Was the Third Reich a modern creation? Some remarks on the essence and practice of National Socialism

This article is an attempt at answering the question of whether German National Socialism was a modern creation or whether it represented a sinister, Janus-faced totalitarian expression of the modernization process. Another problem considered is whether it was a revolutionary or “reactionary” phenomenon. Not only Western researchers have increasingly viewed the Third Reich as a stage in the modernization process and an alternative form of occidental rationalism. From this perspective, the Nazi movement—not excluding the Final Solution—would not represent a return to barbarism, but rather a dark variant of the European modernizing trend. National Socialism was one of the developmental possibilities of modernity, it emerged, however, under the conditions of a modernization crisis, the expansion of parliamentarism, and capitalist economic relations. National Socialism was put forward as a systemic antithesis to the French Revolution and the ideological legacy of the post-revolutionary era. This text is intended as a reflective outline and does not claim to offer an exhaustive reading of the subject.