DAF officials. Perhaps the tumult of the Cold War will give them a chance to once more command their totalitarian movement.