Symbol and ritual under National Socialism

The relationship of symbol and ritual to the 'world-view' of National Socialism has rarely been discussed. In this article however, it is argued that for Nazism, symbol and ritual were essential forms of ideological presentation and reinforcement. The NSDAP reduced political relationships to the workings of an eschatology, constructed upon symbols relating either to the German Volksgemeinschaft or to Judentum. Thereby it was possible to promote a sense of 'internal ' consensus, in opposition to 'class politics ', whilst simultaneously warning of imminent national catastrophy because of the 'Jewish conspiracy'. It was the very character of Nazi ideology, supported upon nebulous concepts such as 'feeling and belief' which determined its means of presentation through ritualized political celebration, where the mechanisms of 'mass suggestion' were consciously brought into operation. And the failure of other 'intellectual' forms of ideological presentation, such as the Thingspiel, supports the hypothesis that symbol and political ritual perfc)rmed the function of mystifying the real social, economic, and political contradictions between the social strata which constituted German fascism's mass basis. There have been surprisingly few attempts by social scientists to explore the cult and ritual aspects of National Socialism. Indeed H. T. Burden's book on the Nuremberg Rallies, published in 1967, remains the most substantive work available in English on the general theme of Nazism's political celebrations.l However, Burden confines himself to outlining the development of the annual Reichsparty-day, and one has to look to the work of two German authors, Klaus Vondung and Hans-Jochen Gamm, to find any sort of systematic analysis of the ritual forms of National Socialist celebrations, and their possible relationship to the various tenets of the Nazi Weltan-