What was the cause of Nazism?

In continuing to research Ayn Rand and Objectivism, I have come across Leonard Peikoff, the literary executor of Rand.  Peikoff wrote a book entitled, "The Ominous Parallels", linking the rise of Nazism with what was (is?) going on in the USA during the 1980's.  Having just returned from Berlin and having stayed in the old Jewish quarter, I was interested in the Objectivist view of Nazism.

Peikoff thought that Nazism was not rooted in the consequences of World War I but in the philosophy that had developed over centuries, a philosophy consisting of three tenets:

• the worship of unreason.
• the demand for self-sacrifice.
• the elevation of society or the state above the individual.

  In her introduction to the book, Ayn Rand states:

It is a tragic irony of our time that the two worst, bloodiest tribes in history, the Nazis of Germany and the Communists of Soviet Russia, both of whom are motivated by brute powerlust and a crudely materialistic greed for the unearned, show respect for the power of philosophy (they call it "ideology") and spend billions of their looted wealth on propaganda and indoctrination, realising that man's mind is their most dangerous enemy and it is man's mind that they have to destroy — while the United States and the other countries of the West, who claim to believe in the superiority of the human spirit over matter, neglect philosophy, despise ideas, starve the best minds of the young, offer nothing but the stalest slogans of a materialistic altruism in the form of global giveaways, and wonder why they are losing the world to the thugs.

Germany before Nazism was a major European nation, intellectually and industrially developed, widely admired for its culture.  It was considered a modern, civilised nation.

Adolf Hitler, in explaining the moral philosophy of Nazism, said:

It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realise that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual...."

"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture.... The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.

Is there anything evil in these ideas?  On the surface, no.  However, it led to this:

The gas chambers themselves [at Auschwitz] and the adjoining crematoria, viewed from a short distance, were not sinister-looking places at all; it was impossible to make them out for what they were. Over them were well-kept lawns with flower borders; the signs at the entrances merely said BATHS. The unsuspecting Jews thought they were simply being taken to the baths for the delousing which was customary at all camps. And taken to the accompaniment of sweet music!

"For there was light music. An orchestra of 'young and pretty girls all dressed in white blouses and navy-blue skirts,' as one survivor remembered, had been formed from among the inmates. While the selection was being made for the gas chambers this unique musical ensemble played gay tunes from The Merry Widow and Tales of Hoffmann. Nothing solemn and somber from Beethoven. The death marches at Auschwitz were sprightly and merry tunes, straight out of Viennese and Parisian operetta.

"To such music, recalling as it did happier and more frivolous times, the men, women and children were led into the 'bath houses,' where they were told to undress preparatory to taking a 'shower.' Sometimes they were even given towels. "Once they were inside the 'shower-room' — and perhaps this was the first moment that they may have suspected some thing was amiss, for as many as two thousand of them were packed into the chamber like sardines, making it difficult to take a bath — the massive door was slid shut, locked and hermetically sealed. Up above where the well-groomed lawn and flower beds almost concealed the mushroom-shaped lids of vents that ran up from the hall of death, orderlies stood ready to drop into them the amethyst-blue crystals of hydrogen cyanide....

"Surviving prisoners watching from blocks nearby remembered how for a time the signal for the orderlies to pour the crystals down the vents was given by a Sergeant Moll. ' Na, gib ihnen schon zu fressen' ('All right, give 'em something to chew on'), he would laugh and the crystals would be poured through the openings, which were then sealed.

"Through heavy-glass portholes the executioners could watch what happened. The naked prisoners below would be looking up at the showers from which no water spouted or perhaps at the floor wondering why there were no drains. It took some moments for the gas to have much effect. But soon the inmates became aware that it was issuing from the perforations in the vents. It was then that they usually panicked, crowding away from the pipes and finally stampeding toward the huge metal door where, as Reitlinger puts it, 'they piled up in one blue clammy blood-spattered pyramid, clawing and mauling each other even in death.' "

 William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

After the Nazis had led their country to destruction, Frederich Hayek attempted to warn the World that countries should not fall into practising the political philosophy (Socialism) that had led to Nazism.  However, as Peikoff's book attempts to show, this warning continues to go unheeded, moving the Human race closer and closer to more destruction.