Nihilism and Nazism: On Rauschning’s The Revolution of Nihilism

This article is an investigation into Hermann Rauschning’s 1939 book The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West in which he claims that the Nazis should be viewed, not as driven by ideology, but as driven by nihilism. According to Rauschning, who was himself a former official in the Nazi Party, the Nazis had no goal or purpose other than to seek destruction for the sake of destruction, and thus were nihilists. As this view goes against both the standard understanding of Nazism (as driven by racist and nationalist ideologies) and of nihilism (as individualistic rather than political), this paper first investigates Rauschning’s arguments and then compares them against the analysis of Nazism offered by Hannah Arendt. Contrary to Rauschning, Arendt argues that Nazism was driven by a very specific racial ideology and she thus warns against viewing the Nazis as nihilists. By comparing and contrasting the arguments of Rauschning and of Arendt, this paper concludes by offering a better understanding of Nazism and of nihilism.