Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The far right in the German and Russian Empires
- 2 At the extreme in the Ukraine and in Germany
- 3 “Hand in hand with Germany”
- 4 The international radical right's Aufbau (reconstruction)
- 5 “Germany–Russia above everything”
- 6 Conspiracies of fire and the sword
- 7 “In Quick March to the Abyss!”
- 8 The four writers of the apocalypse
- 9 Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
9 - Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The far right in the German and Russian Empires
- 2 At the extreme in the Ukraine and in Germany
- 3 “Hand in hand with Germany”
- 4 The international radical right's Aufbau (reconstruction)
- 5 “Germany–Russia above everything”
- 6 Conspiracies of fire and the sword
- 7 “In Quick March to the Abyss!”
- 8 The four writers of the apocalypse
- 9 Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Summary
While Aufbau clearly played a formative role in shaping early anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic National Socialist ideology, the historian Walter Laqueur has minimized the heritage that Aufbau left to National Socialism after 1923. In his work Russia and Germany, Laqueur asserts that National Socialism did not need White émigré support after it had become a mass movement in the course of the 1920s. While National Socialist–White émigré collaboration did decrease markedly in the aftermath of the failed Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch of November 1923, Aufbau nonetheless bequeathed a powerful political, financial, military, and ideological legacy to National Socialism.
Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism took several forms. The death of First Lieutenant Max von Scheubner-Richter, Aufbau's de facto leader and Hitler's closest political advisor, in the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch served as an example of heroic sacrifice for the National Socialist cause. White émigrés continued to raise significant funds for the NSDAP after 1923. In the vein of Aufbau, Hitler continued to use White émigrés, especially Ukrainian nationalists, to destabilize Soviet rule after the failure of the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch. Hitler's preoccupation with winning the Ukraine for Germany along the lines of Aufbau policy led him to divert powerful armed forces away from Moscow in 1941, thereby diminishing German chances of victory in World War II.
Early anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic National Socialist ideology, which relied greatly on Aufbau thought, found pronounced expression in the Third Reich's final years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Russian Roots of NazismWhite Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945, pp. 245 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005