The narration of a fiction: the ideological manipulation of National Socialism

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to provide with an overview of the historical manipulation that National Socialism attempted to carry out on the basis of its ideology. Starting from the Arendtian definition of «ideology» as the logic of an idea or the unfolding of a process, I will describe some of the attempts made by the Third Reich in order to reformulate its past and its present, focusing specially on a series of myths or narratives which were elaborated, such as the «myth of the Arian race», the «myth of the national community» —die Volksgemeinschaft—, the tale of the «stab in the back», its portrait about the icon of the Jew, or its purpose to eliminate the remnants of the concentration camp