ABSTRACT
On 30 January 1933, a movement of totalitarian conscience, racist ideology and genocidal intent rose to power in Germany. The historical uniqueness of National Socialism, however, lies in the fact that in a meteoric time span and with the acquiescence and complicity of a substantial section of German society in free elections, it would write some of the most ignominious chapters in the history of mankind: Theirs is the responsibility for World War II and theirs is the responsibility for the bureaucratised, industrial mass murder of the Holocaust. The experiment of democracy came with the promise of greater freedom, a widening of participation by making politics accessible to everyone and, insofar as its principal driving force was articulated around a social democratic-minded labor movement, greater social justice. The glorification of martyrdom was a vector of National Socialist hagiography and propaganda that its emocrats stressed to the point of paroxysm.
