Arendt-Theory of Totalitarianism

The application of Nazi ideas and ideology was based on two types of force against individuals and social groups. One of these took the form of propaganda and indoctrination, the other was based on terror (Kühl, 2002). The Nazi ensured that not to appear

The Meaning of the Term Totalitarianism Totalitarianism was a one-party political system that was based on dictatorship. It first started in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. It was an absolutism that emphasized the importance of the state at the expense of individual liberties. It displays the following features: One-party dictatorship and one-man rule were emphasized in a totalitarian state. Only one party ruled in a totalitarian state, for example, the Fascist Part in Italy, the Nazi Party in Germany and the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.

This view of social dominance and evolutionary superiority is very in line with the views of the Nazi Party and ordinary Germans. This hate for the Jews starts with Hitler’s Ant-Jewish propaganda and the implementation of the Nuremberg laws. In “Perish the Jew,” Hitler puts his views of racial superiority into writing, “The Aryan regards work as the basis for the maintenance of the national community as such; the Jew regards work as a means of exploiting other peoples” (Hitler 223). With this writing and other propaganda, Hitler successfully spread a hate for Jewish people across the country. Hitler then created the Nuremberg Laws, which slowly but successfully stripped the Jews of all their rights and made them second-class citizens in Germany. The Jews slowly became, in the eyes of the German people and the SS, people who could be consciously oppressed and turned into slave workers.

Arendt explains that the ultimate power of a totalitarian government is the acceptance of the ideology being propagated. The laws that are put into place in totalitarian government are not to empower the people and protect their rights. Instead, the laws tell the people what they must do, not what they must not do. Arendt tells how the law of nature is the foundation for Hitler's Nazis, and the law of history for Russia's communist regimes. According to Arendt, both the Nazi and communist regimes maintained that those laws gave them justification for their cruelty. These laws of nature and history are not permanent or stable. They are in motion to keep history and nature moving, so that it progresses without ever stopping. <p>Arendt claims that these laws of motion sustain the terror fueling the totalitarian government. Arendt says that terror is the realization and execution of these laws with nothing standing in its way. Throughout the selection, Arendt speaks of terror. Terror is essential for the state to keep its power, or else it will fall. According to Arendt, in a totalitarian state terror terminates individuality among the people. Individual men become a mass of humankind, in the eyes of the state. "Terror exists neither for nor against men", claims Arendt, "it substitutes for the boundaries and channels of communication between individual men a band of iron which holds them so tightly

In the book Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning tackles the question of why German citizens engaged in nefarious behavior that led to the deaths of millions of Jewish and other minorities throughout Europe. The question of what drove Germans to commit acts of genocide has been investigated by numerous historians, but unfortunately, no overarching answer for the crimes has yet been decided upon. However, certain theories are more popular than others. Daniel Goldhagen in his book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, has expounded that the nature of the German culture before the Second World War was deeply embedded in anti-Semitic fervor, which in turn, acted as the catalyst for the events that would unfold into the Holocaust. It is at this

Most of us have heard of the Nazi party’s horrific, genocidal regime on destroying the Jewish race, but what events led up to their dire judgement? In this study I aim to uncover the events, reasons and changes which led to the Holocaust and the further changes in the treatment of the Jewish race by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

The Nazis also adopted the social Darwinist take on Darwinian evolutionary theory regarding the “survival of the fittest.” For the Nazis, survival of a race depended upon its ability to reproduce and multiply, its accumulation of land to support and feed that expanding population, and its vigilance in maintaining the purity of its gene pool, thus preserving the unique “racial” characteristics with which “nature” had equipped it for success in the struggle to survive. Since each “race” sought to expand, and since the space on the earth was finite, the struggle for survival resulted “naturally” in violent conquest and military confrontation. Hence, war even constant war was a part of nature, a part of the human condition. Hitler and the Nazi party outlined their racial enemies in clear and unequivocal terms. For Hitler and the Nazis, the Jews represented a priority enemy both within and outside Germany. Their allegedly racial and inferior genetic makeup spawned the exploitative systems of capitalism and communism. In their drive to expand, the Jews promoted and used these systems of government and state organization, including constitutions, proclamations of equal rights, and international peace, to undermine the race-consciousness of superior races like the German race and to

The Advancement presents several strong arguments regarding Bush’s claims on modern naturalism. Bush’s strongest argument lies within his view that the modern naturist worldview as relative and deceitful. The presentation of the logical conclusion of the evolutionary worldview, which led to the Nazi movement in Germany, was an extremely powerful way to expose the logical trappings of this advancement mindset. The gauge in which humanity views its progress and achievement through naturalistic thought is subjective and skewed to this atheistic philosophy. Bush unveils advancement thinking as false by revealing the lack of inevitable progress within human history. The continued advancement of

Thesis: A key concept to understanding Hannah Arendt’s “Total Domination” is the essence of terror and the importance of concentration camps in maintaining the Nazi totalitarian state.

However, an examination of the policies of the Nazi regime shows that although it was not defined as a final solution, the German nation had already embarked on the path of “scientific” racism that ultimately manifested in the final solution of the Nazis. The 1933 Law for

The most alarming thing about Arendt's book is that she is able to make a compelling case that the greatest evils of mankind are committed by ordinary people. Her work forces one to look at the world and realize that the Holocaust was not an isolated incident committed by blood thirsty sociopaths. One must realize that the decision making processes that created an environment accepting of the "Final Solution" is still alive an well today as it has been throughout history. The weight of personal moral choice

The Nazi war criminals violated the Natural Law. The Natural Law is a principle of laws that reflect the morals of humans.

Social Darwinism was a concept that emerged later in the nineteenth century suggesting that what applied to nature could also apply to human society – that the strong prevail over the weak, that superior races prevail over inferior races. This concept with its theme of struggle and survival of the fittest appealed to Hitler. “Struggle” wrote Hitler “is the father of all things…He who wants to live must fight and who does not want to fight in this world where external struggle is the law of life has no right to exist”*.

According to Rosenfeld Arendt “famously gets a lot of her past wrong” (Rosenfeld 220). However, Rosenfeld’s study of Arendt’s work is not to find error rather depict the history of the writing of the French enlightenment. The “Truth in Politics” written by Arendt “provides a tour of various ancient and early modern thinkers, from Herodotus to Spinoza to James Madison, and of events in the profound and recent past to name a few” (qtd. in Rosenfeld 221).

By quoting many writers and Nazi documents, Bergman creates collective authority to validate an absurd argument. However, by providing readers with detailed interpretations of various quotes from Hitler's Mein Kampf, he successfully illustrates how Darwin’s ideas of ‘natural selection’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ were misused to justify for racial discrimination. Hitler used terms such as ‘superior race,’ ‘lower human types,’‘pollution of the race,’ and the word evolution itself-derived from Darwin’s theories of evolution. This clearly indicates Darwin’s theories influenced Hitler. However if these ideas did not exists, the Nazis might have found another reason to justify for the genocide