Did Nazism exist before Hitler

Answer 1

It's a complicated question. The short answer is yes, it existed before Hitler joined. The longer answer...

Originally, the Nazi Party was called the "German Workers Party" and was a small group of drunken, racist right-wing extremists from the German city of Munich. The party would meet at a beer hall (a type of large pub popular in southern Germany) and drink and complain about how socialists, communists, and Jews caused Germany to lose World War I, and how they were ruining everything since then. Aside from this, the party wasn't super organized nor did it have much of a concrete ideology, although they did agree with racist writings by 19th century authors like Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Additionally, some members of the Party were members of other racist groups like the Thule Society and the Germanenorden.

After World War I ended, Germany had problems with extremist political parties- notably, there was a short civil war wherein communists tried to overthrow the government and create a German version of the Soviet Union. So the government started spying on extremist parties, in order to catch them before they could cause trouble. Hitler, who had served in the Germany Army during World War I and stayed in the Army after the war ended, was ordered to join and spy on the GWP. He did as he was ordered, but after a short time, he joined for real.

Hitler proved to be a talented public speaker. He quickly became the leader of the party, and renamed it the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (even though it wasn't socialist in any way- Hitler was just trying to gain popularity); it was nicknamed the Nazi Party by its opponents, and the nickname stuck. Nazis tended to call themselves "National Socialists" or "NSDAP" (which are the initials of the German version of the full name of the party), or even just "NS".

Under Hitler's leadership, the Nazi "philosophy" became more formalized. He wrote the book Mein Kampf while he was in prison for a short time in the early 1920s, and this became the basis of Nazi ideology. Hitler was eventually able to get himself into power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and then imposed his racist Nazi ideology on the country. By August 1934 he was the dictatorial "Fuehrer" ("Leader") of Germany.

So while the Party already existed before Hitler joined it, Hitler was the one who really got it working, and made it successful.

Answer 2

Generally speaking the Nazi Party was the creation of Hitler. Other helped him early in his political career. It became evident by 1929 that Hitler ran the Nazi Party. So technically, no there was no nazism before Hitler. There was a form of it in the fascist nation of Italy.