Author Topic: National Socialists were socialists  (Read 4193 times)

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #30 on: January 30, 2022, 05:25:31 am »
Information from Otto Strasser's memoir "Hitler and I", published in 1940. In the book, he is bitterly anti-Hitler and anti-NSDAP.

Previously, we discussed numerous times how Hitler respected the Strassers, went out of his way to try to keep them in the party, and never criticized them for being leftist. Here is further evidence Strasser was indeed leftist/Socialist, and that he believed Hitler was leftist enough to be "used" to further the cause of Socialism.

Quote
Six months earlier the celebrated Kapp putsch had taken place in Berlin, on which occasion I had fought valiantly for the Weimar Republic. I had led three squads of Berlin workingmen against Colonel Erhardt’s Brigade and General Luttwitz’s Regiment.
[...]
I was a young student of law and economics, a Left-Wing student leader, and a leader of ex-soldier students.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 2-3.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

Quote
Gregor, as leader of the Nationalist ex-service men of Bavaria, had incorporated his followers in the National-Socialist movement that spring [1920]. He had founded the first provincial branch of the party, and was thus Hitler’s first Gauleiter.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 6-7.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

Quote
‘There is no question of revenge and there is no question of war,’ I replied. ‘Our Socialism must be “national” in order to establish a new order in Germany and not to set out on a new policy of conquests.’

‘Yes,’ said Gregor, who had been listening very seriously, ‘from the Right we shall take nationalism, which has so disastrously allied itself with capitalism, and from the Left we shall take Socialism, which has made such an unhappy union with internationalism. Thus we shall form the National-Socialism which will be the motive force of a new Germany and a new Europe.’

‘And,’ I continued, ‘the emphasis in this amalgamation must be on the socialism. Don’t you call your movement Nationalsozialist in a single word, Herr Hitler? German grammar tells us that in compound words of this kind the first part serves to qualify the second, which is the essential part.’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 9.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

Again, there was an understanding in the 1920s that Marx did not have a monopoly on the idea of Socialism:
Quote
The more persuasive Hitler tried to be, the more critical did I become. He stopped for breath and saw me smile.

‘You do not know the Jews, Herr Hitler, and permit me to tell you that you overestimate them,’ I replied. ‘The Jew, you see, is above all adaptable. He exploits existing possibilities, but creates nothing. He makes use of socialism, he utilizes capitalism, he would even exploit National-Socialism if you gave him the chance. He adapts himself to circumstances with a suppleness of which, apart from him, only the Chinese is capable. Marx invented nothing. Socialism has always had three sides. Marx, in collaboration with the good German Engels, studied its economic side, the Italian Mazzini examined its national and religious implications, and Bakunin, a Russian, developed its Nihilist side, from which Bolshevism was born. Thus you see that socialism was not of Jewish origin at all.’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 11.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

(For reference, Bakunin was very anti-Jewish.)


Like Hitler, the Strassers wanted a synthesis of Nationalism and Socialism:
Quote
As for Hitler, I thought him too servile towards the General, too quick in argument and in the art of isolating his opponent. He has no political convictions, he has the eloquence of a loudspeaker.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Gregor, ‘his corporal’s stripes are pinned to his body. All the same there’s something about him. He has a magnetic quality which it is difficult to resist. What fine things we could do if we could use him to express your ideas, employing Ludendorff’s energy and my own organizing ability to carry them out!’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 13.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser


Ironically, the Strassers expressed disappointment that Hitler was making an actual synthesis of Nationalism and Socialism, as well as setting his sights on a radical and revolutionary transformation of politics. The Strassers were too bogged down in Western traditions...
Quote
Gregor had more solid arguments to justify his obstinacy.

I reminded him of Hitler’s successive acts of treachery.

‘We no longer talk the same language,’ I said. ‘We are socialists, and Hitler has already come to terms with the capitalists. We are republicans, and Hitler allies himself with the Wittelsbachs and even with the Hohenzollerns. We are European and liberal; we demand our liberty, but we also respect the liberty of others, while Hitler talks to his confidants of the domination of Europe. We are Christians; without Christianity Europe is lost. Hitler is an atheist.’

Gregor listened to me gravely, his brows contracted in a frown.

‘No!’ he exclaimed, ‘I won’t allow myself to be unhorsed. I shall tame him.’

Did Gregor really believe he would tame Adolf? Was he not bound to him by one of those obstinate fidelities that nothing could shake?
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 93.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

See the previous post of Hitler's conversations with Otto Strasser in 1930, where Hitler reaffirmed his Socialism and criticized Strasser for being too Marxist-sympathetic and not radical enough. (A different translation of that conversation is also included in the book I'm quoting from.)
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10620/#msg10620


Strasser speaks very negatively of Goebbels, but never does he portray Goebbels as a rightist. This occurred in 1925 I believe:
Quote
When Feder protested in Hitler’s name, Goebbels leapt to his feet and made a sensational speech in our support.

‘In these circumstances I demand that the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler be expelled from the National-Socialist Party,’ he thundered. I may add that he was loudly applauded.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 86.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

Otto Strasser claims Goebbels helped organize the coup attempt led by Stennes (which Otto Strasser supported). (This also means Stennes would have been a leftist Socialist. So many leftist factions within the NSDAP!)
Quote
On Good Friday, 1931, the Berlin S.A., in full uniform, with Stennes at their head, seized the building in which Goebbels lived and the Angriff was printed.
[...]
Stennes informed me of what had happened. ‘Goebbels is in flight, but the police are on the move against us,’ he said.

I immediately joined him at the Angriff building.

‘What are we to do?’ he asked me. ‘The revolt was planned in agreement with Goebbels, but at the last moment he betrayed us, warned the police, and fled to Munich to take refuge in Hitler’s bosom.’

‘A revolt which does not develop into a revolution,’ I replied, ‘is doomed in advance. We must hold out.’

The S.A. occupied the Angriff works for three days, publishing the paper on their own. Hitler and Goebbels were declared to have been dethroned. The Gauleiters of North Germany decided to support Stennes in the total revolution, and Goebbels’ second betrayal was reported in large type in all their papers.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 126-127.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser


Strasser also claims Goebbels was assuring Roehm that the right-wing elements of the party would soon be purged, in the days leading up to the Night of the Long Knives! Strasser insults Goebbels for seemingly favoring whichever faction is more likely to emerge victorious, even if it means 'betraying' his Socialist ideals, but Strasser never suggests that Goebbels was insincere in his initial support of the leftist plotters of the party. He does not suggest Goebbels was a rightist in disguise who was trying to gain the confidence of the leftists!

Furthermore, the way Strasser describes things, Hitler was ready to side with Roehm and the leftist radical/revolutionary faction over the right-leaning faction of the party, but Hitler's hand was forced by President Hindenburg's threats of using the military against him if he couldn't control agitation within the party, the danger of alienating the industrial powers, and Goering siding with the military/industrialists.

(Note that when Strasser says "radical", he means leftist.)
Quote
The conversations between Roehm and Goebbels at the Bratwurst-Glockle became much more animated. When the landlord or the waiters entered their private room, they heard only fragments.

‘Mussolini demanded the sacrifice of the radicals... The reactionaries grow more and more insolent... The Marburg speech was a provocation... Adolf will put these gentlemen of the Herrenklub in their place... We’ll make a clean sweep.’

They didn't hear much, but it was too much.

When Hitler finally came down on the side of the reactionaries a few days later, it was important that nobody should be left alive who knew that a few days earlier Goebbels had been discussing with Roehm the liquidation of the capitalist and bourgeois clique.
[...]
Adolf need only have taken one further step to have created a fait accompli, but Roehm, the soul of the revolutionary movement, was absent, and Blomberg and even Goering kept silence.
[...]
He made up his mind to deal once and for all with the reactionary gentlemen, if not tomorrow, then next day or next week.

What he needed now was the President’s consent to the formation of a new Cabinet built on real Nazi lines.
[...]
Hitler was accompanied by Goebbels, by Hofmann the photographer, and by Herr Schreck, the leader of the S.S. These three represented the radical wing of the party in South Germany.
[...]
Did not Goering belong to the Party? Did he not owe everything to Adolf? Yet he dared come out on the side of the Reichswehr and the police against the Party and the S.A. Blomberg and Goering against Hitler and Roehm...

Goebbels reflected. From the corner of his eye he watched Hitler pass from violent anger to complete prostration. The little cripple had betrayed Gregor Strasser at Bamberg, he had betrayed Stennes in Berlin, and he would betray Adolf too if the latter were obstinate, for he knew that power was on the side of the Reichswehr ... But Hitler must realize that too ... Hitler would reflect, he had already reflected, he would go back on his original intentions. Goebbels was sure of it. Only one petty act of treachery would be necessary, and the Minister of Propaganda cheerfully reconciled himself to it. What, after all, had he promised Roehm? Nothing at all. Roehm must be sacrificed.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 184-187.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

This is similar to how Rauschning said Hitler was considering regaining control of the party by leading the revolutionary leftist element of the SA himself, rather than purging them:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10719/#msg10719


Weeks before the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler again offered Gregor Strasser additional power in an attempt to retain his loyalty. There is no way Hitler would have offered Strasser the position of Minister of the National Economy had Hitler been a far-rightist trying to stamp out left-wing elements of the party! Furthermore, Otto Strasser's narrative that Hitler was basically right-leaning and had "betrayed" the Socialist aspects of National Socialism from the outset make little sense, given how willing Hitler was to continuously empower Gregor Strasser and Roehm (who Otto Strasser says was aligned with their overall Socialist goals).
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He was at the cross-roads. One way led towards a peaceful German revolution and the regeneration of the country; this was the way of Roehm, Gregor Strasser, and General von Schleicher. The other was the Imperialist way of old Germany, which led inevitably to war. At this time I wrote a pamphlet, Social Revolution or Fascist War? of which thousands of copies were sold throughout the country.

On June 13, before leaving for Venice to meet the Duce, Adolf sent for Gregor; the two had not met since the stormy interview provoked by the intrigues of Papen, Goering, and Goebbels.

‘I offer you the Ministry of National Economy, Strasser. Accept, and between us we can still save the situation.’

‘I accept, Herr Hitler,' said Gregor, ‘on condition that Goering and Goebbels are removed; an honest man cannot work with these individuals.’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 179.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser

Even the former Marxist Mussolini was apparently worried about just how leftist National Socialism was. (And he even recommended purging Goebbels for his unrepentant leftism.)
Quote
Adolf had two meetings with Mussolini, on June 14 and 15. The Duce, however, failed to succumb to the German Chancellor’s charms. ... Mussolini, however, went still further. Would it not be prudent, he suggested, purely of course as a friend, to restrain somewhat the radical actions and speeches of the Left Wing of the National-Socialist Party? Would it not be wise to dissolve the S.A., which formed a state within the state, and was led by that notorious freebooter Roehm, in association with notorious characters such as Heines, Ernst, etc.?  ...and of Goebbels, who dared speak of the possibility of a second revolution?
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 181.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser


These quotes once again demonstrate that the Strassers genuinely believed themselves to be Socialists, and Otto Strasser seems to believe Hitler only ultimately sided with the "reactionary"/non-Socialist-leaning faction of the party in 1934 when Hitler had to make political compromises to keep the NSDAP in power. Recall also that when Strasser was writing this, he was bitterly anti-Hitler and anti-NSDAP. So even if he was exaggerating things to make them seem worse than they were, even he cannot deny Hitler and the party's Socialism--even if he thinks Hitlerism betrayed "real" Strasserist Socialism.

We must ask ourselves, would the democratic and Marxist-sympathetic Strassers have been able to have more success than Hitler in furthering radical Socialism? I think this is unlikely. Socialist Otto Wagener also agreed that Hitler's synthesis of Socialism was likely more successful than a more conventional Marxist-leaning form of Socialism would have been:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10723/#msg10723

Blue Kumul

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #31 on: February 01, 2022, 09:11:08 am »
Ah, a lot of stuff to refute here:

1. Romanticism can be both left-wing and right-wing phenomenon. Romantics always exalt the heart above reason, irrational belief above rational enquiry and the remote past above modernity. This can lead to anarchism (Leftist) or to traditionalism (Rightist). You are correct that Hitler was a romantic, but he was a totalitarian, right-wing romantic. Dugin is another example. Compare him with William Blake, who represented a freedom oriented, proto-anarchist form of Romanticism.

2. Being against colonialism is not a good definition of leftism. Some European right-wing identitarians are also against colonialism. They see Europe as the natural habitat of White people, and also the Middle East as the natural habitat of Arabs and sub-Saharan Africa as the natural habitat of Blacks. This is a stance known as "pan-nationalism", which could be also called rightist internationalism.

My definition of Leftism is being opposed to hierarchy. In terms of economics, this means socialism. In terms of culture, this means support for social freedom (inclusivity). In terms of foreign policy this means belief that all ethnicities and cultures are equal. This cannot include Hitler, who believed that Jews and Slavs are inferior to Germans because of their innate characteristics.

3. It is possible to quote Mein Kampf selectively to show Hitler as a forerunner of post-WW2 American counterculture, just as it is possible to quote the Koran and Hadith selectively to show that Mohammed was a peaceful preacher.

"Would you say analogous things to Communists and supporters of "Enlightenment" liberalism/democracy whenever they speak positively of their views? (Personally, I do find their constant rehabilitation of their ideologists and dogmatic devotion to their failed ideologies to be creepy.)"

Whitewashing Lenin and Stalin is just as creepy as what you are doing here.

Blue Kumul

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guest55

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #33 on: February 01, 2022, 01:56:56 pm »
You can also read:
http://factmyth.com/factoids/hitler-was-a-left-wing-socialist-liberal/

I can tell you right out the gate this author has no clue what they are talking about:
Quote
First off, let’s start by saying the fascism of the pre-WWII and WWII era was a left-right mix that drew from socialism but stood against liberalism. Especially the NAZI brand of fascism drew heavily from socialism and promised and implemented socialism for its in-group. This form of socialism was very different than communism in terms of theory (see communism vs. fascism), but it did draw from it and it did have left-wing elements. Despite this, fascism, including the NAZI brand, has a ton of right-wing elements and an overarching nativist and nationalist philosophy that tends to resonate with the right.

The author clearly doesn't understand the difference between tribalism and nationalism, as most Westerners do not. Their is NO in-group vs. out-group dichotomy(tribalism) in any form of true nationalism because it would simply cease being nationalism at all to begin with. It is an oxymoron.

Why should I even bother reading the rest of the article you linked when the author of it makes such a striking error in the very first couple paragraphs?

90sRetroFan

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #34 on: February 01, 2022, 11:18:51 pm »
"Hitler was a romantic, but he was a totalitarian, right-wing romantic."

Hitler despised Joshua and Alexander, wanted Charles Martel to lose at Poitiers and hated Ferdinand and Isabella for the Reconquista. He sided with the Ottoman Empire against Greece in the Greek War of Independence. He sided with Lincoln against the Confederacy in the American Civil War. He sided with China against Germany in the Boxer Rebellion. He sided with Japan against Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. During WWII he supported India, Iraq and Egypt against Britain, Algeria against France, Bosnia against Serbia, Chechens against Russia, Native Americans against the "white" US government, and so on. And he sided with non-humans against humans. All of this is left-wing romanticism.

"Being against colonialism is not a good definition of leftism. Some European right-wing identitarians are also against colonialism. They see Europe as the natural habitat of White people, and also the Middle East as the natural habitat of Arabs and sub-Saharan Africa as the natural habitat of Blacks. This is a stance known as "pan-nationalism", which could be also called rightist internationalism."

I am aware of them. They are not really against colonialism. Those who claim to be against colonialism but who do not demand accountability for colonialists are not to be taken seriously. That these identitarians think "whites" still deserve to keep "Europe" for themselves after colonizing the whole world for 500 years instantly disqualifies them from seriousness.

Furthermore, they are unilaterally deciding where everyone else's respective "natural habitats" are, which presumes the entire planet belongs to "whites" in the first place to apportion to others as "whites" see fit, which is a colonialist attitude in itself. A better name for this would be global apartheid. (Speaking of which, they also support Israel.)

In any case, I did not claim that simply being against colonialism is the definition of leftism. Paleocons are against colonialism in the sense that they consider it a strategic mistake to share modern means with non-Westerners (which has reduced the competitive advantage of Western civilization over non-Western civilizations). They would have preferred Western civilization to have quietly kept building its competitive advantage for a few more centuries until the gap is so great that it can never be closed by non-Westerners, so that Western victory in any conflict is guaranteed. Paleocons are indeed not leftists, as their objective is final Western victory. Leftists are necessarily those who want final Western defeat.

"My definition of Leftism is being opposed to hierarchy."

This is egalitarianism, hence False Leftism.

"In terms of foreign policy this means belief that all ethnicities and cultures are equal. This cannot include Hitler, who believed that Jews and Slavs are inferior to Germans because of their innate characteristics."

Throwing out egalitarianism from leftist thinking is what we are here to do. True Leftism still believes in superiority and inferiority; the difference is that we believe the superior can be (and in reality are more often than not) defeated by the inferior in worldly competition (the colonial era being one example). In other words, True Leftism is divergence of the moral hierarchy from the natural hierarchy.

Socialism is then the attempt, given awareness of the above, to set things up in practice so as to help the superior (but less competitive) defeat the inferior (but more competitive). National Socialism furthermore believes that any such setup will not last long, therefore the superior must use its brief interval in power to destroy the inferior, or else the inferior - being more competitive - will eventually find a way around the setup to come back and win.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2022, 12:25:38 am by 90sRetroFan »

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #35 on: February 07, 2022, 02:38:07 am »
Quote
the remote past above modernity. This can lead to anarchism (Leftist) or to traditionalism (Rightist). You are correct that Hitler was a romantic, but he was a totalitarian, right-wing romantic.

In prior discussions, 90sRetroFan has summarized that leftist Romanticists draw inspiration from the ancient past, whereas rightists draw inspiration from the traditional past. (He may be able to expand on this point more.)

The ancient past that we are inspired by has very often ceased to have any real form of continuation into the present-day. The things we (Romanticist leftists) try to salvage from the ancient past are things which we deem to be noble and high quality, and we have no problems discarding low-quality and ignoble practices. We are not trying to perfectly recreate any traditions exactly as they were in the past, but to manifest an ideal new world entirely. As Romanticists, we open the doors that history has closed so we can take the path that should have been taken all along.

In contrast, rightists wish to preserve everything from the traditional past on the arbitrary basis of the customs/practices simply having existed in the past. There is no quality judgment there, merely identity.

As evidenced from the quotes provided, Hitler clearly (1) drew inspiration from a Romantic past whose customs no longer really existed in the recent world (i.e. he says he wants to resurrect the authentic Socialism of Jesus, which, in his words, has basically vanished since the Renaissance) and (2) wanted to completely dismantle post-Renaissance Western Civilization to replace it with something radically new.

This is in contrast to people like Himmler, who wanted to re-implement feudalist and mysticist traditions. Hitler criticized him for latching on to the traditional past and not being able to let go in order to manifest something entirely new. Hitler also criticized the Strasser-style leftists who were unable to dream big and merely wanted to push Western Civilization into its next phase.

Quote
In terms of foreign policy this means belief that all ethnicities and cultures are equal.

This kind of moral relativism has never been a part of any (ideologically-serious) type of anti-racist ideology. In principle, what is commonly called "equality" does not mean believing everyone is literally equal:
Quote
We now have to consider the bearing of these statements on the problem of human equality. It must be asserted with the utmost emphasis that equality as an ethical principle in no way depends upon the assertion that human beings are in fact equal in endowment. Obviously individuals in all ethnic groups vary greatly among themselves in endowment.
   -UNESCO. (1950). "Statement on race".

We wish to emphasize that equality of opportunity and equality in law in no way depend, as ethical principles, upon the assertion that human beings are in fact equal in endowment.
   -UNESCO. (1951). "Statement on the nature of race and race differences".
   https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000122962

In practice it means judging individuals and cultures by the same set of FAIR criteria, rather than applying double standards (e.g. arbitrary negative prejudice against an out-group, or arbitrary favoritism/ethno-nepotism for the in-group (which is just arbitrary positive prejudice)). Properly applied, "cultural relativism" isn't the complete abandonment of value standards, but was a (not-so-great) historic attempt to find _less arbitrary_ ways of judging cultures compared to the Eurocentric outlook which had been regarded as the only possible view.

Moral relativism (e.g. egalitarianism)--which has often been conflated with cultural relativism for the past 100 or so years--isn't even a serious belief, since moral relativists judge moral relativism as superior to non-moral-relativism.  ;D


The ostensibly-positive aspects of "equality" do not mean the egalitarian belief that we have to believe everyone is literally the exact same, or treat everyone exactly the same, even when they are clearly different in ethical quality, ability, and motives. The positive aspects of "equality" mean judging everyone by the same set of standards and the elimination of double standards (i.e. FAIRNESS).

We could word this more strongly and say that the notion of egalitarianism/"equality" is a scam to mislead people from arriving at the conclusion that FAIRNESS IN JUDGMENTS is the real principle we yearn for, not literal equality and inability to make judgments even if individuals really do not deserve to be judged equally.


As one example of how this would apply to leftist foreign policy, this means that nations, cultures, ethnic groups/"races", or individuals who support apartheid are judged to be utterly inferior. (e.g. Western Culture is inferior). Any nation, culture, or individual who supports destroying apartheid is judged to be high quality and to be supported.

In terms of politics...well, even False Left supporters of democracy complain how the vote of "low information voters" and empathy-devoid far-rightists is worth the same value as a "high information voter" and someone who has empathy... In other words, even supposed supporters of egalitarianism aren't actually egalitarian, and desire a political system that fairly judges people based on their quality rather than unfairly assumes everyone's opinions are "equal".

Quote
It is possible to quote Mein Kampf selectively to show Hitler as a forerunner of post-WW2 American counterculture, just as it is possible to quote the Koran and Hadith selectively to show that Mohammed was a peaceful preacher.

Yes, because we are Romanticist leftists drawing inspiration from the positive aspects of the ancient past.

Because we are idealists who want to manifest a better world, unlike False Leftists who quote only the negative aspects of the past and completely ignore the potential in the positive aspects. We are also unlike rightists who are content with preserving both the bad and the "good" from the past. (I put "good" in quotations, since rightists often downplay the noble elements of the past in order to present a narrative which amplifies all the ignoble aspects of the past instead!)

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #36 on: February 07, 2022, 02:53:05 am »
Historians seem to consider Albert Speer's memoirs to be contradictory and opportunistically anti-Hitler in order to rehabilitate his own reputation. But there is some information which may be useful to catalog here.


Speer mentions that Hitler regretted supporting Franco in the Spanish Civil War and declared that in the future he would side with the Communists to overthrow him. If Hitler was a far-rightist, why would he ever think of such a thing? And why would those Communists invite Speer to spend Christmas with them if he was an enemy far-rightist? (And why would Hitler tell the Vichy French government/German work agency to treat these imprisoned Communists well if he was a far-rightist?)
Quote
Gloomily, I brood about the last three Christmases of the war. At the time I thought it my duty to spend the day with the Todt Organization crews; in 1942 on the Biscay coast, where bunkers were being built, in 1943 by the Arctic Ocean in northern Lapland; and the last time on the German-Belgian border.
[...]
When we celebrated Christmas of 1942 in the vicinity of Bordeaux, I heard from the head of the construction unit during the dinner that a group of former so-called Spanish Reds who were interned in a nearby camp had invited me to their Christmas party. Without an SS escort squad—right up to the end of the war this distinction was accorded only to Donitz, Bormann, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Funk, and Goebbels, in addition to Hitler and Himmler—I drove over to the camp with a small following, The party had already begun. A Spaniard made a short speech to introduce me; the throng responded with faint applause. Folk dances and other popular offerings followed, each time to stormy applause. The rather stiff attitude toward me relaxed only after I had a sizable supply of cigarettes and wine distributed. These Spaniards, who had fought on the side of the Republic, had fled across the Pyrenees to France at the end of the civil war. By now they had been held behind barbed wire for almost three years. They were people with likable, courageous faces; we sat together until late at night, and there was a note of cordiality in our goodbyes.

Two weeks later I told Hitler about the incident and asked him to authorize preferential treatment for these Spaniards. They hated Franco, who had defeated them, I said, and likewise the French brand of democracy that was keeping them imprisoned. “That’s highly interesting,” Hitler interrupted eagerly, “Did you hear that, Keitel? You know my opinion of Franco. Two years ago, when we were about to meet, I still thought he was a true leader, but I met a fat little sergeant who couldn’t at all grasp my far-reaching plans. We ought to keep these Red Spaniards on the back burner—there are many thousands of them, after all. They’re lost to democracy, and to that reactionary crew around Franco too—we have real chances there. I believe you to the letter, Speer, that they were impressive people. I must say, in general, that during the civil war the idealism was not on Franco’s side; it was to be found among the Reds. Certainly they pillaged and desecrated, but so did Franco’s men, without having any good reason for it—the Reds were working off centuries of hatred for the Catholic Church, which always oppressed the Spanish people. When I think of that I understand a good many things. Franco knows perfectly well why he objected only half a year ago to our employing these Spanish Reds. But one of these days”—Hitler stabbed the air with his finger—“one of these days we’ll he able to make use of them, When we call it quits with Franco. Then we’ll let them go home, And you’ll see what happens then! The whole thing will start all over again. But with us on the opposite side. I don’t give a damn about that. Let him find out what I can be like!”

Hitler had never been able to bear opposition, and he could not forgive the Spanish dictator for having refused to go along with his plans, in particular for the occupation of Gibraltar. Personal rancor of this sort invariably counted for much more with Hitler than ideological agreement. That same day he issued orders to treat the “Spanish Reds” well.
Albert Speer. Diary entry from December 26, 1950. Spandau, The Secret Diaries. (1975). Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1976). Pocket Books New York. Page 183-184.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.236711/page/n97/mode/2up

Hitler didn't mind if artists working for the party were sympathetic to Communism, which surprised Speer and others:
Quote
I wonder whether Hitler ever observed that in all the years before I became a cabinet minister I never uttered so much as one political phrase? I rather think he didn’t even notice. Just as it was only after we had been acquainted for years that he learned with surprise, but with no particular interest, that I had been a party member since 1931. It was a matter of supreme indifference to him whether the artists he esteemed, from Breker and Thorak to Hilz and Peiner or Furtwangler and Eugen Jochum, belonged to the National Socialist Party. He regarded them one and all as politically feeble-minded. In a certain sense he must have applied the same standard to me. In 1938, a few days before the opening of the annual exhibition in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, a small group of us sat in Hitler’s favorite Italian restaurant, the Osteria Bavaria in Munich. Out of a clear sky Adolf Wagner, the Gauleiter of Bavaria, began to relate that he had recently discovered a Communist proclamation that had been signed by a large number of artists. The manifesto in question had been published a little while before the seizure of power, and among others had borne the signature of Josef Thorak.

I stiffened, for Thorak was more or less “my” sculptor, who frequently designed statues and reliefs for my buildings and in the past year had just created the group of figures for the German pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair. Wagner went on to say that such a man could not be allowed to decorate the great buildings for the Nuremberg Party Rally, which for centuries to come would be an object of admiration and veneration. I was convinced that now Thorak would be lost to me. Had he occupied a Party office, Hitler would in fact have immediately ordered his dismissal. But in this case Hitler replied disdainfully, “Oh, you know I don’t take any of that seriously. We should never judge artists by their political views. The imagination they need for their work deprives them of the ability to think in realistic terms. Let’s keep Thorak on. Artists are simple-hearted souls. Today they sign this, tomorrow that; they don’t even look to see what it is, so. long as it seems to them well-meaning.”
Albert Speer. Diary entry from November 26, 1954. Spandau, The Secret Diaries. (1975). Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1976). Pocket Books New York. Page 288-289.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.236711/page/n167/mode/2up

We already saw many quotes about how Hitler respected the Socialist core of what Communism claimed to be. I suppose his "admiration" of Jews is due to their deep understanding of racial matters that the non-Jewish public did not understand.
Quote
It is generally admitted that Hitler admired what he hated; it is really more accurate to say that he hated what he admired. His hatred was admiration that he refused to acknowledge. That is true of the Jews, of Stalin, of communism in general.
Albert Speer. Diary entry from December 21, 1946. Spandau, The Secret Diaries. (1975). Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1976). Pocket Books New York. Page 31.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.236711/page/n21/mode/2up


Speer's rightist upper-class father thought the National Socialists were Socialists:
Quote
When he joined the Party in 1931, Speer had never given much thought to politics. He came from an upper-middle-class family, one of the most prominent in Mannheim, supported in high style by the father’s flourishing architectural practice and involved mainly in the cultural and social life of the city. Speer’s father did read the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung, an unusual paper for a conservative architect to have in his home, but he utterly rejected the Nazis because he believed them to be more socialist than nationalist.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Introduction by Eugene Davidson. Page xi-xii.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/n7/mode/2up

Quote
The NSDAP (National Socialist Party) had won 107 seats and was suddenly the chief topic of political discussion.

My father had the darkest forebodings, chiefly in view of the NSDAP’s socialist tendencies. He was already disturbed enough by the strength of the Social Democrats and the Communists.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 14.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/14/mode/2up

Business leaders assumed the economic system in Germany would continue to become more Socialist as the party gained efficiency:
Quote
On June 26 [1944] about a hundred representatives of the armaments industry gathered in the coffee room of the Platterhof. During our sessions in Linz, I had noticed that their disgruntlement was also partly concerned with the increasing interference of the party apparatus in economic affairs. Actually, a kind of state socialism seemed to be gaining more and more ground, furthered by many of the party functionaries. They had already managed to have all plants owned by the state distributed among the various party districts and subordinated to their own district enterprises. In particular the numerous underground plants, which had been equipped and financed by the state, but whose directors, skilled workers, and machinery had been provided by private industry, seemed destined to fall under state control after the war. Our very system of industrial direction in the interests of war production could easily become the framework for a state-socialist economic order. The result was that our organization, the more efficient it became, was itself providing the party leaders with the instruments for the doom of private enterprise.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 359.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/358/mode/2up

Commentary: Speer says Goebbels and Robert Ley were among those who kept pushing Hitler to be more ideological, after Hitler had become more practical-minded after taking power. As we saw in many prior posts, Goebbels was originally a Communist and firmly leftist throughout this time in the NSDAP. Himmler formed a separate (rightist) ideological camp and was mocked by Hitler, Goebbels, and others.
Quote
When ideology receded into the background after the seizure of power, efforts were made to tame down the party and make it more respectable. Goebbels and Bormann were the chief opponents of that tendency. They were always trying to radicalize Hitler ideologically. To judge by his speeches, Ley must also have belonged to the group of tough ideologists, but lacked the stature to gain any significant influence. Himmler, on the other hand, obviously was going his own absurd way, which was compounded of beliefs about an original Germanic race, a brand of elitism, and an assortment of health-food notions. The whole thing was beginning to assume far-fetched pseudoreligious forms. Goebbels, with Hitler, took the lead in ridiculing these dreams of Himmler’s, with Himmler himself adding to the comedy by his vanity and obsessiveness. When, for example, the Japanese presented him with a samurai sword, he at once discovered kinships between Japanese and Teutonic cults and called upon scientists to help him trace these similarities to a racial common denominator.

Hitler was particularly concerned with the question of how he could assure his Reich a new generation of followers committed to his ideas. The general outlines of a plan were drafted by Ley, to whom Hitler had also entrusted the organization of the educational system.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 122.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/122/mode/2up

Robert Ley was part of the leftist wing of the party as well.

...Another Socialist who could have easily been purged for his alleged drunkenness and lack of administrative talent, had Hitler been interested in purging leftists?
Quote
Ley proved unswervingly loyal to Hitler, which led Hitler to ignore complaints about his arrogance, incompetence and drunkenness.[4] Ley's impoverished upbringing and his experience as head of the largely working-class Rhineland party region meant that he was sympathetic to those elements in the party who were open to socialism, but he always sided with Hitler in inner party disputes.
[...]
On 10 June 1932, following a further organizational restructuring by Strasser, Ley was named one of two Reichsinspecteurs with oversight of approximately half the Gaue. Furthermore, he was made the Acting Landesinspekteur for Bavaria with direct responsibility for the six Bavarian Gaue.[6] This was a short-lived initiative by Gregor Strasser to centralize control over the Gaue. However, it was unpopular with the Gauleiters and was repealed on Strasser's fall from power. Strasser resigned on 8 December 1932 in a break with Hitler over the future direction of the Party. Hitler himself took over as Reichsorganisationsleiter and installed Ley as his Stabschef (Chief of Staff).
[...]
By April, 1933 Hitler decided to have the state take over the trade union movement. On 10 May 1933, Hitler appointed Ley head of the newly founded German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF). The DAF took over the existing Nazi trade union formation, the National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation (Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation, NSBO) as well as the main trade union federation. But Ley's lack of administrative ability meant that the NSBO leader, Reinhold Muchow, a member of the socialist wing of the Nazi Party, soon became the dominant figure in the DAF, overshadowing Ley. Muchow began a purge of the DAF administration, rooting out ex-Social Democrats and ex-Communists and placing his own militants in their place.
[...]
The DAF and KdF's most ambitious program was the "people's car," the Volkswagen, originally a project undertaken at Hitler's request by the car-maker Ferdinand Porsche. When the German car industry was unable to meet Hitler's demand that the Volkswagen be sold at 1,000 Reichsmarks or less, the project was taken over by the DAF. This brought Ley's old socialist tendencies back into prominence. The party, he said, had taken over where private industry had failed, because of the "short-sightedness, malevolence, profiteering and stupidity" of the business class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ley

Another leftist in charge of the Labor Front? Why would a far-right party put a leftist in charge of important labor/economic tasks, considering all that Communists talk about is labor and economics?
Quote
Reinhold Muchow (21 December 1905 in Berlin – 12 September 1933 in Bacharach) was a Nazi Party politician. Especially prized in the early years of the movement for his organisational skills, he was associated with the economically left wing of the party.

A native of the gritty Neukölln district of Berlin, Muchow was one of the Alter Kämpfer of the Nazi Party.[1] He was associated with the Strasser brothers[2] and set up a Central Union of the Unemployed in an attempt to attract new members to the party before this initiative was closed down by the central leadership.[3] He became leader of the Greater Berlin Gau 1 in 1925 and here he established the Muchow Plan, a cell-based structure for Nazi Party organisation on a local level which proved important in the growth of the party.[1] Muchow's organisational talents impressed Joseph Goebbels and in 1928 he was given charge of organisation for the entire city where his plan became the standard for party structure across Germany.[1] In fact Muchow's structure was strongly influenced by the cell structure of the Communist Party.[4]
[...]
He died in an accident in the Rhineland in September 1933 and was widely mourned by the Nazi hierarchy.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Muchow

90sRetroFan

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #37 on: February 07, 2022, 03:40:08 am »
"90sRetroFan has summarized that leftist Romanticists draw inspiration from the ancient past, whereas rightists draw inspiration from the traditional past. (He may be able to expand on this point more.)"

I guess you are thinking of this quote:

Quote
Rightists have sneakily duped into their camp many people disillusioned with the drudgery of the present-day world and who seek answers in myth and ancient history by crudely associating leftism with modernity and deceptively presenting rightism as the only camp that offers connection with the past. To counter this, the True Left must distinguish itself from the False Left by heavily emphasizing that we too offer a connection with the past – merely not (unlike the rightists) with the traditional past which we justly abhor. The past which inspires us is the romantic past of chances missed, of paths untaken, of the long intellectual legacy of anti-tradition that dates back to ancient times.

You explained the same point very well in your post. The only thing I might put differently is:

"rightists wish to preserve everything from the traditional past on the arbitrary basis of the customs/practices simply having existed in the past. There is no quality judgment there, merely identity."

I would say rightists wish to preserve traditions on account of traditions having proven survivable for so long. The survivability of the traditions are the assurance to rightists that the traditions are compatible with natural selection. So rightists do make a quality judgement, just according to Demiurgic standards.

In contrast, that certain superior practices from the past (e.g. Catharism) failed to survive only ascertains their value in our eyes. It proves to us their ultimate incompatibility with natural selection, which we take as a compliment. Which is not to say that everything that failed to survive is superior (of course not, duh!). But something which is superior - which we deduce separately - is almost certain to not last long, because natural selection will not allow it to.

"we open the doors that history has closed so we can take the path that should have been taken all along."

I would say we reopen the doors that natural selection has closed.

"FAIRNESS IN JUDGMENTS is the real principle we yearn for"

This is true, but I also want to emphasize that another possible scenario we are trying to avoid is fairness in judgements but under BAD CRITERIA. For example, if it were decided that the only criterion for judging a civilization is its ability to innovate machines, then to conclude the superiority of Western civilization over all others would be a perfectly fair judgement. It would also be a terrible conclusion. Thus fair judgement alone is insufficient.

So, to clarify, we are not the only ones yearning for fairness in judgements. All absolutists yearn for fairness in judgements. We are distinguished from other absolutists by which criteria we want to be used for fair judgements.

Blue Kumul

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #38 on: February 08, 2022, 06:02:04 am »
"The author clearly doesn't understand the difference between tribalism and nationalism, as most Westerners do not. Their is NO in-group vs. out-group dichotomy(tribalism) in any form of true nationalism because it would simply cease being nationalism at all to begin with. It is an oxymoron."

I certainly don't understand it. If you abandon the in-group vs. out-group dichotomy, this is cosmopolitanism. As I understand it, nationalism defines the in-group as the citizens of a particular state, while tribalism defines the in-group as members of a certain ethnic group.

Hitler clearly believed that having German "blood" is more important than having German citizenship. So he was a tribalist, of course.

"Hitler despised Joshua and Alexander, wanted Charles Martel to lose at Poitiers and hated Ferdinand and Isabella for the Reconquista. He sided with the Ottoman Empire against Greece in the Greek War of Independence. He sided with Lincoln against the Confederacy in the American Civil War. He sided with China against Germany in the Boxer Rebellion. He sided with Japan against Russia in WWI. During WWII he supported India, Iraq and Egypt against Britain, Algeria against France, Bosnia against Serbia, Chechens against Russia, Native Americans against the "white" US government, and so on. And he sided with non-humans against humans. All of this is left-wing romanticism."

He wanted Britain and Russia to lose because they were rivals for domination in Europe. His practices in Central and Eastern Europe were nothing short of colonialism. If Hitler had established German domination in Africa, he would treat Blacks at least as bad as he treated Poles or Russians.

"It is generally admitted that Hitler admired what he hated; it is really more accurate to say that he hated what he admired."

It is also true with respect to you, 90s Retro Fan. You clearly admire Duginism. Take Dugin's points and replace "Russia" with "America" and vice versa - wow, we have 90s RF's points!

"we are Romanticist leftists drawing inspiration from the positive aspects of the ancient past."

I understand that. I like some points of your ideology, like original nobility or criticism of the technological society. But at least be honest and open against the flaws of those who inspired you, whether the Nazis, Islamists, or post-WW2 countercultural movements.

90sRetroFan

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #39 on: February 08, 2022, 09:02:33 pm »
"Take Dugin's points and replace "Russia" with "America" and vice versa - wow, we have 90s RF's points!"

Thank you for confirming your illiteracy. Henceforth, all further posts by you will be moved here:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/re-national-socialists-were-socialists/


« Last Edit: February 08, 2022, 09:16:34 pm by 90sRetroFan »

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #40 on: February 10, 2022, 01:19:16 am »
Excerpt from an essay by Léon Degrelle about Hitler's "social revolution". I'm not sure if Degrelle himself should be considered right-leaning or not, but the topics of this essay seem like something Bernie Sanders or any standard leftist today could have written--it is praising Hitler for improving the social and economic conditions of the "working class". From what I can tell, this was written in 1992. So, Hitler's pro-labor social reforms were important enough for Degrelle, 50 years later, to give his reflections on them in the final years of his life.

The primary False Left argument to "discredit" National Socialists from being called Socialists is the allegation that they did not care about "the workers". Which is clearly false:
Quote
One of the first labor reforms to benefit the German workers was the establishment of annual paid vacation. The Socialist French Popular Front, in 1936, would make a show of having invented the concept of paid vacation, and stingily at that, only one week per year. But Adolf Hitler originated the idea, and two or three times as generously, from the first month of his coming to power in 1933.
[...]
And already the steel spades of the sturdy young lads of the National Labor Service could be seen gleaming along the highways. The National Labor Service had been created by Hitler out of thin air to bring together for a few months in absolute equality, and in the same uniform, both the sons of millionaires and the sons of the poorest families. All had to perform the same work and were subject to the same discipline, even the same pleasures and the same physical and moral development. On the same construction sites and in the same living quarters, they had become conscious of their commonality, had come to understand one another, and had swept away their old prejudices of class and caste. After this hitch in the National Labor Service they all began to live as comrades, the workers knowing that the rich man's son was not a monster, and the young lad from the wealthy family knowing that the worker's son had honor just like any other young fellow who had been more generously favored by birth. Social hatred was disappearing, and a socially united people was being born.

Hitler could already go into factories—something no man of the so-called Right before him would have risked doing—and hold forth to the mob of workers, tens of thousands of them at a time, as in the Siemens works. "In contrast to the von Papens and other country gentlemen," he might tell them, "In my youth I was a worker like you. And in my heart of hearts, I have remained what I was then." In the course of his twelve years in power, no incident ever occurred at any factory Adolf Hitler ever visited. When Hitler was among the people, he was at home, and he was received like the member of the family who had been most successful.
I think the proper title of this essay is:
Léon Degrelle. (1992). "How Hitler Consolidated Power in Germany and Launched a Social Revolution."
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitlerCollection/Hitlers%20Social%20Revolution/page/n3/mode/2up


The way Degrelle describes the Reich Labour Service is almost identical to what Maoist Communist labor policies theoretically wanted to achieve (except far less authoritarian, since the National Socialists didn't force people to move across the country like cogs in a machine--which would be an anti-social act, since it makes people bitter towards the state and prevents a community from socially strengthing, since people are being forced to work in a random place with complete strangers.)
Quote
Hu Rongfen had no choice. On November 14, 1971, in the whirlwind of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, the slender and soft-spoken middle school graduate was dispatched from Shanghai to a far-flung village in East China's Anhui Province to work in the country.

This wasn't a punishment for any wrongdoing -- on the contrary, the quiet girl was a top student in class. The migration was an order from the central government to every urban household -- at least one of their teenage children needed to leave the city to work on the farm indefinitely.

The ruthless political command lasted from 1966 until the mid-1970s and intended that the privileged urban "intellectual" youth learn from farmers and workers. As a result, China's "lost generation" emerged -- deprived of the chance of education and the right to live with their families.

"We were told that city dwellers never move their limbs and could not distinguish different crops," says Hu, now 58. "So we were banished to labor and learn skills and grit from peasants." Hu spent four years (1971-1974) planting rice, spreading cow dung and chopping wood in Jin Xian, a mountainous county.

Known in Chinese as "up to the mountains and down to the farms," the urban-to-rural youth migration was part of China's decade-long Cultural Revolution, a social political movement initiated to implement Communism and Maoism in China by eliminating any capitalist, feudalistic and cultural elements.
[...]
"I still can't bear to recall my youth spent on the farm," she says.
https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/24/world/asia/china-lost-generation/

Quote
As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_the_Countryside_Movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sent-down_youth

----

Two articles about National Socialist social services/welfare used by Allied intelligence and used at the Nuremberg Trials. The first article is written by someone from the US, and is anti-NS, but still admits that NS Germany's social welfare services were extensive. The second article was written by a National Socialist, but was apparently considered unbiased enough that it was of use by the Allied intelligence agencies and Nuremberg prosecutors.

Page 1-6 is:
Hertha Kraus. (1944?). Social Policy in the National Socialist State: The Role of Social Welfare and Health Services.
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150

Page 7-22 is:
Ralf Zeitler. (1939). Principles of Public Welfare in the Third Reich. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege, vol 14, part 12, March 1939, page 645-654. Translated by Lois Armour. (1944?)
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150


Anti-NS article written by an American and used by Allied intelligence:
Quote
Nazi Germany has taken over from the Weimar Republic (and also from the monarchy preceding it) a highly developed network of public and private welfare services.
[...]
Frequently public welfare agencies throughout Germany made collective arrangements for institutional care for the sick the aged, the handicapped and for dependent children with  private organizations who received regular fees for such services. Similar arrangements were developed for day care for both children and adults and for the provision of work camps. There was a great deal of interaction, as well as interdependence, between public and private services.
[...]
The Nazi regime has not changed this framework to any considerable degree, but it has strongly influenced the practice of social service by changing its direction and motivation.

With slight modifications (mostly abolishing the representations of different groups and the committee structure) all major public welfare and social insurance laws have been continued. Some of the private agencies have been continued without substantial change; others have boon taken over (including their considerable property and real estate) and are now affiliated with the newly created national Welfare Agency of the National Socialist Party and its three major subsidiaries (see Chart II).
[...]
In addition to these employed workers, very large numbers of volunteers have been used by both the public welfare and the voluntary NSV services, as a means of extending the party influence.
[...]
In extending public and voluntary welfare and health services very widely and very freely, in a selective manner, National Socialism has used social policy in line with the general policy of the totalitarian state. Social policy has been given a clearly defined task: in its particular field, it helps to achieve the ends which are fixed for the whole nation by National Socialism ...
[...]
The following article [Ralf Zeitler article?] may help to clarify totalitarian social policy, which has become one of the most effective weapons of the totalitarian state.
Hertha Kraus. (1944?). Social Policy in the National Socialist State: The Role of Social Welfare and Health Services.
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150


Commentary and summary:
This article summarizes the attitude with which the National Socialist government approached welfare. Welfare is not a mere "handout", but embodies both service and sacrifice--from both the state and the individual receiving the welfare. Individuals must try to seek work, etc. before seeking public welfare, but, if it is truly necessary, the state will give them adequate help to live--not just "half-measures" that don't help. NS Germany is also a "Worker's State", and everyone who seeks employment will have help in finding it, thereby further lessening the need for "handouts". The NS approach to welfare is to eliminate the social/economic causes that make people unable to support themselves in the first place, rather than merely treat the symptoms. Volunteer work and volunteer agencies are an important part of rendering welfare and other service to the community (particularly in situations where an individual's need may not meet the threshold to receive direct aid/welfare from the state itself).
Quote
If one surveys the past six years since the assumption of power, during which the Nationalist Socialist movement has become responsible for a new form of our national life, a fundamental change even in public welfare is observable. This too has obtained new National Socialist principles for its guidance and direction. While preserving the fundamentals of previous organization, National Socialism has approached public welfare with a new attitude toward men and objects and has transformed it with its new philosophy.

The keynote of this philosophy today is the Folk-Community.
[...]
The individual must conform in his wishes and demands to the life of the nation. He no longer stands with his needs and claims in the center of things, as Liberalism and Marxism would have it. Rather conformation and subordination are expected of him and, consequently, even the needy has his responsibilities and obligations in the now German welfare system.
[...]
To be sure, wherever undeserved poverty exists, wherever the force of unfortunate circumstances has proved stronger than the strength of the individual to resist, there the assistance of public welfare naturally steps in, but always with the attitude that it is of special importance to develop and strengthen the afflicted person's will to live and will to maintain himself independently. The Fuehrer once said that National Socialism is not a doctrine of indolence but of struggle, not a doctrine of chance and luck, but of work and striving, and therefore, a doctrine of sacrifice.
[...]
Therefore, while the basis of public welfare assistance is that public assistance should be sought only as a last resource, when all other possibilities of private and foreign aid have failed, the second characteristic of public welfare is individualization, which requires that the kind and extent of aid should suit the individual case, the local conditions and the personal situation. In this way public welfare agencies avoid giving more assistance than is needed, an error, which is more destructive than constructive. On the other hand, individualization insures adequate help and not just half-way measures, which would make public welfare of questionable benefit.
[...]
In addition to tho above mentioned characteristics of the welfare system, another matter of importance should be mentioned.

The Third Reich is a "Workers' State." That means that on the one hand the right to work not only is a statement made on paper, but also is realized in actuality; everyone, who seriously wishes to work, will obtain work suitable to his knowledge and ability and in this way the necessity for the interference of public welfare is prevented. On the other hand in the term "Workers' State" there is expressed the obligation to work which no one can avoid, if he does not wish to be excluded from the Folk-Community. For public welfare this is of extreme importance.
[...]
With this challenge the present welfare system differs from that of the past, which did not ask, whether the elements of a successful and promising welfare system were followed. They saw as their only duty the immediate alleviation of a temporary emergency instead of tracing the conditions to their sources and getting rid of the causes of the conditions.
[...]
Everyone, who has to do with welfare work is aware of the fact that he is not only concerned with economic welfare but also with its closely allied branches, health and educational welfare.
[...]
Public welfare must be organized so that it can meet any and every exigency. Experience has proven that the individual always turns to the community for help in case of need and ho has a right to expect assistance from it. Therefore, even in case of war the community will have to meet every war emergency situation efficiently. The community must be prepared to take care of the nourishment of its population, provide doctors and hospitals for the wounded, lodging for the homeless, a solution for every catastrophe, etc.
[...]
Just as a modern and National Socialist state system is inconceivable without uniform and comprehensive public welfare, so history and experience teach, that besides public welfare "free" welfare is also needed. Public welfare is an expression of the national idea, which understands welfare service as a state duty, the state being responsible for the good of its people. In contrast to the state welfare agencies then we have "free" welfare services, which are the voluntary institution of socially conscious and active folk-comrades. The "free" welfare agencies have the special responsibility of supplementing the welfare work of the public welfare agency.

Chief Official Leader Pg. Hilgenfeldt says that the National Socialist welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities because no laws bind them. The National Socialist philosophy is the activating force behind their welfare work and this has its origin in the voluntary self-sacrifice of the people themselves. Their performance does not follow the letter of the law but the law of their hearts.
Ralf Zeitler. (1939). Principles of Public Welfare in the Third Reich. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege, vol 14, part 12, March 1939, page 645-654. Translated by Lois Armour. (1944?)
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150


Look at that last paragraph--"National Socialist welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities". Unlimited welfare! Did Communist governments even promise such a thing?! Can you imagine Bernie Sanders demanding that "welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities because no laws bind them"? LOL!

Again, this document was considered important enough that it was used by Allied intelligence and one of the many documents used at the Nuremberg Trials.


Hilgenfeldt was the leader of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), which according to Wikipedia was the second-largest NS organization (second only to the German Labor Front (labor unions organization)). In other words, the top man himself said: "National Socialist welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities because no laws bind them"!!!

And False Leftists have the nerve to try to say National Socialists didn't care about welfare and social policies?
Quote
Hilgenfeldt worked as office head at the NSDAP Office for People's Welfare and in close association with the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (NSV), or the National Socialist People's Welfare. By organizing a charity drive to celebrate Hitler's Birthday on 20 April 1931, Joseph Goebbels named him the head of the NSV. The NSV was named the single Nazi Party welfare organ in May 1933.[3] On 21 September 1933 he was appointed as Reich Commissioner for the Winterhilfswerk (Winter Support Programme). Under Hilgenfeldt the programme was massively expanded, so that the régime deemed it worthy to be called the "greatest social institution in the world." One method of expansion was to absorb, or in NSDAP parlance coordinate, already existing but non-Nazi charity organizations. NSV was the second largest Nazi group organization by 1939, second only to the German Labor Front.[3][4]

From November of the same year, Hilgenfeldt was a member of the Reich Work Chamber (Reichsarbeitskammer), as well as the Academy for German Law and Honorary Judge at the Supreme Honour and Disciplinary Court.[citation needed] As NSV leader, he was also Reich Women's Leader (Reichsfrauenführerin) Gertrud Scholtz-Klink's superior.[5] Also by virtue of his NSV office, he was the head of the German union of private charitable organizations, which included among its members the Protestant Inner Mission organization and the Catholic Caritas, as well as the NSV itself.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Hilgenfeldt

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #41 on: February 10, 2022, 01:25:29 am »
Our enemies also help with our research. Far-right WNs who reject Neo-Nazism frequently outline how National Socialism does not resemble their far-right and pro-Western views at all. Both WNs and mainstream conservatives like to make comparisons between National Socialists and Communists/liberals/leftists in general in an attempt to smear leftism as bad. Sometimes False Left useful idiots will write articles compiling quotes about National Socialists' views on anti-capitalism and Socialism, just to reject it using the circular logic that they don't follow Communist definitions of anti-capitalism and Socialism, and therefore that is somehow proof the National Socialists were insincere. (LOL, thanks for helping us compile quotes.)

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This quote is posted on the wacko-rightist propaganda site Conservapedia. I haven't found the original newspaper article, but the book it quotes from is from a mainstream historian, so presumably it is accurate.
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Hitler himself echoed basically the same theme. In an article published in 1930 for the UK Daily Express, Hitler stated:
Quote
'Socialist' I define from the word 'social; meaning in the main ‘social equity’. A Socialist is one who serves the common good without giving up his individuality or personality or the product of his personal efficiency. Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not. Marxism places no value on the individual, or individual effort, of efficiency; true Socialism values the individual and encourages him in individual efficiency, at the same time holding that his interests as an individual must be in consonance with those of the community.
Frank McDonough. (2003, 2nd ed. 2012). Hitler and the Rise of the Nazi Party. Page 120.
https://books.google.com/books?id=rE7JAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA120

(Conservapedia also claims Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a form of National Socialism, nice!)


Simple Alt-Right propaganda emphasizing the pro-labor and social policies of NS Germany. They even make the obvious connection of how the present-day SJW complaints about "the 1%" are the same as the NS complaints about the Jewish elite. (Since, you know, National Socialists called themselves social justice advocates.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20210301052410/https://louderwithcrowder.com/myth-busted-actually-yes-hitler-was-a-socialist-liberal/

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Rightist-libertarian/non-Alt-Right article which cites how influential mainstream conservative/libertarian economist F.A. Hayek believed National Socialists were genuinely Socialist.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211006060429/https://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-with-it-b7f12cc53b6f

Quote
Friedrich August von Hayek (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-British economist, and philosopher who is best known for his defence of classical liberalism.[1] Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for their work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.[2] His account of how changing prices communicate information that helps individuals coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics, leading to his prize.[3][4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

Quote
However uncomfortable to opinion shapers, alternative views of the Third Reich exist and were written by the finest minds of their time. Opinions of the period perhaps carry more weight because they are unburdened by the aftermath of the uniquely heinous Nazi crimes. ‘The Road to Serfdom’ by FA Hayek is one such tract. Published in 1944 it remains a classic for young people on the political right discovering their intellectual roots. A sort of academic ‘1984,’ it warns of socialism’s tendency toward planned states and totalitarianism.

But one aspect of the book can shock the conscience. Hayek describes Nazism as a “genuine socialist movement” and thus left wing by modern American standards. Indeed, the Austrian-born Hayek wrote the book from his essay ‘Nazi-Socialism’ that countered prevailing opinion at the London School of Economics where he taught. British elites regarded Nazism as a virulent capitalist reaction against enlightened socialism — a view that persists today.

The shock comes from academic and cultural orthodoxy on National Socialism. From the moment they enter the political fray, young right-wingers are told ‘you own the Nazis.’ At best, the left concedes it owns communism.
[...]
The left believes the opposite. These people are distrustful of the excesses and inequality capitalism produces. ... They believe it is the government’s responsibility to solve social problems.
[...]
By these definitions the Nazis were firmly on the left. National Socialism was a collectivist authoritarian movement run by “social justice warriors.”
[...]
As Hayek wrote in 1933, the year the Nazis took power:
Quote
It is more than probable that the real meaning of the German revolution is that the long dreaded expansion of communism into the heart of Europe has taken place but is not recognized because the fundamental similarity of methods and ideas is hidden by the difference in phraseology and the privileged groups.
[...]
Nazism and socialism competed with the Enlightenment-based individualism of Locke, Smith, Montesquieu, and others who profoundly influenced the American founding and define the modern American right at its best.
[...]
Hitler’s first “National Workers Party” meeting while still an Army corporal featured the speech “How and by What Means is Capitalism to be Eliminated?”

The Nazi charter published a year later and coauthored by Hitler is socialist in almost every aspect. It calls for “equality of rights for the German people.” The subjugation of the individual to the state; breaking of “rent slavery,”; “confiscation of war profits,”; the nationalization of industry; profit sharing in heavy industry; large scale social security; the “communalization of the great warehouses and there being leased at low costs to small firms”; the “free expropriation of [privately owned] land for the purpose of public utility”; the abolition of “materialistic” Roman Law; the nationalization of education; the nationalization of the army; the nationalization of healthcare for the mother and child; state regulation of the press; and strong central power in the Reich.
[...]
These attitudes shouldn’t be surprising given the socialist thinkers that provided the theoretical basis for Nazism abhorred English “commercialism” and “comfort.” As Hayek described, “From 1914 onward there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hardworking laborer and idealist youth into the National Socialist fold.”
[...]
As late as 1941 with the war in bloom [Hitler] stated “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same” in a speech published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
[...]
Nazi propaganda minister and resident intellectual Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary the Nazis would install “real socialism” after Russia’s defeat in the East. And Hitler favorite Albert Speer, the Nazi armaments minister whose memoir became an international bestseller, wrote Hitler viewed Stalin as a kindred spirit, ensuring his POW son received good treatment, and even talked of keeping Stalin in power in a puppet government after Germany’s eventual triumph. His views on Churchill and Roosevelt were decidedly less kind.

And at the bitter end, as Bolshevik shells exploded just above him, when he had no more reason to lie or obfuscate, whom did Hitler blame for his downfall? Not the communists whose cunning and determination had ultimately ruined his plans, but the evil ‘Jewish capitalistic system.’
[...]
The Nazis and communists not only struggled for street-war supremacy but also recruits. And these recruits were easily turned because both sides were fighting for the same men. Hayek recalls
Quote
the relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. Many a University teacher during the 1930s has seen English or American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain they hated Western liberal civilization. . . . To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince is the liberal of the old type.
[...]
George Orwell remarked, “Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a socialist state.” Max Eastman an old friend of Vladimir Lenin described Stalin’s brand of communism as “super fascist.” British writer FA Voight after several years on the continent concluded “Marxism has led to Fascism and National Socialism because in all essentials it is Fascism and National Socialism.”
[...]
Hitler described the bourgeoisie as “worthless for any noble human endeavor, capable of any error of judgment, failure of nerve and moral corruption.” In 1931 as the Nazis gained power in elections, Goebbels wrote an editorial warning about these newcomer so-called “Septemberlings,’ the bourgeoisie intellectuals who thought they could wrest the party from what they considered the “demagogue” old guard.
[...]
The more vehemently the left, particularly academics, argue their dissociation with the Nazis the more they protest “too much.” Indeed, the failure here is as much one of academic prejudice as any willful wish to avoid truth.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211006060429/https://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-with-it-b7f12cc53b6f


Some commentary on Frederick Augustus Voigt. He was a rightist champion of Western Civilization, and saw Western Civilization to be gravely threatened by National Socialism.
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He came to regard both Fascism/Nazism and Communism as pseudo-religious ideologies that seriously threatened the essentially Christian civilization of Europe, and could only be opposed if the Western democracies committed to defend that civilization.

After World War II he became a leading exponent of what George Orwell termed “neo-toryism”, regarding the maintenance of British imperial power as an invaluable bulwark against Communism and as being indispensable to the creation and continuation of international peace and political stability.
[...]
The central thesis of Unto Caesar is that Communism and National Socialism were “revolutionary secular religions arising from the arrogant endeavour of man to transform religious promises directly into worldly reality” (Markus Huttner). Voigt argues that such 'secular religions' pose a threat to the fundamentals of European civilization by seeking to “render to Caesar what is God's” and can only be defeated if the western democracies, particularly Britain, stand up and actively defend Christianity and Civilization against the totalitarian onslaught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Augustus_Voigt

A. James Gregor seemed to have a similar thesis about Marxist Socialism, National Socialism, and Fascism being "revolutionary secular religions" (e.g. his book Totalitarianism and Political Religion: An Intellectual History, (2012).

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #42 on: February 10, 2022, 01:29:47 am »
Article by conservative scholar George Watson. He references Wagener and Rauschning many times, and I have already posted most of the relevant quotes Watson brings up in this article.
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Hitler and the socialist dream

He declared that 'national socialism was based on Marx' Socialists have always disowned him. But a new book insists that he was, at heart, a left-winger
22 November 1998

The Lost Literature of Socialism by George Watson is published by Lutterworth, pounds 15
[...]
It is the issue of race, above all, that for half a century has prevented National Socialism from being seen as socialist. The proletariat may have no fatherland, as Lenin said. But there were still, in Marx's view, races that would have to be exterminated. That is a view he published in January-February 1849 in an article by Engels called "The Hungarian Struggle" in Marx's journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and the point was recalled by socialists down to the rise of Hitler. It is now becoming possible to believe that Auschwitz was socialist-inspired. The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism was already giving place to capitalism, which must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire races would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age; and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history.
[...]
Addressing his own party, the NSDAP, in Munich in August 1920, he pledged his faith in socialist-racialism: "If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites - and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose." There was loud applause. Hitler went on: "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?"
[...]
Harold Nicolson, a democratic socialist, and after 1935 a Member of the House of Commons, conscientiously studied a pile of pamphlets in his hotel room in Rome in January 1932 and decided judiciously that fascism (Italian-style) was a kind of militarised socialism; though it destroyed liberty, he concluded in his diary, "it is certainly a socialist experiment in that it destroys individuality". The Moscow view that fascism was the last phase of capitalism, though already proposed, was not yet widely heard. Richard [Crossman] remarked in a 1934 BBC talk that many students in Nazi Germany believed they were "digging the foundations of a new German socialism".
[...]
The planned economy had long stood at the head of socialist demands; and National Socialism, Orwell argued, had taken from socialism "just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes". Hitler had already come close to socialising Germany. "Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a socialist state." These words were written just before Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union.
[...]
At its height, Hitler's appeal transcended party division. Shortly before they fell out in the summer of 1933, Hitler uttered sentiments in front of Otto Wagener, which were published after his death in 1971 as a biography by an unrepentant Nazi. Wagener's Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, composed in a British prisoner-of-war camp, did not appear until 1978 in the original German, and arrived in English, without much acclaim, as recently as 1985. Hitler's remembered talk offers a vision of a future that draws together many of the strands that once made utopian socialism irresistibly appealing to an age bred out of economic depression and cataclysmic wars; it mingles, as Victorian socialism had done before it, an intense economic radicalism with a romantic enthusiasm for a vanished age before capitalism had degraded heroism into sordid greed ...

Socialism, Hitler told Wagener shortly after he seized power, was not a recent invention of the human spirit, and when he read the New Testament he was often reminded of socialism in the words of Jesus. The trouble was that the long ages of Christianity had failed to act on the Master's teachings. Mary and Mary Magdalen, Hitler went on in a surprising flight of imagination, had found an empty tomb, and it would be the task of National Socialism to give body at long last to the sayings of a great teacher: "We are the first to exhume these teachings." The Jew, Hitler told Wagener, was not a socialist, and the Jesus they crucified was the true creator of socialist redemption. As for communists, he opposed them because they created mere herds, Soviet-style, without individual life, and his own ideal was "the socialism of nations" rather than the international socialism of Marx and Lenin. The one and only problem of the age, he told Wagener, was to liberate labour and replace the rule of capital over labour with the rule of labour over capital.

These are highly socialist sentiments, and if Wagener reports his master faithfully they leave no doubt about the conclusion: that Hitler was an unorthodox Marxist who knew his sources and knew just how unorthodox the way in which he handled them was. He was a dissident socialist. His programme was at once nostalgic and radical. It proposed to accomplish something that Christians had failed to act on and that communists before him had attempted and bungled. "What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish," he told Wagener, "we shall be in a position to achieve."

That was the National Socialist vision.
[...]
To relive it again, in imagination, one might look at an entry in Goebbels's diaries. On 16 June 1941, five days before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Goebbels exulted, in the privacy of his diary, in the victory over Bolshevism that he believed would quickly follow. There would be no restoration of the tsars, he remarked to himself, after Russia had been conquered. But Jewish Bolshevism would be uprooted in Russia and "real socialism" planted in its place - "Der echte Sozialismus". Goebbels was a liar, to be sure, but no one can explain why he would lie to his diaries. And to the end of his days he believed that socialism was what National Socialism was about.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210227034306/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html

I previously posted a larger portion of the passage where Hitler tells Wagener, "What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish, we shall be in a position to achieve."
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10723/#msg10723


As some commentary, Richard Crossman was a (non-Jewish?) Zionist and left-wing Labour Party politician, so he would have no reason to speak positively of the 'new German socialism' if this was not an accurate characterization of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Crossman

Quote
Indeed, Crossman’s own broadcast discusses what impression his listeners will get, ‘If you go to Germany as a tourist.’[17] Nevertheless, Crossman’s first-hand knowledge of Germany was much closer than that of most Britons. For academic and marital reasons, he had paid repeated visits and lived there for considerable lengths of time over the previous four years.[18] His emphasis upon the ideas of German youth and their visions of a community of the soil had an even more proximate cause. In April 1934 he had visited a Nazi-organised youth labour camp in Schleswig-Holstein: a visit described in a previous radio talk on 2 May, published in The Listener on 16 May, which vividly conveyed the spirit of the young officers and students and their ‘belief that they are digging the foundation of a new German Socialism, not of the town and the machine but of the fields and the spade.’[19]
[...]
Crossman subsequently turned his radio talks into a book, Plato Today, published a year later in June 1937.[24]
[...]
Freed from BBC constraints, in Plato Today Crossman states his political views with more forthrightness and in a very different form, exploiting  with greater creativity the fiction of Plato being alive in the modern world. Nowhere is this more evident than in Chapter 9, ‘Plato looks at Fascism’. The chapter imagines Plato writing to Aristotle an account of his experiences during a visit to Nazi Germany, focusing on the speeches at amass public meeting in Berlin. One of the speeches comes from an academic philosopher, a student of Plato, newly converted to National Socialism from his former liberal views. Arguing that Plato ‘was a prototype of National Socialism’ who ‘preached the revolution which Adolf Hitler has so wonderfully carried through’, the philosopher expounds his view of the sources of Plato’s views ...

[19] Richard Crossman. ‘German labour camps’, The Listener, vol. 11 (16 May 1934), 813.

[24] Richard Crossman. (1937). Plato Today, London.
Stephen Hodkinson. (2010). Sparta and Nazi Germany in Mid-20th-Century British Liberal and Left-Wing Thought. In: A. Powell & S. Hodkinson (eds.), Sparta: The Body Politic, Swansea (The Classical Press of Wales), 2010.
https://www.academia.edu/35634339/Sparta_and_Nazi_Germany_in_mid_20th_century_British_liberal_and_left_wing_thought_2010_

(It seems Crossman eventually soured on the new socialism, and tried to claim NS Germany is analogous to ancient Sparta. Crossman's Plato criticizes the philosopher who calls the supposedly "Spartan" NS Germany a representative of real Platonic ideas. Of course, Spartanism is negative, but NS Germany isn't "Spartan" at all, and really was closer to the Platonic Republic than any other government that I am aware of...)

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #43 on: February 10, 2022, 01:36:04 am »
Continuing from the previous post, Watson translated the term "Völkerabfälle"--used by Marxist theorist Friedrich Engels--as "racial trash". Communists claim that is an inaccurate translation, but to me it seems accurate. It is not the dumb tribalism of when white supremacists call "blacks" "racial trash", but a qualitative term which is based in a very long-sighted view of history.
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Völkerabfälle is a term used by Frederick Engels to describe small nations which he considered residual fragments of former peoples who had succumbed to more powerful neighbours in the historic process of social development and which Engels considered prone to become "fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution".
[...]
Engels was referring also specifically to the Serb uprising of 1848–49, in which Serbs from Vojvodina fought against the previously victorious Hungarian revolution. Engels finished the article with the following prediction:
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But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.

The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerabf%C3%A4lle

(Yet False Leftist liberals and Communists will claim Hitler is "racist" when he said nearly identical things about "Slav barbarians" and how "entire reactionary peoples" need to disappear from the face of the Earth to enact real Socialism... Hitler was not motivated by petty ethno-tribalist squabbles, but a long-sighted view of history and revolution, just like Engels and Marx. Maybe he even got the idea from them directly.)

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Let's look at the 3 full articles Engels published on this topic, since the full context is even more brutal than the brief quote above.

First, just to emphasize, Engels was absolutely integral to the development of Marxism/Communism:
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Engels developed what is now known as Marxism together with Karl Marx. In 1845, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in English cities. In 1848, Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx and also authored and co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works. Later, Engels supported Marx financially, allowing him to do research and write Das Kapital. After Marx's death, Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital. Additionally, Engels organised Marx's notes on the Theories of Surplus Value which were later published as the "fourth volume" of Das Kapital.[8][9] In 1884, he published The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State on the basis of Marx's ethnographic research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels

Secondly, Marx himself was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper where Engels published the articles, so he probably wouldn't have allowed 3 such articles to be published if he strongly disagreed with them:
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The Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie ("New Rhenish Newspaper: Organ of Democracy") was a German daily newspaper, published by Karl Marx in Cologne between 1 June 1848 and 19 May 1849.
[...]
The paper was established by Karl Marx, Frederich Engels, as well as leading members of the Communist League living in Cologne immediately upon the return of Marx and Engels to Germany following the outbreak of the 1848 Revolution.[1] The paper's editorial staff included Joseph Weydemeyer, with Marx serving as editor-in-chief.
[...]
The great bulk of the journalism of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the NRZ became systematically accessible to an English readership only in 1977, with the publication of volumes 7, 8, and 9 of the Marx-Engels Collected Works. It was then that a total of 357 of the 422 articles contained therein were published in English for the first time.[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Rheinische_Zeitung


Engels speaks positively of the fighting spirit of the "revolutionary" pro-democracy Hungarians fighting against numerically-superior "counter-revolutionary" Slavs in Austria.

Engels gives a brief history of Austria-Hungary and how various ethnic groups were becoming more oppressed under the dynastic class, yet were apparently willing to support them since the rulers knew how to play into their interests. In the 1848 revolution in Austria-Hungary, Engels writes: "the Germans, Poles, and Magyars took the side of the revolution; the remainder, all the Slavs, except for the Poles, the Rumanians and Transylvanian Saxons, took the side of the counter-revolution."

Engels then goes on to say:
Quote
How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis?

The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the nationalities in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these nations, large and small.

All the earlier history of Austria up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality--the Germans, the Poles, and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary.

All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary.
[...]
Let us, however, also remark at the outset that the Poles have revealed great political understanding and a true revolutionary spirit by now entering into an alliance with their old enemies, the Germans and Magyars, against the Pan-Slav counter-revolution. A Slav people for whom freedom is dearer than Slavism proves its vitality by this fact alone, and thereby already assures a future for itself.

Engels then claims the Slavs were not able to form any real cultural movements without the "help" of Germans, Hungarians, or Ottomans. He goes on to praise Hungarians:
Quote
And if the Magyars were a little behind the German Austrians in civilisation, they have recently brilliantly overtaken them by their political activity. Between 1830 and 1848 there was more political life in Hungary alone than in the whole of Germany, and the feudal forms of the old Hungarian Constitution were better exploited in the interests of democracy than the modern forms of South-German constitutions. And who was at the head of the movement here? The Magyars. Who supported the Austrian reaction? The Croats and Slovenes.

Against the Magyar movement, as also against the reawakening political movement in Germany, the Austrian Slavs founded a Sonderbund--pan-Slavism.
[...]
In its basic tendency, pan-Slavism is aimed against the revolutionary elements of Austria and is therefore reactionary from the outset.

Pan-Slavism immediately gave proof of this reactionary tendency by a double betrayal: it sacrificed to its petty national narrow-mindedness the only Slav nation which up to then had acted in a revolutionary manner, the Poles; it sold both itself and Poland to the Russian Tsar.

The direct aim of Pan-Slavism is the creation of a Slav state under Russian domination, extending from the Erzgebirge and the Carpathians to the Black, Aegean and Adriatic seas ...
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc


Throughout this article, Engels refers to Slavs as "barbarians" a number of times and continuously criticizes the national/cultural character of these Slav nations.
Quote
And what nations are supposed to head this great Slav state? Precisely those nations which for a thousand years have been scattered and split up, those nations whose elements capable of life and development were forcibly imposed on them by other, non-Slav peoples, small, powerless nationalities, everywhere separated from one another and deprived of their national strength, numbering from a few thousand up to less than two million people! They have become so weak that, for example, the race which in the Middle Ages was the strongest and most terrible, the Bulgarians, are now in Turkey known only for their mildness and soft-heartedness and set great store on being called dobre chrisztian, good Christians! Is there a single one of these races, not excluding the Czechs and Serbs, that possesses a national historical tradition which is kept alive among the people and stands above the pettiest local struggles?
Spoiler alert: even 150 years later the answer was no:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Wars

Quote
Pan-Slavism was at its height in the eight and ninth centuries, when the Southern Slavs still held the whole of Hungary and Austria and were threatening Byzantium. If at that time they were unable to resist the German and Magyar invasion, if they were unable to achieve independence and form a stable state even when both their enemies, the Magyars and Germans, were tearing each other to pieces, how will they be able to achieve it today, after a thousand years of subjection and loss of their national character?

There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples, the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historic development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says,[1] these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against historical revolution.
[...]
Such, in Austria, are the pan-Slavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but the residual fragment of peoples, resulting from an extremely confused thousand years of development. That this residual fragment, which is likely extremely confused, sees its salvation only in a reversal of the whole European movement, which in its view ought to go not from west to east, but from east to west, and that for it the instrument of liberation and the bond of unity is the Russian knout--that is the most natural thing in the world.

Already before 1848, therefore, the Southern Slavs had clearly shown their reactionary character.

[1] See G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Einleitung.

Quote
To sum up:

In Austria, apart from Poland and Italy, it is the Germans and Magyars in 1848, as during the past thousand years already, who have assumed the historical initiative. They represent the revolution.

The Southern Slavs, who for a thousand years have been taken in tow by the Germans and Magyars, only rose up in 1848 to achieve their national independence in order thereby at the same time to suppress the German-Magyar revolution. They represent the counter-revolution.
[...]
The Magyars are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall gloriously, as the last heroes of the 1848 revolution, and only for a short time. Then for a time the Slav counter-revolution will sweep down on the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarity, and the camarilla will see what sort of allies it has. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.

The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
Frederick Engels. (January 13, 1849). The Magyar Struggle. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 194. Republished in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works. (1977). Volume 8: 1848-49. Progress Publishers, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., and International Publishers Co. Inc. Page 227-238.
https://archive.org/details/karlmarxfrederic0008marx/page/226/mode/2up


So, to summarize, Engels views the "Pan-Slav" ambitions to be a continuation of petty historic tribalism, and not a revolutionary progression into the next stage of history by overthrowing the dynastic elite class to form a democracy. These counter-revolutionary ethnic groups will "perish" in the long term--not necessarily by ethnic cleansing (although Engels strongly implies this is what must be done), but, due to their counter-revolutionary attitudes, they are of no use for long-reaching political goals and one way or another will not leave their mark on the future.

To put it more simply, "Pan-Slavism" is not a "prole class"-based struggle, and therefore needs to get out of the way so a "real" revolution can proceed. Further, "Pan-Slavism" is not even a real nationalist movement seeking to unite small ethnic groups into a new nation, but a hollow attempt for Slav nations to imitate the dynastic classes of Austria-Hungary that had previously ruled them (with the added insult of becoming part of the Russian Empire's sphere).

One way or another, history will sweep them aside during the coming Communist "revolutionary world storm", and they will not continue on into the future as unique ethnic groups/nationalities.

How will this happen? Presumably the simplest way would be for the high quality elements of those ethnic groups will be integrated into the "revolutionary" nationalities (although Engels disagrees this is possible in the follow-up articles posted below), and those low quality elements who remain counter-revolutionary will be sent to gulags, where their culture and bloodlines end forever.

This would be the politest way, but Engels puts it more ruthlessly--when (not if) the next world war breaks out, there will be a "bloody revenge" which will wipe out the Slav nations "down to their very names", causing "the disappearance from the face of the earth...entire reactionary peoples." (For fun, next time you see a Communist you can imply Hitler said that, and see how they react when you reveal it was their beloved Engels.)

Engels also says counter-revolutionaries will remain a persistent problem until their "complete extirpation":
Quote
extirpation

1. Biology, Ecology. (of a species) the state or condition of having become locally or regionally extinct

2. Medicine/Medical. the removal or excision of a tumor, organ, etc.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/extirpation

Quote
early 15c., "removal;" 1520s, "rooting out, eradication," from Latin extirpationem/exstirpationem (nominative extirpatio/exstirpatio), noun of action from past-participle stem of extirpare/exstirpare "root out," from ex "out" (see ex-) + stirps (genitive stirpis) "a root, stock of a tree."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/extirpation

Ok, I guess his desire for the destruction of Slavic peoples wasn't "implicit", but pretty explicit.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #44 on: February 10, 2022, 01:41:23 am »
Continuing from the previous post.

A month later, Engels published two follow-up articles titled "Democratic Pan-Slavism".
Quote
We have often enough pointed out that the romantic dreams which came into being after the revolutions of February and March, such as ardent fantasies about the universal fraternal union of peoples, a European federative republic, and eternal world peace, were basically nothing but screens hiding the immeasurable perplexity and inactivity of the leading spokesmen of that time. People did not see, or did not want to see, what had to be done to safeguard the revolution; they were unable or unwilling to carry out any really revolutionary measures; the narrow-mindedness of some and the counter-revolutionary intrigues of others resulted in the people getting only sentimental phrases instead of revolutionary deeds.
[...]
People have learned by bitter experience that the "European fraternal union of peoples" cannot be achieved by mere phrases and pious wishes, but only by profound revolutions and bloody struggles; they have learned that the question is not that of a fraternal union of all European peoples under a single republican flag, but of an alliance of the revolutionary peoples against the counter-revolutionary peoples, an alliance which comes into being not on paper, but on the battlefield.

He is not mincing words about what needs to happen to the "counter-revolutionary peoples"...

In this article, he says the spirit of the revolution is weakly kept alive by democratic pan-Slavists, but these democratic pan-Slavists do not have the martial spirit necessary to bring the goals of a revolution into reality by whatever means necessary. Engels strongly criticizes an article by Mikhail Bakunin, who praises the democratic pan-Slavists and thinks they will be able to accomplish something. (Engels also praises how the US conquered large amounts of Mexico, declaring the US was more "civilized" and would bring "progress" to the regions, yikes.)
Quote
We repeat: apart from the Poles, the Russians, and at most the Turkish Slavs, no Slav people has a future, for the simple reason that all the other Slavs lack the primary historical geographical, political and industrial conditions for independence and viability.

Peoples which have never had a history of their own, which from the time when they achieved the first, most elementary stage of civilisation already came under foreign sway, or which were forced to attain the first stage of civilisation only by means of a foreign yoke, are not viable and will never be able to achieve any kind of independence.

And that has been the fate of the Austrian Slavs.

Quote
Of course, matters of this kind cannot be accomplished without many a tender national blossom being forcibly broken. But in history nothing is achieved without violence and implacable ruthlessness, and if Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon had been capable of being moved by the same sort of appeal as that which pan-Slavism now makes on behalf of its ruined clients, what would have become of history!
[...]
In short, it turns out these "crimes" of the Germans and Magyars against said Slavs are among the best and most praiseworthy deeds which our and the Magyar people can boast of in their hostory.

Quote
If at any epoch while they were oppressed the Slavs had begun a new revolutionary history, that by itself would have proved their viability. From that moment the revolution would have had an interest in their liberation, and the special interest of the Germans and Magyars would have given way to the greater interest of the European revolution.

Precisely that, however, never happened. The Slavs--once again we remind our readers here we always exclude the Poles--were always the main instruments of the counter-revolutionaries. Oppressed at home, outside their country, wherever Slav influence extended to, they were the oppressors of all revolutionary nations.

Let no one object that we speak here on behalf of German national prejudices. In German, French, Belgian and English periodicals, the proofs are to be found that it was precisely the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung who already long before the revolution most decisively opposed all manifestations of German narrow-mindedness. ... they have always recognized the superiority of the great historical nations of the west, the English and the French, compared with the backward Germans. But precisely for that reason we should be permitted not to share the fantastic illusion of the Slavs and allowed to judge other peoples as severely as we have judged our own nation.

Quote
But, once again, what was the composition of the armies which best let themselves be used for oppression and for whose savage acts the Germans were blamed? Once again, they consisted of Slavs. Go to Italy and asked who suppressed the Milan revolution; people will no longer say: the Tedeschi [Germans]--since the Tedeschi made a revolution in Vienna they are no longer hated--but the Croati. That is the word which Italians now apply to the whole Austrian army, i.e. to all that is most deeply hated by them: i Croati!
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

See also:
Even Himmler was dismayed with the barbarity of the Croatian state during WWII, and from the beginning of this Croatian state's existence a German general said German troops had to frequently intervene against criminal acts by Croatian forces. ...But their crimes remain broadly blamed on the "Axis" and Germany in particular:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_State_of_Croatia#Influence_of_Nazi_Germany

Quote
Nevertheless, these reproaches would be superfluous and unjustified if the Slavs had anywhere seriously participated in the movement of 1848, if they had hastened to join the ranks of the revolutionary peoples.
[...]
The revolution of 1848 compelled all European peoples to declare themselves for or against it. In the course of a month all the peoples ripe for revolution had made their revolution, and all those which were not ripe had allied themselves against the revolution. At that time it was a matter of disentangling the confused tangle of peoples of Eastern Europe. The question was which nation would seize the revolutionary initiative here, and which nation would develop the greatest revolutionary energy and thereby safeguard its future. The Slavs remained silent, the Germans and Magyars, faithful to their previous historical position, took the lead. As a result, the Slavs were thrown completely into the arms of the counter-revolution.

But what about the Slav Congress in Prague?

We repeat: the so-called democrats among the Austrian Slavs are either scoundrels or fantasts, and the latter, who do not find any fertile soil among their people for the ideas imported from abroad, have been continually led by the nose by the scoundrels.
That last paragraph sounds similar to how Hitler describes "Judeo-Bolshevism" leading the Russians and other Slavs astray from authentic Socialist revolution.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10718/#msg10718

Quote
But let us not harbour any illusions. Among all the pan-Slavists, nationality, i.e. imaginary common Slav nationality, takes precedence over the revolution. The pan-Slavists want to join the revolution on the condition that they will be allowed to constitute all Slavs without exception, regardless of material necessities, into independent Slav states. ... But the revolution does not allow of any conditions being imposed upon it. Either one is a revolutionary and accepts the consequences of the revolution, whatever they are, or one is driven into the arms of the counter-revolution ...
[...]
The demand is put to us and the other revolutionary nations of Europe that the hotbeds of counter-revolution at our very door should be guaranteed an unhindered existence and the free right to conspire and take up arms against the revolution; it is demanded that we should establish a counter-revolutionary Czech state in the very heart of Germany ...

We have no intention of doing that. To the sentimental phrases about brotherhood which are being offered here on behalf of the most counter-revolutionary nations of Europe, we reply that hatred of Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution. We know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated, viz. in Russia and the Slav regions of Austria, and no fine phrases, no allusions to an undefined democratic future for these countries can deter us from treating our enemies as enemies.

And if Bakunin finally exclaims:
Quote
Truly, the Slav should not lose anything, he should win! Truly, he should live! And we shall live. As long as the smallest part of our rights is contested, as long as a single member is cut off from our whole body, so long will we fight to the end, inexorably wage a life-and-death struggle, until the Slavs have their place in the world, great and free and independent--

if revolutionary pan-Slavism means this passage to be taken seriously, and in its concern for imaginary Slav nationality leaves the revolution entirely out of account, then we too know what we have to do.

Then there will be a struggle, an "inexorable life-and-death struggle", against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror--not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!
Frederick Engels. (February 15, 1849). Democratic Pan-Slavism. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 222. page 362-371.
Frederick Engels. (February 16, 1849). Democratic Pan-Slavism. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 223. page 371-378.
Republished in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works. (1977). Volume 8: 1848-49. Progress Publishers, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., and International Publishers Co. Inc.
https://archive.org/details/karlmarxfrederic0008marx/page/362/mode/2up


Wow. Those final two paragraphs...

I would not be surprised if Hitler had read these articles by Engels. Note the obvious parallels between Hitler's emphasis on the concept of struggle in history, and obviously on what had to be done to safeguard the National Socialist revolution against reactionary "Judeo-Bolshevik"-following Slavs. (And Hitler obviously allied with Slavic nations willing to embrace the revolution, e.g. Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria.)


...I will also point out how we outlined in a different thread how the Communist USSR engaged in settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing of many ethnic groups:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/western-revisionism-of-wwi-and-wwii/msg6582/#msg6582

I'll let someone else figure out if they were all "counter-revolutionaries" who deserved that or not...