National socialism was a political ideology that originated in Germany in the years following World War I. Its best-known variant, Nazism, was the ideology of the Nazi Party and the state ideology of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, but the national socialist movement was not confined to Germany. In fact, national socialist movements appeared in countries as far away as Mongolia, Chile, and Russia.
National socialism, as the name suggests, originated as a nationalist form of non-Marxist socialism. This form of socialism was called "Prussian socialism", this ideology claimed that true socialism was the one embraced by the Prussian people for centuries, involving the unity of the German peoples and authoritarianism. National socialism believed in a corporatist and state-run economy that was shielded from foreign trade, aggressive nationalism and militarism, moralism, and xenophobia. National socialists were opposed to the Marxist idea of class struggle, but they started as an anti-elitist movement, campaigning against the rich during the Great Depression. National socialism supported efforts to employ all members of the majority race/ethnicity, with an example being the Reich Labor Service in Germany. In Germany, unemployment collapsed as more and more Germans were put to work by building war materials, roads, model villages, and other things in a manner similar to the employment of Americans for public works during the New Deal, reviving the German economy. German men and women worked together, albeit in separate branches of the same organization.
National socialism's evolution from the socialist movement made it appeal to several nationalist leftists and right-wingers, as it was "beyond left and right". It supported the unification of people from all parties in the nation (until the Night of the Long Knives), a societal interest in the "national collective", the nationalization of key industries, replacing foreign employees with citizen employees, giving more jobs to citizens and fewer to immigrants, overcoming the gap of contradictions between the classes, and focusing all people's efforts towards one common goal. The leftists were nicknamed "Beefsteak Nazis" for being "red on the inside, brown on the outside", and the leftist national socialists would later form their own ideology, Strasserism. The right wing would continue on as the mainstream Nazi Party.
A major feature of national socialism was scientific racism, the idea that some races were inferior to others. In Germany, the Nordic "Aryan race" was promoted as the "master race", and the Germans sought to create lebensraum ("living space") for the Aryans in Europe. In Chile, the National Socialist Movement of Chile believed that the biracial mestizo people was the "chosen people", as they were of mixed indigenous South American and white descent. In other countries, national socialist movements would advocate the supremacy of their own cultural groups. The minority groups were persecuted to varying degrees in many countries, with the Nazis in Germany boycotting Jewish stores and carrying out pogroms and, later, mass executions; the National Socialist Movement in Chile distanced itself from anti-Semitism.
National socialism reached its height in 1942, at the height of Nazi Germany's expansion during World War II. Nazi collaboration governments had been established across Europe, and local national socialist parties in countries such as Denmark and Norway persuaded their people to volunteer in the Waffen-SS to fight against communism and the Western Allies. National socialism declined after the war, however, as Allied leaders pursued a policy of Denazification. Former Nazis were purged from public offices, the swastika and the Hitler salute were outlawed as hate speech, and Nazi symbols and structures across the country were demolished, notably the swastika atop the Reichstag. In many countries that had been occupied by Germany, national socialists were tried for treason, with many of them being executed or imprisoned. Despite this, neo-Nazism continues to remain influential in far-right circles across the world. Minor national socialist parties appeared in various countries, with some advocating for the supremacy of the Nazi Party's "Aryan race", others for the supremacy of their own races. Many neo-Nazis argue that "Nazism" was Zionist propaganda invented after the war to besmirch the reputation of Hitler's "national socialism", and that "national socialism" is not racist.