Hitler’s National Socialist Democracy Concept 1919–1933

ABSTRACT A conceptual study of Hitler's development of the National Socialist democracy concept between 1919 and 1933 is presented. Despite the voluminous literature on Hitler and Nazism, our knowledge of the NS democracy concept is seriously incomplete. This article makes a substantial historiographical contribution by providing a more profound understanding of Hitler's NS democracy concept and his position in the broader Weimar debate on democracy. I argue that Hitler prioritized democracy as a core concept in NS ideology. Between 1920 and 1925, Hitler employed a Germanic democracy concept centred on a popularly elected Führer modelled in the reversed mirror image of his Jewish democracy concept. The allegedly Jewish interpretation of democracy was, according to Hitler's conspiracy theory, a precursor for the Jews to achieve a global dictatorship. Between 1925 and 1933 Hitler resettled for an anti-plebiscitary Volksherrschaft concept, abandoning his Germanic democracy, the election of the Führer, and elections per se. This new concept rested on a notion of a Volkswille, which purportedly accommodated a genuine will of the people that could not be expressed in plebiscites and was identical with Hitler's worldview. I contend that Hitler's changeover from Germanic democracy to Volksherrschaft contributed to a totalitarian turn in NS ideology.