Author Topic: National Socialists were socialists  (Read 4179 times)

guest5

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National Socialists were socialists
« on: March 06, 2021, 02:26:54 pm »
Calling National Socialism "reactionary" is Marxist terminology.

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National Socialism in fact constituted a unique and radical kind of modern revolutionism. — Stanley G. Payne in A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. pg. 204
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We are the full counterpart of the French Revolution — Adolf Hitler
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We are not a charitable institution but a Party of revolutionary socialists. — Joseph Goebbels


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The new claimants: A youth creating for itself a new state. A new species of man.... — Konrad Heiden

Adolf Hitler used the term revolutionary at the Beer Hall Putsch.
Adolf Hitler wanted to call his party The Social Revolutionary Party.

National Socialists used to sing out against "reaction" in NSDAP songs....

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90sRetroFan

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The Christian Identity movement emerged in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s as an offshoot of British Israelism.[1][6] The idea that "lower races" are mentioned in the Bible (in contrast to Aryans) was posited in the 1905 book Theozoology; or The Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, a volkisch writer seen by many historians as a major influence on Nazism.[citation needed] Adolf Hitler, however, did not subscribe to the belief that the Israelites of the Bible were Aryans; in a speech he gave in Munich in 1920 titled "Why We Are Anti-Semites", he referred to and disparaged Abraham as racially Jewish.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity

Zea_mays

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National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2022, 10:45:18 pm »
One of the major tasks of the True Left is demonstrating that National Socialism (specifically, historic Hitlerism) genuinely was leftist and Socialist.

I think to convincingly accomplish this once and for all, we must first concisely provide a proper relation between Socialism and Marxism/Communism.

Marxist-sympathetic political ideologists portray Marxism/Communism as the pinnacle of leftism. It is the furthest possible ideology to the left, and all left-wing ideologies ultimately have their views on societal matters tinted through a Marxist lens, to some degree. (Except, perhaps certain types of liberalism which trace their ideology back purely to pre-Marxist Enlightenment ideas, or the rare form of anarchism which completely rejects "anarcho-communist" principles.)

In the colloquial understanding, "Socialism" is merely a watered down form of Communism.


The True Left must reframe the relationship to accurately contextualize Marxist Socialism as merely one type of Socialism among many(?) possibilities.

In other words, instead of Marxism being the umbrella term under which varieties of Socialism fall, Socialism is the umbrella term under which many different types of leftism fall. As categories falling under this umbrella of Socialism, we would have Marxist Socialism aka Communism (or "International Socialism" as Hitler seems to have called it in some early speeches) and National Socialism.

There may be other possibilities. For example, scholar of Fascism A. James Gregor seems to have considered (authentic) Fascism to be a form of Socialism (or at least derived from it). Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is on track to become another--if it manages to fully rid itself of Communist ideas. There are other forms of Socialism which are minor or were historic dead ends, but I think it would be too much of a tangent to get into them here.

----

Now that we have provided this logical framework, let's look at how historic National Socialists viewed their own ideology.

I stumbled across a collection of many of Hitler's speeches, and in some of his earliest speeches, he references the "social idea" of the state using its power to look after the welfare of all sectors of society as more-or-less the inspiration for his view on Socialism. The "social idea" is, of course, the abstract idea from which all, more-detailed, ideological interpretations of Socialism derive.

Communists categorically reject that National Socialism is Socialist, because it doesn't live up to the Communist-created definition of Socialism. This is circular reasoning. The Communist definition is merely one specific interpretation of the social idea.

----

Before I quote large sections from the speeches I would like to start by outlining two things.


* First, Hitler viewed National Socialism as a direct competitor to Marxism/Communism over who really fulfilled the "social idea" of Socialism. More strongly, Hitler denied Marxism/Communism could even be called Socialism at all (but I think that is an untenable position for us to try to defend today). It would make no sense for Hitler to view National Socialism to be in competition for heart of Socialism if National Socialism was far-right.

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This edited interview of Adolf Hitler by George Sylvester Viereck took place in 1923. It was republished in Liberty magazine in July 1932
[...]
"Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"

"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.

"Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.

"We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatinterviews1


* Second, Hitler considered National Socialism to be a radically anti-traditionalist ideology which would topple the current social order of Western Civilization and replace it with a new one. This would make no sense if National Socialism was a right-wing traditionalist ideology which wished to preserve Western Civilization. Consider also how Communists wanted to topple the current social order and replace it with a new one (although their "progression" would not be a fundamental threat to Western Civilization, despite their claims).

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[From a private conversation with Hermann Rauschning, 1934.]

All of us are suffering from the ailment of mixed, corrupted blood. How can we purify ourselves and make atonement? ...”
[...]
“...Only a new nobility can introduce the new civilisation for us. ...we learn from it that selection and renewal are possible only amid the continuous tension of a lasting struggle. A world-wide process of segregation is going on before our eyes. Those who see in struggle the meaning of life, gradually mount the steps of a new nobility. Those who are in search of peace and order through dependence, sink, whatever their origin, to the inert masses. The masses, however, are doomed to decay and self-destruction. In our world-revolutionary turning-point the masses are the sum total of the sinking civilisation and of its dying representatives. We must allow them to die with their kings, like Amfortas.”

“In a natural order,” he continued, “the classes are peoples superimposed on one another in strata, instead of living as neighbours. To this order we shall return as soon as the sequelae of Liberalism have been removed. The Middle Ages were not yet ended when the liberal dissolution began of the firm bonds which alone guaranteed the rule of a nobility of pure blood — until finally in our glorious day we find all values subverted — the meaner components of the European nations on top, and the valuable ones dependent on them.

“But this,” I interposed, “means the setting up of a new feudal order.”

“No, no!” said Hitler, and he told me to disregard all these ridiculous comparisons. “Don’t let us waste time on these naive criteria. Such conceptions of an age of which not a vestige is left have no bearing on what we are called to create. Imagination is needed in order to divine the vast scale of the coming order. But,” he continued, “when a situation is created that favours noble blood, the man of the great race always comes to the top, as, for instance, our own movement shows. The creation and maintenance of this situation is the great preparatory political action of the Leader-legislator.”

“Once,” I mentioned, “ I heard you say, I think, that the days of conventional nationalism are over. Did I rightly understand you?”

“The conception of the nation has become meaningless. The conditions of the time compelled me to begin on the basis of that conception. But I realised from the first that it could only have transient validity. The ‘nation’ is a political expedient of democracy and Liberalism. We have to get rid of this false conception and set in its place the conception of race, which has not yet been politically used, up. The new order cannot be conceived in terms of the, national boundaries of the peoples with an historic past, but in terms of race that transcend those boundaries. All the adjustments and corrections of frontiers, and of regions of colonisation, are a ploughing of the sands.”

I tried to object that there were very great difficulties in the way of this for Germany, but Hitler cut me short with a wave of his hand.

I know perfectly well,” he said, “just as well as all these tremendously clever intellectuals, that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as race. But you, as a farmer and cattle-breeder, cannot get your breeding successfully achieved without the conception of race. And I as a politician need a conception which enables the order which has hitherto existed on historic bases to be abolished and an entirely new and anti-historic order enforced and given an intellectual basis. Understand what I mean,” he said, breaking off. “I have to liberate the world from dependence on its historic past. Nations are the outward and visible forms of our history. So I have to fuse these nations into a higher order if I want to get rid of the chaos of an historic past that has become an absurdity. And for this purpose the conception of race serves me well. It disposes of the old order and makes possible new associations. France carried her great Revolution beyond her borders with the conception of the nation. With the conception of race, National Socialism will carry its revolution abroad and recast the world.”

Hitler concluded, with growing fervour:

Just as the conception of the nation was a revolutionary change from the purely dynastic feudal states, and just as it introduced a biological conception, that of the people, so our own revolution is a further step, or, rather, the final step, in the rejection of the historic order and the recognition of purely biological values. And I shall bring into operation throughout all Europe and the whole world this process of selection which we have carried out through National Socialism in Germany. The process of dissolution and reordering will run its course in every nation, no matter how old and firmly knit its social system may be.
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 227-230.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n229/mode/2up

[Although Rauschning was a rightist who became anti-NS, his description of Hitler's attitudes here are consistent with Hitler's own speeches, which are quoted further down, and therefore this quote seems credible.]


In contrast to Communists, who thought the culturally-relative idea of "class" and economic conditions were the factor behind social changes and historical trends, Hitler understood that INNATE BIOLOGICAL QUALITIES (i.e. "race") was the real factor behind social change. Instead of world-wide class struggle causing a social revolution, only the anti-historic use of "race" as a construct to unite people across "class" and nationality had any hope of actually achieving a new civilization.

To give a really crude analogy, you can almost imagine Hitler as a car mechanic swapping out an engine labelled as "class" with an engine labelled as "race" to convert Marxist Socialism to National Socialism. The other parts of the car would be the core shell of Socialism that is shared in common with both ideologies.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2022, 10:57:54 pm »
For the speeches, here is the book I am taking the quotes from. It does not seem to specify the translator, and it does not include all of Hitler's speeches (although it is probably most of them). I am posting very large excerpts from the speeches, because I think it is useful for discussion and understanding to see the context.
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitlerCollectionOfSpeeches19221945/mode/2up


To give a broad summary, in the earliest dated speeches included in the book, Hitler basically says his goal is to provide an ideology which combines statism (represented by the ideal found in Nationalism) and Socialism's ideal of selflessly serving the welfare of society as a whole. This is consistent in later speeches during the war as well. Instead of dividing and pitting the "blue collar workers" and "white collar workers" against each other, as Communists wanted to, Hitler wanted to unite all laborers, transcend the existing False Left-Right political false dichotomy, and instead base the struggle on innate biological qualities to actually achieve a radically new society. Instead of the disorganized "international" and theoretically democratic struggle of Communism, Hitler embraced the unifying power of the nation and the centralized power of the state to achieve Socialism (which even Stalin was forced to do with his absolute rule and "Socialism in one country" policy contradicting the Communist world revolution idea.)

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2022, 11:02:53 pm »
Speech in Munich. April 12, 1922.

Summary and commentary:
Hitler criticizes both the left and the right. Hitler's new ideology is explicitly Socialist, but Communists have misappropriated what people think Socialism means. False Left parties do not sufficiently grasp the condition of the workers, the forces of capitalism, the biggest beneficiaries of capitalism (i.e. Jews) and the fact that they remain the elite beneficiaries under Soviet Communism just as well as 'bourgeois' capitalism. This Communist "proletariatism" misappropriation of Socialism results in physical workers and intellectual workers fighting against each other, leading to disintegration of the nation and the impossibility of truly overthrowing capitalist exploitation. Left-wing parties are not radical and have been led astray, and double-down on their ideological mistakes and increasingly turn to bolshevism (while thinking it makes them radical), rendering them useless.

("And thus the Left is forced more and more to turn to Bolshevism. In Bolshevism they see today the sole, the last possibility of preserving the present state of affairs. They realize quite accurately that the people is beaten so long as Brain and Hand can be kept apart. For alone neither Brain nor Hand can really oppose them. So long therefore as the Socialist idea is coined only by men who see in it a means for disintegrating a nation, so long can they rest in peace. But it will be a sorry day for them when this Socialist idea is grasped by a Movement which unites it with the highest Nationalist pride, with Nationalist defiance, and thus places the Nation's Brain, its intellectual workers, on this ground.")
   
Right-wing parties are energetic, but are too traditionalist-minded and unable to grasp the radical restructuring of society that the 'Social idea' (i.e. Socialism) truly represents. They are concerned about keeping their status as 'bourgeois' (and therefore dislike Communism and their mistaken idea of Socialism), but don't realize the status quo capitalist order will ultimately enslave them and ruin society just the same as Communism. Rightists do not understand the true danger Jewish elites represent in both Communism and the new democratic/capitalist order. Although, overall, Hitler's position in this speech makes it clear he is neither part of the mainstream left nor mainstream right, he seems to be addressing a right-leaning audience. However, from a strategic point of view, he seems to primarily be harnessing the right for its energy ("We recognized that freedom can eternally be only a consequence of power and that the source of power is the will. Consequently the will to power must be strengthened in a people with passionate ardor. ... POWER IN THE LAST RESORT IS POSSIBLE ONLY WHERE THERE IS STRENGTH, and that strength lies not in the dead weight of numbers but solely in energy. Even the smallest minority can achieve a mighty result if it is inspired by the most fiery, the most passionate will to act. World history has always been made by minorities.") Overall, it seems like he would rather immediately harness the right's energy and direct it against both Communism and democracy, rather than fight the attritious battle of beating Communism from within the left and _then_ fighting democracy with what forces remain. Whereas the left has already been led astray by Jews (through Communism), the right has not yet completely embraced democracy and the new system of capitalism (also controlled by Jews).

(Although I will note that in the April 24, 1923, speech in Munich, Hitler says the rightist parties have lost their energy and the left-wing parties are "slightly" more energetic. So we should be careful with generalizing the commentary in the prior paragraph.)

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And if we ask who was responsible for our misfortune, then we must inquire who profited by our collapse. And the answer to that question is that 'Banks and Stock Exchanges are more flourishing than ever before.' We were told that capitalism would be destroyed, and when we ventured to remind one or other of these famous statesmen and said 'Don't forget that Jews too have capital,' then the answer was: 'What are you worrying about? Capitalism as a whole will now be destroyed, the whole people will now be free. We are not fighting Jewish or Christian capitalism, we are fighting very capitalism: we are making the people completely free.'

'Christian capitalism' is already as good as destroyed, the international Jewish Stock Exchange capital gains in proportion as the other loses ground. It is only the international Stock Exchange and loan-capital, the so-called 'supra-state capital,' which has profited from the collapse of our economic life, the capital which receives its character from the single supra-state nation which is itself national to the core, which fancies itself to be above all other nations, which places itself above other nations and which already rules over them.

The international Stock Exchange capital would be unthinkable, it would never have come, without its founders the supra-national, because intensely national, Jews....
[...]
These are not, you may be sure, our working classes: neither those working with the mind, nor with the body. ... No, assuredly the Jew has suffered no privations!
[...]
While now in Soviet Russia the millions are ruined and are dying, Chicherin - and with him a staff of over 200 Soviet Jews - travels by express train through Europe, visits the cabarets, watches naked dancers perform for his pleasure, lives in the finest hotels, and does himself better than the millions whom once you thought you must fight as 'bourgeois.' The 400 Soviet Commissars of Jewish nationality - they do not suffer; the thousands upon thousands of sub-Commissars -they do not suffer. No! all the treasures which the 'proletarian' in his madness took from the 'bourgeoisie' in order to fight so-called capitalism - they have all gone into their hands. Once the worker appropriated the purse of the landed proprietor who gave him work, he took the rings, the diamonds and rejoiced that he had now got the treasures which before only the 'bourgeoisie' possessed. But in his hands they are dead things - they are veritable death-gold. They are no profit to him. He is banished into his wilderness and one cannot feed oneself on diamonds. For a morsel of bread he gives millions in objects of value. But the bread is in the hands of the State Central Organization and this is in the hands of the Jews: so everything, everything that the common man thought that he was winning for himself, flows back again to his seducers.

But amongst the masses there begins to flow a new stream - a stream of opposition. It is the recognition of the facts which is already in pursuit of this system, it already is hunting the system down; it will one day scourge the masses into action and carry the masses along with it. And these leaders, they see that behind them the anti-Semitic wave grows and grows; and when the masses once recognize the facts, that is the end of these leaders.

And thus the Left is forced more and more to turn to Bolshevism. In Bolshevism they see today the sole, the last possibility of preserving the present state of affairs. They realize quite accurately that the people is beaten so long as Brain and Hand can be kept apart. For alone neither Brain nor Hand can really oppose them. So long therefore as the Socialist idea is coined only by men who see in it a means for disintegrating a nation, so long can they rest in peace.

But it will be a sorry day for them when this Socialist idea is grasped by a Movement which unites it with the highest Nationalist pride, with Nationalist defiance, and thus places the Nation's Brain, its intellectual workers, on this ground. Then this system will break up, and there would remain only one single means of salvation for its supporters: viz. to bring the catastrophe upon us before their own ruin, to destroy the Nation's Brain, to bring it to the scaffold - to introduce Bolshevism.

So the Left neither can nor will help. On the contrary, their first lie compels them constantly to resort to new lies. There remains then the Right. And this party of the Right meant well, but it cannot do what it would because up to the present time it has failed to recognize a whole series of elementary principles.

In the first place the Right still fails to recognize the danger. These gentlemen still persist in believing that it is a question of being elected to a Landtag or of posts as ministers or secretaries. They think that the decision of a people's destiny would mean at worst nothing more than some damage to their so-called bourgeois-economic existence. They have never grasped the fact that this decision threatens their heads. They have never yet understood that it is not necessary to be an enemy of the Jew for him to drag you one day, on the Russian model, to the scaffold. They do not see that it is quite enough to have a head on your shoulders and not to be a Jew: that will secure the scaffold for you.

In consequence their whole action today is so petty, so limited, so hesitating and pusillanimous. They would like to - but they can never decide on any great deed, because they fail to realize the greatness of the whole period.

And then there is another fundamental error: they have never got it clear in their own minds that there is a difference or how great a difference there is between the conception 'National' and the word 'dynastic' or 'monarchist.' They do not understand that today it is more than ever necessary in our thoughts as Nationalists to avoid anything which might perhaps cause the individual to think that the National Idea was identical with petty everyday political views. They ought day by day to din into the ears of the masses:  'We want to bury all the petty differences and to bring out into the light the big things, the things we have in common which bind us to one another.
[...]
And finally they all fail to understand that we must on principle free ourselves from any class standpoint. It is of course very easy to call out to those on the Left, 'You must not be proletarians, leave your class-madness,' while you yourselves continue to call yourself 'bourgeois.' They should learn that in a single State there is only one supreme citizen - right, one supreme citizen - honor, and that is the right and the honor of honest work. They should further learn that the social idea must be the essential foundation for any State, otherwise no State can permanently endure.

Certainly a government needs power, it needs strength. It must, I might almost say, with brutal ruthlessness press through the ideas which it has recognized to be right, trusting to the actual authority of its strength in the State. But even with the most ruthless brutality it can ultimately prevail only if what it seeks to restore does truly correspond to the welfare of a whole people.

That the so-called enlightened absolutism of a Frederick the Great was possible depended solely on the fact that, though this man could undoubtedly have decided 'arbitrarily' the destiny - for good or ill - of his so-called 'subjects,' he did not do so, but made his decisions influenced and supported by one thought alone, the welfare of his Prussian people. It was this fact only that led the people to tolerate willingly, nay joyfully, the dictatorship of the great king.

AND THE RIGHT HAS FURTHER COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THAT DEMOCRACY IS FUNDAMENTALLY NOT GERMAN: IT IS JEWISH. It has completely forgotten that this Jewish democracy with its majority decisions has always been without exception only a means towards the destruction of any existing Aryan leadership. The Right does not understand that directly every small question of profit or loss is regularly put before so-called 'public opinion,' he who knows how most skillfully to make this 'public opinion' serve his own interests becomes forthwith master in the State. And that can be achieved by the man who can lie most artfully, most infamously; and in the last resort he is not the German, he is, in Schopenhauer's words, 'the great master in the art of lying' - the Jew.

And finally it has been forgotten that the condition which must precede every act is the will and the courage to speak the truth - and that we do not see today either in the Right or in the Left.
[...]
It is from the recognition of this fact, from recognizing it, I would say, in utter, dead earnestness, that there resulted the formation of our Movement. There are two principles which, when we founded the Movement, we engraved upon our hearts: first, to base it on the most sober recognition of the facts, and second, to proclaim these facts with the most ruthless sincerity.

And this recognition of the facts discloses at once a whole series of the most important fundamental principles which must guide this young Movement which, we hope, is destined one day for greatness:

1. 'NATIONAL' AND 'SOCIAL ARE TWO IDENTICAL CONCEPTIONS. It was only the Jew who succeeded, through falsifying the social idea and turning it into Marxism, not only in divorcing the social idea from the national, but in actually representing them as utterly contradictory. That aim he has in fact achieved. At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it "National Socialist.' We said to ourselves that to be 'national' means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly to be 'social' means so to build up the state and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it.

2. And then we said to ourselves: THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS CLASSES: THEY CANNOT BE.
[...]
3. And in the third place IT WAS CLEAR TO US THAT THIS PARTICULAR VIEW IS BASED ON AN IMPULSE WHICH SPRINGS FROM OUR RACE AND FROM OUR BLOOD. We said to ourselves that race differs from race and, further, that each race in accordance with its fundamental demands shows externally certain specific tendencies, and these tendencies can perhaps be most clearly traced in their relation to the conception of work. The Aryan regards work as the foundation for the maintenance of the community of people amongst it members. The Jew regards work as the means to the exploitation of other peoples. The Jew never works as a productive creator without the great aim of becoming the master. He works unproductively using and enjoying other people's work. And thus we understand the iron sentence which Mommsen once uttered: 'The Jew is the ferment of decomposition in peoples,' that means that the Jew destroys and must destroy because he completely lacks the conception of an activity which builds up the life of the community. And therefore it is beside the point whether the individual Jew is 'decent' or not. In himself he carries those characteristics which Nature has given him, and he cannot ever rid himself of those characteristics. And to us he is harmful. Whether he harms us consciously or unconsciously, that is not our affair. We have consciously to concern ourselves for the welfare of our own people.

4. And fourthly WE WERE FURTHER PERSUADED THAT ECONOMIC PROSPERITY IS INSEPARABLE FROM POLITICAL FREEDOM AND THAT THEREFORE THAT HOUSE OF LIES, 'INTERNATIONALISM,' MUST IMMEDIATELY COLLAPSE. We recognized that freedom can eternally be only a consequence of power and that the source of power is the will. Consequently the will to power must be strengthened in a people with passionate ardor. And thus we realized fifthly that

5. WE AS NATIONAL SOCIALISTS and members of the German Workers party - a Party pledged to work - MUST BE ON PRINCIPLE THE MOST FANATICAL NATIONALISTS. We realized that the State can be for our people a paradise only if the people can hold sway therein freely as in a paradise: we realized that a slave state will never be a paradise, but only - always and for all time - a hell or a colony.

6. And then sixthly we grasped the fact that POWER IN THE LAST RESORT IS POSSIBLE ONLY WHERE THERE IS STRENGTH, and that strength lies not in the dead weight of numbers but solely in energy. Even the smallest minority can achieve a mighty result if it is inspired by the most fiery, the most passionate will to act. World history has always been made by minorities. And lastly

7. If one has realized a truth, that truth is valueless so long as there is lacking the indomitable will to turn this realization into action!

These were the foundations of our Movement - the truths on which it was based and which demonstrated its necessity.
[...]
And finally we were also the first to point the people on any large scale to a danger which insinuated itself into our midst - a danger which millions failed to realize and which will nonetheless lead us all into ruin - the Jewish danger. And today people are saying yet again that we were 'agitators.' I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man and a Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I SAY: MY FEELING AS A CHRISTIAN POINTS ME TO MY LORD AND SAVIOUR AS A FIGHTER. IT POINTS ME TO THE MAN WHO ONCE IN LONELINESS, SURROUNDED ONLY BY A FEW FOLLOWERS, RECOGNIZED THESE JEWS FOR WHAT THEY WERE AND SUMMONED MEN TO THE FIGHT AGAINST THEM AND WHO, GOD'S TRUTH! WAS GREATEST NOT AS SUFFERER BUT AS FIGHTER. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before - the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago - a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.
[...]
And through the distress there is no doubt that the people has been aroused. Externally perhaps apathetic, but within there is ferment. And many may say, 'It is an accursed crime to stir up passions in the people.' And then I say to myself: Passion is already stirred through the rising tide of distress, and one day this passion will break out in one way or another: AND NOW I WOULD ASK THOSE WHO TODAY CALL US AGITATORS': 'WHAT THEN HAVE YOU TO GIVE TO THE PEOPLE AS A FAITH TO WHICH IT MIGHT CLING?'

Nothing at all, for you yourselves have no faith in your own prescriptions.

That is the mightiest thing which our Movement must create: for these widespread, seeking and straying masses a new Faith which will not fail them in this hour of confusion, to which they can pledge themselves, on which they can build so that they may at least find once again a place which may bring calm to their hearts.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2022, 11:17:16 pm »
Speech in Schleiz, Thuringia. January 18, 1927.

Summary and commentary:
Again, Hitler presents himself as if he is neither on the (Communist) left nor the right. Hitler seems more sympathetic to rightists who want a strong state (Hitler seems to generally equate statism with nationalism in this speech). However, a powerful state in and of itself is not the end goal. The goal of the state must be to selflessly enact a non-Communist form of Socialism for the benefit of all citizens. Hitler defends the value of leftists in Germany who have been swayed by Communism (with the implication they can be converted to National Socialism). Hitler says he would not join a mainstream right-wing ("middle class") party. Hitler says 15 million people (i.e. 'international Marxists') reject "middle class"/bourgeoisie/right-wing national ideas, and 15 million middle class individuals reject Communist ideas for restructuring society. He says both ideologies have fundamentally failed in their goals, and he is trying to unite society ("Believe me, you will never achieve national reconciliation on the basis of the present parties. This reconciliation is what National Socialism seeks to achieve. Our national ideal is identical with our social ideal.") with a new, radical ideology which will actually address society's problems.

Hitler proposes a revised basis for Socialism. Not an undifferentiated internationalism where everyone is identical in character or ability, but a Socialism which takes into account the inherent inequality of individuals and bloodlines. He notes that Jews (who are behind Communism) still value race above all, despite Communism's theoretical ideal of international unity:

("International Marxism is rejected by fifteen million people, because fifteen million minds are too intelligent not to know that the condition it seeks is impossible to achieve, just as impossible as it was in Russia - other than in theory.

The German socialist has been taught to believe that he can only be international, and he has been taught that there exist only other human beings. That defies all experience and is an insult to their own existence. It is easy for anyone to say that a person is a person, just as a dog is a dog no matter whether it is a dachshund or a greyhound. A person is a person, whether New Zealander or German, English or Zulu. However, they differ just as much as one breed of dogs from another.  You know, it is really unbelievable that it was possible to preach this insanity of internationalism to millions of people and people believed in this idea; incredible that the Jew who has been in our midst for thousands of years and yet remained a Jew, has managed to persuade millions of us that race is completely unimportant, and yet for him race is all-important.")

I will chalk this up to propaganda, but in the speech Hitler says "blacks" have never invented anything and do not possess the same talents as "whites". I suspect this is propaganda to rouse a right-leaning crowd because he says the same thing about the Jews--that they have never invented anything. There are probably hundreds of websites (both Zionist and anti-Jewish) which list how Jews have received so many more Nobel Prizes, dominate scientific fields, etc., etc. Surely Hitler was aware of this trend.

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Why have you come here today in greater numbers than perhaps you would have done on another occasion? Simply because an election is under discussion? No, not at all. You are well aware that elections have taken place for decades and you expect that there will be more elections in the coming years. In previous years they have never completely satisfied you, and in the coming decades you will not be satisfied by the elections either. Nor have you come here in the hope that I will read out a long recipe for a cure.

You yourselves do not expect the promises made by the election speakers to be kept. You have long since ceased to believe in magic cures. What is really decided through an election of this kind? You know how things are today. Here in Thuringia, too, there is no reason to expect that a new view of the world (Weltanschauung) will take over.
[...]
To me the situation of the German nation today seems like that of a sick person. I know that people on various sides often say, "Why do you constantly say that we are sick!" People have said to us: "Daily life goes on as it always did; this "sick person", as you can see, eats day after day, works day in and day out; how can you say that this person is sick?!" But the question is not whether a nation is still alive and the economy functioning. Just because a person eats and works does not mean that he is fit. The most reliable criterion is how that persons himself feels. He can tell whether he is fit or ill. It is precisely the same in the life of nations. Nations are often sick for long periods - often centuries - yet individual members of the nations cannot fully understand the nature of the sickness.
[...]
It is precisely the same today. No one will claim that the German nation is healthy. It is sick and this feeling of sickness motivates our entire nation today. Some people, it is true, feel well. There are individuals who thrive precisely when the nation is sick, people whose well-being is an indirect proof of the general crisis. This crisis will always be twofold in nature. It is not only a material crisis, it is above all a spiritual, ethical and moral crisis, even if most people are unwilling to believe this because they merely experience the material crisis. This could not exist if there were not a spiritual crisis. This applies particularly to our time.

This is the reason why you have come here. In this room there are supporters and opponents of our movement. The supporters came to hear their leader, the opponents came in order to hear just for once the leader of this movement. However, someone who strongly believes in an idea - a religious idea, for example - does not go to listen if someone is preaching a different idea. If I am firmly rooted in my own faith then I have absolutely no interest in another. You have come here, although you probably are not conscious of this, because you are dissatisfied with what has existed in the past. Neither the man on the right nor the man on the left is satisfied.

I do not want to divide the German nation into little parties but instead into two broad halves. The one half consists of those who consciously describe themselves as national. The other half consists of those who just as consciously call themselves international. On the one side the national middle class (Burgertum), and on the other side the international proletariat. Within these groups there is constant movement in one direction or the other. Why? Because people are not completely satisfied with the achievements of their political direction. Instead individuals sometimes have the feeling that the direction to which they belong has failed.
[...]
What really proves whether an idea is right or wrong? The real proof of the correctness of an idea is not whether people believe it, but whether it succeeds, i.e. whether the goal of the program which is proposed is achieved. So we can apply the following test: If a group of people join together to achieve a specific goal, this group is not victorious at the moment when it obtains power but at the moment when it achieves its goal with the aid of that power. Today there is another theory, the one on which our state is based. According to this a political campaign can be considered successful when it has gained control of the power within the state. If, however, we apply this test, then you can judge how little success the two groups we are considering have had in achieving their goals. ... The answer to this question is easy because both groups held political power.
[...]
The political goal of the right in our nation was in broad terms as follows: "We want to establish a great, powerful German Reich, a Reich which has power and greatness, a Reich with strength. We want to ensure complete freedom for this Reich through unlimited cultivation of a sense of national honor and national pride and by maximum development of the nation's strength to defend itself. We want our nation to achieve its place in the sun and to retain it. A national Reich, externally powerful and internally free." When you recall this goal today and compare it with reality, you have to admit that it has not been achieved. ... Of 30 million adult men and women, fifteen million flatly reject the national ideal. They say: "We are international, we want nothing to do with the national ideal."
[...]
And the left? Its goal was the establishment of a world-wide coalition of states with a proletarian form of government - that is to say states which are completely free of militarism and of capitalism - and the establishment of a new world built on the corpses of the downtrodden anti-socialist states. And here again if you disregard all explanations and interpretations and concern yourselves purely with the bare truth, then, my friends on the left, you must admit that your real objective has also not been achieved. The world is more divided than ever before. What people call the League of Nations is a pathetic structure, as pathetic as probably our old German Reich before 1871. World history take its course ignoring this so-called League of Nations as if it did not exist. The states are arming themselves day after day. Militarism has not been abolished, and capitalism has not been abolished either and has become instead the dominant world power. Are the developments which we see in Germany by any chance the victory of socialism? So here, too, it is understandable if a person is discontent. His newspaper can tell him about day to day events etc. Yet he cannot help sometimes saying to himself that the whole struggle has been in vain! Today an army of unemployed separates us from genuine social well-being. And this army is growing larger rather than smaller.

It is the feeling that something is not right which brings you here. When there is a need to overcome a crisis which cannot be cured by small-scale measures, when circumstances which affect an entire nation must be remedied and thus require the application of large-scale measures, the first requirement is that we understand how things got the way they are. We live in a time which in small ways is great and genial but in broad terms has been a miserable failure. That is the reason why I am criticized for not concerning myself with day to day problems. To me worrying about day to day problems is as if, when someone is seriously ill, your sole concern is whether to feed him his soup with a silver or a golden spoon.

We want to seek out the really major causes of the sickness. ... The one reason which the right gives for its failure is that the German middle class (Bürgertum) made the big mistake of not maintaining its hold on power and instead surrendered it. ...But in the long run a position of dominance is not maintained with mechanical weapons, machines guns, hand grenades etc. The absolute monarchy in Germany recognized this. In principle its view, "l'etat, c'est moi", was right. Why? Because everybody was still convinced that, for example, the man who then ruled over the Prussian Reich was unselfish, was a hero, because everyone was convinced: "I am ruled over sensibly and this indirectly benefits me."

The second reason is the simplest. When I talk to national politicians today and I say to them: "Please admit that you have failed; fifteen million people are no longer interested in the national ideal and that is the most dreadful thing conceivable", they reply: "Yes, but look at these people, they are scum. Just go down and mix with these people, they are not worth talking to." There is only one response to this. If it is true that fifteen million people consciously reject the national ideal because they are morally bad, because they are riff-raff, scum, scoundrels, what is the point of any further political activity? Well, with what do the gentlemen on the right intend to save Germany? With their fragmented and divided middle class? No, under these circumstances there is no value in continuing the struggle, it is pointless. Fate has simply spoken, i.e. our nation is destined for destruction. But then why not have the courage to go before the nation and say, even if one does not wish to admit that one has failed: "Under these circumstances we have no further interest in politics! There is no point in engaging in politics any longer!" Nevertheless these gentlemen come before you again and say: "Give us your votes!".

However, it is not true that fifteen million people are not national because they are morally bad. You see, I cannot judge a nation by the situation which prevails at this moment. Naturally it is simpler and easier to explain that fifteen million people are scum than to admit that you are making a mistake or have represented an idea in the wrong way. They say the people are worthless. Why worthless? I cannot measure a person's worth in terms of his wealth or his birth, or things like that. All that means nothing, is not a measure of worth. If today I were to remove a good-for-nothing who is born wealthy I would do the nation no harm, but I would if I removed a craftsman or an intellectual who conscientiously does his duty. The value of a person depends on the value which his labour creates. It is not by his own volition that a person becomes a thinker, musician, great inventor etc. This is not the result of his individual will but rather a higher nature endows him with this disposition at birth. A person may be praised because he is a genius; his abilities are, however, of no importance if he cannot make them serve everyone. He can just as well be a brilliant criminal, good-for-nothing... On the other hand, if I were to remove any street cleaner who conscientiously sweeps his square meter of street, I would have to replace him with another street sweeper. We should judge people according to the abilities with which nature has endowed them and which they use for the benefit of the community. This criterion excludes the accidental factor of high or low birth and gives a person the freedom to forge his own reputation. Even the most insignificant person, if he honestly carries out the work he is given so as to serve the national community (Volksgemeinschaft), can be replaced by another, but the community needs his services. If I apply this criterion I cannot say that the fifteen million people on the left are worthless. You cannot simply remove them, you would have to replace them. Some of them may be worthless but the first measure of value speaks for the fifteen million.
[...]
The second criterion of value: People should be measured firstly by the work which they perform for their nation and secondly by their general character. It is not shouting hurrah but the willingness to subordinate their personal interest to those of the community, to those of the state, to subordinate their ego to the interest of all others which demonstrate their character. There are people who are full of assurances that they are ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the community at large. They do everything out of sympathy for their fellow members of the human race. Others fight the most momentous battles at a table full of beer bottles. Their ability to make sacrifices remains theoretical.

There is, however, a practical test and this test is war. That great test when the iron Goddess of Fate approaches the individual and asks him: "Are you ready now to sacrifice yourself for others, yes or no?" Pretences are not the deciding factor then, or deception, no, pretences disappear and all that remains is the naked human as he really is. ... Those were the hours when Fate applied its test - to the German working man as well. No German army could have celebrated a victory if beside the General had not stood the German grenadier. The millions who owned nothing for which they could have fought, they were the objects of the second test. They did their duty as if the entire fate of the fatherland depended on them alone, and in so doing they passed the test to the everlasting fame of the broad masses of our People.

With this before our eyes it cannot be said that the German People are worthless, are evil. If this had been the case Germany would have collapsed in the first three weeks. Today the German People have nothing in which to believe and hence turn this way and that thoughtlessly and weak. And there is a reason for this: How can the German People have faith in those weak individuals who are watching and have watched as Germany suffered harm in the most humiliating fashion? How can it regard them as the protectors of their interests? These men have heaped too much guilt upon themselves for the German people to ignore this. Believe me, if I were not a National Socialist, I could never join the ranks of the middle class (bürgerlich) parties, because I loath big talk which is merely an empty facade; I hate the kind of cowardice which avoids making decisions; I hate the half-hearted attitude which was shown before, during and after the war.
[...]

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2022, 11:21:56 pm »
Speech in Schleiz, Thuringia. January 18, 1927. (continued).

Commentary: In this portion, he addresses the failures of 'international' socialism, and indicates National Socialism will be able to fulfill the "social idea" of Socialism. In addition, he points out the importance of using "race" instead of "class", as the Jewish elite who promote Communism and claim "race" is not important nevertheless place supreme importance on their own "race" which they have preserved for thousands of years.

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The reasons given by the left are just as faulty as those of the right. The first big excuse is: "Yes, we were stupid to seize power alone.". Well, that is your own fault! And the second: When you say to a leader on the left, 'What use are your international and Marxist ideas, fifteen million people reject them?", the only answer you get is that the fifteen million people are simply worthless and useless, and that they should have decapitated them. Here I have to say the same as I did earlier about the other side. How do you measure a person's value? It is determined by the person's value for the community. Can the professional class, the intellectual laborers, (Geistesarbeiter) really be called worthless? Certainly not! There are thousands and thousands of pairs of hands at work in a factory from which a locomotive finally emerges. But do not forget that before their work began it was the engineers who designed the machine, there were the chemists who made the alloys. You cannot say today: "Out with the engineer; he is not a member of our party, so off with his head!" If it was a question of only three or four you could do that, but with fifteen million people that is impossible. If millions of working people did not supply their strength to implement ideas which originate in the brains of others, if those brains did not constantly supply all the millions of pairs of hands with the plans, the human race would be unable to progress from its original state. Our brain and hands have collaborated to create the healthy organism in which we all participate and of which we all are a part today.

And the second criterion, that of character? You cannot say that all those on the right are all scum, they have no character. You must not judge the value and the character of the German professional and middle classes in general on the basis of individual typical slaver-drivers or exploiters. This would be just as stupid as judging every manual laborer by some good-for-nothing who crosses one's path. Just as in the army there were officers who forgot that they had fellow citizens, fellow Germans under their command - if you believe in metempsychosis you might thing that perhaps they were camel drivers in an earlier existence - there were also N.C.O.s who had been one of us before their promotion and who were much worse than those officers.
[...]
Please do not forget that there have been millions who work with their brains, inventors, etc., who have created the best things for the human race but who have nevertheless died penniless, and that today there are still people who, for example, take on the most dangerous mission in the service of science. Why does someone engage in cancer research for a decade until he is perhaps infected himself? Not because he wants to exploit others, but because he is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have the interest of the community at heart ....

International Marxism is rejected by fifteen million people, because fifteen million minds are too intelligent not to know that the condition it seeks is impossible to achieve, just as impossible as it was in Russia - other than in theory.

The German socialist has been taught to believe that he can only be international, and he has been taught that there exist only other human beings. That defies all experience and is an insult to their own existence. It is easy for anyone to say that a person is a person, just as a dog is a dog no matter whether it is a dachshund or a greyhound. A person is a person, whether New Zealander or German, English or Zulu. However, they differ just as much as one breed of dogs from another.

You know, it is really unbelievable that it was possible to preach this insanity of internationalism to millions of people and people believed in this idea; incredible that the Jew who has been in our midst for thousands of years and yet remained a Jew, has managed to persuade millions of us that race is completely unimportant, and yet for him race is all-important. What would that really mean, - that race does not matter?
[...]
There are fields in which various races were active for centuries. Wherever the Aryan goes there is culture; if he leaves, it gradually disappears; and if he returns after two thousand years to somewhere where culture has perhaps been replaced by a desert, he will restore culture. Culture is inseparably linked with people, that is to say with certain people. If you take them away in the long run nothing is left. You say that does not matter, a person is a person. ... If you go into the factory and go through the work halls and look at the endless huge machines and then look at the workers - there, too, no Jews. But if you go into a shop in Berlin on the Kurfurstendamm, then you do not see a single non-Jew in it. ... The reason why today he has no culture of his own, no state of his own, has to do with the fact that for thousands of years he has avoided any productive work. He has not been persecuted because he did not perform productive work, but because he demanded unproductive interest charges. He always only bought, sold and sold again, and our ancestors forbade that: 'You do not work our soil, therefore you have no right to buy it either'.

Tens of thousands of Protestants were driven out of my native land, for ever. And so they packed their bundle of belongings and they went to East Prussia and worked, or went overseas. Those who were persecuted in this manner began to work over there, took up the struggle with the wild animals, set up farms, and after them the people with spades always followed until the continent was conquered. And when everything was done, our friend came. Don't tell me that he would not have been allowed to come earlier, and do not say he could have withstood the climate. He can withstand the climate everywhere. It is only work that he cannot stand. That is the only reason why he did not go. Believe me, the same people who had managed to make almost the entire world serve their purposes could have created a state for themselves anywhere. The world would have been happy, grateful, but they had absolutely no desire to do this. . . .

Believe me, you will never achieve national reconciliation on the basis of the present parties. This reconciliation is what National Socialism seeks to achieve. Our national ideal is identical with our social ideal. We are National Socialists, that is to say what we understand by the word nation is not one class, nor one economic group; the nation is for us the collective term for all people who speak our language and possess our blood. We see no possibility for pride in the nation if there is a well-fed group of entrepreneurs and behind them the starving and exhausted working people of our nation. National pride is possible only if intellectual and manual laborers, well fed and with a decent standard of living, can live side by side in harmony. We want to build the foundation for a new view of the world (Weltanschauung) in which greatness attaches only to the person who sacrifices himself out of passionate devotion to his entire People. We are convinced that no one in the world will give us anything for nothing. No one else is furthering our cause, we alone must forge our own future. Within our nation lies the source of our entire strength. If our nation falls we shall all fall with it. We cannot prosper if our nation is destroyed. Our nation and our state shall prosper so that each individual in it can live.

We are not pacifists, for we know that the father of all things is combat and struggle. We see that race is of supreme importance to the life of our nation as well as character, the basis of which must be responsibility toward our People. We are absolutely convinced that every decision requires responsibility. That is why we are at odds with the entire world, that is why we are considered subversive and why we are prohibited from speaking, and why we are silenced, because we want to restore the health of our entire German nation and to cure it from this cursed sickness of fragmentation.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2022, 11:24:57 pm »
Speech in the Sportpalast. Berlin, January 30, 1942.

Commentary:
In the excerpt below Hitler outlines how National Socialist policies are a direct left-wing competitor to Communist Socialism, and have successfully implemented the social welfare policies Communists claim to support!!! Consider that this was during the war. Hitler would have had no reason to boast about Socialism if he was a far-rightist. Note how he specifically contrasts the capitalist states as if there is a greater divide between them and NS Germany than between NS Germany and the Communist USSR.

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We had a world unanimously against us here. Of course, not only on the right, but also on the left. Those on the left feared: "What are we going to do, if this experiment succeeds and he actually makes it and eliminates the housing problem? What if he manages to introduce an educational system based on which a talented boy, no matter who his parents are, can attain God knows what position? And, he is capable of doing it, he is already making a Reich protector out of a former farmhand. What if he really introduces an old-age pension scheme covering the whole Volk? What if he truly secures a right to vacations for the whole Volk, since he is already building ships? And he is bringing all this up to an ordered and secured standard of living. What are we going to do? We live by the absence of this. We live by this and, therefore, we must fight National Socialism." What the others have accomplished-that, our comrades were best able to see in Russia. We have been in power for nine years now. Bolshevism has been there since 1917, that is, almost twenty-five years. Everyone can judge for himself by comparing this Russia with Germany. The things we did in these nine years. What does the German Volk look like, and what have they accomplished over there? I do not even want to mention the capitalist states.

They do not take care of their unemployed, because no American millionaire will ever come into the area where they live, and no unemployed man will ever go to the area where the millionaires live. While hunger marches to Washington and to the White House are organized, they are usually dispersed en route by the police by means of rubber truncheons and tear gas. Such things do not exist in authoritarian Germany. We deal with such problems without such things-rubber truncheons and tear gas.

----

Speech at the annual rally of young officer cadets at the Berlin Sportpalast. December 18, 1940.

Summary: Hitler again makes clear he aimed to form a revolutionary synthesis of nationalism and socialism. The ideological revolution in Germany and manifestation of an entirely "new world" poses a threat to the traditional Western order, which is the true root of why the Allies oppose Germany.

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As I returned home from the World War, I found a picture of divisiveness which had elevated itself from the level of the former dynasties to that of an ideology (Weltanschauung).

While in former times counts and Lander had meant division for the nation, ideologies and parties had in the meanwhile developed from this. Here the bourgeoisie-there the proletariat; here Nationalism-there Socialism. At the time, both were frames of reference which could no longer be reconciled with each other. Neither of the two, in my opinion, was strong enough to secure final victory even after overcoming the other, since, in the life of a nation, there is no such thing as sentimentality. Once a certain standpoint prevails and reigns victorious in a Volk, then it is of no consequence-it is not even interesting to know-whether it obtained this victory rightly or not. What is decisive is that it manages to obtain unity of will on its own level. If this is possible, then the question of right or wrong is no longer relevant. If this is not possible, then the Volk will fail. For it is self-evident that it is difficult enough for a nation to maintain a position already obtained, but it is even more difficult to fight for a position which must yet be secured. There is hope for success in such a fight only if it is led with the complete dedication of the entire strength of a Volk.

It makes a difference whether a world empire such as Great Britain seeks to maintain its position, or whether a "Reich" such as Germany must first set out to secure its position in battle.

That life was impossible under the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles is something that I need not tell you about. New conditions for life had to be created. This was opposed by a divided nation and two ideologies, which already at the time appeared to be in the process of disintegration, since a large number of parties represented both the bourgeois and the Marxist ideology, which included groups from Social Democracy to the most radical syndicalism, namely, anarchism. It was clear that, in the year 1919, an exclusive, clear victory by one of these two ideas could no longer be expected. Just as Germany had once before disintegrated into countless small dynastic structures, there again was the threat of the German nation disintegrating into countless small ideological or party political groups. There was a time when a maximum of forty-six such "pocket parties" (Parteichen) stepped up to compete for the favor and approval of the German Volk. It was Utopian to expect a resurrection under these conditions, not to mention bringing about such a resurrection.
[...]
When I returned at the time, I realized that, as long as the two definitions of socialism and nationalism remained what they had been, a resurrection of the German nation was inconceivable. On the other hand, I realized that no ideals existed outside the two worlds of socialism and nationalism. They were the only two concepts for which people were ready to die if necessary. At the time, I therefore undertook to form one common world out of these torn nationalist and socialist worlds-founded on a new definition of the two concepts. I did so in the realization that it was no longer a question of preserving what was old, but eliminating the impossible, and creating a new world in which it would be possible to concentrate and redirect the total strength of the nation from the inside to the outside. Of course, this change had to occur not within the state, but within the Volksgemeinschaft. This means: the new state had to begin to form within a new Movement. After about fifteen years, this new Movement had the strength to take over power and realize its ideas in practice. This not only brought about the creation of a new empire in Europe, but also-as we can confidently state-a new world.

It is a world which is naturally more modern than the world of those who need only preserve what they acquired over 300 years.

Today's Germany stands for several ideas which can claim to be truly revolutionary- ideas which managed to mobilize the strength of the Volk for one goal and to concentrate it in the direction of this goal. Other peoples and their state leaders are frightened by the thought of what has formed here.

They realize that this state has arrived at a lasting synthesis of nationalism and socialism and that, in the long run, this state will develop a powerful attraction, similar to that of the ideas of the French Revolution at the time.

This is also the case today: when they speak of a so-called "fifth column," they are not referring to people who sympathize with Germany politically, but people who have weltanschaulich been inspired by us and who now form an opposition in their nations; an opposition based on the realization that the German example is essentially correct and that it should be copied elsewhere.

This does not mean that they wish to join Germany or subjugate themselves to it. When this is claimed in the other states, it is a dying world that makes the claim, in the hope of compromising these new movements by portraying them as unpatriotic, conspiring, or sympathizing with the enemy.
[...]
Anyhow, all these ideas about race, blood, and soil, the idea of labor as the only creative force, the idea of the social community are the prerequisites for preserving a nation. After all, these ideas are today in the process of attracting more and more people. And this is where the fight against Germany sets in, not only because we are disrupting the European balance of power by our claim to life, but also because we are disrupting the European order by new ideas, which we made public in Europe and which are now gaining in popularity.
[...]
And now, my young Comrades, you must understand one thing: in the year 1919, I took up a struggle which appeared nearly hopeless at the time. An unknown man who undertook to rid a world of resistance, to tear down walls of prejudice. Prejudice at times is worse than divine force.

A man took a stand against all the bearers of public life back then, against the parties, against their press, against the whole system of capitalist fabrication of public opinion. I led this struggle until the final seizure of power.

----

Speech to the workers of Berlin. December 10, 1940.

Commentary: anti-capitalism, pro-labor, anti-elitist.

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Throughout my life I have been a have-not. At home I was a have-not, I count myself among the have-nots, and I have always fought for them. For them I stood up, and I stand up to the world as a representative of the have-nots! [-] It is understandable when an Englishman says: "We do not want our world to perish in any way at all." And rightly so. They know all too well: we are no threat to their empire. But they also say to themselves, and rightly so: "If these ideas which are popular in Germany are not eliminated and eradicated, they will come to our people, and this is most dangerous. This we do not want." And if it did come this way it would do no harm. But they are as narrow-minded as others used to be here with us once. [-] These English capitalists have the opportunity, to give just one example, to make dividends of seventy-six, eighty, ninety-five, 140, 160 percent. Yes naturally, they say: "If these German methods gain currency or are victorious, this will end." And this is completely correct. This I would not tolerate. I think that six percent suffices, but we must take half of this six percent away again, and from the rest we must have documented proof that it was reinvested in the interest of the Volksgemeinschaft. [-] I do not believe that one can maintain a situation in which a man toils and works a whole year, only to get a ludicrous salary, and another just sits down in a leather seat and gets enormous sums for it. This is a condition unworthy of man. [-] After all, there are two worlds which confront each other. And they are right when they say: "We can never reconcile ourselves to the National Socialist world." For how could a narrow-minded capitalist possibly declare his agreement with my principles? It would be easier for the devil to go to church and take holy water. [-] This is the first state in our German history which, as a matter of principle, eliminated all social prejudice in the assignment of social positions, and this not only in civilian life. I myself am the best proof of that.
[...]
And, my Volksgenossen, I believe it became common knowledge that I have plans of some substance, beautiful and great plans for my Volk. I have the ambition to make the German Volk rich, the German lands beautiful. I wish the standard of living of the individual to increase. I wish us to develop the most beautiful and best culture. I wish theater to be an enjoyment affordable for the entire Volk and not only for the upper ten-thousand as in England. Beyond this, I wish the entirety of German culture to benefit the Volk. These were enormous plans which we possessed, and for their realization I needed manpower.
[...]
We have now determined to tear down all the constraints which hinder the individual in striving for the fulfillment of his potential, to take the place rightfully his. We have the firm will to erect a social state which must serve, and will serve, as an example for all walks of life.

Therein we conceive our final victory! For we have seen what it leads to with the others. Twenty years ago they secured an apparent victory. And what has come of this victory? Nothing but misery and despair. Unemployment has come of it. They fought their war only for the damned plutocracy, for a few financier dynasties which administer their capital markets, for a few hundred who in the end control these peoples. That should serve as a lesson for all of us! When this war is over, then Germany will begin a great undertaking: a cry of "Arise" shall echo through the German lands. Then the German Volk will abandon the production of cannons and will begin the labors of peace and a new reconstruction work for the mass of millions! Then we shall show the world all the more clearly what is the master and who is the master: capital or labor! And then from this labor will arise the great German Reich of which a great German poet once dreamt. It will be a Germany to which every son clings in zealous love because it will be home to even the most wretched. It will open life up to him.

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

Thus far, I have only read a few of the speeches, so there is probably plenty of additional supporting evidence in the book. And, as I said, it does not seem to contain all of his speeches.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2022, 11:28:00 pm »
What about the red flag of National Socialism? As an artist, no doubt Hitler would have been deeply aware of the importance of symbolism. As a ideologist, he would have obviously known of the red flag's association with the "social idea" and leftism.

Indeed:
Quote
He also stated: "As National Socialists, we see our program in our flag. In red, we see the social idea of the movement; in white, the nationalistic idea; in the hooked cross, the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Use_in_Nazism

There is no way he could have been unaware of its historical symbolism, nor of its use by communists and its fear by 'red scare' advocates in the 1920s!
Quote
In politics, a red flag is predominantly a symbol of socialism,... It has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution (1789–1799).[1]

Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of communism as a result of its use by the Paris Commune of 1871.
[...]
Two red flags soaked in calf's blood were flown by marchers in South Wales during the Merthyr Rising of 1831. It is claimed to be the first time that the red flag was waved as a banner of workers' power.
[...]
In 1870, following the stunning defeat of the French Army by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, French workers and socialist revolutionaries seized Paris and created the Paris Commune. The Commune lasted for two months before it was crushed by the French Army, with much bloodshed. The original red banners of the Commune became icons of the socialist revolution; in 1921 members of the French Communist Party came to Moscow and presented the new Soviet government with one of the original Commune banners; it was placed (and is still in place) in the tomb of Vladimir Lenin, next to his open coffin.[12]
[...]
With the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the red flag, with a hammer to symbolize the workers and sickle to symbolize peasants, became the official flag of Russia, and, in 1923, of the Soviet Union. It remained so until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
[...]
After the suppression of the 1848 revolution, the red flag and other insignia dominated by the colour red were banned in Prussia, as was the case in France after the demise of the Paris Commune.[20] During the Red Scare of 1919–1920 in the United States, many states passed laws forbidding the display of red flags, including Minnesota, South Dakota, Oklahoma,[21] and California. In Stromberg v. California, the United States Supreme Court held that such laws are unconstitutional.[22]

In Australia the red flag was similarly banned in September 1918 under the War Precautions Act 1914. This ban would be an arguable cause of the Red Flag riots. The ban ended in Australia with the repeal of the War Precautions Act in 1920.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_(politics)

And he chose this leftist symbol to be the largest aspect of the flag--especially when you think of all the building-length banners that were commonly used.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2022, 11:55:23 pm »
Among those who are above-averagely familiar with WWII, it is common to talk about 'Strasserism' as the left-wing of National Socialism, and common to believe Strasserists were purged from the party due to their leftism. Yet this is not accurate.

Hitler had trusted Gregor and Otto Strasser enough to appoint them with expanding the party while he was banned from speaking. This would have made no sense if Hitler was far-right.

Quote
However, after an inflammatory speech he gave on 27 February, Hitler was barred from public speaking by the Bavarian authorities, a ban that remained in place until 1927.[132][133] To advance his political ambitions in spite of the ban, Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser, Otto Strasser and Joseph Goebbels to organise and enlarge the Nazi Party in northern Germany. Gregor Strasser steered a more independent political course, emphasising the socialist elements of the party's programme.[134]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Rebuilding_the_Nazi_Party

Quote
After 1925, Strasser's organizational skills helped transform the Nazi Party from a marginal south-German splinter party into a nationwide party with mass appeal.[16][7] Due to the public-speaking ban issued against Hitler, Strasser had been deputized (by Hitler) to represent the party in the north and speak.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Strasser#Role_in_the_Nazi_Party's_national_organisation

The Strassers lost favor in the party not because they were leftist Socialists, but because Otto was unwilling to fully repudiate Marxist Socialism and because both Gregor and Otto were unwilling to fully embrace the Leader Principle. Hitler made multiple attempts to keep them in the party, debate with them, and reconcile with them (even giving them _more power_ within the party!). If Hitler was a far-rightist, how could it make any sense to do that? If the National Socialist party was a far-right party, why would the Socialist Strassers join it and accept such high ranking positions when the KPD (Communist) party was one of the largest in Germany which they could have easily joined instead? Surely it would have been easier for them to recruit people to develop an anti-Marxist form of Socialism within the left-wing Communist party than within the supposedly "far-right" NS party...?

----

In 1926, Hitler had reconciled with the Strassers (who were developing an alternate, dissenting, party platform). But Otto remained too Communist-leaning (in Hitler's opinion), leading to a private debate between Hitler and Otto Strasser in 1930.

While the debate covered a number of different topics, one of the core topics (which both of them agreed was the most critical) was about the meaning of Socialism and whether the two men could reconcile their definitions of it. (Some of the text bolded below are things Strasser said. Note that he makes it clear he supports Socialism, and Hitler does not attack him for supporting Socialism. In fact, highlighted in red, Hitler clearly says he is Socialist! Hitler's problem with Strasser is not leftism, but being too sympathetic to the Marxist conception of Socialism.)

Quote
Mr Hitler agreed that he wanted this explanation. He attached the greatest price to my work, he fully acknowledged my work and wanted to keep me in the party. That was the reason for his invitation. I was young, a front line veteran and an old National Socialist, so I could be convinced.
[...]
Him: “Yes, we diverge here considerably. You bring us back to democracy, and democracy is dissolved. Our organization is founded on discipline, and I will not let it be dismembered by a handful of writers. You yourself knew the army. See how your brother although he is not always in agreement with me, he bends to this discipline, for him I have much esteem. And I ask you if accept this discipline, yes or no.”
[...]
Hitler swore that if he extended me his hand today, it was precisely in memory of my brother who had suffered greatly from our differences and for himself.

Him: “Once again, I offer you the post of national press leader. You will come with me to Munich, where you will be directly under my authority. You could put all your work and intelligence, which I esteem, in the service of the movement.”

I responded that I could only accept this offer if we were in fundamental agreement regarding political goals. I added verbatim: “If it turns out that our views still differ, you will have the impression that I have deceived you, and I myself the feeling of having been betrayed. The most important thing seems to me that we have a deep discussion on political objectives. I would be ready to return to Munich for four weeks and discuss all the questions with you and eventually with Rosenberg, whose hostility towards me I am aware of, and primarily the questions of foreign policy and socialism as in my opinion, Rosenberg is the most distant from my conceptions.”

Thereafter, Mr Hitler told me that this proposal had come too late, that I should decide for myself now, failing that he would take the necessary measures on Monday. That is to say he would declare that Editions Combat had brought harm to the interests of the party, that all members of the party would be banned from the dissemination and propagation of the Edition Combat’s magazines, that he would exclude me and the people surrounding me from the party.

I responded that Mr Hitler did indeed have the opportunity to take these measures, but he had thus proved something that I never believed was possible until now: his total disagreement with our revolutionary socialist will, as expressed for five years in Editions Combat, where it was the goal and essential object.

I roughly said this: “Mister Hitler, I have the impression that you forgot to say the true reasons that push you to destroy Editions Combat; the real stake is this revolutionary socialism we advocate, you desire to sacrifice it to establish the legality of the party and in order to cooperate with the bourgeois right (Hugenberg, Stahlhelm, etc)”

Mister Hitler rejected this opinion very quickly: “Unlike people such as the wealthy Count Reventlow, I am socialist. I started as a simple worker, and today still, I do not allow my chauffeur to receive another meal than me. But your socialism is Marxism pure and simple. You see, the great mass of workers only wants bread and circuses. Ideas are not accessible to them and we cannot hope to win them over. We attach ourselves to the fringe, the race of lords, which did not grow through a miserabilist doctrine and knows by the virtue of its own character that it is called to rule, and rule without weakness over the masses of beings.”

Me: “Mister Hitler, this opinion overwhelms me. A vision founded on race is erroneous. In my opinion, race is only the initial first material. For example, the German people are constituted by four or five different races. To which we add geopolitical, climactic influences, and others, external pressure, internal fusion, which forged what we call a people. The following step is born from living together and becoming aware of this life: this superior form is the nation, born for us in August 1914. The racial vision of Rosenberg that you have made yours denies the great task of National Socialism, the constitution of the German people into a nation, and will even lead to the dissolution of this people. So it denies, in my eyes, the objective and the meaning of the German revolution to come.”

Him: “You are a liberal. Every revolution is fundamentally racial. There are no social, political, or economic revolutions. ...”
[...]
It was getting late – it had nearly been 4 hours – I asked to continue our conversation tomorrow, on the specific subject of socialism. He declared, “But the question of foreign policy is purely theoretical for the moment. Neither you nor me make decisions and I can satisfy myself with this formulation, that foreign policy only obeys a singular objective: the good of Germany. Cultural policy is not very important in my eyes, in any case it seems quite second rank now. In my eyes, the decisive and central question is economic organization and socialism, as it’s in this matter that I have the greatest doubts about the party’s policy.
[...]
As we had outlined the plan of the day’s conversation yesterday, I had reflected on five fundamental points which I communicated to my brother in the course of our brief meeting, they were as followed:
[...]
2 It follows from the above that we are equally opposed to bourgeois capitalism and internationalist Marxism.
[...]
5 This anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist attitude means that we do not envision military intervention against Russia.
[...]
At Hitler’s demand, I began in roughly these terms: “The discussion yesterday showed that important points should be clarified. Namely to know if you, like me, are of the opinion that the revolution to which we aspire must be implemented on political, economic, and spiritual level. In which case that implies that we be inflexible and fight bourgeois capitalism and internationalist Marxism with equal ardor, which leads us to the central point of this meeting. Our propaganda must not only attach itself to the anti-Marxist struggle, it must equally attack capitalism and found a German socialism.

Which necessitates that we clarify the concept of property. I believe that religious respect for private property excludes all possibility of German socialism.
[...]
Private property was conceived for agriculture, as the soil is divisible into little parcels. In industrial matters, things present themselves differently, so we must opt for collective ownership of the enterprises in which people work. In order to distribute land to the peasants, Stein had to confiscate it from the large landowners, as he couldn’t find un-owned land. Today we must do the same: the entrepreneurs maintain a monopoly on industrial property, so we must seize a part of this property to give to the workers, and in a broader sense, to the people collectively. These proposals will be treated as Bolshevism, but the large landowners treated Baron Vom Stein as a Jacobin. However: the liberation of Prussia was unthinkable without the liberation of the peasantry. Likewise, the liberation of Germany happens through the liberation of the German workers.”

On the demand of Mister Hitler, I declared that in my opinion, 49% of property and wealth should remain in the hands of their current owners, 41% should return to the state which represents the nation, and 10% to the personnel of the enterprise. Decisions should be made with equal representation between the entrepreneur, the state, and the employees, in a way that reduces the influence of the state and increases that of the workers.

Hitler: “That’s Marxism, Bolshevism, pure and simple. You pretend to extend this democracy to economics, which lead us politically to Russia, and ruins the entire nation in the same stroke. ...”
[...]
I objected that the great names of history didn’t know the meaning of the role they played. Man is not the creator of history, he is the instrument of destiny.
   [my note: this is also a Marxist conception of history--historical materialism vs the 'great man theory'.]
[...]
Hitler: “What you call socialism is a purely Marxist vision. The system that you erect is academic work, it doesn’t correspond to the reality of life. In this sense there is no capitalist system. The head of the enterprise is dependent on his workforce, the willingness of his workers to participate in a common effort. If they strike, his property is worthless. On the other hand, by what right could they claim a part of this property, even to participate in decisions? Mister Amann, would you accept it if your stenographers suddenly wanted to take part in your decisions? The employer is responsible for production, and assures the workers their subsistence. Our great heads of industry are not concerned with the accumulation of wealth and the good life, rather they are concerned with responsibility and power. They have acquired this right by natural selection: they are members of the higher race. But you would surround them with a council of incompetents, who have no notion of anything. No economic leader can accept that.”
[...]
A long economic discussion followed ... that I quickly brought back to the socialist field with a concrete question for Mister Hitler: “If you seized power in Germany tomorrow what would you immediately do with the Krupp firm? Regarding the shareholders, the workers, the property, the benefits, and the direction, would you keep things as they are?”

Hitler: “Of course. Do you think I’m stupid enough to destroy the economy? The state will only intervene if people do not act in the interest of the nation. There is no need for dispossession or participation in all the decisions. The state will intervene strongly when it must, pushed by superior motives, without regards to particular interests.”

Me: “But Mister Hitler, if you want to preserve the capitalist system, you don’t have the right to speak of socialism! As the militants are socialists in the first rank, they refer to the program of the party, which expressly demands the socialization of enterprises of national interest.”

Him: “The expression of socialism is faulty in itself, and above all: it doesn’t imply that enterprises must be nationalized, but only that they can be, in the scenario where they operate against the interest of the nation. For a long time that hasn’t been the case, it would be criminal to destroy the economy.”
[...]
Me: “It’s true Mister Hitler, the processes of production remain the same. The assembly of a car is not much different in the socialist system than in the capitalist system. On the other hand, the policies of production, the economic objectives are the responsibility of the system. ... I say that it’s the system that is criminal and we must change it, and not the men. The reality of capitalism and the necessity of instituting socialism is clearly visible.”

Him: “But in order to change this institution, there is no need for the workers to become co-owners of the enterprise or participate in its decisions. It’s the role of a strong state to assure that production serves the interests of the nation. If it is lacking in certain cases, the state will take energetic measures, seizing the enterprise and putting its destiny in its hands.”

Me: “But that would not change the destiny of the workers, objects of the economy, rather than subjects. Moreover, I note that you were ready to break with the sacrosanct principle of the inviolability of private property. Then take that step, why bother with arbitrary intervention case by case by functionaries insufficiently informed of local conditions and at the mercy of personal denunciations, why not directly and organically anchor this right of intervention in the economy?”

Him: “Some fundamental differences oppose us here, as collective ownership and decision making resemble Marxism. But, for my part, I reserve the right of intervention to an elite within the state.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20190330073454/https://institutenr.org/2016/12/30/hitler-vs-strasser-the-historic-debate-of-may-21st-and-22nd-1930-otto-strasser/

Otto was unable to be convinced by Hitler and he was subsequently expelled from the party. Again, not for his Socialism--as Hitler clearly attacks his Socialism for being Marxist-sympathetic and therefore not authentically Socialist enough! Had he been expelled for his leftism, it would have made no sense for Hitler to have kept him in the party and in positions of power for the past 4 years! (Nor would it have made sense for Hitler to have debated by proposing a competing form of Socialism!) Nor would it have made any sense for Hitler to explicitly tell Strasser Hitler considered himself a Socialist!!!


[As a side note, note how Strasser brings up the "four or five races". This idea of multiple "races" in Germany was referenced again by Hitler again in his 1944 Platterhof speech where Hitler says he has now made clear folk and "race" are not the same thing. (As implied in the speech, I'm sure more people than just Strasser balked at the use of "race" on this basis.) Hitler used the existing notion of "race" as a social construct to rouse people, and then transformed the multiple "blood kernels" of the so-called "races" into a 'superior form of nation'--i.e. a folk. And, in the process, transcended the traditional classification of "races" with a new, qualitative one.]

[As another note, according to the debate as it was written by Strasser, Hitler placed importance on "Nordic" character, but he also said the Chinese have a Nordic elite, which makes no biological sense, suggesting "Nordic" is being used as a general social construct here. According to Strasser's transcript of the debate, Hitler also sided with the British against the Indian independence movement, but during the war Hitler allied with and personally met with Socialist Subhas Chandra Bose.]


Gregor Strasser was ousted a few years later after he became tied up in a plot to divide the National Socialist party in their critical moment of ascendance:
Quote
In August 1932, Hitler was offered the job of Vice-Chancellor of Germany by then Chancellor Franz von Papen at the behest of President Paul von Hindenburg, but he refused. Strasser urged him to enter a coalition government, but Hitler saw the offer as placing him in a position of "playing second fiddle".[39][40] While many in his inner circle, like Goebbels, saw his resistance as heroic, Strasser was frustrated and believed Hitler was wrong to hold out for the Chancellorship. The ideological and personal rivalry with Hitler grew when the successor Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher had discussions with Strasser as to becoming Vice-Chancellor in December 1932.[41] Schleicher hoped to split the NSDAP with Strasser's help, pulling the left wing of the NSDAP to his "national conservative" side to stop Hitler.[16] Hitler was furious and demanded that Strasser refuse Schleicher's offer.[16] At a meeting of Nazi Reichstag members Hitler confronted the 30-40 that supported Strasser, forcing them to publicly support the former and denounce the latter.[40] Strasser resigned from his party offices on 8 December 1932, just seven weeks before the NSDAP obtained political power.[42] Hitler temporarily took over the post of Reichsorganisationsleiter, eventually turning it over to Robert Ley. [43] On 16 January 1933, Hitler "publicly repudiated Strasser" for his interactions with Schleicher.[44] In March 1933, Strasser officially exited politics by renouncing his Reichstag seat.[45]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Strasser#Conflicts_with_Hitler

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2022, 12:46:11 am »
Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's most loyal party members, worked for the Strassers when he joined the party. In 1926, Goebbel's own faith in Hitler was shaken when Hitler made clear he would not compromise on his break from Marxist Socialism. Reading between the lines, Goebbels was a straight up Marxist far-left Socialist when he joined the party!!! Hitler was able to convince Goebbels of the merits of a fully anti-Marxist Socialism, but not the Strassers.

Quote
In late 1924, Goebbels offered his services to Karl Kaufmann, who was Gauleiter (Nazi Party district leader) for the Rhine-Ruhr District. Kaufmann put him in touch with Gregor Strasser, a leading Nazi organiser in northern Germany, who hired him to work on their weekly newspaper and undertake secretarial work for the regional party offices.[40] He was also put to work as party speaker and representative for Rhineland-Westphalia.[41] Members of Strasser's northern branch of the Nazi Party, including Goebbels, had a more socialist outlook than the rival Hitler group in Munich.[42] Strasser disagreed with Hitler on many parts of the party platform, and in November 1926 began working on a revision.[43]

Hitler viewed Strasser's actions as a threat to his authority, and summoned 60 Gauleiters and party leaders, including Goebbels, to a special conference in Bamberg, in Streicher's Gau of Franconia, where he gave a two-hour speech repudiating Strasser's new political programme.[44] Hitler was opposed to the socialist leanings of the northern wing, stating it would mean "political bolshevization of Germany."
[...]
Goebbels was horrified by Hitler's characterisation of socialism as "a Jewish creation" and his assertion that a Nazi government would not expropriate private property. He wrote in his diary: "I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That's the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away."[45]

After reading Hitler's book Mein Kampf, Goebbels found himself agreeing with Hitler's assertion of a "Jewish doctrine of Marxism".[46] In February 1926, Goebbels gave a speech titled "Lenin or Hitler?" in which he asserted that communism or Marxism could not save the German people, but he believed it would cause a "socialist nationalist state" to arise in Russia.[47] In 1926, Goebbels published a pamphlet titled Nazi-Sozi which attempted to explain how National Socialism differed from Marxism.[48]

In hopes of winning over the opposition, Hitler arranged meetings in Munich with the three Greater Ruhr Gau leaders, including Goebbels.[49] Goebbels was impressed when Hitler sent his own car to meet them at the railway station. That evening, Hitler and Goebbels both gave speeches at a beer hall rally.[49] The following day, Hitler offered his hand in reconciliation to the three men, encouraging them to put their differences behind them.[50] Goebbels capitulated completely, offering Hitler his total loyalty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Nazi_activist

----

Don't just read between the lines, read Goebbels's own thoughts.

(Feel free to fact check these sources. Even if some are mistranslations or fake, I doubt a majority of them are!)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels


Quote
Communism. Jewry. I am a German Communist.

   -(diary entry: 1924) Published in: Peter Longerich. (2015). Goebbels: A Biography. “Erinnerungsblätter,” 27, Part 1, Volume 1, page 27.

Quote
The social is a stopgap. Socialism is the ideology of the future.

   -Open Letter to Ernst Graf zu Reventlow in the Völkische Freiheit, 1925, as quoted in Goebbels: A Biography, Peter Longerich (2015), p. 55

Quote
You and I, we are fighting each other but we are not really enemies. By doing so we are dividing our strength, and we shall never reach our goal. Maybe the final extremity will bring us together. Maybe.

   -Nationalsozialismus oder Bolschewismus? (National Socialism or Bolshevism), open letter to “My Friends on the Left,” Nationalsozialistische Briefe (National Socialist Letters), (Oct. 15, 1925); Joseph Gobbles, Quoted in The Devil’s Disciples, Anthony Read, W. W. Norton & Company, 2005, p. 142

The "Lenin or Hitler" speech was not a red scare speech directed towards rightists, but a speech to convince leftists that National Socialism was superior to Communism!
Quote
Düsseldorf; big red posters up. Lenin or Hitler! Thundering attendance. All of them communists. They want to state a disturbance. I grip them in no time and do not let go for two hours. We are making progress.

   -9 October 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, (1963)

Quote
Communism is nothing but a grotesque distortion of true Socialist thought. We and we alone could become the genuine Socialists in Germany, or for that matter, in Europe.

   -Letter to Count E. Von Reventlow (mid 1920s), quoted in Joseph Goebbels: A Biography, Curt Riess, Hollis and Carter, London (1949) p. 37
   [Perhaps written after 1926, when Hitler had fully convinced Goebbels of the merits of anti-Marxist Socialism.]

Quote
One class has fulfilled its historical mission and is about to yield to another. The bourgeoisie has to yield to the working class ... Whatever is about to fall should be pushed. We are all soldiers of the revolution. We want the workers' victory over filthy lucre. That is socialism.

   -Quoted in Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death, Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel, New York, NY, Skyhorse Publishing, 2010 p. 25, conversation with Hertha Holk

Quote
And in the last analysis better to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal capitalist servitude.

   -23 October 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, (1963)

Quote
National and socialist! What comes first and what second? For us in the West there can be no doubt. First the socialist redemption, then, like a hurricane, national liberation.

   -11 September 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, (1963)

Quote
Speech in the evening. Almost exclusively port workers. One proper communist. I am almost at one with him.

   -14 November 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, (1963)

Quote
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.

   -Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
(Holy ****, Goebbels was a SJW?!?)

Quote
We demand a strict social justice, work and livelihood for the broad masses, residences and bread and thus life joy for the German worker.

   -“The German Worker,” Der Angriff (24 August 1930), as quoted in English translation Attack: Essays from the Time of Struggle, RJG Enterprises (2010) p. 292

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)
, quoted in Wolfgang Venohr’s book: Documents of German existence: 500 years of German national history 1445-1945, Athenäum Verlag, 1980, p. 291.

In German: "Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhaßter als der rechtsstehende nationale Besitzbürgerblock"

Quote
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. We have no intention of begging for that right… Since the political powers of the day are neither willing nor able to create such a situation, socialism must be fought for. It is a fighting slogan both inwardly and outwardly. It is aimed domestically at the bourgeois parties and Marxism at the same time, because both are sworn enemies of the coming workers’ state. It is directed abroad at all powers that threaten our national existence and thereby the possibility of the coming socialist national state.

   -“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?” written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932)

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This is only a tiny fraction of the leftist content from Goebbels's Wikiquote page. I have not read or posted all the quotes. Feel free to read some others and post the best!

----

Goebbels also wrote a pamphlet titled "Nazi-Sozi", which explicitly emphasizes the role Socialism played in National Socialism, as well as critiques the Marxist ideas of the proletariat and bourgeois from a clearly leftist angle. (Which would only make sense if he was writing for a left-wing audience to convert them a better form of leftism.)

Of course, enemies eventually dropped the "Sozi" part of the nickname...

Quote
The Class Struggle

   [critics:]
"That means that you've become a party supporting the class struggle! You called yourself the Workers' Party! That was the first step. You called yourself Socialist. That was the second. Now you're talking about a middle-class one-class State. That's the third and last step."

"Is there even anything left now to set you apart from Marxism?"
[...]
   [Goebbels:]
Really, there's nothing more hypocritical than a well-fed citizen protesting against the working class idea of class struggle.

You made it through the winter all snug and comfortable. Your very person is provocative of class struggle. What gives you the right to puff yourself up, all swelled with the pride of national responsibility, against the struggle of the working class?
[...]
Yes, we call ourselves the Workers' Party! That's the first step. The first step away from the middle-class State! We call ourselves the Workers' Party because we want to make work free, because for us, productive work is the driving force of history, because work means more to us than possessions, education, niveau and a middle-class background do!

That's why we call ourselves the Workers' Party!

Social and Socialist

Yes, we call ourselves Socialist, That's the second step. The second step away from the middle-class State. We call ourselves Socialist in protest against the lie of social middle-class pity. We don't want pity, and we don't want social-mindedness. We don't care a hoot for that which you call 'social welfare legislation.' That's barely enough to keep body and soul together.

We want the rights to which nature and the law entitle us.

We want our full share of what Heaven gave us, and of the returns from our physical and mental labors.

And that's Socialism!
[...]
Nationalist and Socialist

Then we will prove that nationalism is more than a comfortable moral theology of middle-class wealth and Capitalist profit. The cesspool of corruption and depravity will then yield to new nationalism as a radical form of national self-defense, and to new Socialism as the most conscious creation of its requisite preconditions.

Despair of Marxism

"You speak of Socialism! But after a 60-year struggle for Socialism which has resulted in the complete undoing of the ideal of the State, is the German worker not justified in despairing of Socialism and the future of his social class?"

Never! Consider:

1. He has not fought for 60 years for Socialism, but for Marxism. And Marxism, with its theories destructive of peoples and races, is the exact opposite of Socialism.

2. Marxism was never the German worker's ideal of the State. He accepted this jumble of Jewish ideas only because there were no other choices open to him in his struggle for the freedom of his class.

3. Marxism is the graveyard not only for national peoples but also particularly for the one class that fights whole-heartedly for its realization: the working class.

It is therefore not the worker's right to give up on Socialism, but rather his duty to give up on Marxism. The sooner he does so, the better for him. The clock is about to strike midnight."
[...]
Anti-Semitism

"You make a big fuss about being opposed to the Jews. Today, in the 20th century, isn't anti-Semitism passe? Aren't the Jews human beings too? Aren't there also decent Jews?"
   [note: the particular translation I've taken this from says "white Jews", but a different translation suggests this is slang and should be properly translated as "decent Jews":
   https://web.archive.org/web/20220105012759/https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/nazi-sozi.htm ]

Isn't it a bad sign for us that we 60 million Germans are afraid of two million Jews?

Careful! Try to think logically:

1. If we were only anti-Semitic, then yes, that would indeed be passe. But we are also Socialist. We can't have one without the other: Socialism, that is, the freedom of the German workers, and thus of the German nation, can only be achieved in opposition to the Jews, and because we want Germany's liberty, and Socialism, we are anti-Semitic.
[...]
The Middle Class

"Aren't Marxists perhaps right after all when they say that the NSDAP is just a petty middle-class movement whose leadership consists of failed officers, students and doctors? How is a worker to believe that these could possibly liberate  him? You won't be able to convince him that workers can only be liberated by workers."

That's a lot of nonsense all in one breath. Listen:

1. The NSDAP is not a petty middle-class movement, but rather, on the contrary, a protest against the bourgeoisification of Socialism in a social democracy.
[...]
3. You ask, how could they possibly liberate the workers? If your question is to be justified, then the workers will first of all have to rid the labor movement of that horde of Jewish literati who call themselves leaders of the working class and in actual fact misuse the labor movement for their own despicable aims.
[...]
Proletariat and Working Class

"So if I understand you correctly, the NSDAP is a proletarian party under bourgeois leadership?"

I see; you can only think in terms of concepts from a time quickly becoming extinct. The Germany that we want represents an overcoming of all these old, antiquated concepts. We are neither bourgeois nor proletarian. The concepts of the bourgeoisie is dead, and that of the proletariat will never rise again. We neither want that which is coming to an end today in the form of a middle-class world, nor that which the Jews and their servants strive for as Marxist-proletarian future.

We want a Germany of the working class. What does that mean? It means that we want a Germany in which work and achievement are the highest moral and political standards. That's why we are a Workers Party in the truest sense of the term. Once we have gained the power of the State, Germany will be a nation of labor, a working-class State.
[...]
the historical role of the middle class is at an end and will have to yield to the creative force of a younger, healthier class.

It will be replaced by the younger class of— we don't say of the proletariat; because that is a slander on German workers — of the working class. This working class includes everything that works for Germany and towards her future: muscle and intellect.

Muscle will be guided by intellect and intellect will ensure the consistent support lent to it by the creative power of force in order to build up its new German State. This inter-reliance of intellect and muscle will perforce unite the workers of both sides. For as long as the Jews make up the German workers' leadership, they will use the misrepresentations of the International to blur the dividing line.
[...]
International and National

"In other words: you want to counter the International of Marxism with the nationalism of German Socialism?"

Exactly! Finally we've begun to understand each other!

[...]
But the goal of this fight is never, by no means, a World Republic of Socialism — there has never been any such thing and there never will be; it exists only in the minds of Jewish traitors to the working class, and of misled German workers. The true goal is the establishment of new nationalistic Socialist states.
[...]
Production and Nationalization

"That's all well and good. But all this has been only talk. Now, the pivotal point: how do you envision the solution to the social problem?"

To get to the bottom of this question: what is the nature of the social problem? Seventeen million workers are unconditionally at the mercy of Capitalism, which has complete control over all methods of production; they are thus forced to sell their own, their only capital — their power of work — at the lowest possible price. And for this reason, they rightly feel cast out from a society (by whatever name: people, state or nation) which silently tolerates the situation. Under such conditions, the security of the people breaks down, and they become divided into two factions — one which wants to see this state protected, and one which wants to go up against it. Through such internal division, this nation is eliminated as power of consequence in the grand scale of history.

The solution to the social problem is therefore nothing more nor less than the social reintegration of a part of the population, its decisive involvement in ail matters of political and economic importance, and, in this way, the reintegration of our nation into the grand course of history.

Towards this end, we demand:

1. Everything that nature has given the people: land, rivers, mountains, forests, the natural resources both above and below the ground, the air — all this in principle belongs to the people as a whole. If anyone owns these, he is in effect the trustee of the people's property, and must consider himself accountable to the State and the nation. If he manages the possessions entrusted to him poorly or in a manner detrimental to the good of the whole, then the State has the right to terminate his ownership and to give his possessions back to the people as a whole.
[...]
Germany's Freedom

"And what will be the end result of all this?"

The end result will be the freedom of the German people on German soil.
[...]
This future will be ours, or it will not be at all.

Liberalism will die so that Socialism may live.

Marxism will die so that Nationalism may live.

And then we will shape the new Germany —
the nationalistic, Socialist Third Reich!
https://archive.org/details/NaziSozi/page/n1/mode/2up


Hitler and Goebbels had ideologically reconciled in April 1926, so by this date they were in ideological agreement with one another. Goebbels's Nazi-Sozi pamphlet was first published at some point in 1926 (I'm not sure what month). It was republished in 1927, and published again by the party in 1931.

There can be no explanation for why a far-right party would allow this to be officially republished multiple times, especially since Hitler was personally aware of Goebbels's leftist attitudes.

Reading this pamphlet, there can be no mistaking that it was written for a leftist audience.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2022, 12:49:41 am »
Lol, about 2/3s of the "quotes about Goebbels" section on Wikiquotes are about people emphasizing his leftism.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Quotes_about_Goebbels

Quote
It was Strasser’s radicalism, his belief in the ‘socialism’ of National Socialism, which attracted the young Goebbels. Both wanted to build the party on the proletariat. The diary of Goebbels is full of expressions of sympathy for Communism at this time.

   -William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York: NY Simon & Schuster (2011), first published 1960, pp. 126-127
(Shirer is a leading mainstream scholar on NS Germany. Even if we may not respect an anti-NS historian's narrative, even he acknowledges Goebbels's leftism.)

Quote
Goebbels and some other northern leaders thought of themselves as revolutionaries, with more in common with the Communists than with the hated bourgeoisie.

   -Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, (1999) p. 272
(Kershaw is another leading mainstream scholar on NS Germany and he agrees. You can find a lot of blogs and news articles attempting to claim that the idea of the Strassers/"northern wing" being leftist is just a 'myth'. But two of the leading mainstream historians on NS Germany both agree they were straight up Communist leaning. If that isn't "leftist", I don't know what is.)

Quote
The National Socialist-Labor Party, of which Adolf Hitler is patron and father, persists in believing Lenin and Hitler can be compared or contrasted in a party meeting. Two weeks ago an attempted discussion of this subject left to one death, sixty injuries and $5,000 damages to beer glasses, tables, chairs, windows and chandeliers in Chemnitz. Last night DR. Göebells tried the experiment in Berlin and only police intervention prevented a repetition of the Chemnitz affair. On the speaker's assertion that Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight, a faction war opened with whizzing beer glasses. When this sort of ammunition was exhausted a free fight in which fists and knives played important roles was indulged in. Later a gang marched to the offices of the Socialist paper Vorärts and smashed plate-glass windows. Police made nineteen arrest.

   -Anonymous, Hitlerite Riot in Berlin: Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler to Lenin, New York Times (November 28, 1925)
Wikiquote tries to add a disclaimer that "New York Times's reporting on Communism was neither unbiased nor accurate" during this time period. But here's Goebbels's account:
Quote
On to Chemnitz. Speech to two thousand communists. Meeting quiet and factual. At the end devastating free-for-all fight. A thousand beer glasses smashed. Hundred and fifty wounded, thirty seriously, two dead.

   -23 November 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, (1963)


If the Night of the Long Knives (1934) was intended as a purge of the left-wing elements of the party (as False Leftists often claim), it would make no sense to allow Joseph Goebbels to live, let alone continue serving in his prominent position in the party. In fact, Goebbels was one of the architects of the purge, and I believe Hitler even criticized him for the setbacks the party would face from it. (I was unable to find the quote regarding this.)

In 1924, the same year he joined the National Socialist party, Goebbels literally wrote in his diary that he was a Communist. Why would he join a far-right party? Why would a former Communist remain loyal to Hitler in the bunker in his final days, while a far-rightist like Himmler engaged in an act of treachery?


If the National Socialist party was far-right, why would Hitler make a point of speaking jointly with the Communist Goebbels, embracing him with tears in his eyes? (Again, note how Hitler even further empowered Strasser as part of his reconciliation. How would it make any sense for a far-rightist to do that? A far-rightist would have disempowered him.)
Quote
The dissent evaporated after this. Strasser made a short statement in which accepted the Führer's leadership and Hitler put his arm around Strasser in a show of comradeship.[15] Strasser agreed to have the recipients of the alternative program return their copies to him.
[...]
Hitler continued his efforts to conciliate with both Strasser and Goebbels. As to Strasser, Hitler approved the establishment of the new publishing house under Strasser's control. He allowed Strasser to merge two Gaue (Westphalia and Rhineland North) into one new and more powerful Gau called the Ruhr Gau, with Goebbels, Pfeffer and Kaufman as a ruling triumvirate. To placate Strasser, he even removed Esser from the party's leadership cadre in April 1926. When Strasser was injured in an automobile accident—his car was hit by a freight train—Hitler visited him in his Landshut home, bearing a large bouquet of flowers and expressions of sympathy.

Hitler wooed Goebbels as well. He invited Goebbels to speak, with Hitler on stage, at the Burgerbraukeller on 8 April 1926, and had the event widely publicized. Hitler's chauffeur, driving the supercharged Mercedes, picked up Goebbels (along with Pfeffer and Kaufman) at the train station and gave them a tour of Munich. Hitler greeted the trio at their hotel and Goebbels confessed to his diary that "his kindness in spite of Bamberg makes us feel ashamed." After Goebbels' speech at the beer hall, the audience responds wildly and Hitler embraces Goebbels, with "tears in his eyes."[citation needed]

The next day Hitler dressed down Goebbels, Pfeffer and Kaufman for their rebelliousness but forgave them, and Goebbels wrote in his journal that "unity follows. Hitler is great." Hitler continued his conversations with Goebbels and invited him to dine in Hitler's apartment, accompanied by Geli, who flirted with the young Goebbels, much to his delight. Later, Hitler took Goebbels on day-long sightseeing tours in Bavaria and when Hitler spoke in Stuttgart, Goebbels was on stage with him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamberg_Conference#Aftermath


Meanwhile, in the USSR, Communists were busy murdering their own left-wing party members who had served with them in the early days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #12 on: January 18, 2022, 12:23:47 am »
What is that one Hitler quote? Along the lines of 'In the early days, wasn't our party made up of mostly left-wing elements'?


It was even a joke within the party that their ranks were made up heavily of former Communists. (Konrad Heiden was Jewish and anti-NS, not a party member, so this phenomenon was clearly well-known.)
Quote
Beefsteak Nazi (Rindersteak Nazi) or "Roast-beef Nazi" was a term used in Nazi Germany to describe communists and socialists who joined the Nazi Party. The Munich-born American historian Konrad Heiden was one of the first to document this phenomenon in his 1936 book Hitler: A Biography, remarking that in the Sturmabteilung (Brownshirts, SA) ranks there were "large numbers of Communists and Social Democrats" and that "many of the storm troops were called 'beefsteaks' – brown outside and red within".[1]
[...]
The term was particularly used for working class members of the SA who were aligned with Strasserism.[2] The term derived from the idea that these individuals were like a "beefsteak"—brown on the outside and red on the inside, with "brown" referring to the colour of the uniforms and "red" to their communist and socialist sympathies.[3]
[...]
After Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, beefsteak Nazis continued during the suppression of both communists and socialists (represented by the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, respectively) in the 1930s and the term was popular as early as 1933.[4]
[...]
Ernst Röhm, a co-founder of the SA and later its commander, had developed within the SA ranks an "expanding Röhm-cult",[5] where many in the SA sought a revolutionary socialist regime, radicalizing the SA.[6] Röhm and large segments of the Nazi Party supported the 25 point National Socialist Program for its socialist, revolutionary and anti-capitalist positions, expecting Hitler to fulfill his promises when power was finally achieved.[6] Since Röhm had "considerable sympathy with the more socialist aspects of the Nazi programme",[7] "turncoat Communists and Socialists joined the Nazi Party for a number of years, where they were derisively known as 'Beefsteak Nazis'."[8]

Röhm's radicalization came to the forefront in 1933–1934 when he sought to have his plebeian SA troopers engage in permanent or "second revolution" after Hitler had become Germany's Chancellor. With 2.5 million Stormtroopers under his command by late 1933,[7] Röhm envisaged a purging of the conservative faction, the "Reaktion" in Germany that would entail more nationalization of industry, "worker control of the means of production" and the "confiscation and redistribution of property and wealth of the upper classes."[9][10] Such ideological and political infighting within the Nazi Party prompted Hitler to have the political rival Röhm and other Nazi socialist radicals executed on the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.

Some have argued that since most SA members came from working-class families or were unemployed, they were amenable to Marxist-leaning socialism.[6] However, historian Thomas Friedrich reports that repeated efforts by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to appeal to the working-class backgrounds of the SA were "doomed to failure" because most SA men were focused on the cult of Hitler and the destruction of the "Marxist enemy".[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefsteak_Nazi

Röhm was not purged for being a leftist Socialist, but because he was a reactionary coup-plotter who threatened national unity. If he was born in the USSR, they would have purged him too.


Quote
In some cities, the numeral strength of party-switching beefsteak Nazis was estimated to be large. Rudolf Diels (the head of the Gestapo from 1933 to 1934) reported that "70 percent" of new SA recruits had been communists in the city of Berlin.[12]
That doesn't seem very right-wing.

----

Speaking of Heiden, let's see what else he has to say about the Socialist aspects of National Socialism. I have not read his whole book; I merely searched for some keywords like "socialism", so there are probably plenty of additional references.


Quote
The fourth to join them was Gottfried Feder, the engineer, a man with a real, though questionable, political idea: he wanted to do away with ‘big money’ or high finance. It was a time of Socialist ferment; for the broad masses capital was the root of all evil, and for the purposes of the new party, Feder had a very fitting answer to the great Socialist question of the day: yes, abolish that part of capital which is totally superfluous, to wit banking capital, which creates no values, but only lays its clutches on interest; but productive capital, expressed in objective values, mines, factories, machines, must be retained.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 90.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n103/mode/2up

Quote
Thus the National Socialist Movement was born, under the sign of the sword. Its program, which Hitler put forward on that February 24, 1920, consisted of twenty-five points. It was written by Hitler, Anton Drexler, Gottfried Feder, and Dietrich Eckart.
[...]
Points 11, 13, and 17 can be called the Socialist part of the program. They embrace two central ideas: the destruction of finance capital and the protection of the creative industrial personality. They also embody a less pronounced tendency to attack large property-holdings as such. The idea that the power of finance capital could be broken by the abolition of capital interest originated with Gottfried Feder. In the beginning, this plan made a tremendous impression on Hitler; not because he approved it from the economic point of view—about such things he admittedly understood nothing—but because Hitler regarded all finance Capital as Jewish capital. Point 13 is intended to protect small business. ‘Taken over by the state’ sounds strongly Socialist, but the main emphasis is not on this; the real meaning of the clause is that the corporations should be eliminated from private business and replaced by small individual enterprises.
[...]
The word 'parliament' is striking. Apparently the founders of the party were not yet clear or not yet agreed concerning one of their chief aims: the replacement of democracy by dictatorship. The original founders, the Drexlers and Harrers, actually did not want a dictatorship. The example of Soviet Russia was too terrifying. They occassionally referred to their party as a 'party of the Left.'

But in demanding a strong central power in the Reich, Hitler impressed his absolute will on his comrades.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 92-95.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n107/mode/2up


(This speech does not seem to be dated, but given the surrounding context, it is from the early days of ~1919-early 1920s.)
Quote
Hitler himself boasted; ‘In our movement the two extremes come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and the students from the Right.[/u][/b] These two have always been the most active elements, and it was the greatest crime that they used to oppose each other in street fights. The Communists were the idealists of socialism; through years of persecution they saw their mortal enemy in the officer; while the officers fought the Communists because they inevitably saw the mortal enemy of their fatherland in the proletarian led astray by the Jew. Our party has already succeeded in uniting these two utter extremes within the ranks of our storm troops. They will form the core of the great German liberation movement, in which all without distinction will stand together when die day comes to say: The nation arises, the storm is breaking!’
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 147.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n159/mode/2up

Quote
The Strassers and Goebbels now founded a Strasser party in the Hitler party. Its program was anti-capitalistic, even nihilistic. Germany must be built up in a socialist ‘corporate form’; everything opposed to this goal would be shattered in a great cataclysm; and it was the aim of the National Socialists to hasten this cataclysm. What Gregor Strasser meant by the cataclysm was an alliance of Germany with Bolshevik Russia, with Gandhi’s rebellious India, with the anti-British Soviet-supported revolutionary movement of China, with the Kuomintang under the leadership of Chiang Kaishek. In short, with all the forces of destruction against democracy; with the ‘young,’ in part colored, peoples of the East against the declining West; with Bolshevism against capitalism; with—as Houston Stewart Chamberlain would have put it—the Tartarized Slavs against Wall Street, with world doom against Versailles.

‘The class struggle, like all things, has its two sides,’ said Goebbels publicly, and among friends be insisted that the National Socialist Party must above all be socialist and proletarian. He wrote an open letter to a Communist opponent, assuring him that Communism was really the same thing as National Socialism: ‘You and I are fighting one another, but we are not really enemies. Our forces are split up and we never reach our goal.’

Strasser and Goebbels believed in 1925 that the party belonged to the Proletariat; Hitler intended that the party should capture the Proletariat and bold it in check; especially that fifty per cent of the Proletariat which ‘glorify theft, call high treason a duty, regard courageous defense of the fatherland as an idiocy, call religion opium for the people.’ They actually are enemies within: ‘Fifty per cent have no other wish but to smash the state; they consciously feel themselves to be advance guards of a foreign state’—and rightly so; for ‘we must not forget that our nation is racially composed of the most varied elements; the slogan “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” is a demonstration of the will of men who do possess a certain kinship with analogous nations of a lower cultural level.’
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 287.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n299/mode/2up

Quote
He coldly ordered his deputies to withdraw their bill for expropriation of the bank and stock exchange princes. This they did in a silent rage. Thereupon the Communists indulged in the joke of reintroducing the bill in the exact National Socialist wording. Hitler commanded his followers to vote against their own bill, and they did so. Laughter in parliament and all over the country. Hitler saw that every time his party grew he had to conquer it afresh, break it and smooth the edges. These deputies, often unknown to him personally, still took the program seriously; many honestly regarded themselves as a kind of socialist.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 407.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n419/mode/2up

Quote
In the course of 1932, Strasser’s face had become imprinted on the consciousness of the German masses. He publicized himself as the socialist in the party, and no other party leaders equaled him in mass appeal. Within the party machine he had built up a sort of labor movement, known as the N.S.B.O. (National Socialist Organization of Shop Cells). It was a part of the ‘state within the state,’ which Strasser had made of the party apparatus. His idea was that when the National Socialists seized power, they would march into the Wilhelmstrasse, not as a single minister or chancellor, but with a whole ready-made government; they would discard the old state completely and set an entirely new one in its place. This type of party had cost him a hard fight with Hitler. Hitler had feared Strasser’s machine, which, to his mind, embodied too much planning and preparation; too little fighting and propaganda. The semi-socialist manifestoes and inflation plans of this machine had attracted many voters, but had aroused the business men among Hitler’s friends; Schacht had warned Hitler to stop making economic promises. Hitler decided to dissolve the economic planning apparatus headed by Gottfried Feder. Now it was said that the Leader was against socialism, but that Strasser wanted to save the socialism of the party.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 499.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n511/mode/2up

Quote
Under Goebbels’s direction, the parvenus now staged a great victory celebration; the outward occasion was the convening of the newly elected Reichstag. As the scene, Goebbels had chosen the grave of Frederick the Great, that Prussian King whom the National Socialists rather unaccountably proclaimed as the first German socialist.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 574.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n587/mode/2up

(How could Communists practice entryism into a far-right group to stealthily convert them into "revolutionary communist" cells? It would only make sense if National Socialism was leftist.)
Quote
Göring was present at the meeting; he stepped forward and added: ‘...not only has German National Socialism been victorious, but German socialism as well.’ ... Even the Communists, who had originally conceived things differently, began to give out the watchword: Go into the National Socialist organizations and bore from within; turn them into revolutionary cells.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 590.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n603/mode/2up

Quote
While in Germany, fascism could claim to be fighting for a socialism which the Marxists had betrayed, Austrian fascism had to attack a socialism in which the tenets of Marxism had been partially realized.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 608.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n621/mode/2up

Quote
Among younger men, it was almost a matter of course to call this future economic order ‘socialism.’ The twenty-six-year-old Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler youth, who could boast of Standing close to Hitler, declared bluntly in those revolutionary June [1933] weeks: ‘A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany.’

Despite the rhetoric, these words did express the sound sentiment that socialism, like every great political idea, demanded above all a mental attitude on the part of the people, and that objective conditions were only secondary. But if this socialism were to be described in economic terms, it was clear that it could not mean an egalitarian elimination of private property. On the contrary, private property was not to be eliminated, but restored; for in this view, capitalism was the real enemy of private property, while socialism meant that one man’s property would be equal—in importance and dignity—to another’s.

For private property—in Hitler’s view—belonged, along with superior strength, superior intelligence, and higher discipline, to the characteristics by which the higher race is distinguished. The uneven distribution of wealth came from the same causes as the organization of nations; from the interaction between races of different ‘value’; from the superiority of the stronger race over the weaker. As soon as these two racial types came together, or, in Hitler’s words, ‘as soon as this process of nation and state formation was initiated, the Communist age of society was past. The primitive faculty of one race creates different values from the more highly developed or divergent faculty of another. And consequently, the fruits of labor will be distributed with a view to achievement’
[...]
For ‘common good’ always dominates private interest; this is ‘socialism,’ and property could not continue to exist without this socialism.
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 642.
https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n655/mode/2up

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2022, 12:26:51 am »

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #14 on: January 18, 2022, 12:31:21 am »
Heiden published other books in 1932 and 1934. The following text is from an English-language translation which combined the two books and was published in 1934.


Quote
And it was no mere quixotry but a fine sensitiveness to popular feeling that caused Drexler to reproach himself for having sung that chorus with his comrades. He perceived that the fate of Germany depended less upon lances than upon the national character. ‘The German Socialist spirit will put the world to rights.’ The salvation of Germany from international capitalism—‘the parasite upon the German body’—was to be found in Socialism. In reality there was little difference between the theory of a German Socialism that should confer benefits upon the world and the practice of an International in which German Social Democracy formed the most powerful party. Drexler quotes Scheidemann’s words with approval: The War is not being fought to benefit solely the great industrialists and large farmers, but also for the sake of the workers in factories and workshops, mines, and fields. Majority Socialism—Left Wing Socialists called its adherents the ‘Kaiser’s Socialists’—would have been acceptable to many present-day Nazis.
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London: Methuen and Co. Page 2.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17342/page/n19/mode/2up

As far as I can tell the "Majority Socialist Party" is an informal term referring to the faction in control of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). For example, this 1919 article says they have 160 members in the Weimar National Assembly, which can only be the SPD:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050403233104/https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1919/03/outlook.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weimar_National_Assembly_seating_chart.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_National_Assembly

Quote
The SPD was established in 1863, and is the oldest political party represented in the Bundestag. It was one of the earliest Marxist-influenced parties in the world. From the 1890s through the early 20th century, the SPD was Europe's largest Marxist party, and the most popular political party in Germany.[6] During the First World War, the party split between a pro-war mainstream and the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party, of which some members went on to form the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The SPD played a leading role in the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and was responsible for the foundation of the Weimar Republic. SPD politician Friedrich Ebert served as the first President of Germany and the SPD stayed in power until 1932.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany


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At first Eckart was no more than a well-wisher of the German Workers Party. His real interests were in the ‘Union of German Citizens’ which he tried to establish in May 1919, with a proclamation that ran:

‘Is the factory-hand not a citizen? Is every propertied person a good-for-nothing, a capitalist? Down with envy! Down with pomp and false appearances! Our aim is to regain simplicity and to be once more German. Our demand is true Socialism. Power should only be given to him who has German blood alone in his veins!’
[...]
Some time had still to pass before Eckart discovered that his ‘Union of Citizens’ already existed in the German Workers Party.

Feder indoctrinated the German Workers Party with scientific notions. He was a constructional engineer who had worked abroad and also as an independent contractor. At the age of thirty-five in 1918 Feder suddenly thought of a plan for the abolition of interest. He spent a whole night in drafting a memorandum which he subsequently handed to the Bavarian Government only to receive the customary polite acknowledgement. He thus became a disappointed doctrinaire fighting for the public recognition of his favourite theories. Gottfried Feder gave the Nazi Party an ideology. Its essential points were paramount State ownership of land and the prohibition of private sales of land, the substitution of German for Roman law, nationalization of the banks and the abolition of interest by an amortization service. It was he, too, who inspired the Party with its doctrine of the distinction between productive and non-productive capital and of the necessity for destroying the ‘slavery of profits.’ On the subject of the Jews, Feder displayed comparative tolerance. He proposed to exclude them from all legal and educational posts and to declare them unfitted to be leaders of the German nation. Nevertheless they were to be permitted to send representatives to the Reichstag in proportion to their numbers. As for all other projects for the future, ‘these need not be mentioned here since they are to be found in the demands put forward by other Left Parties.’ Thus Feder in the Völkischer Beobachier (then the Münchener Beobachter) of May 31, 1919. (In those days the Nazi Party was still a Party of the Left.) Moreover, Feder gave Hitler many of his ideas. History knows such Archimedean natures who can only accomplish great achievements after another has given them an idea or what passes for an idea.
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London: Methuen and Co. Page 6-7.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17342/page/7/mode/2up


Check this out, Heiden says it was unlikely that Hitler truly intended to join the "Majority Socialist Party" because they were TOO RIGHTIST (despite the SPD apparently being the largest Marxist-influenced political party in Europe, according to the Wikipedia page quoted above), while the predecessor to the NSDAP was "A PARTY OF THE LEFT".

Also, maybe I am assuming too much, but does this not seem to imply the Reichswehr may have instructed Hitler to join and gather intelligence on the DAP because they feared it may have been involved in Communist agitation? (i.e. if this conjecture is accurate, then it is more evidence the party was firmly leftist.)
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It was nevertheless the Reichswehr which sent Corporal Adolf Hitler as a political liaison officer into the German Workers Party.

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. After the capture of Munich by the Reichswehr and the Volunteer Corps, Hitler was attached to the Second Infantry Regiment for duty that would certainly not have been to every one’s taste. He joined the staff of the commission that had been established to investigate the events of the Bolshevist revolution in Munich and drew up indictments against persons suspected of complicity in the revolution.
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

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The year 1919 passed amid the most absurd and violent dissensions within the membership. In particular, the ‘national chairman’ Harrer did not wish to bring forward No. 7 [Hitler] as speaker. He thought fairly highly of him, but simply did not consider that Hitler was an orator; and even his first successes did not change Harrer’s opinion. When in October 1919 Hitler spoke for the first time in the comparative publicity of an audience of something over a hundred people, Harrer at the conclusion stepped on to the platform and uttered a warning against noisy anti-Semitism. For at this period the youthful Party still felt itself to be a Party of the Left.
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London: Methuen and Co. Page 9-10.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17342/page/9/mode/2up

It seems to suggest Strasser was responsible for this, but doesn't say Hitler criticized him:
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At the beginning of November [1932] a strike of transport workers broke out in Berlin, which partially paralysed the town for several days, and its effects looked uncommonly like a general strike. The National Socialists were obliged willy-nilly to join in this affray with waving banners, although the strike had been called by the Communists and rejected by the regular Trade Unions. The idea of their joining in a strike shoulder to shoulder with Communists roused horror in a section of the bourgeois electorate.
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London: Methuen and Co. Page 190.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17342/page/189/mode/2up


I think that is enough quotes from Heiden to demonstrate the point. You are welcome to read through the books and post other examples.