It is necessary first to lay out the political spectrum of Germany before the National Socialists came to power. Germany, like all polities, was not divided along a single line. The truly conservative forces among the various Germanies were the Habsburg Empire, the various principalities and their cherished independence, and the major Christian denominations, most particularly the Roman Catholic Church. The conservative ideal was that propagated by Klemens von Metternich during and after the Congress of Vienna. It entailed a balance of power in Germany between the Emperor in Vienna and the upstart King in Berlin, which therefore maintained peace in Europe by dividing the might of the Reich. Metternich's policy was diametrically opposed to nationalism and rebellion. Henry Kissinger wrote, "Oppressed by the vulnerability of its domestic structures in an age of nationalism, the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire insisted on a generalized right of interference to defeat social unrest wherever it occurred." Both the Catholic Church and its principal defender, the Habsburg Crown, were founded on universalist and transnational grounds, and each, along with the smaller states of the old Holy Roman Empire, found themselves assaulted in the nineteenth century.

Supported by the pan-German nationalism of 1848, the Prussian state was able to assert its centralizing, authoritarian control over the bulk of the Reich. The traditional Imperial idea of transnational lordship which had characterized the Imperial Crown from Charlemagne's time fell under the sword of Prussian aggression in 1866; shortly thereafter, Bismarck launched the Kulturkampf against the Church. In response to this maneuver, which anticipated Hitler's own assault against the religious bodies, the Center Party leader Ludwig Windthorst stated succinctly the conservative position, "My loyalty to the Royal family of Hanover will last until my dying day, and nothing in the world, not even the most powerful Chancellor of Germany, will be able to make me depart from it." Conservative in Germany, as elsewhere, meant an adherence to legitimate and traditional institutions ‹ the very opposite of the Nazi ideology.

National Socialism stood in direct contravention to all that traditional Germany held dear: the Christian faith, civilization, and the ancient (and somewhat befuddled) political structure. The deep Nazi antipathy to Christianity and civilization, which, in much of Europe, meant practically the same thing, is particularly illuminating. Hitler despised these things: he said that, "Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." In fact, Hitler and the Nazis wanted nothing less than the "re-barbarization" of the German people. The esteemed German historian Hajo Holborn wrote that "Anti-Semitism was the major instrument in this policy of barbarization. Through the vilification, torture, and mass murder of the Jews the ruthlessness was produced that Hitler wanted to inculcate in his followers."

Hitler wished to undo the Romanization of Germany. He wanted, in effect, to set back up the pagan holy tree of the Saxons which St. Boniface had felled twelve hundred years before. The source for his thinking, according to Alan Bullock, was a "crude Darwinism," in which struggle was the key aspect of existence. Such thinking was the very antithesis of conservative Germany.

Also illuminating is the way in which Germans voted and acted under Nazi tyranny. The source of the Nazi electoral victories, particularly after Bruening took office as Chancellor, were the middle and lower-middle class voters of northern Germany. Many have labeled these voters "conservative." They were the support for the right-wing Nationalist Party and the anti-Weimar movement. But these were also those who had provided the backbone for the revolution in Germany which had taken place under Bismarck the defeat of the Austrians and exclusion of the Habsburgs, the reckless territorial aggrandizement against the French, and the suppression of religious liberty with the Kulturkampf. In truth, Hitler came to power on a program that might have been ripped from the pan-Germanic dreams of a 19th century liberal revolutionary. The infamous Twenty-Five Points include provisions such as unification of all Germans in Europe, land reform, the abolition of child labor, division of profits, old-age security, the replacement of the Roman with the German Law, and "the duty of the state to provide for the individual." This was clearly a challenge to the conservative institutions of German life. And when the Nazis came to power, they proved this point. The Nazi state was a highly centralized, technocratic, propagandistic, national machine. In addition to its systematic attack on the Jews, who comprised a long-standing, but abused, segment of the population, the Nazis opened a new Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church, jailing priests and deposing bishops; unlike 1874, however, Hitler also moved against the established Protestant denominations, persecuting such noble men as Dietrich Bonhoffer.

In truth, it was the established institutions which provided the terribly small opposition to Hitler (along with the Communists, who engaged in an internecine totalitarian war with their rival National Socialists). Holborn wrote, "The challenge to the totalitarian claims of the Nazi government by the churches found the support of people who had been willing to adjust themselves to the new regime.... Conservative elements, both Catholic and Protestant, were shocked by the Nazi attacks on the churches and the Christian religion.... There were a good many liberal intellectuals who...were now attracted by the church resistance." These dissenters included Bishops Galen of Munster and Faulhaber of Munich (other bishops proved weaker) among Catholics, and Bonhoffer among Lutherans. Even the Prussian military aristocracy, an institution largely damned by its complicity with Hitler, offered substantial opposition ‹ General Beck, Admiral Canaris, and Colonel von Stauffenberg among them.

The Nazi state was an abomination almost unimaginable to those who have not endured its tortures, both subtle and overt. Like Stalinist Russia, which Hitler consciously emulated, National Socialist Germany repudiated the civilized tradition of government which had developed out of the medieval period. Hitler and his acolytes ruthlessly and maliciously employed the liberal themes of nationalism, anti-Christian secularism, and devotion to the state. To contend that Nazism was conservative is not only untrue, it is lazy and unfair.

In the United States, it is an especially ill-used label. It is not as if the Republican Party had Nazism in its closet; the very purpose for which the GOP exists is to protect the traditional apparatus of limited government and individual liberties from molestation by the state. Yet the abuse of the opprobious term "Nazi" continues in American political discourse.

Of all the words which must retain their full and horrifying meaning for the sake of our lives and liberties, "Nazi" probably ranks highest. One may fairly hold that the Republican Party is dangerous because of the fundamental distinctions between the two parties on the issues. But one may not reasonably hold that a party based on fear of the state (witness the Second Amendment controversy) could possibly lead, or be linked, to Nazism. We are fortunate enough not to have this beast threaten us; let us be wary that we do not, by cheapening its dangers, let it become acceptable.