Weltanschauung (worldview) is a term that calls to mind visions of mystics and was forged in the 19th century as Germany was forming as a nation. It replaced the word “philosophy” in the Nazi language. Hitler liked to describe National Socialism as “a worldview.”

“The Nazi vision of the world was clearly not a contemplative philosophy. It was an active ‘vision,’ that aimed continually to transfigure the whole world in order to render it familiar and to eliminate whatever remained alien to it.” (Michaud, p 25)

Definition adapted from Eric Michaud The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).