Author Topic: National Socialists were socialists  (Read 4184 times)

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #45 on: February 10, 2022, 01:51:11 am »
From an anti-NS False left article criticizing anti-NS rightists:
Quote
A similar argument is propounded in the 2017 book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left by Dinesh D’Souza, who maintains that Adolf Hitler himself was a “dedicated socialist”:

Quote
In statement after statement, Hitler could not be clearer about his socialist commitments. He said, for example, in a 1927 speech, “We are socialists. We are the enemies of today’s capitalist system of exploitation … and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20211218084848/https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/

Unsurprisingly, the rightist D'Souza suffers from shoddy scholarship. This quote was actually from Gregor Strasser. It was published in June 1926, and recall that Hitler had ideologically reconcilced with the Strassers and Goebbels by April 1926, indicating Hitler almost certainly did not have a problem with this publication. (And, as covered previously, the Strassers were highly esteemed by Hitler, and Hitler had no problems with the Strassers being leftist Socialists:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10620/#msg10620 )

Quote
Perhaps ironically, that article opens with a tidbit of literally rewritten history, misattributing a quote by Nazi party member Gregor Strasser to Adolf Hitler:

Quote
We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!

While Hitler may have co-opted elements of this language when it was politically expedient, they are not his words. Instead, these are the words of early Nazi party official Gregor Strasser, printed in a 1926 pamphlet titled Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220113190014/https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hitler-nazis-capitalist-system/

Back to the other article:
Quote
[Hitler] having declared, at various times, “I am a socialist,” “We are socialists,” and similar avowals ...
[...]
This excerpt from a speech Hitler gave in 1922 (quoted in William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, published in 1960) is indicative:

Quote
Whoever is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an extent that he knows no higher ideal than the welfare of the nation; whoever has understood our great national anthem, “Deutschland ueber Alles,” to mean that nothing in the wide world surpasses in his eyes this Germany, people and land — that man is a Socialist.

And this is what came out of Adolf Hitler’s mouth on another occasion when a comrade riled him by harping on socialism (as reported by Henry A. Turner, author of German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, published in 1985):

Quote
Socialism! What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211218084848/https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/

The article is quite funny, isn't it? All the "information" to attempt to demonstrate National Socialism wasn't Socialist are quotes from random historians giving their opinions. All the actual quotes from Hitler and other National Socialists were quotes explicitly saying they viewed themselves as Socialists! It's literally the Big Lie tactics--repeat something enough times and people will believe it.

----

For reference, in that final quote, Hitler is giving an exasperated, super-simple, and practical definition of Socialism, since he seems frustrated the person he's talking to would likely reject a practical alliance due to overly-theoretical definitions of Socialism:
Quote
Thereupon I clothed my answer in a conditional sentence: If he negotiated with Alfred Hugenberg,[29] he could also negotiate with Brüning.

From this sentence Hitler heard at first and primarily only the criticism. In a fervent voice, therefore, he praised Hugenberg as an outstanding economic leader and a true nationalist who already had had dealings with him, Hitler, when the Nazi party was small and insignificant. Now, to be sure, all the others came running, not just rich Germans, but Americans, Frenchmen, even Jews. Then Hitler asked me what I had against Hugenberg. When I expressed doubts about the good nationalist attitude of Hugenberg because it had no culmination in social attitudes, Hitler caught me up: "Socialism! What is Socialism, then? When the people have enough to eat and their pleasure, then they have their Socialism. That's just what Hugenberg thinks!" My objection that it had less to do with food and pleasure than with the development and uplifting of the talented and healthy hereditary core of the nation, he dismissed with a few remarks about trade union ideology.

[29] Alfred Hugenberg, Germany's greatest newspaper magnate, was the reactionary leader of the DNVP. He had collaborated with Hitler in the Young Plan plebiscite, as described above, and within a year of the incident described here was to join Hitler in the Harzburg Front, a confederation of rightist parties. When Hitler took office in 1933 it was actually in coalition with Hugenberg's party.
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 173.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/172/mode/2up

A constant theme of Hitler's speeches is that he was willing to transcend the constraints of the mainstream left and right in order to build a revolutionary new ideology, by whatever means necessary. Chancellor Brüning was in negotiations to potentially form a coalition with the NSDAP, and Hitler viewed him as an adversary, whereas Hitler was angered Krebs made a parallel that implied Hugenberg was a similar adversary, rather than believing in the most basic aspects of Socialism enough to be considered a genuine collaborator.

Krebs was part of the Strasserist faction and apparently quite critical of the NSDAP absorbing/making alliances with right-leaning parties (not just in this passage.) He was expelled from the party for agitation in 1932. Briefly skimming his memoir, he seems anti-Hitler with the view that Hitler betrayed the "real" Socialism that the Strasserist faction was developing.


If the accounts of Krebs and Otto Strasser (see the 1930 debate between Hitler and Strasser posted previously) are accurate, Hitler seemed to have a short temper with Strasserists whose understanding of Socialism was tainted by Marxism:
Quote
No matter what a Nazi fought against, whether Versailles, capitalism, the Red Front, the department stores, or the democratic parties of fulfillment, it was always one and the same enemy. To destroy him meant to destroy the causes of Germany's misery with one stroke. Therefore, it was a mistake to be overly concerned with any single problem, such as socialism. That only turned you away from the real goal of the struggle. "What is socialism?" Hitler screamed at me in 1930. "A Jewish invention to incense the German folk against itself!"
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 46-47.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/46/mode/2up

However, Hitler was clear to others in his private conversations that his goal was to purify Socialism of the Marxist elements that were dragging it down and preventing it from succeeding. For example, see this previous post:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10718/#msg10718


Krebs acknowledges the party synthesized various political currents, including Marxist Socialism:
Quote
Seen as a whole, the party was thus an organization of "new men" who were breaking into the domain of politics with youthful obstreperousness, full of faith in their own mission and determined to use their eagerness at risk-taking to make the impossible possible. From the spiritual heritage of the past they took whatever they thought useful for their goals and purposes. That produced, especially in the beginning, a remarkable mixture of liberal, conservative, Marxist, reactionary, and revolutionary elements, though probably very few of them were aware of this.
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 242-243.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/242/mode/2up

Krebs describes some of the far-left Socialists in the National Socialist party who he met during his time as Gauleiter of Hamburg (leader of the Hamburg NSDAP political district) in 1926-1928:
Quote
Less complicated personalities than Böckenhauer were Dr. Schranz and Arnold Peters, who were practically the first and the only ones among the leadership in those early years whose socialism went beyond practical considerations. To be sure, they came to their socialism from diverse directions.
[...]
On the basis of his studies after the war and of his experience in various businesses, Dr. Schranz came to the conclusion that traditional economic liberalism was socially unjust and economically outmoded both in theory and in practice ... Like many reformers of those years he saw the cure in combatting finance capitalism, a retreat from the gold standard, and the establishment of the fundamental thesis that all value is created by labor.

In any event, there was less favor in the Hamburg party in those days for unambiguously clear formulations than there was acceptance of a revolutionary socialism. Thus Dr. Schranz played an essential role in the determination of the Hamburg Party's development.
[...]
What for Dr. Schranz had been the result of an intellectual blending of experience and systematic study was for Arnold Peters an emotion formed from youthful adventures. When I first met him, he was a lad of seventeen years whose appearance and personality were a joy to behold. He came from a Hamburg working-class family in which adherence to the Marxist-Socialist labor movement was taken as a matter of course. Thus Peters had become a member of the Red Falcons and later of the Young Socialist Workers. Exactly what impelled him to leave these organizations I was never able to discover. From the point of view of social attitudes, Peters still lived completely in the world in which he had been brought up. He considered himself passionately and unqualifiedly as a National Socialist without troubling himself too much about the theoretical differences between that and Marxism, apart from those which centered about the antithesis "national vs. international."
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 50-51.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/50/mode/2up


I didn't look through this book too much, but there is probably a lot more information about the Strasserist left-wing and other leftists in it. Although I did notice on page 240 that he mentions Roehm and Gregor Strasser were two opposed factions, similar to Rauschning's account--i.e. the two major opposition factions in the party were leftist! On page 192 he mentions a rumor that Goebbels was part of a Communist student group around 1920, indicating Goebbel's far-leftism was well known. (Recall the earlier post in the thread where Rosenberg said Goebbels could have easily joined the Communist party instead of the NSDAP). As we saw in a different post, Goebbels wrote as late as 1924 (when he joined the NSDAP) that he was a Communist:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621

Recall also that Rosenberg was jealous about how close Goebbels became to Hitler, indicating Goebbels and Hitler must have been very closely ideologically aligned in order for them to grow so close:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10804/#msg10804

Recall also that Albert Speer mentioned Goebbels was among those who was constantly pushing Hitler to remain ideological and not make practical compromises (and how they mocked the rightist Himmler):
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11108/#msg11108


Leftism overload.

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #46 on: February 10, 2022, 02:00:02 am »
Thus far, I have avoided relying on commentary from historians for 4 main reasons:

(1) Historians write their works by reading and synthesizing primary sources (i.e. the exact same process of what we are doing here by quoting National Socialists in their own words). If we want an actual understanding of the truth, we might as well cut out the middle-men.

(2) It is possible for two historians/individuals to read the EXACT SAME sources, but write two completely different narratives, depending on their own personal attitudes and values. (e.g. Rightists can quote the "great minds" of Western Civilization with admiration, while leftists like us can quote the same sentences and express our disgust.) Again, it is best to cut out the middle-men who try to tell us what to believe, and just read the original documents and decide for ourselves.

(3) Every time we quote a historian who acknowledges the Socialism of National Socialism, our enemies could quote a dozen other historians who claim National Socialism is far-rightism. The only way to cut through the propaganda and biased narratives to get down to the truth is by reading the actual primary source documents of what National Socialists believed in their own words.

(4) In any case, relying exclusively on a historian's opinion rather than the content of the actual source documents is an appeal to authority (a logical fallacy) and intellectual laziness.

----

However, the fact that many mainstream historians do acknowledge the leftism/Socialism of National Socialism demonstrates that even within Western academia there is far from a unanimous agreement that National Socialism was some far-right ideology. These historians will obviously quote excerpts of National Socialist writings in order to demonstrate their point--pointing us to valuable information for further study. Until we can find a full copy of the original source documents, then commentary from these historians will have to suffice.

----

Below is the book from which Wikipedia and other sources cite the following quote.
Quote
According to the idea of the NSDAP, we are the German left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national ownership block.
   -Der Angriff (The Attack), (6 December 1931)

Wolfgang Venohr, Hellmut Diwald, and Sebastian Haffner. (1983). Dokumente deutschen Daseins: 500 Jahre deutsche Nationalgeschichte, 1445-1945 (Documents of German existence: 500 years of German national history 1445-1945). Krefeld: SINUS-Verlag. Page 279.
https://archive.org/details/dokumentedeutsch00veno/page/278/mode/2up

See the previous post about this and other Joseph Goebbels quotes. Hitler would have been fully aware of Goebbel's leftism for years at this point.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621

----------------

Page 276-277.

Quote
HAFFNER
Ich würde so sagen: Die Weimarer Parteien haben den nationalen Bereich nicht völolig ignoriert. Die Deutsch-Nationalen rührten ja auch die _nationale_ Trommel. Un die Sozialdemokraten rührten die _sozialistische_ Trommel. Aber die beiden Sachen mal zusammenzubringen: Das war eine bedeutende Idee! Und das zeigt, daß Hitler kein verächtlicher Politiker war, solange er sich noch Mühe gab, einer zu sein. Dieser Versuch, zwei großbe, damals ungeheurer schlagkräftige Ideen--den Nationalismus un den Sozialismus--miteinander zu fusionieren, das war eine große Sache!

Prof. DIWALD
Das allein hat aber das Besondere des Nationalsozialismus noch nich ausgemacht. Als drittes Moment ist dazu der ganz brutale Rassenantisemitismus gekommen! Es ist ein Phänomen, das es weder in Deutschland noch in der gesamten politischen Geschichte vorher in dieser Prägnanz und Entschiedenheit gegeben hat...

HAFFNER
Ja, das simmt schon, un ich mach' es auch den Deutschen etwas zum Votwurf, daß sie da nicht genauer hingehört haben, daß sie das sozusagen in Kauf genommen haben. Aber eines muß man da sagen: Hitler hat in der Zeit 1930 bis 1933 gerade den Antisemitismus verhältnismäßig in den Hintergrund treten lassen. Da redete er hauptsächlich von der sozialen Not und dem Versagen der Parteien und diesen Dingen.

Und bei der Gelegenheit möchte ich doch eines auch sagen: Daß Hitler nur das Werkzeug der Kapitalisten war, das ist ja Unsinn! Die Kapitalisten mißtrauten ihm sogar noch in der Zeit seines Erfolges 1930/31, und erst 1932 hat er sie--ich möchte mal hamburgisch sagen--"begöscht", mit der berühmten Rede in Düsseldorf vor dem Rhein-Ruhr-Club der Industriellen.

Prof. DIWALD
Ja, Seihne Ausrichtung auf den Arbeiter, die lief damals durchaus in dem, was man als sozialistisch oder links bezeichnet hat (natürlich nict zu verwechseon mit dem, was man heute unter links oder sozialistisch versteht). Die Hauptpropaganda, die hat er ausgerichtet auf den einfachen Bürger, auf den Bauern und auf den Arbeiter!

HAFFNER
Wobei immerhin zu beachten ist: beim Bauern und beim Kleinbürger hatte er sofort großen Erfolg. Beim Arbeiter zunächst nicht! Das kam erst später. Bis 1933 wählten die Arbeiter kommunistisch oder sozialdemokratisch; mit einer Linksverschiebung. Zuerst mehrheitlich sozialdemokratisch, dann wurde die Mehrheit immer dünner. Aber was die Sozialdemokraten verloren, gewannen nicht die Nazis. Das gewannen die Kommunisten! Nach 1933/34 hat er dann auch die Arbeiter 'rumgekreigt.

Prof. DIWALD
Es kommt noch dazu, und das ist eine der Erklärungen, die man nicht vergessen darf: Die Parteien hatten bis zu den Präsidialkabinetten gezeigt, daß sie nicht in der Lage warren, mit den Schwiergkeiten fertigzuwerden. Hitler hat den Konterpart gespielt. Er hat gesagt, ich werde mit allem fertig...

Google translate:
Quote
HAFFNER
I would put it this way: the Weimar parties have not completely ignored the national sphere. The German nationalists also beat the _national_ drum. And the Social Democrats beat the _socialist_ drum. But to bring the two things together: That was an important idea! And that shows that Hitler was not a contemptible politician while he still tried to be one. This attempt to fuse two great ideas, which at the time were enormously powerful -- nationalism and socialism -- was a big deal!

Prof. DIWALD
But that alone did not make up what was special about National Socialism. The third moment was the very brutal racial anti-Semitism! It is a phenomenon that has never existed before in Germany or in all of political history with such conciseness and decisiveness...

HAFFNER
Yes, that's true, and I also blame the Germans for not listening more carefully, for accepting it, so to speak. But one thing has to be said: in the period from 1930 to 1933 Hitler allowed anti-Semitism to recede into the background. He talked mainly about the social misery and the failure of the parties and things like that.

And I would like to take this opportunity to say one thing: hat Hitler was only the tool of the capitalists, that's nonsense! The capitalists mistrusted him even during the period of his success in 1930/31, and it was not until 1932 that he--I would like to say Hamburgian--"begged" them with the famous speech in Düsseldorf before the Rhein-Ruhr-Club of the industrialists.

Prof. DIWALD
Yes, his orientation towards the worker was definitely part of what was called socialist or left (of course not to be confused with what is meant by left or socialist today). The main propaganda he aimed at the simple citizen, at the peasant and at the worker!

HAFFNER
However, it should be noted that he immediately had great success with the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie. Not with the worker at first! That came later. Until 1933 the workers voted communist or social democratic; with a left shift. At first the majority was social democratic, then the majority became thinner and thinner. But what the Social Democrats lost, the Nazis did not gain. The communists won! After 1933/34 he then also 'round the workers' around.

Prof. DIWALD
What's more, and this is one of the explanations that must not be forgotten: the parties had shown up to the presidential cabinets that they were unable to cope with the difficulties. Hitler played the counterpart. He said I can handle anything...

----
Page 278-278.

Quote
Der Stabchef der SA, Ernst Röhm, hatte auf dem Neujahrsempfang des diplomatischen Korps in Berlin, zu Beginn des Jahres 1934, damit gedroht, daß SA bald zur "zweiten Revolution" schreiten würde, zu einer Revolution, in der mit dem Sozialismus in Deutschland ernst gemacht werden sollte. Die Bourgeoisie war auf's höchste alarmiert! Sie setze Himmel und Hölle in Bewegung, Hitler--vor allem auf dem Umweg über die Heeresgeneralität--under Druck zu setzen und gegen seine "alten Kämpfer" zu mobilisieren, indem man frei erfundene Gerüchte in die Welt setzte, die SA wollen gegen ihren eigenen Führer und Reichskanzler putschen.

Tatsächlich gab es starke sozialistiche bzw. sozialrevolutionäre Kräfte in der NSDAP; vor allem im Raum Berlin-Brandenburg. Hier herrschte so etwas wie Horst-Wessel-Geist, und ganz in diesem Sinne schrieb der NS-Gauleiter von Großberlin, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, am 6. 12. 1931 im "Angriff", dem Berliner Kampfblatt der Hitlerbewgung:

"Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhaßter als der rechtsstehende nationale Besitzbürgerblock." Und zehn Monate später, am 9. 10. 1932--also nur ein Vierteljahr vor der Machtäbernahme!--erklärte er, daß es die große Idee Adolf Hitlers sei, "aus Deutschland den sozialistischen Arbeiterstaat zu machen".

Das fiel vor allem bei der kämpferischen SA auf fruchtbaren Boden. Das Wort von der "antikapitalistchen Sehnsucht", das einer der höchsten NS-Funktionäre, Gergor Strasser, vor dem Deutschen Reichstag gesprochen hatte, gab exakt die Gefählslage in diesen bärgerkreigserprobten Formationen wieder.

Von konkreten Putschplänen der SA gegn Hitler konnte im Ernst keine Rede sein; Wohl aber vom Anwachsen einer vorrevolutionären Stimmung, die sich immer deutlicher gegen das Großkapital richtete. Im Südwesten des Reiches ließ SA-Gruppenführer Hanns Ludin den Nationalkommunisten Richard Scheringer Schulungsvorträge über den Weg zum deutschen Sozialismus vor seinem Führerkorps halten. In Berlin-SIemensstadt veruschten SA-Leute in spontaner Aktion, das Großunterehmen Siemens zu sozialisieren und dort die Macht zu übernehmen. Sa-Gruppenführer  Karl Ernst von Berlin-Brandenburg erklärte dem KPD-Richstagsabgeordneten Torgler, man werde wohl bald gemeinsam gegen die Bourgeoisie marschieren.

Der Antifaschist Willy Brandt schrieb in der Zeitschrift "Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei" im Jahre 1932 treffend: "Das sozialistiche Element im Nationalsozialismus, im Denken seiner Gefolgsleute, das subjektiv Revolutionäre an der Basis, muß von uns erkannt werden." Das deutsche Großkapital sah die Hitlerpartei ganz genauso! und umischtig sorgte es dafür, daß die nationalen Sozialisten der NSDAP rechtzeitig liquidiert wurden.

Google translate:
Quote
At the New Year's reception of the diplomatic corps in Berlin in early 1934, the Chief of Staff of the SA, Ernst Röhm, had threatened that the SA would soon proceed to the "second revolution", a revolution in which socialism in Germany was taken seriously should be done. The bourgeoisie was extremely alarmed! They set heaven and hell in motion to put pressure on Hitler--above all by way of the army generals--and to mobilize against his "old fighters" by spreading fictitious rumors that the SA wanted against theirs own leaders and chancellors.

In fact, there were strong socialistic or social-revolutionary forces in the NSDAP; especially in the Berlin-Brandenburg area. Something akin to the Horst Wessel spirit prevailed here, and it was in this spirit that the Nazi Gauleiter of Greater Berlin, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, on December 6, 1931 in "Angriff", the Berlin newspaper of the Hitler movement:

"According to the idea of ​​the NSDAP, we are the German left. Nothing we hate more than the right-wing national property-owning block." And ten months later, on October 9, 1932--that is, only three months before the seizure of power!--he declared that Adolf Hitler's great idea was "to turn Germany into a socialist workers' state."


This fell on fertile ground, especially in the militant SA. The phrase "anti-capitalist longing" spoken by one of the highest NS officials, Gergor Strasser, before the German Reichstag, accurately reflected the emotional state of these formations, which had been tried and tested in the Civil War.

There could seriously be no talk of concrete putsch plans by the SA against Hitler; But it was due to the growth of a pre-revolutionary mood, which was directed more and more clearly against big business. In the southwest of the Reich, SA group leader Hanns Ludin had the national communist Richard Scheringer give training lectures to his leadership corps on the road to German socialism. In Berlin-Siemensstadt, SA men attempted spontaneous action to socialize the large company Siemens and take over power there. SA group leader Karl Ernst from Berlin-Brandenburg explained to Torgler, a KPD [Communist party] member of the Reichstag, that they would soon march together against the bourgeoisie.

The anti-fascist Willy Brandt wrote in the magazine "Socialist Workers' Party" in 1932: "The socialistic element in National Socialism, in the thinking of its followers, the subjectively revolutionary at the base, must be recognized by us." German big capital saw the Hitler party in exactly the same way! and it cunningly ensured that the national Socialists of the NSDAP [die nationalen Sozialisten der NSDAP] were liquidated in good time.
The last sentence seems to be specifically stressing the Socialist elements of the NSDAP, since "Nationalsozialist" (referring to the ideology and party name) is a single word in German. These historians also suggest the evidence of Roehm/the SA planning to commit a coup was fabricated by rightists in order to force a purge of the leftist agitators who were unwilling to make practical compromises. As we saw previously, even Otto Strasser (who had been expelled from the party and bitter at that point) acknowledged that Hitler did not actually want to purge Roehm or other leftists, but his hand was forced by President Hindenburg and others. Perhaps I was too critical of Roehm in earlier posts.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10915/#msg10915


To add some commentary on the last paragraph of the quote, from 1931 to the end of WWII, Willy Brandt was part of the (Communist/Marxist) Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. Apparently he drifted towards the "right-wing" of the mainstream Social Democratic Party by the time he became Chancellor. Consider the significance of this--a (future) German Chancellor acknowledged the leftism of National Socialism while being a member of a Communist party!!
Quote
Willy Brandt (18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen cooperation in western Europe through the EEC and to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe.[1] He was the first Social Democrat chancellor[2] since 1930.

Fleeing to Norway and then Sweden during the Nazi regime and working as a left-wing journalist, he took the name Willy Brandt as a pseudonym to avoid detection by Nazi agents, and then formally adopted the name in 1948. Brandt was originally considered one of the leaders of the right wing of the SPD, and earned initial fame as Governing Mayor of West Berlin. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's cabinet, and became chancellor in 1969.

As chancellor, he maintained West Germany's close alignment with the United States and focused on strengthening European integration in western Europe, while launching the new policy of Ostpolitik aimed at improving relations with Eastern Europe. Brandt was controversial on both the right wing, for his Ostpolitik, and on the left wing, for his support of American policies, including the Vietnam War, and right-wing authoritarian regimes. The Brandt Report became a recognised measure for describing the general North-South divide in world economics and politics between an affluent North and a poor South. Brandt was also known for his fierce anti-communist policies at the domestic level, culminating in the Radikalenerlass (Anti-Radical Decree) in 1972.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Brandt


While the most important focus of this thread is how National Socialists viewed Socialism in their own words, further evidence that non-NS leftists (especially those who were contemporaries with the living National Socialist movement) viewed National Socialism as a genuinely Socialist/leftist ideology is welcome as well.

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #47 on: February 10, 2022, 02:15:22 am »
Pamphlet translated as "Those Damned Nazis" [Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken.], by Joseph Goebbels. It was first published in 1929 and republished in 1932. The source doesn't say if it was published more than this.

Just like Goebbels's "Nazi-Sozi" pamphlet:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621

this pamphlet is clearly writing for a leftist audience to convince them of the Socialist merits of National Socialism.
Quote
We are nationalists because we see the nation as the only way to bring all the forces of the nation together to preserve and improve our existence and the conditions under which we live.
[...]
Nationalism has turned into bourgeois patriotism and its defenders are battling windmills.
[...]
Bourgeois patriotism is the privilege of a class. It is the real reason for its decline. When 30 million are for something and 30 million are against it, things balance out and nothing happens. That is how things are with us. We are the world’s Pariah not because we do not have the courage to resist, but rather because out entire national energy is wasted in eternal and unproductive squabbling between the right and the left. Our way only goes downward, and today one can already predict when we will fall into the abyss.
[...]
From this understanding, the young nationalism draws its absolute demand. The faith in the nation is a matter for everyone, never a group, a class or an economic clique. The eternal must be distinguished from the temporal. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.
[...]
If a Communist shouts “Down with nationalism!”, he means the hypocritical bourgeois patriotism that sees the economy only as a system of slavery. If we make clear to the man of the left that nationalism and capitalism, that is the affirmation of the Fatherland and the misuse of its resources, have nothing to do with each other, indeed that they go together like fire and water, then even as a socialist he will come to affirm the nation, which he will want to conquer.

That is our real task as National Socialists. We were the first to recognize the connections, and the first to begin the struggle. Because we are socialists we have felt the deepest blessings of the nation, and because we are nationalists we want to promote socialist justice in a new Germany.

A young fatherland will rise when the socialist front is firm.

Socialism will become reality when the Fatherland is free.

Why Are We Socialists?


We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.

Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to breaking the present slavery and regaining German freedom. Socialism, therefore, is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only through a total fighting brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the fatherland!

The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism into a question of wages and the stomach, putting it in conflict with the state and its national existence. An understanding of both these facts leads us to a new sense of socialism, which sees its nature as nationalistic, state-building, liberating and constructive.

The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. [...] It is not merely a matter of wages, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day — though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform [...] The bourgeoisie does not want to recognize the strength of the working class. Marxism has forced it into a straitjacket that will ruin it. While the working class gradually disintegrates in the Marxist front, bleeding itself dry, the bourgeoisie and Marxism have agreed on the general lines of capitalism, and see their task now to protect and defend it in various ways, often concealed.
[...]
We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces.
[...]
The lines of German socialism are sharp, and our path is clear.

We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism!

We are against Marxism, but for true socialism!

We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature!

We are for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!
[...]
Marxist nonsense claimed to free labor, yet it degraded the work of its members and saw it as a curse and disgrace. It can hardly be our goal to abolish labor, but rather to give new meaning and content. The worker in a capitalist state — and that is his deepest misfortune — is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker.

He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.
[...]
We are a workers’ party because we see in the coming battle between finance and labor the beginning and the end of the structure of the twentieth century. We are on the side of labor and against finance. Money is the measuring rod of liberalism, work and accomplishment that of the socialist state. The liberal asks: What are you? The socialist asks: Who are you? Worlds lie between.

We do not want to make everyone the same. Nor do we want levels in the population, high and low, above and below. The aristocracy of the coming state will be determined not by possessions or money, but only on the quality of one’s accomplishments. One earns merit through service. Men are distinguished by the results of their labor. That is the sure sign of the character and value of a person. The value of labor under socialism will be determined by its value to the state, to the whole community.
[...]
We oppose the Jews because we are defending the freedom of the German people. The Jew is the cause and beneficiary of our slavery He has misused the social misery of the broad masses to deepen the dreadful split between the right and left of our people, to divide Germany into two halves thereby concealing the true reason for the loss of the Great War and falsifying the nature of the revolution.

The Jew has no interest in solving the German question. He cannot have such an interest. He depends on it remaining unsolved. If the German people formed a united community and won back its freedom, there would be no place any longer for the Jew.
[...]
That is why we oppose the Jew as nationalists and as socialists.
[...]
What does anti-Semitism have to do with socialism? I would put the question this way: What does the Jew have to do with socialism? Socialism has to do with labor. When did one ever see him working instead of plundering, stealing and living from the sweat of others? As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation’s goods.
[...]
Peace among productive workers! Each should do his duty for the good of the whole community. The state then has the responsibility of protecting the individual, guaranteeing him the fruits of his labor.
[...]
The gallows for profiteers and usurers!
https://web.archive.org/web/20210322034535/https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm


I don't speak German, so I will refrain from getting into a battle of definitions and etymologies, but one major point of debate regarding a translation/mistranslation of NS words is the idea of "creativity". Rightist (pro-Western) Neo-Nazis have interpreted the translation "creativity" to mean high IQ and inventiveness. However, in this pamphlet, at least, Goebbels uses "creator" to mean "a worker who does productive labor". So, "creativity" is not a boasting about high IQ, but about productive vs non-productive labor.
Quote
We call ourselves a workers’ party because we want to rescue the word work from its current definition and give it back its original meaning. Anyone who creates value is a creator, that is, a worker.
[...]
The Jew is uncreative. He produces nothing, he only haggles with products.

And as we saw in Hitler's speech at Schleiz, Thuringia, on January 18, 1927, he places the highest value on what we would today call "essential work"--i.e. those who are viewed the lowest by capitalism, such as janitors or simple farmers, yet actually do the most important labor.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10616/#msg10616

So, in terms of labor, too, the most important productive labor is not inventing new machines or whatever, but doing the most simple and basic tasks that contribute to society. Jews do not contribute 'productive labor' to society and hence are called "uncreative", despite having very high IQ and talent at politics, finance, and science.

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #48 on: February 10, 2022, 02:31:08 am »
As National Socialism's influence grew beyond Germany, Hitler seems stunned by the party's rapid elevation to a global movement. It seems he began thinking more global-mindedly soon before WWII began.

We see in this quote that Hitler was willing to form alliances with anti-Westerners of all ethnic backgrounds! I will make the contention that, just because he became more globally-minded over time when it came to political matters, doesn't necessarily mean he was racist to begin with and then became less racist over time. If anything, his readiness to expand alliances to the whole world immediately after realizing the global influence of National Socialism can be taken as evidence he wasn't racist to begin with. He did not need time to reflect to challenge and change his views--he immediately accepted the doors that had opened up.

Wagener agreed with Hitler that such anti-Western alliances would be completely in line with the Socialism of the National Socialist party.
Quote
Wagener then tells of a visit paid to Hitler by an Arab emissary. The emissary informed Hitler that he and his movement were held in high regard in the Arab world and expressed the hope that Germany might free itself from the chains of its oppressors. The Arabs, he reported, were especially impressed that the NSDAP was the first political movement in modern Europe to recognize correctly the dangers of Jewry. His commission was to ask Hitler not to send the Jews of Germany to Palestine or any other part of the Arabic world if he expelled them from Germany.

“Strange,” Hitler said to me after the conference. “Until now I never considered the idea of expelling the Jews from Germany. And since our objective is peace, I don’t even think such a move is necessary. If we were to be entangled in a war, as in the First World War, one would have to make sure of the Jews. Because they were the ones who at that time sharpened the dagger which the elected representatives of the German Volk plunged into the back of the government of the Volk and its fighting men at the front.

“But the Semites seem to recognize their racial compatriots. Furthermore, it seems to me that they understand and know more about race than Europe does. The whitewashed good manners of our continent have seen to it that everything that might contribute to lucidity and truth was overlaid with a coat of uniform gray.

“Let us not lose sight of an alliance with the Arab League. We Germans have gotten into the habit of looking for friends only in Europe—if possible, among people of the same race. Perhaps that’s a mistake. Perhaps it’s much easier to find friends among other races. If the Arabs know that we—that is, a new Germany—can offer them understanding, support, and firm backing in their own struggles for freedom, and that we consider them competent to enter into alliances—welcome them, in fact—such a realization might have significant repercussions on our position in Europe as well. Furthermore, an alliance of interests between Germany and the Arabic-Semitic race might also have far-reaching significance for our relations with the millions of the African, Indian, and yellow peoples.

“A whole new perspective is opening up for me!”

But then Hitler rubbed his hand across his eyes and continued in a calmer voice:

“I have to sleep on it. It seems to me that it will have to be a long-term goal. Practical politics ties us to England.”

“Nor would England sit idly by,” I interjected, “while we begin to sympathize with the very nations England has always considered its vassals. Either we pursue a joint policy with England—in which case we would have to drop the idea you just presented or at least let it take a back seat, tempting and appropriate to our socialist thinking though it might be. On the other hand, if we could and should pursue a purely socialistic policy, these trains of thought would present prospects that could offer a different picture to the whole world.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 227-228.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n269/mode/2up


It looks like this meeting was immediately prior to the war in 1939:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Arab_world#Nazi_perceptions_of_the_Arab_world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Al_Hud_Al_Gargani

After the war began, he fully embraced all these anti-Western alliances, including in India (e.g. with anti-British Socialist Subhas Chandra Bose) and Africa (hence the book series Black Nazis).
Agree Agree x 1 View List

90sRetroFan

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11039
  • WESTERN CIVILIZATION MUST DIE!
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #49 on: February 10, 2022, 03:35:52 am »
"I don't speak German, so I will refrain from getting into a battle of definitions and etymologies, but one major point of debate regarding a translation/mistranslation of NS words is the idea of "creativity". Rightist (pro-Western) Neo-Nazis have interpreted the translation "creativity" to mean high IQ and inventiveness. However, in this pamphlet, at least, Goebbels uses "creator" to mean "a worker who does productive labor". So, "creativity" is not a boasting about high IQ, but about productive vs non-productive labor."

Thank you very much for this. I mentioned this point on the main site also:

Quote
Neo-Nazis, unlike authentic National Socialists, have no awareness of this distinction. Part of their ignorance is linguistic: they read Hitler’s positive statements on what has been disastrously translated into English language as “creativity”  with the presumed meaning of innovativeness, without realizing that the corresponding word in the original German language was “schaffenskraft” with the very different meaning of self-reliant productivity, which is what Hitler really means each time he makes use of the term.


This poster illustrates what Hitler was thinking of when he used the term "schaffendes".

As for our enemies, their obsession with innovation is leading them to embrace not just high IQ test scores, but also personality traits that they believe will increase innovativeness, and trying to come up with reproductive strategies to increase the occurrence of such traits:

https://vdare.com/articles/why-were-so-many-geniuses-born-prematurely

Quote
Then there is the genius personality. New ideas almost always offend, but geniuses don’t care about this because they tend to be high in autism traits. Scientific geniuses, at least, are obsessed with systematizing and are thus low in empathy, as these sit on the opposite ends of a spectrum: they are focused on the truth. Prematurity is a significant predictor of autism.

In many cases, as with Isaac Newton, geniuses are also high in psychopathic personality traits and thus simply don’t care if their ideas offend. Related to this, they have problems with impulse control and with following the rules. Not being rule-bound, they will “think outside the box” and thus dare to consider things that ordinary people would not. And preemies have elevated levels of psychopathic personality, due to abnormal brain development.
...
The group with the optimum low level of geniuses—too high and you have too many anti-social people—will triumph over other groups due to superior weapons or leaders that inspire greater ethnocentrism-inducing religiosity, where the group is certain that it is blessed by the gods. There would need to be a mechanism for this.

This mechanism has to be neurodiversity. And one means of achieving that mechanism, other than unlikely genetic combinations rendering the offspring very different from the parents, would be often older or stressed mothers who expose their fetuses to atypical doses of hormones and other chemical signallers. These may, among other things, better condition the fetus to survive a premature birth. And the fact of this birth, and the infant’s level of development at birth, would further interfere with the infant’s neural development. All of which could lead to the development genius characteristics.

This is why they must not be allowed to win.

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #50 on: February 14, 2022, 06:19:17 am »
That poster also reminds me of the National Socialist labor recruitment posters targeted at "Slavic" people.

Polish-language poster, c. 1940-1941:

Quote
Let's go to Germany for agricultural work! Report immediately to your mayor.


Russian-language poster:

Quote
I live with a German family and feel just fine. Come to Germany to help with household chores.


In other words, Hitler's views on the "Slavic people" were more favorable than even Marxists, since Friedrich Engels doubted they could be integrated into the nations of "revolutionary peoples", and would instead have to be completely exterminated:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11178/#msg11178
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11179/#msg11179


----

Wochenspruch der NSDAP was a propaganda poster/wall newspaper issued by the party from 1937-1944. The images below are particularly useful in demonstrating the importance of Socialism to National Socialists, since they're literally one-sentence propaganda posters printed for mass distribution. Long speeches and writings are one thing, but it is pretty difficult to argue National Socialists were anti-Socialist when their own, most basic, forms of propaganda called themselves Socialists.  ;D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wochenspruch_der_NSDAP


Note that the word Socialism is printed in a different color to emphasize it:

Quote
True socialism, however, is the doctrine of the strictest performance of duty.
   -Wochenspruch der NSDAP ("Weekly Quotation of the National Socialist Party"), June 8-14, 1941.


Quote
“There is no socialism that does not apply to one’s own people. -Adolf Hitler.”
   -Wochenspruch der NSDAP ("Weekly Quotation of the National Socialist Party"), August 27-September 2, 1939.

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #51 on: February 14, 2022, 06:35:49 am »
At this point, I have posted nearly all of the information that I've stumbled across during my preliminary search into the Socialist attitudes of National Socialists.

I say this is a preliminary search, because I have basically just dug a tiny bit deeper to double-check the quotations that can be found in various articles and forum posts scattered around the internet. Yes, the massive walls of quotes in this thread are just scratching the surface.

I think we have abundantly proven our point with the information contained here. As far as I am aware, this is the largest collection of quotes that has ever been compiled on the internet regarding the leftist Socialist attitudes of National Socialists.

----

To summarize the sources:

• Hitler's public speeches, writings, and interviews.

• Hitler's private conversations:
   ◦ sourced from rightist anti-Hitlerists (Hermann Rauschning (including where Hitler said he is literally going to be the "Executor of Marxism")).
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10718/#msg10718

   ◦ sourced from leftist anti-Hitlerists (Albert Krebs, Otto Strasser (including Hitler's debate with Strasser where he told him Strasserist Socialism wasn't authentically Socialist enough)).
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10620/#msg10620

   ◦ sourced from leftist Hitler loyalists (Otto Wagener, Alfred Rosenberg, and Albert Speer (if you count him as 'loyal'/leftist)).


• Official party propaganda, particularly that which was written/edited/approved by Joseph Goebbels. (Much of which was clearly written for leftist audiences).

• Private diary entries of Joseph Goebbels's personal opinions. (Where he literally said he is a Communist and other very leftist things).
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621

• Memoirs from Albert Speer, Alfred Rosenberg, Herman Goering, and Otto Strasser indicating how Hitler favored Goebbels heavily and was ideologically influenced by him.

• Information from Otto Strasser declaring Goebbels had initially supported Walter Stennes's leftist coup in the SA, and how Goebbels assured Ernst Roehm that Hitler would soon purge the rightist elements of the party (and how Strasser believed Hitler genuinely intended to do this, and how Strasser believed Goebbels was genuinely leftist rather than a rightist infiltrator).
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10915/#msg10915


• Basic biographical/historical information:
   ◦ from Wikipedia acknowledging that various other party figures were leftists/Socialists (or at least within "the left wing of the NSDAP"). Wikipedia isn't a perfect source on history, but it is generally good at presenting the "mainstream consensus narrative"--i.e. the historians being referenced on those pages were likely willing to admit the leftist tendencies of many members.

   ◦ from Hermann Rauschning and Otto Strasser revealing how the three major opposition factions in the party (Walter Stennes's SA faction, Ernst Roehm's SA faction, and the Strasserist faction) were all leftists!!! (And how Hitler had invited leftist Ernst Roehm to come back to Germany to lead the SA after the Stennes coup was put down!!! And how Hitler made constant concessions to the Strassers to keep them in the party!!!)


• Information about the social welfare policies of National Socialist Germany:
   ◦ sourced from documents used by Allied intelligence and were later used at the Nuremberg Trials.

   ◦ sourced from National Socialist propaganda (which was considered accurate enough to also be used by Allied intelligence and Nuremberg Trial prosecutors).

   ◦ sourced from an essay by Léon Degrelle written in the final years of his life, indicating the lasting importance of these policies in his mind.


• Quotes from non-National-Socialists acknowledging the leftist Socialist elements:
   -From leftists:
      ◦ Willy Brandt, a member of a Communist party and later the Chancellor of West Germany from 1969-1974.
      ◦ Bertrand Russell, who acknowledged in his "History of Western Philosophy" that Hitler and Mussolini fell within the branch of Romanticist leftism.
      ◦ Richard Crossman (British Labour Party politician who had visited Germany in the 1930s).
      ◦ Konrad Heiden (a Jewish journalist from the 1930s; I assume he was liberal/left-leaning).

   -From Western-Civilization-admiring rightists:
      ◦ F. A. Hayek, Frederick Augustus Voigt.
      ◦ 21st-century propaganda articles by rightists of various camps.


• Opinions from historians:
   ◦ George Watson's article "Hitler and the socialist dream", which has many quotes, which I have confirmed and posted separately from his article.
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11177/#msg11177

   ◦ Wolfgang Venohr, Hellmut Diwald, and Sebastian Haffner, who explicitly acknowledged Hitler's attitudes were "socialist or left". (And they also included the quote from Goebbels's newspaper where he says, "According to the idea of the NSDAP, we are the German left.")
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11181/#msg11181

   ◦ A. James Gregor (who wrote about Mussolini and Fascism's development from Socialism and Marxism).
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10717/#msg10717


• Parallelism with Marxists/Communists:
   ◦ Frederick Engels's declaration that during the next revolution/world war there needs to be "the disappearance from the face of the earth...of entire reactionary peoples." George Watson drew the obvious parallel between the revolutionary acts Engels advocated for and what Hitler did.
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11178/#msg11178
   https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11179/#msg11179

   ◦ I've said before that things like Stalin's policy of "Socialism in one country" is an indication that even Communism in the early USSR moved towards nationalist-socialism and away from orthodox Marxism (contrast it to the internationalism of the Trotskyist faction that Stalin purged).

----

To summarize what we have learned:

• Hitler and many of his key associates viewed themselves as genuine Socialists.

• Hitler made it clear both in public and private that he aimed to essentially "purify" and correct the errors that Marxists/Communists had made to Socialism, which prevented their Socialism from living up to its idealistic promises.

• Hitler and Goebbels made clear that the reason National Socialists were anti-Zionists is because Jews were the elite beneficiaries of capitalism and profiteers in an unjust system.

• Hitler, Goebbels, and Rosenberg declared National Socialists were motivated by concerns for "social justice".

• Hitler was thoroughly against post-Renaissance Western Civilization and wanted to replace it with a radically new Civilization. (I.e., unlike rightists, he did not admire it nor want to preserve it.)

• The National Socialist party had many leftist factions which constantly battled for control of the party--from its early days all the way to even after Hitler became Chancellor.

• We have multiple quotes from National Socialists and non-National-Socialists literally saying the NSDAP was a party of the "left".

• We have evidence from Hitler's rightist enemies (formerly) within the party, Hitler's leftist enemies (formerly) within the party, Hitler's leftist enemies who never joined the party, and Hitler's rightist enemies who never joined the party emphasizing the Socialism of his ideology. We also have evidence of leftist and rightist historians emphasizing the leftism and Socialism of his ideology.

• We have evidence that the National Socialist party and Communist party were competing for left-wing supporters--which was apparent even to non-National-Socialists in the 1930s like Konrad Heiden and F. A. Hayek.

• We have evidence used by Allied intelligence and Nuremberg Trial prosecutors outlining the social welfare policies of National Socialist Germany--showing that pre-NS welfare systems were expanded upon.

• We have evidence of Hitler declaring his intent to forge alliances with anti-Westerners of diverse ethnic backgrounds around the world. (And he would later put that into practice, although we didn't discuss the details in this thread).

• We have evidence that the (rightist, Western-Civilization-admiring) Neo-Nazi emphasis on words translated as "creativity" is a misunderstanding of "productive" vs "non-productive" labor--not IQ scores or 'genetic genius'.

• We have seen that the National Socialist war-time policy to (allegedly) result in "the disappearance from the face of the earth...of entire reactionary peoples" may in fact have been an idea Hitler got from Marxist theorist Frederick Engels. At the very least, the obvious parallelism between Marxist theory and National Socialist practice here indicates there was nothing remarkable about National Socialist war-time actions. The narrative that NS actions during the war were somehow a "uniquely" evil machination of their twisted minds is forever proven to be nonsense. (And, in any case, their polices were far less successful than the Western ethnic cleansing of both North and South America, but I digress.)

• Hitler, Otto Strasser, Mussolini, historian A. James Gregor, philosopher Bertrand Russell, and others agree with our 'big picture' argument that Marxist Socialism is merely one variety of Socialism among many.

----
----


I would have been skeptical about all these claims had I not read all these quotes myself. What else remains to be learned, buried under a lifetime of propaganda and lies?

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #52 on: February 14, 2022, 06:39:44 am »
What work remains to be done?


I think the information we have compiled here is sufficient to demonstrate that historic National Socialists viewed themselves as genuine Socialists.

Now, the task is to flesh out a classification of leftism to properly contextualize Marxist Socialism/Communism as merely one type of Socialism among many. Comparing the similarities and contrasting the key differences between 'orthodox Marxist' and Communist ideological positions vs National Socialist ideological positions will be a major task in this. I think it would be useful to consult the works of A. James Gregor for this, as this seems to have been the focus of his career (although he was mostly focused on Fascism and Marxism/Communism, and less so on National Socialism).

Additionally, we must trace the roots of Socialist ideology back further in time beyond Marxism and the so-called "Enlightenment", just as Hitler began to do by declaring his Socialism was inspired by Jesus. (And even the Marxist slogan, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," has been argued to be inspired from the New Testament.)

Lastly, we can outline ways to "purify" present-day leftist/Socialist ideologies which have thoroughly diverged from orthodox Marxism, in order to fully cut the string needlessly attaching them to Communism and Marxism attitudes (e.g. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, things like Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality).

Such discussions can probably be taken to a new thread, leaving this one for continued curation of historic information.

guest55

  • Guest
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #53 on: February 18, 2022, 10:36:54 pm »
Where did the new thread go, could have swore I saw one a day or two ago?

I know Chris Hedges has made quite a few lectures on the topic of different forms of socialism in the past, I'll have to try and dig them up. Perhaps there are facts and examples in those that we can use as a spring board into a wider discussion on the topic? I haven't been listening to a whole lot of leftist radio the last couple of years, so I may be a little out of touch on this subject.

KPFA and KPFK often host people who speak about other forms of leftism and socialism as well, here is one example I just found: Ecomodernism and Degrowth: https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-march-16-2021/
Just one example. Perhaps when I get some time I'll spend it scouring the net to see what I can find....

Also, should we not do a thorough breakdown of people like John Locke from our perspective as perhaps a start to what you described above?

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #54 on: March 01, 2022, 04:31:27 pm »
Quote
Where did the new thread go, could have swore I saw one a day or two ago?

For reference (so others can easily find them). I made a new thread for discussing leftist ideological differences here:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/leftist-ideological-camps-in-the-big-picture-socialism-marxism-true-leftism-etc/

There is also this thread which was split off, which seems more like off-topic discussion deriving from here:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/re-national-socialists-were-socialists/

christianbethel

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 430
  • Location: Miami, FL, USA
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #55 on: September 06, 2022, 12:28:59 pm »

Thoughts?
National Socialism ≠ Nazism

Aryan ≠ 'White'.

Race = Quality && Race ≠ Ethnicity.

History is written by the victors.

The truth fears no investigation.

(He) who controls the past controls the future; (he) who controls the present controls the past.

UNITY THROUGH NOBILITY.

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #56 on: March 19, 2023, 08:48:59 pm »
Previously, we saw how Goebbels wrote in his diary that he was a communist:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621

And how Otto Strasser was part of a leftist/communist militia during the 1918-1919 revolution.


What about Hitler? It seems that his very first political involvement was on the side of the socialists in Bavaria during the 1918-1919 revolution--including the final stage during the most thoroughly communist part. While he likely never admitted he was part of the revolution, the evidence is pretty convincing.

This would explain why he was so close to Goebbels and spent so much effort trying to keep Strasser in the party.


The German Revolution of 1918–1919 was kicked off by mutinying soldiers, and Hitler's unit in Bavaria was one of the units which supported the revolution in Bavaria.

Quote
The People's State of Bavaria (German: Volksstaat Bayern)[nb 1] was a short-lived socialist state in Bavaria from 1918 to 1919. The People's State of Bavaria was established on 8 November 1918 during the German Revolution, as an attempt at a socialist state to replace the Kingdom of Bavaria. The state was led by Kurt Eisner until his assassination in February 1919, and co-existed with the rival Bavarian Soviet Republic from 6 April 1919, with its government under Johannes Hoffmann exiled in Bamberg. The People's State of Bavaria was dissolved upon the establishment of the Free State of Bavaria on 14 August 1919.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_State_of_Bavaria

In the final phase, it descended into anarchy and Bolshevism. However, even in this stage, Hitler lent his services to the revolutionary republic!
Quote
Though he advocated a socialist republic, Eisner distanced himself from the Russian Bolsheviks, declaring that his government would protect property rights.
[...]
On Saturday 12 April 1919, only six days into Toller's regime, the Communist Party seized power, led by three Russian Bolsheviks, with Eugen Leviné as head of state and Max Levien as the chairman of the Bavarian KPD.
[...]
Having received the blessings of Lenin – who at the annual May Day celebration in Red Square said: "The liberated working class is celebrating its anniversary not only in Soviet Russia but in ... Soviet Bavaria"[17][19][13] – Leviné began to enact more hardline communist reforms, which included forming a "Red Army" from factory workers, seizing cash, food supplies, and privately owned guns, expropriating luxurious apartments and giving them to the homeless and placing factories under the ownership and control of their workers. One of Munich's main churches was taken over and made into a revolutionary temple dedicated to the "Goddess of Reason." Bavaria was to be in the vanguard of the Bolshevization of Europe, with all workers to receive military training.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Soviet_Republic

Recall that during this time period, anti-Hitler Jewish journalist Konrad Heiden wrote that Hitler considered the mainstream Majority Socialist faction of the Social Democratic Party to be "too rightist" for his taste:
Quote
Hitler had spent the winter months of 1918-19 with a reserve battalion of his regiment at Traunstein, in Upper Bavaria. At the time when the Soviet Republic was set up, he was again serving with his regiment in Munich. People who knew him at this time have stated that he professed himself a Majority Socialist, and that he even declared his intention of joining that Party. If this is true, then it was certainly as a matter of tactics and not of principle. The Majority Socialist Party was at that time regarded by many as a Party of the Right because it had lost its pre-War programme and not yet found a new one.
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London: Methuen and Co. Page 8.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17342/page/7/mode/2up

The respected mainstream historian Ian Kershaw wrote that during the German Revolution of 1918-1919 Hitler was chosen as a representative in the communist Munich Soviet Republic—even after the Soviet Republic called new elections to ensure soldiers' representatives reflected the will of the soldiers and were loyal to the new leadership of the Soviet Republic. Now we know why Heiden could say that the SPD was too rightist for Hitler at the time! Going further, Kershaw outlines that many trusted NSDAP members had aided the communists during the uprising.

Quote
On 21 November 1918, two days after leaving the hospital in Pasewalk, Hitler was back in Munich. ... He came back to a Munich he scarcely recognized. The barracks to which he returned were run by soldiers' councils. The revolutionary Bavarian government, in the shape of a provisional National Council, was in the hands of the Social Democrats and the more radical Independent Social Democrats. ...
[...]
One of the most remarkable aspects of the biographical parts of Mein Kampf is how quickly Hitler passed over his own experience of the traumatic revolutionary period in Bavaria. After all, he witnessed for the most part at close quarters the turmoil which so deeply scarred his psyche. He was based in Munich, at the epicentre of events, for the whole period that saw the descent into political chaos following the assassination of Eisner and culminated in the violent end of the 'council's republic'. Yet the entire treatment of the months between the November revolution and the suppression of the Räterreplik covers a mere page of his otherwise expansive book. Finding the soldiers' councils in charge of his regiment so repelled him, he wrote, that he decided to leave again as soon as possible. ... returning to Munich in March 1919. During the Räterpublik—the 'passing rule of Jews' as he dubbed it—Hitler claimed he pondered what could be done, but repeatedly realized that, since he was 'nameless', he 'did not possess the least basis for any useful action'. ...
[...]
The gulf between the momentous nature of the events taking place before his eyes and this brief and laconic account came not unnaturally to fuel speculation that Hitler was trying to obfuscate his own actions and conceal a role which might prove embarrassing to the later nationalist hero. It does seem likely that this was indeed his aim, and to a considerable extent he succeeded in it. What Hitler did, how he reacted to the drama unfolding around him in Munich in the first half of 1919, remains for the most part a dark spot in his personal history. Even so, the evidence, patchy in the extreme though it is, reveals one or two surprises.

The German Revolution ... was a messy, largely spontaneous and uncoordinated affair. ...
[...]
The revolution in Bavaria had preceded that in the Reich itself. ...
[...]
When, with a cry of 'off to the barracks', workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors attending a huge peace demonstration on Munich's Theresienwiese on 7 November 1918, addressed by Eisner, had headed for the city's main garrison area, they had met with no resistance from the troops.[8] [...] Without support from the army, the monarchy was finished. The ailing King Ludwig III and his family fled that night. Hitler, over two decades later, was to remark that at least he had to thank the Social Democrats for ridding him of 'these courtly intersts'.[10]
[...]
The assassination of Eisner...on 21 February 1919...provided then the signal for a deterioration into chaos and near anarchy.[12]

With 'Red Guards' trampling the corridors and rooms of the Wittelsbach Palace...a meeting...dominated by members of the USPD and anarchists, proclaimed a 'Councils Republic' in Bavaria. Majority Socialists and Communists—the latter dubbing it a 'Pseudo-Councils Republic' (Scheinräterpublik)—refused to participate.[14] An attempt to unseat it by using troops loyal to the elected government...failed on 13 April. But the initial failure of the counter-revolution simply strengthened the resolve of the revolutionary hot-heads and ushered in the last phase of the Bavarian revolution: the full Communist takeover in the second, or 'real' Räterpublik—an attempt to introduce a Soviet-style system in Bavaria. 'Today, Bavaria has finally erected a dictatorship of the proletariat', ran the proclamation of the new Executive Council under the direction of the Communist Eugen Leviné, a veteran of the 1905 Russian revolution.[15] It lasted little more than a fortnight. But it ended in violence, bloodshed, and deep recrimination, imposing a baleful legacy on the political climate of Bavaria.
[...]
... propaganda througout the Reich as well as in Bavaria itself, was that of alien—Bolshevik and Jewish—forces taking over the state, threatening institutions, tradition, order, and property...
[...]
For Hitler himself, the significance of the period of revolution and Räterpublik in Munich can hardly be overrated. It has been said that Hitler did not decided to become a politician; rather, through the revolution and the rule of the Councils, politics came to him, into the barracks.[22] It is time to explore the truth of that assertion.
[...]
Both, according to Schmidt, were repelled by the changed conditions in the Munich barracks, now in the hands of the Soldiers' Councils...[24] If that was indeed the reason for volunteering, Hitler and Schmidt could have found no improvement on reaching Traunstein. The camp...was also run by the Soldiers' Councils which Hitler allegedly so detested. ...Probably in late January, as Schmidt hinted, Hitler returned to Munich.[26]
[...]
As we have noted, Hitler spoke of his involvement in the investigatory commission following the suppression of the Räterpublik as his first political activity. Evidence recently come to light of Hitler's actions during the revolutionary era does not accord with this assertion. It also helps to suggest why Hitler was so reticent about his behaviour during the months that the 'November criminals', as he later repeatedly called them, ruled Munich.

A routine order of the demobilization battalion on 3 April 1919 referred to Hitler by name as the representative (Vertrauensmann) of his company. The strong likelihood is, in fact, that he had held this position since 15 February. The duties of the representatives (Vertrauensleute) included cooperation with the propaganda department of the socialist government in order to convey 'educational' material to the troops.[33] Hitler’s first political duties took place, therefore, in the service of the revolutionary regime run by the SPD and USPD. It is little wonder that he later wished to say little of his actions at this time.

In fact, he would have had to explain away the even more embarrassing fact of his continued involvement at the very height of Munich's 'red dictatorship'. On 14 April, the day after the Communist Räterepublik had been proclaimed, the Munich Soldiers' Councils approved fresh elections of all barrack representatives to ensure that the Munich garrison stood loyally behind the new regime. In the elections the following day Hitler was chosen as Deputy Battalion Representative.[34] Not only, then, did Hitler do nothing to assist in the crushing of Munich's 'Red Republic'; he was an elected representative of his battalion during the whole period of its existence.

How to interpret this evidence is, nevertheless, not altogether clear. Since the Munich garrison had firmly backed the revolution since November, and again in April supported the radical move to the Räterepublik, the obvious implication must be that Hitler, in order to have been elected as a soldiers' representative, voiced in these months the views of the socialist governments he later denounced with every fibre of his body as 'criminal'. At the very least it would appear that he could not have put forward strongly opposed views. Already in the 1920s, and continuing into the 1930s, there were rumours, never fully countered, that Hitler had initially sympathized with the Majority SPD following the revolution. Since the rumours tended to come from left-wing journalists, seeking to discredit Hitler, they were presumably not taken too seriously. But comments, for example, in the socialist Münchener Post in March 1923 that Hitler had assisted in the indoctrination of troops in favour of the democratic-republican state match the evidence, which we have noted, that he served, probably from February 1919 onwards, in such a capacity as Vertrauensmann of his company.[35] Similar rumours circulated in the socialist press in the early 1930s.[36] Ernst Toller reported that a fellow-prisoner also interned for involvement in the Räterepublik had met Hitler in a Munich barracks during the first months after the revolution, and that the latter had then been calling himself a Social Democrat.[37] Konrad Heiden remarked that, during the time of the Councils Republic, Hitler had, in heated discussions among his comrades, voiced support for the Social Democratic government against that of the Communists. There were even reported rumours – though without any supportive evidence – that Hitler had spoken of joining the SPD.[38] In a pointed remark when defending Esser in 1921 against attacks from within the party, Hitler commented: 'Everyone was at one time a Social Democrat.'[39]

In itself, Hitler’s possible support for the Majority Social Democrats in the revolutionary upheaval is less unlikely than it might at first sight appear. The political situation was extremely confused and uncertain. A number of strange bedfellows, including several who later came to belong to Hitler’s entourage, initially found themselves on the Left during the revolution. Sepp Dietrich, later a general in the Waffen-SS and head of Hitler's SS-Leibstandarte, was elected chairman of a Soldiers' Council in November 1918. Hitler’s long-time chauffeur Julius Schreck had served in the 'Red Army' at the end of April 1919.[40] Hermann Esser, one of Hitler’s earliest supporters, who became the first propaganda chief of the NSDAP, had been for a while a journalist on a Social Democratic newspaper.[41] Gottfried Feder, whose views on 'interest slavery' so gripped Hitler’s imagination in summer 1919, had sent a statement of his position to the socialist government headed by Kurt Eisner the previous November.[42] And Balthasar Brandmayer, one of Hitler's closest wartime comrades and a later fervent supporter, recounted how he at first welcomed the end of the monarchies, the establishment of a republic, and the onset of a new era. His subsequent disillusionment was all the greater. 'Unfortunately,' he added, 'we only changed the marionettes,' while the people continued to slave and starve. 'We hadn't bled for a councils government (Räteregierung)'; 'the thanks of the Fatherland were missing,' he concluded bitterly.[43] Similar sentiments, in which, as was the case with Brandmayer, aggressive nationalism and antisemitism intermingled with a form of radicalism born of a sense of social grievance that was rapidly switched from the old monarchical regime to the new republic itself, were widespread following the war. Ideological muddle-headedness, political confusion and opportunism combined frequently to produce fickle and shifting allegiances.
[...]
... In Pasewalk, he did not denounce to his superiors (as patriotic duty would have demanded) the sailors who arrived in the hospital preaching sedition and revolution.[46] On leaving the hospital, he avoided committing himself politically, and made no attempt to join any of the numerous Freikorps units which sprang up to engaged in the continued fighting on the eastern borders of the Reich and the suppression of left-wing radicalism within Germany, not least in Munich itself. After his return to Munich from Taunstein in February 1919, he most likely took part, since his regiment had issued orders to participate, in a demonstration march of about 10,000 left-wing workers and soldiers in Munich. Probably in April 1919, with Munich ruled by the Communist Councils, he wore, along with almost all the soldiers of the Munich garrison, the revolutionary red armband.[47] That Hitler stood back and took no part whatsoever in the 'liberation' of Munich from the Räterpunlik is said to have brought him later scornful reproaches from Ernst Röhm (who was to head the Nazi stormtroopers), Ritter von Epp (after 1933 Reich Governor in Bavaria), and even Rudolf Heß (who would serve as Hitler's private secretary and subsequently become Deputy Leader of the Party).[48]

Only after the German military put down the revolution did Hitler find himself fully engaged in anti-Bolshevik activities:
Quote
With the Bavarian government 'exiled'...Munich...was throughout the spring and summer a city effectively under military rule.[57] ... The 'education' of the troops in a 'correct' anti-Bolshevik, nationalist fashion was rapidily regarded as a priority, and 'speaker courses' were devised in order to train 'suitable personalities from the troops' who would remain for some considerable time in the army and function as propaganda agents (Propagandaleute) with qualities of persuation capable of negating subversive ideas.[58] The organization of a series of 'anti-Bolshevik courses', beginning in early June, was placed in the hands of Captain Karl Mayr, who, a short while earlier, on 30 May, had taken over the command of the Information Department.[59]
[...]
Within days he [Hitler] had been assigned to the first anti-Bolshevik 'instruction courses' to take place in Munich University between 5 and 12 June 1919. ... Among the speakers...Gottfried Feder...made a deep impression on Hitler, and eventually led to Feder's role as the economics 'guru' of the early Nazi Party.
[...]
The task of the squad was to inculcate nationalist and anti-Bolshevik sentiments in the troops, described as 'infected' by Bolshevism and Spartacism.[66]
Ian Kershaw. (1999). Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 109-123.
https://archive.org/details/hitlerhubris00kers

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #57 on: March 19, 2023, 08:50:42 pm »
In Mein Kampf, Hitler says his first political interest was the socialism of the SPD, but he became "Jew aware" and turned on the party while in Vienna before WWI.

This does not line up with the evidence, and it seems likely Hitler was trying to rewrite his past.

Given the facts, it seems more likely Hitler was one of the many soldiers who were swept up in politics for the first time during the 1918-1919 revolution. Jews were in leadership positions in all stages of the revolution in Bavaria, so Hitler couldn't have been ignorant of this fact. Yet he served (multiple times) as a representative anyway.

Hitler's description in Mein Kampf about becoming aware of all the Jews in the SPD and existing socialist parties, the existence of a "ruthless struggle" between ideologies, learning about the importance of speaking, and studying Marxist ideology in detail lines up very well with his time in the military (both as a participant in the revolution and subsequent assignment to anti-bolshevik activities) in 1919, rather than his time in Vienna.

Quote
Accordingly I had no feeling of antipathy towards the actual policy of the Social Democrats. That its avowed purpose was to raise the level of the working classes—which in my ignorance I then foolishly believed—was a further reason why I should speak in favour of Social Democracy rather than against it.
[...]
And so at the age of seventeen the word 'Marxism' was very little known to me, while I looked on 'Social Democracy' and 'Socialism' as synonymous expressions. It was only as the result of a sudden blow from the rough hand of Fate that my eyes were opened to the nature of this unparalleled system for duping the public.

If Social Democracy should be opposed by a more truthful teaching, then, even though the struggle be of the bitterest kind, this truthful teaching will finally prevail, provided it be enforced with equal ruthlessness.
[...]
I am thankful now for the ordeal which I had to go through at that time; for it was the means of bringing me to think kindly again of my own people, inasmuch as the experience enabled me to distinguish between the false leaders and the victims who have been led astray.

We must took upon the latter simply as victims.
Adolf Hitler. (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translated by James Murphy (1939). London: Hurst and Blackett Ltd. Page 44-50.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n45/mode/2up


Now re-read the section about Hitler's actions during the Räterepublik and compare it. Incredible.

Even more incredible is how all of this evidence of Hitler and other future National Socialists starting their political careers as communists has been compiled by a mainstream historian, yet people still have the nerve to declare National Socialism as the world's most rightist ideology!

antihellenistic

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 587
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #58 on: March 19, 2023, 11:19:28 pm »
True Left's Statement that Hitler write Mein Kampf only for gain winning on democratic elections, not for ideological purpose are confirmed

Quote
“But if what you say is true, you should not have written Mein Kampf beforehand,” I objected.

“Quite right. And I frequently regret that I did. But at the time, when I was in Landsberg after November 9, 1923, I thought everything was over. I was in captivity, I was deprived of my freedom, the party was expropriated, dissolved—everything seemed at an end, even worse than Germany after the Great War. I wrote Mein Kampf as a kind of report to the German Volk, chiefly in memory of the martyrs of November 9. I wrote it out of the narrowness of my cell.

“When I was released, I had Mein Kampf printed. Perhaps, I hoped, it would serve to rally my old friends. And that really happened! That is how it came about.

“But gradually, I saw that many things were, after all, different from the way I had seen them through prison bars and from the way I had figured them out. And soon I set out to draft changes, improvements. But they only turned out to be changes for the worse. I thought about withdrawing the book. But it was too late. It made its way through Germany, it was even spread abroad, and what was right and positive about it did not miss its mark. So I kept hands off. I made no more changes. The book even gave me the financial basis for reconstructing the party. If I were to write it today, a lot would be different. But today, I would not write it at all

Wagener - Hitler Memoirs of a Confidant page 273

So, learn about National Socialism ideology cannot only from reading Mein Kampf, or even we must abandon it

90sRetroFan

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11039
  • WESTERN CIVILIZATION MUST DIE!
    • View Profile
Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #59 on: March 22, 2023, 06:31:20 pm »
Our enemy Culture Critic accurately recognizes that democracy is pro-Western:

https://twitter.com/Culture_Crit/status/1638637841537462272

Quote
Reminder that nobody ever voted for this.


but better still, this led to the following conversation in the replies where our enemies agree that National Socialism is indeed anti-Western:

Quote
that building in Manchester looks like one of the buildings the Nazis (whose architecture SUCKED) built in Germany.

Quote
The German ministry of finance, built in that era, looks brutalist.


Quote
Nazi is brutalism. They're virtually the same thing - walls of the State's jails.


Quote
Birmingham had a bit of help from the Germans.

Quote
The Luftwaffe was involved in blitzkrieg. Dive bombing campaigns by Stukas we're a large part of it. In addition there was a bombing campaign of England called the Blitz in 1940 and 1941

Quote
Blame the blitz

I am happy to reach academic agreement with our enemies. Now would be a good time for me to repost my post from the old forum where I was making the same point (long before our enemies did).

OLD CONTENT

By the way, one of the best ways to demonstrate that the Third Reich is not part of Western civilization, but instead an attempt to overthrow it, is to look at its architecture, which deliberately eschews complexity and outright celebrates austerity (notice in particular the frequent use of square columns, and also flat roofs):































For contrast, Western architecture in Germany/Austria a.k.a. more of the same extremely ugly Homo Hubris self-titillation found throughout Western civilization:



















END OF OLD CONTENT

See also:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/jews-have-nothing-in-common-with-us!/msg11512/?topicseen#msg11512

Quote
Hitler having zero qualms about destroying Western architecture:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw

Quote
    German forces dedicated an unprecedented effort to razing the city, destroying 80–90% of Warsaw's buildings, including the vast majority of museums, art galleries, theaters, churches, parks, and historical buildings such as castles and palaces. They deliberately demolished, burned, or stole an immense part of Warsaw's cultural heritage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Castle,_Warsaw#During_World_War_II

Quote
    On 4 October 1939 in Berlin, Adolf Hitler issued the order to blow up the Royal Castle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Palace

Quote
    the Saxon Palace was blown up by the Germans as part of their planned destruction of Warsaw.[2][3]

etc. etc. (Hail Hitler!)

One more excerpt from the enemy conversation:

Quote



Why do you think Hitler despised France?
« Last Edit: March 22, 2023, 07:34:03 pm by 90sRetroFan »