In a discussion, someone stated that fascism was, at its heart, the mindset that "another group will overtake you [...] and you have to strike first, or else your people will be subjugated". In this telling, Hitler's conception that 'the jews' were responsible for the bad state of Germany was the root of Hitler's philosophies, and the overarching motivation for the bid for power by Hitler and his compatriots.
Is this an accurate account of the motivation or Hitler and his ilk?
Further elaboration:
From reading chapter 1 of Lorna Waddington's "Hitler's crusade" it definitely does seem like Hitler was motivated by a belief in a Jewish conspiracy that manifested itself in lots of evidently horrible things such as democracy, internationalism and pacifism. (and, to be less snarky, bolshevikism and capitalism) His development of his conspirational thinking seems to be around 1919-1920, which is around the same time, I think, as the kickoff to his political activism through membership of the DAP.
Where I'm stuck and would like some feedback is this: this ascribed motivation seems to conflict with the definitions of fascism by scholars such as Roger Griffin, Kevin Passmore, etc. And basically most of the definitions listed on Wikipedia. Passmore, for example, writes in his short introduction on fascism (p 62): "In Italy and Germany a movement came to power that sought to create national unity through the repression of national enemies and the incorporation of all classes and both genders into a permanently mobilized nation".
To me, national unity seems like a different "project" than the ending of international jewish/bolshevik threats. All the definitions of fascism seem to not apply to nazi germany once we define its mission as being solely to strike against these threats. Maybe they're relevant insofar they're associated with the ideology (ie to counter the threat mobilization is useful, as is national unity) but that's like saying propaganda is an important motivation of soviet communism: mistaking a tactic for a motivation.
So how do I resolve this seeming contradiction?
(my intuition is that underlying Hitler's motivation to strike against his perceived enemies is a certain ideology, which is what creates at least part of the opposition to those who are detrimental to it. Which would explain why scholars can describe fascism as having certain ideological tenets. By this account Hitler would be motivated by both this underlying ideology as well as his conspirational thinking)
So, first of all, I think the moderator comment is exactly right: what Hitler thought isn't all that interesting and it's basically impossible to know anyway. It's why I don't assign any of Mein Kampf for undergrads. His ideas shifted around a fair amount and he wasn't a terribly systematic thinker to begin with. For example, Ian Kershaw's biography points out that Hitler, like many right wing Austrian Germans, had a low opinion of Czechs in his youth, something that appears less important by, say, 1940. In other words, he's not some equivalent to Marx or Lenin, who are trying to bring some analysis to a problem.
That said, I do think you're question about fascism is more answerable and worth a stab. I'm getting a fair amount of this from Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism, as a preface. I'll make note of other sources where necessary. So, you point out that Griffin and Passmore define fascism as a classless society, based on a national (or in the German case racial) ideology, and intent on perpetual mobilization. It's this latter part which is key to unifying the two theories here. The question is: "what are the volk being mobilized for?" The answer is that they're being mobilized for the struggle against their racial enemies. Jewish people and 'Bolsheviks' are part of this, but the Germans are supposed to be the preeminent race, so in some sense everyone is their inferior. Had the Germans managed to win World War II, there would simply have been another war to put down whoever was next. Indeed, the entire premise of General Plan Ost, the fantasy cooked up for disposing of European Russia, should the Reich manage to subdue it, was to establish a frontier line to perpetually fight off 'slavic hordes' who'd been pushed into Central Asia. (Mazower, Hitler's Empire). Jewish people and Bolsheviks were seen as the most immediate threats, but by no means were they the only threat. Furthermore, Mazower does a good job of discussing how this sense of racial superiority hamstrung the German war effort, as it rendered them unwilling to cede territory to Spain, Vichy France, or Italy, all of which might have ensured more cooperation and allies in the war.
So, this is how we reconcile the themes of "struggle" and "national mobilization." The mobilization is the ideology. Without that struggle, without being constantly at war, you (if you're a fascist) are at risk of degenerating, thus becoming unworthy of your 'destiny.' Referring to Paxton again, he divides the Italian and German regimes in how they respond to the threat of degeneracy. In the case of Italy, Paxton basically argues that the fascist movement goes limp (if you'll pardon the very appropriate phallic metaphor) in response to not only military defeats in World War II, but perhaps most importantly in response to the lack of struggle that preceded this, when Mussolini focused primarily on running the Italian state. Importantly, Mussolini was a much more engaged and probably more competent administrator than Hitler, but this direct rule tended to slow things down. Hitler, on the other hand, relied on his subordinates to figure out details while he laid out the 'vision.' And this resulted in what Paxton refers to as a Gotterdammerung, borrowing some Wagner. Basically, to avoid going soft, the Nazis continually radicalized their struggle into newer (and more heinous) crimes. Whether these actually mobilized anyone is a matter of debate, but it's also beside the point when we're talking about ideology.
In short, the mass mobilization is for use against the people's enemies, and there's really no end to this. I also mentioned above that Hitler (and for that matter a lot of other fascists) was not a very systemic thinker. I'd keep this in mind as well, because myth and fantasy play major role in fascist ideology. The entire notion of Lebensraum for example, is based on the fantasy that there would ever be enough Germans to fill that space. Or that race was a thing that existed and could be studied in biologically scientific ways. You'll find some French, Italian, or Romanian fascists who were really interested in elevating the ideology, but they seem rarer in Germany and they were none of them ever really in power. I hope that answers your question. I'll admit to getting a bit in the weeds when discussing ideology.
Hi there,
On /r/AskHistorians we often get questions along the lines of 'what did Hitler think about X' - I mean, as an April Fools joke one year, we changed the sub to /r/AskAboutHitler. However, for better or worse, many of these questions about what Hitler thought are, in the literal sense, unanswerable. We don't know what Hitler thought about many things, and especially about things which were inconsequential for him. Hitler did not keep a diary, and the collections of his private conversations is disjointed and nowhere near complete, being almost completely dependent on the post-war recollection of his intimates (who may also be unreliable in their recollections, especially given those circumstances).
Of course, you may still get an answer to this particular question! However, broadly speaking, proving the negative is very hard (there could be an 1965 article on the topic in Swahili), and if you've asked a question which is almost certainly "We don't know, and he probably didn't care anyways", few historians familiar with the topic matter actually are going to want to put in the necessary gruntwork, doubly so about a man who on a personal level was decidedly uninteresting.
For more information that will be helpful in understanding the context around your question, please read /u/commiespaceinvader's wonderful post on why Hitler's opinions actually aren't that interesting, and please see here for an example of a historian attempting to find evidence about Hitler's thoughts on a topic, but finding that it is likely unanswerable.