Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

ers, it was claimed by eyewitnesses, were used for live bayonet practice, while decapitation
was also a popular method of killing among the Japanese troops. Additional, more drastic,
means of murder were also reported, including burning, live burial, and being beaten to
death. Women (when not raped and murdered) and children were also killed in vast numbers.
The figure given most frequently as the total number of killed is 300,000. This figure
takes into account those killed in the city, as well as Chinese citizens murdered in the districts
surrounding Nanking. As with many other instances of genocide and genocidal massacre,
a climate of denial has emerged among some Japanese defenders of their military
involvement in the war with China, such that they even maintain that the massacre at
Nanking never happened. Successive Japanese governments, however, have recognized that
it did occur. Outside of the government, public opinion with regard to the massacre is still
uncertain. The event continues to be a point of contention and controversy in Sino-
Japanese relations, the more so as some Japanese school textbooks that play down or deny
the massacre are still being released and used in the classroom.
National Socialism. A political movement founded in Germany and intimately connected
to Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), which attained office in January 1933. To a large degree, it
began as a movement inspired by the growth of European fascism (particularly its Italian variant
under Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), who was seen for some time as Hitler’s political
mentor), but National Socialist ideology outstripped fascism when it incorporated a powerful
and uncompromising strain of antisemitism into its philosophy, together with a racial conception
of how the world operated. Like fascism, its essential beliefs were grounded in a vigorous
opposition to alternative ideologies, particularly Marxism, socialism, liberalism, and individualism.
Hitler’s philosophy called for an unyielding obedience of the people to the state, which
was the transmitted will of the Volk (people), or national essence. Hitler, as leader (Führer) of
the National Socialist party, was the embodiment of the state and bearer of the will of the
Volk. The major goals of the National Socialist state were physical expansion in accordance
with the principle of racial unification and contiguity, eradication of the nation’s racial and
political enemies (as defined by the Führer), and a militaristic regimentation of society in every
respect. German National Socialism was effectively a destructive force; through harnessing the
power of the advanced industrial state to an ideology predicated on military power, expansion,
and social engineering, National Socialism rapidly showed itself to be bellicose, dangerous,
harmful, and a paradigm of sorts for other genocidal political movements.
Nationalism. A term that stems from the French Revolutionary era (1789–1815). It
embraces the notion that a group of people united legally or by common cultural bonds comprises
a nation with the right to self-determination. Nationalism initially was the quest for
nationhood (in which people sharing a common descent, language, and/or history inhabit a
territory guaranteed by defined borders) and the subsequent pursuit of statehood (in which a
politically defined community, such as a nation, is governed by a united and recognized power
structure accepted by its inhabitants as legitimate). As the idea of a French nation took hold
after the fall of the monarchy in 1789, other ethnic groups began to discover and pursue their
own distinct collective identity, claiming the right to their own independence. In general,
there evolved two kinds of nation: first, that composed of a common civic identity regardless
of cultural and racial limits; and second, that made up of persons with similar physical characteristics
such as shape of nose, height and body shape, texture of hair, skin pigmentation,
and bone structure, and/or ethnic features such as language, religion, history, and customs.
The latter came to be known as völkish nationalism. It tended to be exclusive, rejecting from
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