New Order (Nazism) - Origin of The Term

Origin of The Term

The term Neuordnung originally had a different and more limited meaning than in its present usage. It is typically translated as New Order, but a more correct translation would actually be more akin to re-structurization. When it was used in Germany during the Third Reich-era it referred specifically to the Nazis' desire to essentially redraw the contemporary state borders within Europe, thereby changing the then-existing geopolitical structures. In the same sense it has also been used now and in the past to denote similar re-orderings of the international political order such as the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Vienna Congress in 1815, and the Allied victory in 1945. The complete phrase which was used by the Nazi establishment was actually die Neuordnung Europas (the New Order of Europe), for which Neuordnung was merely a shorthand.

According to the Nazi government this goal was pursued by Germany to secure a fair rearrangement of territory for the "common benefit" of a new, economically integrated Europe, which in Nazi terminology meant the continent of Europe with the exclusion of the "Asiatic" Soviet Union. Nazi racist views regarded the "Judeo-Bolshevist" Soviet state both as a criminal institution which needed to be destroyed as well as a barbarian place as yet lacking any actual culture that would give it a "European" character. Neuordnung was therefore hardly ever used in reference to Soviet Russia since theoretically there weren't even any actual structures that could be re-organized along National Socialist designs.

The actual objective was to ensure a state of total post-war continental hegemony for Nazi Germany. This was to be achieved by the expansion of the territorial base of the German state itself, combined with the political and economic subjugation of the rest of Europe to Germany. Eventual extensions of the project to areas beyond Europe as well as on an ultimately global scale were anticipated for the future period in which Germany would have secured unchallenged control over her own continent first, but Neuordnung did not carry this extra-European meaning at the time.

Through its wide use in Nazi propaganda it quickly gained coinage in Western media. In English-language academic circles especially it eventually carried a much more inclusive definition, and became increasingly known as a term used to refer to all the foreign and domestic politics and war aims of the Nazi German state as well as its dictatorial leader Adolf Hitler. It therefore holds approximately the same connotations as the term co-prosperity sphere did in Japanese circles in reference to their planned imperial domain. Nowadays it is most commonly used to refer to all the post-war planning and policies both in and outside of Europe that the Nazi government expected to implement after an anticipated victory for Germany and the other Axis powers in World War II.