The full name of the Nazi party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party) often abbreviated as NSDAP.

The fundemental principle of the variously named Fascist Parties was the rejection of the Marxist dialectic with its vision of economic man and class struggle as the motivating principle of history. Instead Fascism viewed history as a struggle based on race and ethnicity and, taking its cue from Spengler, saw man as heroic rather than materialistic.

Fascism saw itself as the natural political outgrowth of Darwinism and its principles were not far removed from so-called Social Darwinism which was, at the time, a perfectly respectable social philosophy.