National Socialist Ideology: Impact on Strategy and Operational Art

From the extreme right emerged the NSDAP- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeitspartei, the National Socialist German Workers Party. The National Socialists drew on multiple sources of nationalist information, beliefs, myths, and conspiracies to form their ideology and philosophy or world view, a Weltanschauung. Hitler s message was centered on leadership, race, and socioeconomic relations. National Socialist ideology rejected traditional politics and developed an extremist approach to implement their agenda. The National Socialists created ideological imperatives that restricted debate and winnowed policy options, creating inefficiencies and application errors that a broader and more holistic policy approach would have avoided or mitigated. Liberal democracies must resist the desire to dismiss ideological extremists as irrational. Rather, liberal democracies must allow that extremist policy preferences and actions seek to conform in a rational manner to their philosophy. The acceptance of rationality on behalf of ideological extremists assists liberal democracies to identify and develop strategies to confront them in a forthright and realistic manner.