Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt

The National Socialist People's Welfare (, NSV) was a social welfare organization during the Third Reich. The NSV was originally established in 1931 as a small Nazi Party-affiliated charity, which was active locally in the city of Berlin. On 3 May 1933, shortly after the Nazi Party took power in Weimar Germany, Adolf Hitler turned it into a party organization that was to be active throughout the country. The structure of the NSV was based on the Nazi Party model, with local, county (Kreis) and district (Gau) administrations. Nazi Opposition to Social Welfare While the Nazi Party had existed since 1920, it did not initially set up its own social welfare department as several other German political parties had done. Nazi ideology was in principle unfavourable to the idea of social welfare. Writing in Mein Kampf about his time spent among the poor in Vienna, Hitler expressed indignation against social welfare for helping the degenerate and the feeble. The Nazis believed that the German race had to be strengthened through a process of natural selection, which required weeding out its weakest elements, so they condemned the goals of charity and philanthropy. They opposed the extensive welfare system of the Weimar Republic for being wasteful, bureaucratic, and helping the wrong people, since it distributed welfare benefits indiscriminately without regard for race and often assisted people that the Nazis considered inferior. Foundation in Berlin