NSDAP not NAZI

[Scott]

I rarely use the word Nïgger in polite company. Usually I say Blacks or simply Negro. In German, they say Neger for Negro but now more commonly Schwarze (Blacks).

Nobody says that Negroes are literally black instead of brown. I personally don't like the term "African-American," and even less so, "Afro-American," and rarely use those forms. If I am trying to be cheeky, I might say "Gabon."

I capitalize Black and White if I am talking about races rather than perceived skin color or absolute colors.

Anyway, nobody is saying that NSDAP does not mean the "National Socialist German Workers Party," but I explained the orgin of the colloquial word "Nazi" for the National in National Socialist.

Goebbels also sometimes said "Sozi" for Socialist, but that never really caught on.

The important thing for Hitler was to differentiate the national-socialism of the NSDAP as a Right-wing ideology with the inherent inter-nationalism of Marxist socialism and Jewish "cosmopolitanism."

That is why one says National Socialism or NS, or else the term that the German Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels preferred, i.e., "Nazi."

I already gave the citations for the Goebbels diaries, which you can find in a large academic or public library, or procure from a smaller library via Inter-library Loan.

The popular historian and prolific WWII writer, David Irving has also seen the versions of the Goebbels diaries in the Russian archives that were photographed on glass microfiche for preservation by the good doctor himself, and were subsequently captured by the Soviets at the end of the war.

[Hektor]

Easy there, Comrade.

As I said, the word is colloquial, not formal.

colloquial
characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.

However, official German documents from the period do use a lot of similar abbreviation conventions like the word GeStaPo for Secret State Police or KriPo for Kriminalpolizei.

The fact that the ....

I am saying I don't believe your sources. It was well known that NAZI means idiot/country bumpin/nigger. This is why you don't find it any official documentation.

You won't be fooling me, and perhaps it is you that are the jew.

Why doesn't the Jewish Winners of WW2 use the official Acrynom NSDAP? Because it was the Jewish instigators of the war that assigned NAZI to the NSDAP as a slur.

I'm not aware the term having any other meaning in German, albeit it's possible that it was used different in some slangs.... It sounds a bit like the counterpart of SOZI for the SPD / Social Democrats.... Well. the word got indeed a meaning in Hebrew/Aramaic akin to 'prince' / leader / REGENT (there spelled Nazir)... It's used in the prophesies pointing to Christ. And then there is the term Nazarene as well... That Jews would use that as a code word wouldn't be a surprise. Since WW2 they stopped using Christian or Goy as a slur, although they occasionally still do, simply because they now needed the support of traditionally Christian countries for 'Israel'... So Nazi was a convenient substitute and suitable as a term to sow discord among 'Edom', which is their code word for the Occident or Christianity.

[Scott]

The colloquial term Nazi was not necessarily used to "sow discord," although modern Germans might have a problem with it because Nazism, or National Socialism if you prefer, is illegal there ─ and they might therefore have real concerns with what George Orwell called the Thought Police ─ so they will get extra formal about it and maybe stick to something like "NSDAP" or say "National Socialist" (with a faint shudder).

This might be a good modern example of "Orwellian programming" (not that Americans do not have similar hang-ups of their own with other issues). If we talk about "gun violence," for example, or any other kind of violent crime in the USA, we can't actually mention the Race of the perpetrators. (This is only done with the tardy publication of accompanying news photographs, but only if the perpetrators are not also juveniles.)

As I already said, and showed, the Propaganda Minister himself used the term "Nazi" with great affection.

The only grammatical problem with "Nazi" that I can see is when modern English speakers will say something like "Nazi submarines," or whatever ─ as if German submarines or U-boats belonging to the Third Reich were Party members, LOL.

As explaned, the German word "Nazi" is derived from the word "National" in NSDAP, and in German sounds like "Naht-zee-on-all" (in English phonetic pronunciation).

The term "Commie" in English, short for Communist, might indeed have pejorative connotations because it was never used that way (as far as I know) by its own adherents ─ unlike with the real Nazis, namely the Nazi Propaganda Minister himself, Dr. Goebbels.

Dr. Goebbels was venting in his personal diary in February of 1941 about the ideological dedication of the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and then a few days later, about the Nazi wartime Reichskommissar of the Netherlands, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart ─ both of whom were put on trial by the Victors at Nuremberg and hanged on October 16, 1946 with all the others ─ who was also "no real Nazi."

Of course, Dr. Goebbels was here spouting off privately, and probably didn't mean it literally that Ribbentrop and Seyss-Inquart were not really Nazis, but it shows that he regarded the term "Nazi" with great pride.

[Booze]

Easy there, Comrade.

As I said, the word is colloquial, not formal.

colloquial
characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.

However, official German documents from the period do use a lot of similar abbreviation conventions like the word GeStaPo for Secret State Police or KriPo for Kriminalpolizei.

The fact that the Propaganda Minister loved the term "Nazi" is proof enough that Nazis themselves were proud of the word.

Are you saying that Dr. Goebbels was a Jew lover?

If it was a term in common usage wouldn't there be far more than this single source, Goebbels' diaries?
Maybe those diaries should be called into question.

The history I heard was that the term Nazi originated as a contraction of Ashkenazi, and it's meaning was derogatory.

[HansHill]

The history I heard....

Can you give us this source?

[Stubble]

I think in Europa the last battle they say the term meant 'bumpkin'. I've run across that other places a few time as well, but, I think the documentary was the root as it predates the other stuff I've run across.

I've run across the ashkenazi thing here and there too, but, either in far left circles criticizing the state of Israel or on stormfront. Not really anywhere else.

[Wetzelrad]

Joseph Goebbels's newspaper Der Angriff once ran the headline "A Nazi travels to Palestine".

A document labelled as Julius Streicher's Political Testament has him use the word "Nazi" in quotes. The paragraph has a mocking tone in general, but I can't tell how much mockery is also intended for that term.
https://archive.org/details/StreicherJu ... 4/mode/1up

Hitler gave a speech at Dusseldorf on January 27, 1932 where he may have used "Nazi". I can't find a German translation of it right now, but the English translation has both "National Socialist" and "Nazi" so it's unlikely to be a mistranslation. Hitler uses it within his portrayal of the perspective of a German citizen.
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitler ... 7/mode/1up

Hitler gave a speech before the Reichstag on January 30, 1939 where he used it. He portrays the American media as "anti-Nazi i.e. anti-German". There is supposed to be an official English translation of this speech which would be quite definitive if someone can locate it.
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitler ... 8/mode/1up

One more example from that book. In a speech dated November 8, 1939, Hitler portrays the war aim of the English as "the elimination of Nazism". He separately uses "National Socialism" in the same speech so I believe this is an accurate translation.
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitler ... 2/mode/1up

I asked Grok to find examples but it hallucinated a couple and only found one real one. Its inability to find real examples probably points to how rare the term was in Germany. Still, if someone did an exhaustive search I'm sure they would find more.

I do think there could be some validity to the complaint here. Goebbels's usage of the term is not incompatible with a possible intention to capture a term used to smear him. This is not uncommon. "Queer" was once a slur, now it's used intentionally by those it labels, along with many other gay terms. Some racists say they are "unapologetically racist" despite the strong negative associations with that term. Even Black nationalists will sometimes label themselves "nigger" as a sort of way of taking it back, e.g. Matthew Harris. Reversedly, "anti-Semitism" was once used by its proponents, only later becoming a sort of slur used primarily by Jews.

So I think it is entirely plausible and understandable if Goebbels decided to use "Nazi" in some contexts because it served to mock his opponents. This would be true even if he disliked the term.

With that said, I lean toward the consensus. There is an odd strain of NatSoc advocates on the internet who get very heated over the term Nazi for no good reason.

[Stubble]

Excellent post Scott.

For what it's worth, I found this, although, I was specifically searching the 'bumpkin' angle.

The term “Nazi” (along with “Nazism”) is a political epithet invented by Konrad Heiden (7 August 1901 – 18 June 1966) during the 1920s as a means of denigrating the NSDAP and National Socialism. Heiden was a journalist and member of the Social Democratic Party. The term is a variant of the nickname that was used in reference to members of the SDP at the time “Sozi” (short for Sozialisten). “Nazi” was a political pun, based upon the Austro-Bavarian slang word for “simpleton” or “country bumpkin”, and derived from the fairly common name Ignatz. It would be like saying “nutsy”. So, if for no other reason, one should easily understand why the term was regarded as derogatory by the National Socialists and why they would never use it to describe themselves. One should also see why it would be used and popularized by Marxist-Bolshevik agitators and understand how it was seized upon by various other political opponents and subversive types, both within Germany and abroad, including the international media and political leaders of the western powers.

https://justice4germans.wordpress.com/2 ... -benefits/

I've heard that the NSDAP adopted it because they were generally speaking rural, although, I don't know if there is any truth to that.

Ultimately, the term has come to describe the NSDAP in common parlance, for better or for worse.

I usually use terms like 'The German Government' or 'The German Authorities' because to me it is just as clear, if not more so, and some people view the term 'nazi' as derogatory. It is a personal choice though, and regardless of how nazi entered the lexicon, it isn't going away any time soon.

[HansHill]

Excellent post.

While obviously you are focusing on the use of "Nazi" in the original German, it might be useful to zone into the use of "Nazi" in the English, especially in non-negative or neutral contexts.

Wyndham Lewis was not strictly speaking a National Socialist but used the term "Nazi" favourably as early as 1931 in his "Hitler" pamphlet. William Joyce used "Nazi" a dozen times in his 1940 book "Twilight over England", in tone ranging from mockery "the wicked Nazis" to tone-neutral. The point is he was using it, and he was a National Socialist advocate. George Lincoln Rockwell named his party the American Nazi Party in 1959.

While none of these men were National Socialists in the strictest sense, there is obvsiously a pattern emerging that the word was used in English in tone-neutral if not outright positive contexts both pre-and-post war.

**Edit**

Leon Degrelle used "Nazi" frequently, for example in his book "Hitler Democrat" - i'm just not certain was the English the original. I know it was patched together from notes and writings found by his wife, so the argument could be made the use of "Nazi" was not his intention but I will include it for now! If somebody can confirm that would be helpful.

[Wetzelrad]

Hitler gave a speech before the Reichstag on January 30, 1939 where he used it. He portrays the American media as "anti-Nazi i.e. anti-German". There is supposed to be an official English translation of this speech which would be quite definitive if someone can locate it.
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitler ... 8/mode/1up

I have now found this in an official publication titled Der Führer vor dem ersten Reichstag Großdeutschlands: Reichstagsrede vom 30. Januar 1939. It can be read here:
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52874254/vie ... 6/mode/1up

The specific word he used is "antinazistische". It translates roughly like this:

And the announcement of American film companies of their intention to produce anti-Nazi, that is, anti-German, films will only lead to our German producers creating anti-Semitic films in the future.

Here it is in image format for future use:

antinazistische.jpg (302.27 KiB) Viewed 931 times

[Archie]

Words can acquire different connotations even when the underlying meaning is neutral.

Connotation - an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.

The word nigger has a lot of negative connotations (both with slavery and subservience as well as modern stereotypes). But the word itself literally just means "black." The word is not inherently offensive; tt is etymologically indistinguishable from negro which is considered very dated but not nearly as offensive as nigger. And oddly there other slurs like the ones drawing explicit comparison to apes that would seem to be more offensive in terms of meaning, yet these are all subordinate to the chief ethnic slur, "the n word."

First recorded in 1640–50; from French nègre “a Black person,” from Spanish negro “black”; Negro 1 ( def. )

Or consider the word retarded which is etymologically beyond neutral; it is euphemistic. Saying someone is retarded is (was!) a nice way of saying they are slow, unintelligent. But in time the connotation tends toward the underlying social attitude. Thus what was coined as a euphemism may become offensive, and a new euphemism has to be introduced. And the cycle continues. This is sometimes referred to as the euphemism treadmill.

I had always assumed that the etymology of Nazi was the obvious one, that it was a contraction of Nationalsozialist, and that is indeed what all the dictionaries say.

If it was a term in common usage wouldn't there be far more than this single source, Goebbels' diaries?
Maybe those diaries should be called into question.

The history I heard was that the term Nazi originated as a contraction of Ashkenazi, and it's meaning was derogatory.

I do not think this is correct. People also say goyim means cattle and stuff like that. These claims are usually wrong. The average bro might be an okay guy to hang out with, but most are not competent philologists (or researchers in general).

The name Ashkenazi derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, son of Japhet, son of Noah, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10). The name of Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.

The Biblical Ashkenaz is usually derived from Assyrian Aškūza (cuneiform Aškuzai/Iškuzai), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates;[29] the name Aškūza is identified with the Scythians.[30][31] The intrusive n in the Biblical name is likely due to a scribal error confusing a vav ו‎ with a nun נ‎.[31][32][33]

First recorded in 1830–40; from post-Biblical Hebrew ashkənazzīm, plural of ashkənazzī, equivalent to ashkənaz + -ī a suffix indicating relationship or origin; Ashkenaz

It's coincidental. Also, Ashkenazi was around first, so I don't really understand why Jews would want to coin a slur for the NSDAP based on a term for themselves? I'm not seeing the logic there.

[TlsMS93]

The film "Der Hitlerjunge Quex" frequently uses the term Nazi to portray how they are referred to in the public eye. I see this as a pejorative term in the film, but the Nazis don't mind, as it only gains this negative connotation depending on the context.

[Booze]

The history I heard....

Can you give us this source?

I never bothered to keep record of a source on that.