"For all the parallels, however, the regimes were inherently more distinctive than similar. That the Nazi regime was more radical, more dynamic, more aggressive, more ideologically driven in all it undertook reflected crucial structures of the German dictatorship that bore only superficial similarity to Italian Fascism. The exceptionality of the Nazi regime hinged in no small measure upon the ideological hopes, expectations and opportunities that were embodied in Hitler’s supreme and unchallengeable position as Germany’s leader. The cult that invested ‘heroic’, almost superhuman, qualities in Hitler, turning the one-time beer-hall demagogue into the object of almost deified veneration, was, of course, fabricated, just like the Duce cult in Italy, the Stalin cult in the Soviet Union, and leadership cults elsewhere. However, Hitler did not have to transcend an earlier source of ideological legitimacy, as Stalin had to do in his nominal allegiance to the legacy of Lenin and the tenets of Marxism. Nor did Hitler have to build his leadership cult only years after taking power, as did Mussolini."
This passage further clarifies the difference but it also drills down to the heart of why the Nazis simultaneously hated Jews and wanted to conquer an empire:
"For Hitler and many of his ardent followers the Jews amounted to an all-pervasive danger that threatened Germany’s existence. Internally they were seen as poisoning its culture, undermining its values and corrupting its racial purity. Externally, they were viewed as a malign international power through their presumed domination of both plutocratic capitalism and of Bolshevism. The elimination of all imagined Jewish power and influence was, therefore, the very pivot of the utopian vision of national renewal built on racial purity."
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