“Nazi,” “Fascism,” and Word Politics
The F-scale shows that for the opponents of National Socialism there was yet another
way to talk about Hitler-type regimes, in addition to the parochial term Nazi, while
simultaneously bypassing socialism. From the 1930s to the present, both in the West
and in former Communist countries, writers have frequently used the generic term
fascism to refer collectively to Mussolini’s Italy, Vichy France, and Hitler’s Germany.
In fact, fascism became the favorite word of choice both for Stalinist propaganda
workers and for the Communist Left outside of the Soviet Union. This was the
Communist International’s easy and radical solution in the early 1930s to avoiding
any potentially uncomfortable questions that could arise with regard to the expression
National Socialism. Ideological avatars of Stalinism simply forbade use of the word
socialism in any references to Hitler’s regime altogether. As a result, the name of
Hitler’s party was rarely rendered in full in Russian. Furthermore, to remain politically
correct, Soviet and Western Communist writers more often than not shied away from
the word Nazi to avoid any hazardous questions about how this acronym might have
come about in the first place.
Communists soon began using the term fascism to label not only Mussolini’s
and Hitler’s regimes but also all movements that they defined as their enemies. For
example, the Communist International routinely called Social Democrats “social
fascists” until 1934, when Communists finally shifted gears slightly and began reluctantly
building alliances with these left “apostates.” In the course of time, just like the
term Nazi, the term fascism entered the mainstream and evolved into a metaphor for
something evil, sinister, and hated. In a similar vein, fascism, just like Nazi, eventually
lost its original meaning and came, as Orwell (1968, 132) reminded us, simply to
describe something not desirable.[11]
The first recorded source of the expression Nazi is Hitler’s early opponents,
who began using it in the 1920s as a negative equivalent to the positive term Sozi, a
short-lived colloquial abbreviation that contemporary Germans occasionally used to
refer to the Social Democrats (Mautner 1944, 93). Sozi, like Nazi, never took root
in the German language. Although a 1931 brochure released by Joseph Goebbels
([1931] 1992), the Third Reich’s chief propaganda master, carried the title Nazi–
Sozi, the word Nazi never caught on with Hitler’s followers, who came to dislike it.
They always preferred the more meaningful National Socialism or National Socialist
or occasionally NS for short—the usage that has survived in German to the present
day. Thus, on all their propaganda posters, Hitler’s followers always wrote: “Vote
National Socialist.” Their opponents nevertheless quickly picked up the term Nazi
and began using it in a derogatory manner. It has been claimed that Konrad
Heiden, a popular German Jewish refugee journalist with a Social Democratic
background, was actually the first one to introduce this expression into mainstream
English (Clare 1999).[12] Ironically, Heiden’s very first book about the “Nazis,”
when he still lived in Germany, carried the title Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus
(History of National Socialism [1932]). However, two years later, when he was
already on the run, he published another book that he characteristically titled Sind
die Nazis Sozialisten? (Are the Nazis Socialists? [1934]), which already questioned
Hitler’s socialist credentials.
Although there is no evidence that Heiden was the first to coin the weasel
N word, it is obvious that left-leaning writers and policy experts such as himself,
Neumann, Fromm, and Marcuse were the ones spearheading its use. For all practical
purposes, Nazi not only sounded conveniently short to English speakers but also did
well the job of getting around socialist elements in Hitler’s dictatorship. Apparently,
another reason why that name established itself in English was the reluctance of
British and American media, politicians, and propaganda workers to offend the Soviet
Union, their wartime ally.
It was precisely after 1942, when the Soviet Union became a full-fledged ally of
the Americans and the British, that the use of Nazi became increasingly popular and
almost totally phased out the use of National Socialism. This particular turnaround
was especially visible in Marcuse’s writings. At the end of 1942, this philosopher
turned intelligence expert wrote a propaganda memo for the U.S. Office of War
Information in which he proposed a set of guidelines on how to successfully mobilize
the American people against the enemy by utilizing loaded words that should be
hammered into their minds (1998, 179–86).
Marcuse stressed that such expressions as totalitarianism were not good enough
for propaganda purposes because they were too abstract for the common folk to
swallow. Dictatorship, in references to Germany, was not a good word either because
it blurred the difference between Germany and the Soviets, which could undermine
the Allies’ unity. So what was a good term for him? Marcuse pointedly stressed that
“‘Nazis’ and ‘Nazism’ (not National Socialism) still seem to be the most adequate
symbols. They contain in their very sound and structure something of that barbaric
hate and horror that characterize both references. Moreover, they are free from the
national and socialist illusions which their unabridged form still might convey”
(1998, 180). Marcuse also regretted that this useful loaded term was still confined to
the German regime only. To correct the situation, he suggested that American radio
and print propaganda not only mainstream the expression Nazi but also apply it to
fascist Italy and Vichy France. As if following his own advice, in his texts written after
1942 he switched from National Socialism to Nazi. With regard to Japan, as Marcuse
remarked in passing, the popular expression Japs would work just fine for propaganda
purposes, and no change was needed (1998, 180–81).
----Footnotes
11. It is notable that in his otherwise well-researched book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg (2008),
a popular neoconservative writer, resorts to this particular loaded usage in order to dramatize his case
regarding the historical linking of the National Socialists and Italian fascists with the progressive and
socialist tradition.
12. Heiden is known mostly as the author of the first comprehensive biography of Hitler (Heiden 1944),
which still remains an interesting read. Although in this particular book Heiden occasionally did use
the name “Nazi,” his favorite expression for the description of the German dictatorship was “National
Socialism.” He apparently had not caught up yet with the undergoing change in usage.

Quelle:
ANDREI A. ZNAMENSKI: From “National Socialists” to “Nazi”
History, Politics, and the English Language