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.
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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).
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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.
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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?