True Left
History => Colonial Era => Topic started by: guest5 on March 06, 2021, 02:26:54 pm
-
Calling National Socialism "reactionary" is Marxist terminology.
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
We are the full counterpart of the French Revolution — Adolf Hitler
We are not a charitable institution but a Party of revolutionary socialists. — Joseph Goebbels
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9a/83/e0/9a83e03f705136285608bf43aa2f6404.jpg)
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....
-
OLD CONTENT
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
-
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.
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).
[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.
-
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.)
-
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.)
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.
-
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.
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.
[...]
-
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.
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.
-
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.
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.
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.
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.
-
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:
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!
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.
-
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.
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
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.)
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:
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
-
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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)
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.]
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
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)
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)
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)
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?!?)
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
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"
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)
----
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...
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.
-
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
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.)
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.)
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:
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.)
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
-
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.)
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.
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.
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
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.)
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
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
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
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
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.)
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
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
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
-
(https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-003737025509185ff7c84b815bd7a65a-pjlq)
-
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.
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
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
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.)
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
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:
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.
-
Firstly, thank you very much for your excellent work, as always.
"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."
A major problem is that Marxism only considers consequentially post-capitalist systems as candidates for socialism, because in Marx's worldview, socialism is what happens after people have tried and are fed up with capitalism. Thus pre-capitalist systems which in practice may be closer to versions of socialism that we favour are ignored altogether, or at best dismissed under a blanket label of "feudalism".
Recall the following excerpt from Aryanism.net:
Marx, while critical of capitalism itself, viewed the spread of capitalism to non-Western countries via Western colonialism as an indirectly beneficial development for his own ends, as only thus would non-Western societies be thrust into economic conditions that make communist revolution attractive, whereas communist revolution would have been a much harder sell to non-Western countries had they remained pre-capitalist. Incidentally, this makes it inconsistent for any serious anti-communist to believe in Western superiority.
http://aryanism.net/wp-content/uploads/no-usury.jpg
If we judge purely by practical characteristics instead of causality in relation to capitalism, it would make a lot of sense to classify the system described in the image link as a potentially socialist system. The only reason this is rarely done by self-proclaimed present-day socialists is because most (False Leftists) are progressives, and hence presume that whatever came before capitalism must have been even worse than capitalism, and thus do not deserve the name of socialism (which is supposed to denote something better than capitalism). Only True Leftists and hence regressives are willing to imagine that socialism was historically common until interrupted by capitalism.
Let's go back to the definition of socialism I proposed on Aryanism.net:
Socialism is the belief that state intervention is essential to realistically combatting social injustice, and that it is the moral duty of the state to so intervene. It is based on the view that the stateless system (e.g. free markets) is rigged against true merit in favour of non-merit-based competitive advantages, a problem which can therefore only be remedied by adding rules to the system, where the rules have been derived with the promotion of merit in mind, and function as to nullify the non-merit-based competitive advantages.
State intervention was taken for granted in pre-capitalist systems, and there are many examples of ancient rulers motivated by social justice in their decision-making. I therefore propose that we should describe such rulers as socialists, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism#Early_socialism
The economy of the 3rd century BCE Mauryan Empire of India, an absolute monarchy, has been described by some scholars as "a socialized monarchy" and "a sort of state socialism" due to "nationalisation of industries".[85][86]
Basically, a socialist is anyone who wants to use the state to help superior losers defeat inferior winners. This goes beyond narrowly economic applications. For example, it would be a socialist belief* to consider that A will do a better job as a ruler, but B will be better at seizing power, and hence (in absence of state intervention) B will become the next ruler and then do a bad job. Thus an existing socialist ruler would not sit back and let A and B compete for power, but would hand power over to A directly, and perhaps kill B** in order to make things safe for A. Thus the belief that an existing ruler should choose their own successor (absolute monarchism) could be interpreted as an aspect of socialism (as indeed Fuehrerprinzip is an aspect of National Socialism).
(* In contrast, a non-socialist would believe that the one who is better at seizing power will necessarily be the one who will also do the better job as a ruler.)
(** A National Socialist would not only kill B but eliminate B's bloodline.)
-
A major problem is that Marxism only considers consequentially post-capitalist systems as candidates for socialism, because in Marx's worldview, socialism is what happens after people have tried and are fed up with capitalism.
They technically acknowledged that pre-state hunter-gatherer societies theoretically resembled a communist society:
The original idea of primitive communism is rooted in ideas of the noble savage through the works of Rousseau[6] and the early anthropology of Morgan and Parker.[7][8][9] Engels offered the first detailed elaboration upon that of primitive communism in 1884, with the publication of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.[7][10] Engels categorised primitive communist societies into two phases, the "wild" (hunter-gatherer) phase that lacked permanent superstructure and had close relationships with the natural world, and the "barbarian" phase which was structure like the populations ancient Germany[8] beyond the borders of the Roman Empire and the Indigenous peoples of North America before the colonisation by Europeans.[11] Marx and Engels used the term more broadly than Marxists did later, and applied it not only to hunter-gatherers but also to some subsistence agriculture communities.[12] There is also no agreement among later scholars, including Marxists, on the historical extent, or longevity, of primitive communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism
But I think you are correct that they would not have considered these or later state societies as candidates for being able to live in "real" socialism, since they did not meet the economic conditions to "progress" to the higher stage of "real" socialism. In other words, "primitive communists" could not remain primitive forever, and thus their forms of government were not taken as serious candidates for a stable socialism.
Apparently "woke" Communists, however, have attempted to take these "primitives" more seriously. I.e., such scholars are moving away from orthodox Marxism to True Leftism:
Debate
[...]
Use of the term "primitive"
"Primitive" in recent anthropological and social studies has begun to fall out of use due to racial stereotypes surrounding the ideas of what "primitive" is.[34][113][114][51][50][115] Such a move has been supported by indigenous peoples who have faced racial stereotyping and violence due to being viewed as "primitive".[116][117] Due to this the term "primitive communism" may be replaced by terms such as Pre-Marxist communism.[118]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism#Use_of_the_term_%22primitive%22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Marxist_communism
It is only after they abandon the communist definition of what "socialism" means that these scholars will actually get anywhere.
----
I think your definition of socialism is great and concise, although this raises the question as to what "merit" means.
Socialism is the belief that state intervention is essential to realistically combatting social injustice, and that it is the moral duty of the state to so intervene. It is based on the view that the stateless system (e.g. free markets) is rigged against true merit in favour of non-merit-based competitive advantages, a problem which can therefore only be remedied by adding rules to the system, where the rules have been derived with the promotion of merit in mind, and function as to nullify the non-merit-based competitive advantages.
Obviously, a rightist would disagree with socialism entirely since they believe an individual possessing a natural competitive advantage _is_ merit/virtue in and of itself.
I think how one defines merit traces back to how they define the "social idea" behind their socialism. The implementation of political socialism is what is necessary to achieve the "social idea" of making society meritorious. I think in this sense, the early-20th-century vocabulary "social idea" is synonymous with today's vocabulary "social justice". (In the sense that today "social justice" is more than just a word--it means the core emotion of what moves the passion of sincere leftists; the abstract animating force behind the political movement).
Ok, so we use state power to achieve social justice. But what does that look like? I suppose for communists, that is (exclusively?) economic. The economic have-nots receive "justice" by taking a turn as the slave master over the land-owners and business-owners (which actually includes non-evil people and people who managed to build a successful business due to actual talent, as well as non-productive parasitic elites like financial speculators and talentless hacks who inherited great wealth). As Hitler recognized, that is not "real" socialism. That is not real social justice; that does not really improve the fabric of society.
I am sure there are other definitions from the main site which concisely summarize what we mean by social justice. Off the top of my head, could we say that to us, true social justice means complete freedom, which requires eliminating all forms of exploitation (to humans and non-humans), which necessarily entails the biological improvement of the bloodlines that comprise society in order to make this condition possible. State intervention in economics alone (i.e. communism) will not restore merit to society. State intervention in education/culture alone (i.e. PC liberalism) will not restore merit to society. Only state intervention in biological quality (i.e. National Socialism) will be able to restore merit to society.
----
Also, here is a Hitler speech showing how he agrees entirely with your definition of socialism. Competitive "might" is not identical with merit, and therefore the state must use its power to defend merit and welfare of society a a whole.
I will post another quote further down how Hitler says Jesus is one of the originators of real Socialism, thereby acknowledging Socialism is indeed a very ancient concept.
Speech in Munich. March 27, 1924
... Might is never identical with right.
Frederick the Great once said something which clearly defined the relationship of might and right. He said that the law is worth nothing if it is not defended by the sword. In other words, the law was always worthless unless protected by might.
[...]
Whatever remnants of authority we still possess today can be traced ultimately to the beginnings of the present Reich; it was Frederick William who established the authority of the state. It was the great king who said of himself: "I am the servant of the State!" This applies equally to them all, even the old heroic Kaiser himself.
Today we all still benefit from this authority of the state. The authority of the state was identical with the well-being of the People, it was not something which was prejudicial to the well-being of the People. Carlyle emphasizes that Frederick the Great devoted his entire life's work to the service of his People.
----
Here's a modified tree of leftism. Definitions are important, but I don't think our re-classification of Marxism/Communism as merely one form of Socialism will be intuitive to the public at large unless they are able to see things in a chart/graph. The things I list under True Leftism include the ideologies we wish to salvage or draw inspiration from, even if they aren't 100% in agreement with us on all issues. What do you think about this?
Tier 0. (Temperament)
- Leftism
Tier 1. (Abstract/general attitudes)
- Socialism (further expanded below)
- Enlightenment-based forms of liberalism(?) (not listed below)
- others?
Tier 2. (Ideological theories)
- (a) True Leftism
- (b) Marxism
- (c) authentic Fascism(?)
-- (d?) 'Social Democracy' (including Sanders-style "progressivism" in the US) would be placed separately with dashed lines extending from both Socialism and Enlightenment-based liberalism
-- (e?) the historic Enlightenment-based "Utopian Socialism" could be placed similarly(?)
Tier 3. (Political movements addressing the problems defined by the ideological theories)
- (a1) National Socialism
- (a2) Platonic Republicanism
- (a3) early pre-Marx socialist states/leaders who did not have an explicit ideology
- (a4) individual manifestations of True Leftism or small personality-centered movements which did not attain power
- (a5?) religious socialism
- (b1) Communism
- (b2) 'Anarcho-Communism'
- (c1) Italian school of Fascism(?)
- (c2) Juche(?)
-- (d?) Socialism with Chinese Characteristics--and other "fellow traveller" forms of Socialism which have clearly begun to forge their own path distinct from Marxism--could be placed separately with dashed lines extending from both True Leftism and Marxism(?)
Tier 4. (Specific implementation of the political movement to govern based on the specific circumstances of a country and time period)
- (a1) Hitlerism
- (a2) ? not enacted by any actual regime
- (a3) Mauryan-Empire-ism, Julius-Caesar-ism, and other examples
- (a4) John Brown, Malcolm X, etc.
- (b1) Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism/etc.
- (c1) Mussolini-ism
- (d) Dengism, Chavismo, etc.
----------
I have included authentic Fascism under Socialism, as they considered themselves to be derived from socialism.
For example:
Mussolini was so familiar with Marxist literature that in his own writings he would not only quote from well-known Marxist works but also from the relatively obscure works.[38] During this period Mussolini considered himself a Marxist and he described Marx as "the greatest of all theorists of socialism."[39]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#Political_journalist,_intellectual_and_socialist
(Note how Mussolini considered Marx as merely one theorist of Socialism. By definition, Communists consider Marx as the greatest Socialist theorist and ultimate originator of all Socialism. It would make no sense for Mussolini to qualify Marx as merely one of the greatest unless it was clear to him that Marx was merely one of many who outlined different interpretations of Socialism.)
After being ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his support of Italian intervention, Mussolini made a radical transformation, ending his support for class conflict and joining in support of revolutionary nationalism transcending class lines.[9] He formed the interventionist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista ("Revolutionary Fasces for International Action") in October 1914.[46]
[...]
On 5 December 1914, Mussolini denounced orthodox socialism for failing to recognize that the war had made national identity and loyalty more significant than class distinction.[9]
[...]
Mussolini continued to promote the need of a revolutionary vanguard elite to lead society. He no longer advocated a proletarian vanguard, but instead a vanguard led by dynamic and revolutionary people of any social class.[55] Though he denounced orthodox socialism and class conflict, he maintained at the time that he was a nationalist socialist and a supporter of the legacy of nationalist socialists in Italy's history, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Carlo Pisacane. As for the Italian Socialist Party and its support of orthodox socialism, he claimed that his failure as a member of the party to revitalize and transform it to recognize the contemporary reality revealed the hopelessness of orthodox socialism as outdated and a failure.[56] This perception of the failure of orthodox socialism in the light of the outbreak of World War I was not solely held by Mussolini; other pro-interventionist Italian socialists such as Filippo Corridoni and Sergio Panunzio had also denounced classical Marxism in favor of intervention.[57]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#Beginning_of_Fascism_and_service_in_World_War_I
For further information on leftist Fascism, I would recommend looking into the works of scholar A. James Gregor. Throughout his career, he wrote extensively on Fascism, Marxism, Socialism, and comparisons of them. Most importantly, he seems sympathetic to Fascism (particularly in his younger days), meaning he is not just a rightist attempting to insult leftism by calling Fascism leftist.
Gregor argued that scholars do not agree on the definition of fascism, stating in 1997 that "Almost every specialist has his own interpretation."[6] He argued that Marxist movements of the 20th century discarded Marx and Engels and instead adopted theoretical categories and political methods much like those of Mussolini.[7] In The Faces of Janus (2000) Gregor asserted that the original "Fascists were almost all Marxists—serious theorists who had long been identified with Italy's intelligentsia of the Left."[8] In Young Mussolini (1979), Gregor describes Fascism as "a variant of classical Marxism."[9] According to Gregor, many revolutionary movements have assumed features of paradigmatic Fascism, but none are its duplicate. He said that post-Maoist China displays many of its traits. He denied that paradigmatic Fascism can be responsibly identified as a form of right-wing extremism.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._James_Gregor#Study_of_fascism
On November 24, 1914, when he was expelled from the Socialist Party, Mussolini insisted that his expulsion could not divest him of his ‘socialist faith.’ He made the subtitle of his new paper, Il Popolo d’Italia, ‘A Socialist Daily.’
[...]
By the time Spirito delivered his communications at the Convention of 1932, these sentiments had united with neo-idealist totalitarian aspirations. The result was variously identified as ‘Fascist communism,’ Fascist Bolshevism’ or ‘Fascist socialism.’
[...]
Mussolini was a well-informed and convinced Marxist. His ultimate political convictions represent a reform of classical Marxism in the direction of a restoration of its Hegelian elements.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A._James_Gregor
-
More from Hermann Rauschning's discussions with Hitler. These are the most stunning things I have read thus far. Even if Rauschning was exaggerating certain details of these conversations, clearly all this information is in line with the other quotes I have posted, suggesting it accurately portrays Hitler's real sentiments.
Moreover, we can clearly see Rauschning's distrust of Hitler did not arise because he thought National Socialism was incompetent at implementing rightist goals, but because Hitler was a revolutionary Socialist who never served rightism in the first place.
Executor of Marxism
“I am not only the conqueror, but also the executor of Marxism—of that part of it that is essential and justified, stripped of its Jewish-Talmudic dogma.”
I had asked Hitler whether the crux of the whole economic problem was not the extent to which private economic interests might continue to be the motive force of the national economy. There were party members who passionately denied the possibility of this, and expected a more radical social revolution than moderate Marxism, at any rate, had ever intended.
“I have learnt a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit,” Hitler went on. “I don’t mean their tiresome social doctrine or the materialist conception of history, or their absurd ‘marginal utility’ theories and so on. But I have learnt from their methods. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun. The whole of National Socialism is based on it. Look at the workers’ sports clubs, the industrial cells, the mass demonstrations, the propaganda leaflets written specially for the comprehension of the masses; all these new methods of political struggle are essentially Marxist in origin. All I had to do was to take over these methods and adapt them to our purpose. I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realise its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”
“But surely,” I objected, “what you are describing is not distinct from the Bolshevism and Communism of Russia.”
“Not at all!” Hitler cried. “You are making the usual mistake. What remains is a revolutionary creative will that needs no ideological crutches, but grows into a ruthless instrument of might invincible in both the nation and the world. A doctrine of redemption based on science thus becomes a genuine revolutionary movement possessing all the requisites of power.”
[...]
“In my youth, and even in the first years of my Munich period after the war, I never shunned the company of Marxists of any shade. I was of the opinion that one or other of them showed promise. Certainly they had every freedom to unfold their potentialities. But they were and remained small men. They wanted no giants who towered above the multitude, though they had plenty of pedants who split dogmatic hairs. So I made up my mind to start something new. But it would have been possible at that time to transform the German working-class movement into what we are today. Perhaps it would have been wholesomer for Germany if there had been no split over this matter. Really, there was not much to prevent the German workers from throwing off their mistaken conception of a democracy, within the framework of which their revolution could be fulfilled. But of course that was the decisive, world-historical step reserved for us.”
After reflecting for a moment. Hitler resumed:
“You ask whether private economic interests will have to be eliminated. Certainly not. ... The instinct to earn and the instinct to possess cannot be eliminated. Natural instincts remain. We should be the last to deny that. But the problem is how to adjust and satisfy these natural instincts. The proper limits to private profit and private enterprise must be drawn through the state and general public according to their vital needs. And on this point I can tell you, regardless of all the professors’ theories and trades-union wisdom, that there is no principle on which you can draw any universally valid limits.
[...]
“There is no ideal condition of permanent validity. Only fools believe in a cut-and-dried method of changing the social and economic order. There is no such thing as equality, abolition of private property, just wage, or any of the other ideas they’ve been splitting hairs over. And all the distinctions that are made between production for consumption and production for profit are just pastimes for idlers and muddle-heads.”
“What about the programme of land reforms, the rescue from ground-rent serfdom and nationalisation of the banks?” I asked.
Hitler gesticulated impatiently. “Are you worrying about that programme, too?” he asked. “Need I explain its meaning to you? Anybody who takes it literally, instead of seeing it as the great landscape painted on the background of our stage, is a simpleton. I shall never alter this programme; it is meant for the masses. It points the direction of some of our endeavours—neither more nor less. It is like the dogma of the Church. Is the significance of the Church exhausted by the dogma? Does it not lie much more in the Church rites and activities? The masses need something for the imagination, they need fixed, permanent doctrines. The initiates know that there is nothing fixed, that everything is continutally changing. That is why I impress upon you that National Socialism is a potential Socialism that is never consummated because it is in a state of constant change.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 185-188.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n185/mode/2up
This sounds almost identical to the "collectivist" approach used by the Communist party in one-party Communist states:
Hitler had given me to understand that he regarded me as worthy of being admitted to his innermost thoughts—such as he had not disclosed even to his Gauleiter, who had shown himself incapable of understanding them. Did this not place me under obligations, compel me to keep this knowledge from the masses, and even to be tolerant of the uncomprehending desires of these masses, not to mention the Gauleiter themselves? Or, on the other hand, was this appearance of confidence a mere deception, one of Hitler’s many tricks by means of which he kept people subservient?
I asked Hitler the meaning of the triangle he had drawn for Ley, of the Labour Front, and a number of Gauleiter, in order to make the future social order clear to them.
[...]
“Oh, yes, I remember,” Hitler replied. “This is what you mean: one side of the triangle is the ‘Labor Front,’ the social community, the classless community in which each man helps his neighbour. Everyone feels secure here, each one gets assistance, advice and occupation for his leisure time. All are equal here.
The second side is the professional class. Here each individual is separate, graded, according to his ability and quality, to work for the general good. Knowledge is the criterion here. Each is worth as much as he accomplishes.
The third side represents the party, which, in one or other of its many branches, embraces every German who has not been found unworthy. Each one in the party shares the privilege of leading the nation. Here the decisive factors are devotion and resolution. All are equal as party comrades, but each man must submit to a grading of ranks that is inviolable.”
This, I agreed, was roughly what Forster had tried to explain to me, but he had been only partially successful. There had been some mystic significance as well, the first side at the same time representing the will in man, the second, what is usually called the heart, and the third, the intelligence.
Hitler laughed at this. There was no need to labour the comparison, he remarked. He had only meant to show how each individual, in all his feelings and activities, must be included in some section of the party.
“The party takes over the function of what has been society—that is what I wanted them to undentand. The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no licence, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper. It does not alter external conditions; no, it establishes the relation of the individual to the State, the national community. It does this with the help of one party, or perhaps I should say of one order.”
I could not help remarking that this seemed a novel and harsh doctrine.
Quite true, Hitler replied, and not everyone was capable of understanding it. For this reason, he had felt it necessary to popularise his ideas by means of the diagram.
Then doubtless he would not approve, I suggested, of the kind of state landlordship, or state ownership of the means of production, the dream of some of the most ardent social and economic workers of the party?
Hitler again registered impatience.
“Why bother with such half-measures when I have far more important matters in hand, such as the people themselves?” he exclaimed. “The masses always cling to extremes. After all, what is meant by nationalisation, by socialisation? What has been changed by the fact that a factory is now owned by the State instead of by a Mr. Smith? But once directors and employees alike have been subjected to a universal discipline, there will be a new order for which all expressions used hitherto will be quite inadequate.”
I replied that I was beginning to understand what new and tremendous perspectives this opened.
“The day of individual happiness has passed,” Hitler returned. “Instead, we shall feel a collective happiness. Can there by any greater happiness than a National Socialist meeting in which speakers and audience feel as one? It is the happiness of sharing. Only the early Christian communities could have felt it with equal intensity. They, too, sacrificed their personal happiness for the higher happiness of the community. ...”
[...]
“But in the meantime they have entered a new relation; a powerful social force has caught them up. They themselves are changed. What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialise banks and factories? We socialise human beings.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 188-192.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n187/mode/2up
Prior to the war, a Soviet official criticized National Socialism as being a "decoy Socialism". Not a far-right ideology, but not Socialist enough in his eyes.
I had endeavoured to strengthen this interest in my conversations with Kalina, the Soviet representative in Danzig at that time, in order to leave our backs free during our negotiations with the Poles.
[...]
We did not, however, reach the point of signing a Soviet-Danzig agreement, on the basis of which Danzig was to have built a number of merchant ships for Russia. The latter country was at that time drawing away from Germany as well as from Danzig. Kalina told me the reasons; he had the good sense to speak quite candidly.
“Your National Socialism,” he told me over an early luncheon, “is certainly revolutionary, but what have you done with this revolutionary force? Your Socialism is only a decoy for the masses. You are carrying out a chaotic, unplanned revolution without a conscious aim. This is not revolution in the sense of a social advance of human society. You want power. You are abusing the the revolutionary strength of Germany. You are exhausting it. For us, you are more dangerous than the old capitalist powers. The German people were on the road to liberty. But you will disappoint them. You will leave behind you a dejected, suspicious people, incapable of productive labour. One day the masses will fall away from you. At that time, perhaps, we shall be able to work together. We shall conclude a pact with the German people when they have corrected their mistake. That day will surely come; we can wait.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 131.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n131/mode/2up
Highlighted in red, Hitler predicts the shift from False Leftism to True Leftism.
I explained that I had not meant an alliance between Germany and Russia, but simply a temporary arrangement as a tactical cover for our rear. I quite agreed that a hard-and-fast alliance was not without its dangers for Germany.
“Why?” Hitler asked sharply. “I’ve said nothing like that.”
Surely, I suggested, there would be considerable danger of the Bolshevisation of Germany.
“There is no such danger, and never has been,” Hitler returned. “Besides, you forget that Russia is not only the land of Bolshevism, but also the greatest continental empire in the world, enormously powerful and capable of drawing the whole of Europe into its embrace. The Russians would take complete possession of their partners. That is the real danger; either you go with them all the way, or you leave them strictly alone.”
Then if I understood him rightly, I said, he drew a line of distinction between Russia as an empire and Russia as the home of Bolshevism. But it was not quite clear to me why an agreement as between sovereign states should not be possible between the Reich and Russia. It seemed to me that the only difficulty would be Russia’s Bolshevism, which would always be a danger for us.
“It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist, but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism,” Hitler replied. “Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.”
I raised cautious objections, pointing out the obvious danger of a planned permeation of party organisations by Communist agents. Most of those who had transferred their allegiance from the one party to the other were engaged as Comintern spies. Hitler rejected these suggestions rather sharply. He would accept the risks, he said.
[...]
“A social revolution would lend me new, unsuspected powers. I do not fear permeation with revolutionary Communist propaganda. But Russia, whether she is to be a partner or an enemy, is our equal and must be watched. ...”
[...]
I remarked that it was curious how many young people—young Conservatives, young Prussians, young soldiers and civil engineers—saw the safeguarding of the future in an alliance with Russia. Evidently, Hitler did not like to hear this.
“I know what you mean—all this chattering about ‘Prussian Socialism’ and so on. Just the thing for our generals, playing at political games of war. Because a military alliance of this kind seems convenient to them, they suddenly discover that they’re not in the least capitalist, in fact that they suffer from a kind of anti-capitalist nostalgia! They are quite happy with their half-knowledge, and think of their Prussian Socialism as a kind of drill-ground discipline in economics and personal liberty. But the matter isn’t as simple as that. I can understand that the engineers are delighted with their ‘plans,’ but this isn’t such a simple matter either. They seem to think it is just a question of exchanging raw material for engineering technique. The engineers, by the way, that they’ve got over there now are peculiarly rotten.”
“These beliefs in a supernational workers’ state,” he continued, with production plans and production districts can only come out of the misguided, over-rationalised brains of a literary clique that has lost its sound instincts. It’s all convulsive, false, and a public danger because it obstructs National Socialism. ...”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 134-136.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n133/mode/2up
(Note how in the last two paragraphs above, Hitler is criticizing people for NOT BEING SOCIALIST ENOUGH.)
-
Rauschning describes not one, but two separate factions of leftists who were plotting coups. I will not belabor the point by quoting the entire section. Below he describes the faction of "radical revolutionaries", led by Roehm, who thought Hitler was betraying Socialism by becoming a "reactionary" rightist-sympathizer who sided with the business class and elite military officer class.
The choice in 1934 was between continuation of the revolution and a real restoration of order. Up till then, each man had interpreted the German revolution in the light of his own political aims and desires, but it had become suddenly clear, at least to the thoughtful and intelligent, that this German upheaval really was a revolution. But whither was it leading? Evidently to an indescribable destruction of everything that had hitherto been accepted as the basis of all national and social order. Could we look on any longer with our hands folded? Was it not necessary to put an end to it and, even at the risk of another coup, to drive out the whole gang of brown-shirts?
But would this be possible without a civil war? And could Germany afford civil war at this juncture? Although the thinking members of Conservative and Liberal circles, of the intelligent middle classes, had begun to understand what they had done by placing Hitler in power, the formerly Socialist masses of the working-class and the black-coated workers were unreservedly in favour of National Socialism. Perhaps, in fact, it was amongst the masses in this very year of 1934 that National Socialism was strongest. Could one, at the moment of the greatest mass popularity of National Socialism, undertake a coup to remove Hitler for reasons not understood by the masses?
These were thoughts which many “anxious patriots” in every political camp shared with me. From the early days of 1934, the desire had been growing to put an end, cost what it might, to the evil spell which must bring Germany to its ruin. But no hope of any feasible solution seemed to offer.
Suddenly the Roehm affair became acute. The Reichswehr (the army) understood the dangers threatening it from the new revolutionary nihilism.
[...]
Roehm was dissatisfied. He had not been made a minister. The entire meaning of the National Socialist revolution seemed lost to him.
[...]
The entire National Socialist revolution would be bogged if the S.A. were not given a public, legal function, either as militia or as a special corps of the new army. He was not inclined to be made a fool of.
[...]
We discussed the new defensive power of the State, and who ought to command it, who, in fact, ought to create it, the Reichswehr generals or he—Roehm, who had made the party possible in the first place.
[...]
“Adolf is a swine,” he swore. “He will give us all away. He only associates with the reactionaries now. His old friends aren’t good enough for him. Getting matey with the East Prussian generals. They’re his cronies now.”
He was jealous and hurt.
“Adolf is turning into a gentleman. He’s got himself a tail-coat now!” he mocked.
He drank a glass of water and grew calmer.
“Adolf knows exactly what I want. I’ve told him often enough. Not a second edition of the old imperial army. Are we revolutionaries or aren’t we?
[...]
They expect me to hang about with a lot of old pensioners, a herd of sheep. I’m the nucleus of the new army, don’t you see that? Don’t you understand that what’s coming must be new, fresh and unused? The basis must be revolutionary. You can’t inflate it afterwards. You only get the opportunity once to make something new and big that’ll help us to lift the world off its hinges. ...”
[...]
I mention all this because a conversation with Hitler in February of 1934 showed me not only the Führer’s superiority to his entourage, but also the dangerous game he was playing, a game which, when he was close to being deposed, saved him—at the cost of his friend, it is true—and made him one of the commanders of the newly created army. He seemed to have betrayed the revolutionary ideas of this friend, but it was only a seeming betrayal.
At that time every thing was still fluid. Hitler had to adapt the realisation of his “gigantic” plans to the difficult conditions of internal and external politics, and could take only small, cautious steps forward.
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 152-156.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n151/mode/2up
As Rauschning observed, the "reactionary" conservatives (including himself) did not favor Hitler, and Hitler remained dedicated to Socialist revolution--just not a chaotically-managed one like in the USSR. Further, Rauschning said Hitler was even considering one-upping Roehm's faction by leading Roehm's Socialist "second revolution" himself! Moreover, Rauschning again indicates that Hitler was not "captive" to the conservative elements in society (who just wanted to use Hitler to control the "prole" masses who looked up to him). Once again, Hitler's ideological split with Roehm was not because Roehm was Socialist, but because Roehm's Socialism was too similar to Marxist Socialism (i.e., not authentically Socialist enough!), and, obviously Roehm's removal from the party is because he was plotting a coup.
But was he any more fortunate with his “reactionary” friends? That same spring I had addressed a group of heavy industry magnates at the Essen Mining Syndicate (Essener Bergwerksverein), and at a social gathering after the meeting I found them in the blackest depression regarding the political situation. The general complaint in private conversation was: “He’s leading us to ruin.” Some time later the present Commander-in-Chief, General von Brauchitsch, was in Danzig as my guest. On a visit to the German Consul-General, he spoke of his serious apprehensions about the general situation. In the interests of the state, the army could no longer tolerate it, and would seek unqualified changes.
Hitler was isolated.
What, actually, was the aim of the second National Socialist revolution? Hitler knew his party members very well.
“There are people,” he said, “who believe that Socialism means simply their chance to share the spoils, to do business and live a comfortable life.”
Unhappily, this conception had not died out with the Weimar Republic. He had no intention, like Russia, of “liquidating” the possessing class. On the contrary, he would compel it to contribute by its abilities towards the building up of the new order. He could not afford to allow Germany to vegetate for years, as Russia had done, in famine and misery. ... He had no intention of changing this practical arrangement for the sake of continual bickering with so-called old soldiers and over-ardent party members.
[...]
He knew perfectly well that every phase of a revolution meant a new set of rulers. The flood-tide of a second revolution would wash new men to the top. Would it not mean the end of Hitler and his immediate associates? Was it at all possible to keep the reins in one’s hands, once the revolt of the proletarian masses was unchained? In spite of his armchair battles. Hitler was afraid of the masses. He was afraid of his own people.
“Irresponsible elements are at work to destroy all my constructive labours,” he said. “But I shall not allow my work to be shattered either by the Right or the Left.”
He gave out that treacherous elements within the party, agents of Moscow and of the German bourgeois Nationalists, were together plotting the “second” National Socialist revolution in order to overthrow him.
He had received information that Roehm had intentions of kidnapping him—a suspicion which kept cropping up every time Hitler hesitated to strike at the right moment. On the other hand, it was certain that he must eventually—unless his antagonists were exceptionally stupid—have become the secret captive of the Conservative circles, to be employed as the taskmaster of the revolutionaries, the tamer of that wild beast “the masses.”
Hitler for a long time felt tempted to place himself at the head of the radicals of his party and demand a second revolution, thereby retaining at least a semblance of leadership, and possibly even regaining, after some time, the real leadership. Intense struggles for power were at that time going on in the inner circles, very little of which ever came to the ears of the public. But it is to be assumed that the outcome was not an accidental one. For it proved that Hitler, in his insight and his far-sightedness, is infinitely superior not only to his party clique, but also to his Conservative opponents and the leaders of the Reichswehr.
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 162-164.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n161/mode/2up
In addition to Roehm's Socialist faction, there was Strasser's Socialist faction. Again, see all the previous posts in the thread about how Hitler went to extreme lengths to keep the Strassers loyal to the party because he valued them, and how Hitler criticized Otto Strasser, not because he was Socialist, but because his Socialism was too Marxist-leaning--and therefore not authentically Socialist enough!
Further, consider that the two most powerful opposition factions in the party were both Socialists. (Meanwhile, there were other far-left former Communists like Joseph Goebbels who remained loyal to Hitler!)
In the background, one man was waiting: Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s great antagonist within the party. Once again the same alignment took place as in the autumn and winter of 1932, when the party was threatened with a split, when General von Schleicher conceived his plan to make the trade unions and the social wing of the National Socialist movement the mass foundations of his government. This solution, premature in 1932 and distasteful to the big industrialists, seemed now, after the universal muddle created in a year and a half of the National Socialist regime, the only possible alternative both to a fierce revolution of the S.A. and the sterile mass demagogy of Hitler. It would have provided the permanent form of a new constitution, supported by the Reichswehr.
[...]
In Danzig and in most of Northern Germany, Gregor Strasser had always been more esteemed than Hitler himself. Hitler’s nature was incomprehensible to the North German.
[...]
I had been present at the last meeting of leaders before our seizure of power, in Weimar, in the autumn of 1933. Gregor Strasser gave the meeting its character. Hitler was lost in a sea of despondency and accusations on the top of the Obersalzberg. The party’s position was desperate. Strasser was calm, and with assurance and quiet confidence, succeeded in quenching the feeling that the party was at its last gasp. It was he who led the party. To all practical purposes. Hitler had abdicated.
Was not the position essentially the same as that of 1932 and 1933? The difference was merely that Roehm now stood on the one hand, preparing his radical revolt, but on the other, in the background, Strasser, the potential successor, the exiled, the disgraced, the hated rival. Hitler knew that if he took Roehm’s side, the Reichswehr would restore Strasser and split the party. Strasser, the man who had spoken of the anti-capitalist nostalgia of the German people, would return and, together with Conservative, Liberal and Socialist sympathisers, create the new order in Germany. Positions were reversed: Hitler, the friend of heavy industry, became the rebel, the street-corner agitator of proletarian mass revolution, while Strasser, the anti-capitalist, became the friend of generals.
Hitler made his decision. He made it out of hate and jealousy. The 30th June broke. He struck down more than the rebellious S.A. He struck down General von Schleicher. He struck down Gregor Strasser.
The blood-bath might have been greater. A secret plot had been made to murder Hitler and place the blame for his death on the middle class. This was to be the signal for a real “night of long knives.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 164-167.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n163/mode/2up
Hitler himself makes clear he is not a reactionary:
“With the old gentleman at death’s door, these criminals make such difficulties for me!” he cried indignantly. “At a time when it is so important to decide on the successor to the Reich presidency, when the choice lies between myself and one of the reactionary crowd! For this alone these people deserve to be shot. Have I not emphasised time and time again that only the inviolable unity of our will can lead our venture to success? Anyone who gets out of step will be shot. Have I not implored these people ten, a hundred, times to follow me? At a moment when everything depends on the party’s being a single, close entity, I must listen to the reactionaries taunting me with the inability to keep order and discipline in my own house! ...”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 172.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n171/mode/2up
After the dust settled from getting rid of Roehm, Hitler made clear he was still a Socialist and remained committed to revolution. Note also that the "Executor of Marxism" section (in the previous post) comes after these sections about purging Roehm and Strasser. I.e., Hitler felt the need to continuously stress his leftism to Rauschning (who Hitler must have mistakenly believed was a loyal up-and-comer in the party) after the purge. This would make no sense if Hitler had been a far-rightist purging the leftist elements of the party! Nor would it have made sense for the right-wing Rauschning to become so anti-NS if Hitler was trying to make the party rightist.
Shortly after the funeral, Hitler spoke in a circle of his intimates, about the second revolution, and his views were circulated among the initiated members of the party. It was in this way that they came to my ears; I was not present at Hitler’s private celebration of his official recognition as “Führer” of the German Reich.
“My Socialism,” he is reported to have said, “is not the same thing as Marxism. My Socialism is not class war, but order. Whoever imagines Socialism as revolt and mass demagogy is not a National Socialist. Revolution is not games for the masses. Revolution is hard work. The masses see only the finished product, but they are ignorant, and should be ignorant, of the immeasurable amount of hidden labour that must be done before a new step forward can be taken. The revolution cannot be ended. It can never be ended. We are motion itself, we are eternal revolution. We shall never allow ourselves to be held down to one permanent condition.”
[...]
He was not yet, he continued, in a position to tell them all that he had in mind. But they could rest assured that Socialism, as the Party understood it, was not concerned with the happiness of the individual, but with the greatness and future of the whole people. It was an heroic Socialism—the community of solemnly sworn brothers-in-arms having no individual possessions, but sharing everything in common.
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 175-176.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n175/mode/2up
Also, Hitler personally requested that Roehm rejoin the SA as its leader in 1930, as Roehm had resigned and left Germany a number of years prior. Hitler needed a new leader for the SA because he had just put down a coup within the SA led by Walter Stennes. Why would Hitler make this request to a radical revolutionary Socialist, unless Hitler genuinely trusted him? If Hitler was a far-rightist there is no way that he would have tried to consolidate his control over the SA by placing a revolutionary leftist in charge! Roehm's leftism was not the problem. It was refusal to uphold the Leader Principle and refusal to completely repudiate Marxist Socialism.
When in April 1925 Hitler and Ludendorff disapproved of the proposals under which Röhm was prepared to integrate the 30,000-strong Frontbann into the SA, Röhm resigned from all political groups and military brigades on 1 May 1925. He felt great contempt for the "legalistic" path the party leaders wanted to follow and sought seclusion from public life.[11] In 1928, he accepted a post in Bolivia as adviser to the Bolivian Army, where he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the autumn of 1930, Röhm received a telephone call from Hitler requesting his return to Germany.[11]
In September 1930, as a consequence of the Stennes Revolt in Berlin, Hitler assumed supreme command of the SA as its new Oberster SA-Führer. He sent a personal request to Röhm, asking him to return to serve as the SA's Chief of Staff. Röhm accepted this offer and began his new assignment on 5 January 1931.[27] He brought radical new ideas to the SA, and appointed several close friends to its senior leadership.
[...]
In June 1931, the Münchener Post, a Social Democratic newspaper, began attacking Röhm and the SA regarding homosexuality in its ranks and then in March 1932, the paper obtained and published some private letters of his in which Röhm described himself as "same-sex orientated" (gleichgeschlechtlich). These letters had been confiscated by the Berlin police back in 1931 and subsequently passed along to the journalist Helmuth Klotz.[33][34] Röhm acknowledged that the letters were genuine, and as a result of the scandal, he became the first openly gay politician in history.[34]
Hitler was aware of Röhm's homosexuality. Their friendship shows in that Röhm remained one of the few intimates allowed to use the familiar German du (the German familiar form of "you") when conversing with Hitler.[12] In turn, Röhm was the only Nazi leader who dared to address Hitler by his first name "Adolf" or his nickname "Adi" rather than "mein Führer".[35] Their close association led to rumors that Hitler himself was homosexual.[36] Unlike many in the Nazi hierarchy, Röhm never fell victim to Hitler's "arresting personality" nor did he come fully under his spell, which made him unique.[37]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm
(Also, if Hitler was a homophobic rightist, why would he be close friends with the first openly-"gay" politician in modern history? And note that it was the False Left Social Democratic party who was being homophobic!)
----
Now, having read all this information, it is crystal clear why the "conservative reactionary" Rauschning quickly became anti-NS:
Hermann Adolf Reinhold Rauschning (7 August 1887 – February 8, 1982) was a German conservative reactionary[2] who briefly joined the Nazi movement before breaking with it.[3] He was the President of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934, during which he led the Senate of the Free City of Danzig. In 1934, he renounced Nazi Party membership and in 1936 emigrated from Germany. He eventually settled in the United States and began openly denouncing Nazism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Rauschning
-
Some quotes from Otto Wagener's memoirs.
Otto Wagener (29 April 1888 – 9 August 1971) was a German major general and, for a period, Adolf Hitler's economic advisor and confidant.
Look how Hitler traces back Western thought to ancient Greece and the Renaissance, and criticizes it. Then he deeply criticizes traditionalism and says he must manifest something new.
Hitler had talked himself into considerable excitement, and without pausing for any length of time, he continued.
“You still have not begun to understand that we live at a turning point of history, which, granted, has yet to reach its apogee. The individualism, which, apparent already in classical Greece, marked the Middle Ages and once more put its stamp on the modern period, has begun to falter. Not because of any changes in mankind or nations or on the basis of a new political or cultural orientation, but primarily through a complete transformation of economic life, through the development from trades to industrialization, from the journeyman and independent master craftsman to the factory hand, from small individually owned businesses to large corporations, from the personal relationship between the employer and his employee to the impersonal condition of dependence of labor on capital.
“These represent the problems of our century. To recognize them is everyone’s duty, to solve them is the task of governments. But when governments are made up only of those men who are sent to parliaments by the universal and equal ballot of the great masses, it hardly seems likely that the truly best and most suitable men will be in the government. A very busy, outstanding lawyer or a famous scientist, a great doctor or a leading industrialist simply does not have time to run for office and to devote four weeks of his life to campaigning. And then, he can’t spend his valuable time doing battle in the Reichstag.
[...]
“Then the highbrows appear on the scene and appeal to the law and the authority of tradition. These legitimists do not see that this law and this tradition were born in individualist thinking and are the pillars of a past time. What counts is to establish new laws and a new authority in place of old traditions. If this is not done, they will find that the road to socialist reconstruction will not be traveled according to plan and peaceably, but that the revolution will topple those pillars, bringing down the structure of individualism. But most of them have never even read Marx, and they view the Bolshevik revolution as a private Russian affair.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 12-13.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n41/mode/2up
Commentary: Hitler is anti-human-rights, because it is a selfish individual-centric construct that is ideologically incompatible with Socialism (which looks after the welfare of society as a whole).
“Here you see the difference between the former age of individualism and the socialism that is on the horizon. In the past—that is, for most people it is still the present—the individual is everything, everything is directed at maintaining his life and improving his existence. Everything focuses on him. He is the center. Everyone is a central figure, as is officially acknowledged in his vested human rights.
“In the socialism of the future, on the other hand, what counts is the whole, the community of the Volk. The individual and his life play only a subsidiary role. He can be sacrificed—he is prepared to sacrifice himself should the whole demand it, should the commonweal call for it.
“Since the introduction of universal military training, this idea has taken concrete shape. Laws have been made to punish anyone who dodges military service by self-mutilation or desertion, even prescribing death for flight in the face of the enemy. Here, therefore, the basic socialist principle prevails. But in the rest of life, individualism, liberalism, egotism continue to triumph. Even during a war someone who is not in the military can fill his pockets and amass a fortune, which he will sooner or later lose to someone else, while the poor soldiers at the front fight and give their lives for the community.
“Aren’t these liberals, these reprobate defenders of individualism, ashamed to see the tears of the mothers and wives, or don’t these cold-blooded accountants even notice? Have they already grown so inhuman that they are no longer capable of feeling? It’s understandable why bolshevism simply removed such creatures. They were worthless to humanity, nothing but an encumbrance to their Volk. Even the bees get rid of the drones when they can no longer be of service to the hive. The Bolshevik procedures are thus quite natural.
“But that’s precisely the problem we have set out to solve: to convert the German Volk to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists, without destruction of property and values, without extermination of culture and morality and the ethics ...”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 16-17.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n43/mode/2up
Commentary: Hitler will become MORE SOCIALIST once the state's authority is secure and not in a time of war or crisis.
“... That, furthermore, we must travel the road to the socialist reorganization of things—of that I never had any doubt. But socialist experiments are better made once order has been established. Otherwise, they slide all too smoothly into Bolshevik channels.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 159.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n187/mode/2up
Hitler acknowledges Socialism's ancient roots:
“Socialism is a political problem. And politics is of no concern to the economy,” he once said to me in the course of one of our conversations. “Socialism is a question of attitude toward life, of the ethical outlook on life of all who live together in a common ethnic or national space. Socialism is a Weltanschauung!
“But in actual fact there is nothing new about this Weltanschauung. Whenever I read the New Testament Gospels and the revelations of various of the prophets and imagine myself back in the era of the Roman and late Hellenistic, as well as the Oriental, world, I am astonished at all that has been made of the teachings of these divinely inspired men, especially Jesus Christ, which are so clear and unique, heightened to religiosity. These were the ones who created this new worldview which we now call socialism, they established it, they taught it and they lived it! But the communities that called themselves Christian churches did not understand it! Or if they did, they denied Christ and betrayed him! For they transformed the holy idea of Christian socialism into its opposite! They killed it, just as, at the time, the Jews nailed Jesus to the cross; they buried it, just as the body of Christ was buried. But they allowed Christ to be resurrected, instigating the belief that his teachings, too, were reborn!
“It is in this that the monstrous crime of these enemies of Christian socialism lies! With the basest hypocrisy they carry before them the cross—the instrument of that murder which, in their thoughts, they commit over and over—as a new divine sign of Christian awareness, and allow mankind to kneel to it. They even pretend to be preaching the teachings of Christ. But their lives and deeds are a constant blow against these teachings and their Creator and a defamation of God!
“We are the first to exhume these teachings! Through us alone, and not until now, do these teachings celebrate their resurrection! Mary and Magdalene stood at the empty tomb. For they were seeking the dead man! But we intend to raise the treasures of the living Christ!
“Herein lies the essential element of our mission: we must bring back to the German Volk the recognition of those teachings! For what did the falsification of the original concept of Christian love, of the community of fate before God and of socialism lead to? By their fruits ye shall know them!
[...]
Christ’s deep understanding of the necessity of a socialist community of men and nations.
[...]
“You see, Wagener: our mission is not an economic one. Of course, the economy and its ethics must also be adapted to the conditions of this socialism. I agree with all your plans. But they are not primary. To fill the Volk with the reborn faith and the Weltanschauung of Him who once before was a savior in the peoples’ deepest hour of need—that is primary! And since the old people are usually inextricably enmeshed in their economic interests and egotistical petty shopkeepers’ mentality, we can, in the main, seek support only from the young people. It is youth that will once more conquer the tme kingdom of heaven for its Volk and for all mankind!”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 139-141.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n167/mode/2up
Hitler says that the USSR is not actually Socialist, but practices "state capitalism". This is, in fact, a criticism that you can find many present-day Communists make against the USSR and historic Communist regimes. The rest of this passage about making conditions better for the worker so they aren't slaves of capitalism almost sounds like something a typical Bernie-Sandersite would say, LOL. Also note that Hitler once again says Marxism and its implementations will always fail to bring about true Socialism, but National Socialism will achieve what they fail to do.
I will never forget one occasion, when Feder, wearing a supercilious smile, came to my office to explain that Hitler completely disavowed my socialist ideas and plans. He was, Feder claimed, an admitted follower of individualism and economic liberalism. When I remonstrated, Feder assured me that he had just been talking with Hitler and that in a half-hour discourse Hitler had expounded to him the correctness of the principles of individualism.
I immediately went down to Hitler’s office—we were still in the Brown House on Brienner Strasse—and no sooner did he see me than he called out, “I’m glad you’re here. I was just weighing the pros and cons of liberalism with Feder. And I made an astonishing discovery.
“Individualism, which is in the process of being replaced by socialism—and we’re determined to lend a helping hand to abolish and replace it—is actually already being buried by industrialization. Yes, it’s already in its grave. For, thanks to growing industrialism, with all its consequences—associations, corporations, trusts, and monopolies—actually only a very few people are left who might imagine themselves to be living their individual lives. But even they are under a misapprehension. For they, too, are slaves of those who wield power. All the others, anyway, have become merely working links in the universal enterprise. From early to late, men toil on perpetual treadmills. And when all is said and done, when they fall, exhausted, into bed at night, they have worked for no more than preserving their primitive slaves’ lives, perhaps at one time or another a little bit enhanced. But even then their life has no other meaning.
“So all that is left of individualism is legislation, civil law, as well as the piles of paragraphs in the democratic constitution, with their mentions and guarantees of universal human rights and fundamental rights that, economically speaking, have long ago ceased to exist.
“Industrialization has deprived the individual of all liberty, placed him in thrall to capital and the machine. The state is not the organization for self-rule by free individuals who call themselves citizens, but the central organization for the mills of labor growing out of industrialization, in which any independence or individualism is ground to dust. This is most crudely evident in the Bolshevik state, with its state capitalism.
“But if we realize our social economy exactly as we discussed more than once, we will come to liberate the individual from the domination of capital and all its institutions. To begin with, labor will seize possession of capital. But what is ethically most significant is the following: when the purchasing power of wages increases—when, as you say, it might even double—the initial effect will be that production will have to increase, since the demand will be greater. But next comes the great era of increasing personal gratification, with the result that the worker will still earn a sufficiency if, instead of working eight hours a day, he puts in only seven or even six.
“This moment signifies the rebirth of individuality, of the possibility of living for oneself outside the hours that serve material needs, and of devoting oneself to hobbies, cultural interests, art, science, life in general, and the family.
“To this extent, then, socialism —our socialism—leads back to individuality, and with it to the strongest impetus to a personal, racially defined, and altogether universal human evolution.”
When I told Hitler that this view without any doubt confirmed us in our systematic elaboration of our socio-economic tasks, he replied:
“Without a doubt in the world. The more we examine the conclusions to be drawn from our ideas and plans, the more surely we arrive at the conviction that they are correct and represent the genuine solution of the problems of socialism, which appear so difficult. What Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism failed to accomplish we shall be in a position to achieve. And our synthesis is not a compromise—I should reject any such thing—it is, instead, the radical removal of all the false results of industrialization and unrestrained economic liberalism, and the redirection of this line of development to the service of humanity and the individual.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 148-149.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n177/mode/2up
After the war in his memoir, Wagener revealed that, like Goebbels, his faith in Hitler was somewhat shaken when it was clear just how strongly Hitler rejected the INTERNATIONALIST INTERPRETATION OF SOCIALISM (i.e. Marxism/Communism). It seems that in Wagener's opinion, he faults Hitler for being too nationalist (which Wagener seems to think risks potentially derailing the Socialist cause). I suppose Wagener did not realize that even Stalin had abandoned the practicality of a truly internationalist Socialism with his "Socialism in one country" policy. Indeed, Wagener concedes that his own ideas of Socialism probably would not have succeeded to the extent that Hitler's did.
I was crestfallen. For the first time, I understood clearly the difference between my way of thinking and his, I was a socialist, an advocate of cooperation, a Christian, even in reference to the relationship and cooperation among nations and peoples beyond their own borders; and he was a national socialist, a “Zeissist,” a nationalist of the English stamp, whose socialist thinking was only for his Volk and within his own Volk. Toward the rest of the world, however, he was, in the last analysis, a crass economic liberalist, egotist, and imperialist. From this angle, his Central Europe took on a quite different significance from the one that had appeared during the Hamburg discussion. At that time, granted, rearmament was also a prerequisite for such plans. Who was it who repeatedly induced him to accept the idea of such power politics?
It is, I admit, hard to say which concept is correct. At the time I did not dare, and to this day (1946) I do not dare, simply to reject Hitler’s view. On the contrary, I must admit that all Hitler’s actions and successes in foreign affairs are such as to make his view appear the better one and to seriously shake mine. Furthermore, the respect paid to National Socialist Germany abroad and the rehabilitation of the Germans’ standing among other nations prove that the world appreciates Hitler and the road he has taken. In the final analysis, it will have to be left to events to show which road would have been the better one—though even then, there is no way of testing whether the pursuit of my way of thinking could have led to the desired goal.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 164.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n193/mode/2up
Ok, I think that is enough quotes from Wagener to demonstrate the point. Socialism (with a small "s", and therefore talking about ideological socialism rather than just saying the name of the NS party) appears 174 times if you do a text search of the book. I'm sure there are plenty more great quotes.
----
All these quotes from Wagener (a self-proclaimed Socialist who was loyal to Hitler) express the same sentiments as those found in the work of Heiden (a liberal/left-leaning Jewish journalist), Rauschning (a "reactionary conservative" who quickly became anti-NS and left the party), Otto Strasser (a self-proclaimed Socialist who was accused by Hitler of being a Marxist Socialist, and therefore _not authentically Socialist enough_, who Hitler nevertheless wanted to keep in the party if possible), as well as in Hitler's own speeches.
Now we know why False Leftists never cite primary sources regarding Hitler's own words on his Socialist beliefs when trying to "disprove" that he was a leftist. (And, if they do, it's only to use the circular reasoning that, by definition, since Hitler rejected the Marxist/Communist interpretation, he cannot be "real" a Socialist. eyeroll.)
With the information that has been provided in this thread, I think we have more than enough evidence to conclusively prove that National Socialism was indeed leftist and an authentically Socialist ideology. (But feel free to post more evidence, of course.)
-
"pre-state hunter-gatherer societies theoretically resembled a communist society:"
This is correct in that communism does not care about non-humans. This is a fundamental inferiority of communism that leftist anti-communists should spend more time attacking communism with.
"this raises the question as to what "merit" means."
Exactly. The implication is that there should be distinct versions of socialism for each distinct conception of merit. This demands every socialist first answer the question of precisely what they mean by merit before even beginning to expound on how they plan to promote it. Thus we can evaluate different systems of socialism on two axes: 1) whether or not we agree on their proposed notion of merit; 2) how effective we consider their proposed methods of promoting their notion of merit.
The only thing common among all socialists should be the belief that unrestricted competition does not promote merit. Which brings us to your next point:
"Obviously, a rightist would disagree with socialism entirely since they believe an individual possessing a natural competitive advantage _is_ merit/virtue in and of itself. "
Yes. To make things clear, though, we need a term to explicitly describe this way of thinking. I suggest competitionism. Capitalism should be re-understood as only one of many possible forms of competitionism. The progressive call for innovationism to replace capitalism, for example:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/progressive-yahwism/msg10496/#msg10496
should thus be viewed as conflict between two different forms of competitionism, since doubtless those more efficient at innovating machines (who may turn out indeed not to be the capitalists) will sooner or later gain a runaway competitive advantage over those less efficient at this. This is why we call progressives False Leftists: they may appear opposed to the current form of competitionism, but merely wish to replace it by a different - probably worse - form of competitionism.
Democracy is also a form of competitionism (hence democrats are necessarily also False Leftists). Being popular with the majority of the demos is a competitive advantage, and is likely to be negatively correlated with any ethical conception of merit, since trying to stop the demos from oppressing those outside the demos is probably the fastest way to become unpopular with the majority of the demos!
And so on.
"business-owners (which actually includes non-evil people and people who managed to build a successful business due to actual talent, as well as non-productive parasitic elites like financial speculators and talentless hacks who inherited great wealth)."
The issue of what you call "talent" is where we must be most careful. How much of talent is merit, and how much is competitive advantage? If A is content to serve just enough customers to make a humble living, whereas B supplying a similar product wants to keep expanding its customer base, the predictable eventual result absent state intervention is that B will drive A out of business over time. Is this a problem or not? For those who only care about product quality, so long as B's product is as good as A's, B deserves to win on account of its higher commercial aggressiveness. I of course see it differently: I consider B* to be inferior precisely because it is more aggressive, and believe the state should intervene to keep A in business by limiting B's ability to expand, such as by putting a cap on the maximum quantity of assets anyone can own. (As a National Socialist I would additionally eliminate B's bloodline.) Here we have two notions of merit leading to different conclusions about how the state should respond.
(* To state the obvious, B is how Hitler saw Jewish businesses.)
"Hitler says Jesus is one of the originators of real Socialism"
The state intervening to help A over B in the example above can be considered action towards realizing Jesus' presciption that the meek inherit the earth.
Tier 0. (Temperament)
- Leftism
Tier 1. (Abstract/general attitudes)
- Socialism (further expanded below)
- Enlightenment-based forms of liberalism(?) (not listed below)
- others?
I question whether the "Enlightenment" stuff should be included at all. Elsewhere we have agreed to classify Romanticism within leftism, and Romanticism was a movement against the "Enlightenment", so.....
-
Yes. To make things clear, though, we need a term to explicitly describe this way of thinking. I suggest competitionism.
I don't object to this, but it seems like such a concept may already have a name? (Although from what I've written below, perhaps competitionism is the most concise way to describe this.)
For example, in biology, whichever individual has a higher competitive advantage has higher fitness, and higher fitness means their traits are under natural selection. Not all traits under natural selection are HERITABLE (so, for example, a business owner outcompeting someone else is "economic natural selection", but a bureaucratic business strategy itself isn't biologically heritable).
When it comes to science, compare this chart of how "machine learning" algorithms are "trained"/pruned to Darwin's tree of evolution. The most efficient/successful/advanced routes are selected for:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Will-Serrano/publication/313408173/figure/fig8/AS:669010169438243@1536515862984/Artificial-Neural-Network-Deep-Learning-model.png
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/Cdfig3.gif
Capitalism is similar to primal natural selection in that, at the root of things, everyone is fighting for themselves (or, if they are successful enough, for their families/clans/ethnic group).
I.e., this is decentralized capitalism:
Competition lowers the fitness of both organisms involved, since the presence of one of the organisms always reduces the amount of the resource available to the other.[2]
[...]
There are three major mechanisms of competition: interference, exploitation, and apparent competition (in order from most direct to least direct). Interference and exploitation competition can be classed as "real" forms of competition, while apparent competition is not, as organisms do not share a resource, but instead share a predator.[4] Competition among members of the same species is known as intraspecific competition, while competition between individuals of different species is known as interspecific competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_(biology)
On the other hand, it seems "collectivist" style False Left progressivism aims to maximize fitness among the entire population.
False Left progressivists want to reduce/eliminate human intra-specific competition to maximize average human fitness. Not just reproductively (e.g. transhumanism), but also in terms of knowledge-generation-algorithms (i.e. in the post you linked, they want to get rid of capitalism for more efficient methods of 'technological advancement').
I think "Social Darwinism" is basically "competitionism". Many conservatives would want nature to simply run its course, but "progressive" False Leftists 100+ years ago were heavily involved in the eugenics movement, basically using state power to more efficiently promote competitively-successful Western traits!
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that applied biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s.[1][2]
[...]
In 1883 Sumner published a highly-influential pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", in which he insisted that the social classes owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's findings with free-enterprise capitalism for his justification.[citation needed] According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance to those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for resources, will lead to a country in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to breed more like themselves, eventually dragging the country down. Sumner also believed that the best equipped to win the struggle for existence was the American businessman, and concluded that taxes and regulations serve as dangers to his survival.
[...]
On the basis of U.S. theory and practice, commercial Darwinism operates in markets worldwide, pitting corporation against corporation in struggles for survival.[65]
[...]
In contrast, Fabians in the early 1900s sought to use the state as the means through which a collectivist social Darwinism was to be put into effect. The common Fabian views of the time reconciled a specific form of state socialism and the goal of reducing poverty with eugenics policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism
Universal Darwinism aims to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity proposed by Charles Darwin, so that they can apply to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains, including psychology, linguistics, economics, culture, medicine, computer science and physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism
In contrast, we want to use state power to REDUCE FITNESS to zero and end this madness once and for all. (Which is also the only way to end both intra-specific and inter-specific species competition.)
Is this a problem or not?
In the long term, yes, but I suppose in the short term a centrally-directed economy will ensure that a 'competitive' business owner is serving the needs of the state/nation, rather than enriching themselves, and therefore it won't be a massive problem. This is basically what Hitler complains to Strasser about. If you are too rapid at disrupting the economy (like the Soviets), then your nation becomes weak and cannot even persist long enough to defend itself and implement the true long-term goals of Socialism.
The state intervening to help A over B in the example above can be considered action towards realizing Jesus' presciption that the meek inherit the earth.
Indeed, the meek inheriting the literal earth makes no sense without statist Socialism!
I question whether the "Enlightenment" stuff should be included at all. Elsewhere we have agreed to classify Romanticism within leftism, and Romanticism was a movement against the "Enlightenment", so.....
I suppose so. I've seen "classical liberalism" (i.e. ~18th century democratic/constitutionalist ideas) grouped under conservatism before. (And communists call liberals "rightists", although communists call everyone rightists, including communist factions they don't like...)
I briefly skimmed this article, and if it can be believed, it seems "liberalism" only got serious about social issues in the 2nd half of the 19th century, once actual Socialism became influential against the "laissez-faire" social and economic approaches of "classical liberalism".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
-
Some information from Alfred Rosenberg's memoirs.
During the German civil war in 1919, the communist Bavarian Soviet Republic spared DAP co-founder Dietrich Eckart because of his leftism:
He published a leaflet, To all workers, in which he called them to arms against usury, and which he signed with his full name and address. He printed quite a large edition, and hired two taxicabs from which we scattered them on the streets of Munich. Since many such pamphlets were printed and distributed in these days of revolutionary fermentation, Eckart at first had no difficulties. In fact, when he was about to be arrested during the Raterepublik (the short-lived Communist regime in Munich), and placed among the hostages, this pamphlet may very well have saved his life, for his own janitor and the men who came to arrest him declared with one accord that the author of such a leaflet could not possibly by a reactionary. He went free.
Alfred Rosenberg. (written 1946, published in German 1949). Memoirs. (English translator and date unspecified). Pages not numbered.
https://archive.org/details/MemoirsOfAlfredRosenberg/page/n1/mode/2up
Actual rightists in the 1930s accused National Socialists of being nothing more than Communists:
In their attacks our opponents spared us absolutely nothing. For the middle classes we were camouflaged Bolshevists and atheists, for the Marxists, agents of Deterding, capitalistic varlets, and monarchistic reactionaries.
Again, right-leaning citizens in the 1920s had been prejudiced against the National Socialist party because it had the word "Socialist" in it. I.e., they perceived it to be leftist.
In later years Heinrich Lohse, the son of Holstein peasants, told me repeatedly that it was from me that he had first heard details about Hitler, his speeches, the Feldherrnhalle and our program. The decision he made that day at Weimar was final. So he went to call on his hard-headed, mistrustful peasants who, like those in Oldenburg, were constantly up in arms against any name that contained the world Socialist. It took a long time to break down their resistance, but he did finally succeed.
Rosenberg criticizes Goebbels for being too egocentric (and he seems quite jealous that the propaganda-minded, rather than intellectual-minded, Goebbels was favored by Hitler over himself), but it was obvious to Rosenberg that Goebbels was indeed a leftist:
It is not easy for me to talk about Doctor Joseph Göbbels. From a purely human point of view, his dying in Berlin, together with his wife and five children, takes the sting out of much that is past. Nevertheless, his activities from 1925 until the collapse remain something in the development of the National Socialist revolution that must be studied from a historical point of view. And that, whether open or secret, they were of tremendous importance, I know very well without being cognisant of details. He was the Mephisto of our once so straightforward movement.
[...]
Hitler and I looked at each other and nodded. I was quite willing to forget any instinctive aversion I might have felt. The revolution set him afire. Stürtz and others told me how they all wanted to re-enact, so to speak, certain parallel roles that had once been played in the French Revolution. To become important by joining the opposition was in Göbbels's mind, too, when he came to the fore with articles and speeches. Considering his character and the depth of his social thinking, I came to the conclusion that there was no obstacle that would have prevented Göbbels from joining the Communists. But somehow and somewhere within himself-- this much I am willing to admit unreservedly -- he, too, loved Germany. That's why he turned to Hitler. This was the good that existed even in Göbbels, and that gave to all his activities the magnetic power of the genuine.
Hermann Goering also blamed Goebbels for having too strong of an impact on Hitler.
He influenced Hitler to become anti-Semitic more than Hitler had been before. Hitler used to come to my house once in a while for a cup of coffee, and because I led a normal life, he would leave about nine o'clock. I was in the habit of retiring early. However, Hitler used to spend practically all of his nights, sometimes until four a.m., with Goebbels and his family. God knows what evil influence Goebbels had on him during those long visits.
-Hermann Goering to Leon Goldensohn, May 24, 1946
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Quotes_about_Goebbels
Again, recall that Goebbels was a straight-up Communist far-leftist when he joined the party. Hitler would not have become so close to him if Hitler was a far-rightist. (I doubt Rosenberg read Goebbel's diary where he said he was indeed a Communist!)
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10621/#msg10621
Back to Rosenberg. Hitler demanded social justice and a Socialism that did not involve itself in nonsensical class warfare:
In view of all these contradictory forces and developments, Adolf Hitler, who had encountered such problems in Austria, before serving for four and a half years as a soldier in the German army, not only recognised the necessity of national unity above everything else, but was also willing to press to the hilt the demand for social justice. The National Socialist Party entered the battle. Adolf Hitler became its leader. The point of departure of his way of thinking was this: If so many honest men stand in each of the two opposing camps, no matter how their individual programs look, they must be impelled by decent motives. But if the totality of the bourgeoisie and the totality of the proletariat are such bitter enemies, there must needs be spiritual, political and social causes that prevent understanding, to say nothing of co-operation in regard to all great tasks confronting the Reich. Without going into economic details. National Socialism affirmed the demand for justice for the working classes. But the conviction that social justice could be secured only within the national framework became ever more firm. And here basic dogmas barred the way, dogmas which had been taught only too well to a people more often than not inclined to place veracity above practicality. The class war was looked upon as something factual, and Marxism had not been able to offer anything beyond still more class war -- An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
[...]
It was Adolf Hitler who declared war against all this. ... Hitler had come to the conclusion that a just socialism had, PER SE, nothing to do with class war and internationalism. To perpetuate class war was wrong. It would have to be eliminated.
Hitler spoke to several small gatherings of the party, which was now no longer called the German Workers' Party, but the National Socialist German Workers' Party. This change indicated the union of a cleansed nationalism and a purified socialism.
Rosenberg stresses how similar his views were to Hitler. Since the other quotes have established Hitler was indeed a leftist Socialist and also quite close to the leftist Socialist Goebbels, then, transitively, Rosenberg must have been leftist as well.
Although, briefly skimming through his memoirs, it seems his ideological views were a bit traditionalist in some respects. Perhaps this is why Hitler favored Goebbels more--he was more anti-traditionalist and understood the mission of reshaping and manifesting something entirely new in society? It seems Rosenberg's intellectualism may have prejudiced him to become too attached to the establishment culture to be able to fully imagine a radically new society?
I must say that it was absolutely uncanny how similar our opinions frequently were. Once, after I had written an article on the problems of alcohol for the Folkish Observer, and was just reading the galley proofs. Hitler called on me at the editorial office. He had with him an article on the problems of alcohol which he wanted me to publish in the near future. With a laugh I showed him mine. Then we read each other's articles and found that, starting from different premises, we had reached identical conclusions. When I told him that I naturally would kill my own article. Hitler said, under no circumstances; it was excellent, and it would be a good thing if both of them were published. Thus the Folkish Observer published the two articles in the same issue. Hitler insisted that most of the important speeches to be made at party conventions be submitted to him. Once, when I personally handed him one of mine, he read it immediately and said: This is as much like mine as if we had compared notes beforehand. I might describe the gradually developing personal relationship somewhat like this: he esteemed me highly, but he did not love me. That PER SE was not particularly surprising. For one who came from the Gulf of Bothnia brought along an entirely different temperament than one from Braunau on the Inn. What was surprising, on the contrary, was our miraculously similar judgement regarding the basic traits of so many problems.
-
Even in Mein Kampf, which we've seemed to dismiss as mostly propaganda before, Hitler expresses similar left-wing criticisms of Marxist Socialism, consistent with all the other quotes that have been posted. Although, being a work of propaganda, he is obviously not as explicit in how firmly leftist he is, compared to the quotes from private conversations.
Commentary: Hitler criticizes Marxism for not being a radical opposition to capitalism and Western Civilization, and that, even if it wanted to, it does not have the ideological ability to overthrow Western Civilization to replace it with something meaningful!
Even if Marxism were a thousandfold capable of taking over the economic life as we now have it and maintaining it in operation under Marxist direction, such an achievement would prove nothing; because, on the basis of its own principles, Marxism would never be able to create something which could supplant what exists to-day.
And Marxism itself has furnished the proof that it cannot do this. Not only has it been unable anywhere to create a cultural or economic system of its own; but it was not even able to develop, according to its own principles, the civilization and economic system it found ready at hand. It has had to make compromises, by way of a return to the principle of personality, just as it cannot dispense with that principle in its own organization.
The racial Weltanschauung is fundamentally distinguished from the Marxist by reason of the fact that the former recognizes the significance of race and therefore also personal worth and has made these the pillars of its structure. These are the most important factors of its Weltanschauung.
If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand the fundamental importance of this essential principle, if it should merely varnish the external appearance of the present State and adopt the majority principle, it would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground. For that reason it would not nave the right to call itself a Weltanschauung, If the social programme of the movement consisted in eliminating personality and putting the multitude in its place, then National Socialism would be corrupted with the poison of Marxism, just as our national-bourgeois parties are.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 374.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n375/mode/2up
Again, Marxism is not actually a radical opponent of rightism (i.e. the bourgeois establishment, which Hitler had mentioned in previous speeches represents mainstream conservatism):
Thus the Marxist doctrine is the concentrated extract of the mentality which underlies the general concept of life today. For this reason alone it is out of the question and even ridiculous to think that what is called our bourgeois world can put up any effective fight against Marxism. For this bourgeois world is permeated with all those same poisons and its conception of life in general differs from Marxism only in degree and in the character of the persons who hold it. The bourgeois world is Marxist but believes in the possibility of a certain group of people — that is to say, the bourgeoisie — being able to dominate the world, while Marxism itself systematically aims at delivering the world into the hands of the Jews.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 321.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n323/mode/2up
Commentary: Hitler acknowledging the National Socialist party foremost had appeal to leftists!
The fact that millions of our people yearn at heart for a radical change in our present conditions is proved by the profound discontent which exists among them. This feeling is manifested in a thousand ways. Some express it in a form of discouragement and despair. Others show it in resentment and anger and indignation. Among some the profound discontent calls forth an attitude of indifference, while it urges others to violent manifestations of wrath. Another indication of this feeling may be seen on the one hand in the attitude of those who abstain from voting at elections and, on the other, in the large numbers of those who side with the fanatical extremists of the left wing.
To these latter people our young movement had to appeal first of all.
[...]
Looked at from the purely political point of view, the situation in 1918 was as follows: A nation had been torn into two parts. One part, which was by far the smaller of the two, contained the intellectual classes of the nation, from which all those employed in physical labour were excluded. On the surface these intellectual classes appeared to be national-minded, but that word meant nothing else to them except a very vague and feeble concept of the duty to defend what they called the interests of the State, which in turn seemed identical with those of the dynastic regime.
[...]
Over against this class stood the broad masses of manual labourers who were organized in movements with a more or less radically Marxist tendency. These organized masses were firmly determined to break any kind of intellectual resistance by the use of brute force. They had no nationalist tendencies whatsoever and deliberately repudiated the idea of advancing the interests of the nation as such. On the contrary, they promoted the interests of die foreign oppressor. Numerically this class embraced the majority of the population and, what is more important, included all those elements of the nation without whose collaboration a national resurgence was not only a practical impossibility but was even inconceivable.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 277-278.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n279/mode/2up
Summary: Communist parties gave orders to their followers to attend National Socialist meetings and disrupt them, but what ended up happening is that the Communists ended up joining the National Socialist party instead! In fact, the Communists were losing so many members that they had to change their tactics and forbid their members from attending further NS speeches!
Appeals were then made to the ‘class-conscious proletariat’ to attend our meetings in masses and strike with the clinched hand of the proletarian at the representatives of a ‘monarchist and reactionary agitation.’
Our meetings suddenly became packed with work-people fully three-quarters of an hour before the proceedings were scheduled to begin. These gatherings resembled a powder cask ready to explode at any moment; and the fuse was conveniently at hand. But matters always turned out differently. People came as enemies and left, not perhaps prepared to join us, yet in a reflective mood and disposed critically to examine the correctness of their own doctrine. Gradually as time went on my three-hour lectures resulted in supporters and opponents becoming united in one single enthusiastic group of people. Every signal for the breaking-up of the meeting failed.
[...]
Yet when, after two, three and even eight meetings, it was realized that to break up these gatherings was easier said than done and that every meeting resulted in a decisive weakening of the red fighting forces, then suddenly the other pass-word was introduced: ‘Proletarians, comrades and comradesses, avoid meetings of the National Socialist agitators.’
The same eternally alternating tactics were also to be observed in the Red Press. Soon they tried to silence us but discovered the uselessness of such an attempt. After that they swung round to the opposite tactics. Daily ‘reference’ was made to us solely for the purpose of absolutely ridiculing us in the eyes of the working-classes. After a time these gentlemen must have felt that no harm was being done to us but that, on the contrary, we were reaping an advantage in that people were asking themselves why so much space was being devoted to a subject which was supposed to be so ludicrous. People became curious.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 402.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n403/mode/2up
See also the previous post about "Beefsteak Nazis"--i.e. a joke about just many many National Socialists were former Communists:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10637/#msg10637
The members of our Movement are not recruited from circles which are habitually indifferent to public affairs, but mostly from among men who hold more or less extreme views. Such being the case, it is only natural that their understanding of foreign politics should suffer from the prejudice and inadequate knowledge of those circles to which they were formerly attached by political and ideological ties. And this is true not merely of the men who came to us from the Left.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 522.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n523/mode/2up
Hitler admits social justice warriors are Aryans. Or, rather, that desire for social justice is an innate "racial" quality of Aryans. Communism and other forms of False Leftism claim to fulfill social justice in order to herd people away from REAL solutions.
The Jew artfully enkindled that innate yearning for social justice which is a typical Aryan characteristic. Once that yearning became alive it was transformed into hatred against those in more fortunate circumstances of life. The next stage was to give a precise philosophical aspect to the struggle for the elimination of social wrongs. And thus the Marxist doctrine was invented.
By presenting this doctrine as part and parcel of a just revindication of social rights, the Jew propagated the doctrine all the more effectively. But at the same time he provoked the opposition of decent people who refused to admit these demands which, because of the form and pseudo-philosophical trimmings in which they arc presented, seemed fundamentally unjust and impossible for realization.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 268.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n269/mode/2up
----
In his youth Hitler was attracted to the Socialism of the mainstream Social Democratic Party. However, he realized they did not sincerely believe their Socialist principles, and Hitler set out to make a movement that honestly did believe in Socialism.
Accordingly I had no feeling of antipathy towards the actual policy of the Social Democrats. That its avowed purpose was to raise the level of the working classes--which in my ignorance I then foolishly believed--was a further reason why I should speak in favour of Social Democracy rather than against it. But the features that contributed most to estrange me from the Social Democratic movement was its conservation of Germanism in Austria, its lamentable cocotting with the Slav 'comrades,' who received these approaches favourably as long as any practical advantages were forthcoming but otherwise maintained a haughty reserve, thus giving the importunate mendicants the sort of answer their behaviour deserved.
And so at the age of seventeen the word 'Marxism' was very little known to me, while I looked on 'Social Democracy' and 'Socialism' as synonymous expressions. It was only as the result of a sudden blow from the rough hand of Fate that my eyes were opened to the nature of this unparalleled system for duping the public.
[...]
On my way I noticed the Arbeiterszeitung (The Workman's Journal) in a tobacco shop. This was the chief press-organ of the old Austrian Social Democracy. ... I brought it home with me and spent the whole evening reading it, despite the steadily-mounting rage provoked by this ceaseless outpouring of falsehoods.
I now found that in the social democratic daily papers I could study the inner character of this politico-philosophic system much better than in all their theoretical literature.
For there was a striking discrepancy between the two. In the literary effusions which dealt with the theory of Social Democracy there was a display of high-sounding phraseology about liberty and human dignity and beauty, all promulgated with an air of profound wisdom and prophetic assurance; a meticulously-woven glitter of words, to dazzle and mislead the reader. On the other hand the daily Press inculcated this new doctrine of human redemption in the most brutal fashion. No means were too base, provided they could be exploited in the campaign of slander. These journalists were real virtuosos in the art of twisting facts and presenting them in a deceptive form.
[...]
If Social Democracy should be opposed by a more truthful teaching, then, even though the struggle be of the bitterest kind, this truthful teaching will finally prevail, provided it be enforced with equal ruthlessness.
[...]
I am thankful now for the ordeal which I had to go through at that time; for it was the means of bringing me to think kindly again of my own people, inasmuch as the experience enabled me to distinguish between the false leaders and the victims who have been led astray.
We must took upon the latter simply as victims.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 44-50.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n45/mode/2up
Hitler then studied further and realized why the Social Democratic Party and Marxist Socialism had become derailed from their ostensible Socialist goals:
I gradually discovered that the Social Democratic Press was predominantly controlled by Jews. But I did not attach special importance to this circumstance, for the same state of affairs existed also in other newspapers. But there was one striking fact in this connection. It was that there was not a single newspaper with which Jews were connected that could be spoken of as National, in the meaning that my education and convictions attached to that word.
Making an effort to overcome my natural reluctance, I tried to read articles of this nature published in the Marxist Press; but in doing so my aversion increased all the more. And then I set about learning something of the people who wrote and published this mischievous stuff. From the publisher downwards, all of them were Jews. I recalled to mind the names of the public leaders of Marxism, and then I realized that most of them belonged to the Chosen Race — the Social Democratic representatives in the Imperial Cabinet as well as the secretaries of the Trades Unions and the street agitators. Everywhere the same sinister picture presented itself. I shall never forget the row of names — Austerlitz, David, Adler, Ellenbogen, and others. One fact became quite evident to me. It was that this alien race held in its hands the leadership of that Social Democratic Party with whose minor representatives I had been disputing for months past. I was happy at last to know for certain that the Jew is not a German.
Thus I finally discovered the evil spirits leading our people astray. The sojourn in Vienna for one year had proved long enough to convince me that no worker is so rooted in his preconceived notions that he will not surrender them in face of better and clearer arguments and explanations. Gradually I became an expert in the doctrine of the Marxists and used this knowledge as an instrument to drive home my own firm convictions. I was successful in nearly every case. The great masses can be rescued, but a lot of time and a large share of human patience must be devoted to such work.
[...]
Urged by my own daily experiences, I now began to investigate more thoroughly the sources of the Marxist teaching itself. Its effects were well known to me in detail. As a result of careful observation, its daily progress had become obvious to me. And one needed only a little imagination in order to be able to forecast the consequences which must result from it. The only question now was: Did the founders foresee the effects of their work in the form which those effects have shown themselves today, or were the founders themselves the victims of an error? To my mind both alternatives were possible.
If the second question must be answered in the affirmative, then It was the duty of every thinking person to oppose this sinister movement with a view to preventing it from producing its worst results.
[...]
And so I began to gather information about the authors of this teaching, with a view to studying the principles of the movement. The fact that I attained my object sooner than I could have anticipated was due to the deeper insight into the Jewish question which I then gained, my knowledge of this question being hitherto rather superficial. This newly acquired knowledge alone enabled me to make a practical comparison between the real content and the theoretical pretentiousness of the teaching laid down by the apostolic founders of Social Democracy; because I now understood the language of the Jew. I realized that the Jew uses language for the purpose of dissimulating his thought or at least veiling it, so that his real aim cannot be discovered by what he says but rather by reading between the lines. This knowledge was the occasion of the greatest inner revolution that I had yet experienced. From being a soft-hearted cosmopolitan I became an out-and-out anti-Semite.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 60-65.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n63/mode/2up
Incredible isn't it? Even in a work of propaganda like Mein Kampf, Hitler has no problem admitting his Socialist roots and his desire to manifest a Socialist movement which is able to actually accomplish the social justice goals which Marxist Socialism claims to want, but never will be able to fulfill (both due to flawed ideological foundations and control of its political movements by the very same elites who will have to be toppled to achieve actual Socialist social justice). If Hitler was a far-rightist trying to build a far-rightist movement, why would he so clearly outline his plan to manifest a more honest form of Socialism???
Again, see the previous excerpt about how the Social Democratic Party was indeed very Socialist and not just a mainstream liberal party or something:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10639/#msg10639
And see the quote from Heiden about how he argues Hitler didn't want to join the Social Democratic Party ("Majority Socialist" party) because he thought it was TOO RIGHTIST. Presumably Heiden had read Mein Kampf, so he may have been summarizing Hitler's attitude displayed in the quotes above.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10639/#msg10639
See also the April 12, 1922, speech in Munich, where Hitler explains in further detail about how Communism doesn't actually topple the financial elites.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10614/#msg10614
-
"I question whether the "Enlightenment" stuff should be included at all. Elsewhere we have agreed to classify Romanticism within leftism, and Romanticism was a movement against the "Enlightenment", so....."
I always saw it the opposite way. Leftism is everything derived from the Enlightenment, and Romanticism was a movement against the Enlightenment, so Romanticism is not Leftist.
I'd divide Leftism into three waves:
1. Enlightenment and all later forms of liberalism
2. Socialism, including Marxism
3. Post-WW2 countercultural movements
And stop whitewashing Hitler, it is creepy!
-
I always saw it the opposite way. Leftism is everything derived from the Enlightenment
Gnosticism was leftist long before any European "enlightenment". Even in the New Testament we witness Jesus's leftism. Our enemies will tell you this is the case also:
Leftism is a Gnostic perversion of Christianity
Being that we all live in “Christendom” — that is, a culture shaped and animated (in the literal sense of “given life”) by Judeo-Christian principles — I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that we share its underlying assumptions about the “brokenness” of man and the world. But where the progressive goes off the rails is in supposing there is some secret political formula that can reverse the fall and restore us to wholeness. Thus, the ubiquitous frenzied moral passion that always animates the left. Leftists are always exaggeratedly pessimistic about the present state of the world, but “optimistic” in a crazed and manic way that steamrules over anyone who would dare delay the immediate implementation of paradise.
Entire article: https://wolfpangloss.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/leftism-is-a-gnostic-perversion-of-christianity/
This is why the True Left is also known as the Pan-Gnostic Left among True Leftists.
And stop whitewashing Hitler, it is creepy!
How are we "white-washing" Hitler exactly? You do realize a lot of the previous quotes in this thread are directly from Mein Kampf, as well as other reputable sources, right? Are we "whitewashing" Hitler or have you actually never read anything he said?
-
"Leftism is everything derived from the Enlightenment, and Romanticism was a movement against the Enlightenment, so Romanticism is not Leftist."
"Enlightenmenters" supported Western colonialism because they saw colonialism as a way of spreading the "Enlightenment" to non-Western countries. Romantics were opposed to Western colonialism for the same reason. Thus Romantics are the True Leftists.
You are talking about progressivism, which True Leftism is hostile towards:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/leftists-against-progressivism/
As a simple example, progressives are Islamophobic precisely because they judge Islam to be a regressive force. True Leftists are anti-Islamophobic not because we disagree with the progressive judgement about Islam being a regressive force, but because we agree with it and hence see in Islamization at least a chance to stop progress before it becomes truly unstoppable:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/if-western-civilization-does-not-die-soon/
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/progressive-yahwism/
The nonsensical conflation of leftism with progressivism is the reason why most leftists today are so intellectually weak. Thoroughly extirpating progressivism from leftist thinking is what we are here to do.
"1. Enlightenment and all later forms of liberalism"
This is False Leftism. It still considers Western civilization superior to non-Western civilizations, since the "Enlightenment" was a uniquely Western development.
"2. Socialism, including Marxism"
Marx also supported Western colonialism (see earlier posts), thus Marx was also a False Leftist. It is only Romanticism-inspired versions of socialism, such as Hitlerism, which are True Leftist, considering Western civilization inferior to the civilizations it was colonizing, but merely more powerful.
"3. Post-WW2 countercultural movements"
This is the True Leftist successor to Romanticism-Hitlerism, continuing to argue for the inferiority of Western civilization compared to non-Western civilizations.
The chronological waves of our camp are:
1) Aryan Neolithic revolution
2) Ancient pan-Gnostic movements
3) Romanticism-Hitlerism
4) Counterculture era
5) https://trueleft.createaforum.com/index.php
and of course:
0) Original Nobility
-
And stop whitewashing Hitler, it is creepy!
Would you say analogous things to Communists and supporters of "Enlightenment" liberalism/democracy whenever they speak positively of their views? (Personally, I do find their constant rehabilitation of their ideologists and dogmatic devotion to their failed ideologies to be creepy.)
And, if anything, I'm redwashing Hitler by posting direct primary source quotes from him and those who interacted with him personally. ;D
Consider, for a moment, that professional historians typically write books by quoting a sentence or two from the primary sources and then writing pages upon pages of their own personal opinions to flesh out a narrative. (Sometimes they may go an entire chapter with only citations and no direct quotations, and we have to trust that they are accurately portraying the substance of what they are citing.) In fact, some history books written for general audiences don't cite references at all, and even school history textbooks may not even have any direct quotations.
In contrast, I have provided minimal commentary on the quotes. I have allowed Hitler and those who interacted with him personally to speak almost entirely for themselves, with large chunks of text to give adequate context and fullness to their thoughts. There are quotes from enemies of Hitler (e.g. Rauschning on the right and Strasser on the left), allies (e.g. Wagener and Goebbels), and from Hitler himself. And all the quotes are converging upon the same themes of genuine Socialism.
It is bizarre, I will concede, to read such things for the first time. (I'll admit I was shocked while doing research for this thread!) But it is no more bizarre than, say, a person reading the Communist Manifesto and other works for the first time and realizing what Communism claims to be in its own words is entirely different from how rightist narratives and strawmen portray it.
----
3) Romanticism-Hitlerism
This was, in fact, an ideological stage acknowledged by philosopher Bertrand Russell in his history of "Western Philosophy". From what I can tell, Russell was left/false left, so he is not merely trying to insult leftism by including Hitler and Mussolini in it.
Russell considered that Hitler could be considered under the umbrella of one of two types of post-Enlightenment "liberalism". This is probably not identical to our divide between the post-Enlightenment False Left and the True Left, but we are not alone in seeing a split.
Since Rousseau and Kant, there have been two schools of liberalism, which may be distinguished as the hard-headed and the soft-hearted. The hard-headed developed, through Bentham, Ricardo, and Marx, by logical stages into Stalin; the soft-hearted, by other logical stages, through Fichte, Byron, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, into Hitler.
Bertrand Russell. (1946). History of Western Philosophy. George Allen and Unwin LTD. Page 667.
https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp/page/666/mode/2up
Russell also acknowledges Hitler is a Romanticist:
The intellectual life of the nineteenth century was more complex than that of any previous age. This was due to several causes. ... Fourth: a profound revolt, both philosophical and political, against traditional systems in thought, in politics, and in economics, gave rise to attacks upon many beliefs and institutions that had hitherto been regarded as unassailable. This revolt had two very different forms, one romantic, the other rationalistic. (I am using these words in a liberal sense.) The romantic revolt passes from Byron, Schopenhauer, and Nietzche to Mussolini and Hitler; the rationalistic revolt begins with the French philosophers of the Revolution, passes on, somewhat softened, to the philosophical radicals in England, then acquires a deeper form in Marx and issues in Soviet Russia.
Bertrand Russell. (1946). History of Western Philosophy. George Allen and Unwin LTD. Page 746.
https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp/page/746/mode/2up
(Surely "empiricist" is a better word to describe the non-Romanticists than "rationalistic".)
I don't know much about Rousseau, but Russell sees him as one of the earliest philosophers whose ideas signaled a split between what would become the Romanticist revolution against "Enlightenment" thought. Of course, Hitler himself says his Socialism is entirely pre-Western and traces back to Jesus.
[Rousseau] is the father of the romantic movement, the initiator of systems of thought which infer non-human facts from human emotions, and the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic dictatorships as opposed to traditional absolute monarchies. Ever since his time, those who considered themselves reformers have been divided into two groups, those who followed him and those who followed Locke. Sometimes they co-operated, and many individuals saw no incompatibility. But gradually the incompatibility has become increasingly evident. At the present time, Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke.
Bertrand Russell. (1946). History of Western Philosophy. George Allen and Unwin LTD. Page 711.
https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp/page/710/mode/2up
The chronological waves of our camp are
As an additional random thought regarding political camps, I think there are at least two major techniques to classify them.
The first is in a chronological manner (which would be called a phylogenetic tree if we take into account ideologies branching out into different clusters--e.g. in the classification I outlined earlier in the thread). This is perhaps the most straight-forward technique, since it's basically retracing history.
The second is grouping/distinguishing ideologies by specific characteristics. (e.g. how you outline support vs colonialism vs opposition; or the simple way the True Left and False Left were distinguished on the main site). Ideally these characteristics would cleanly overlap with the groups in a phylogenetic tree--but this is not strictly essential, as even in biology character traits and family classifications don't perfectly correspond to evolutionary phylogenies.
-
Additional quotes from Wagener that are relevant here.
Again, Hitler passionately advocates for a truly revolutionary and anti-traditional form of Socialism that replaces the past ~1000 years of post-Renaissance Western Civilization with a radically new foundation:
“What is at stake at the present great turning point? An individualistic worldview is being replaced by a socialistic one! A thousand-year-old attitude toward life is being thrust aside by completely new concepts.
Such a change cannot be decreed by legislation! Nor can it be brought about by a ministry, no matter how homogeneously it is put together and how saturated and filled it is with the new ideas.
Such a transformation requires an inner conversion! A mental, a spiritual, an ethical, even a religious one!
[...]
What is crucial is the internal conversion of the people, of the Volksgenossen, of the Volk! And that is a political task! As yet, almost everyone is imprisoned in the liberalistic attitude. Do you think that a confirmed industrial entrepreneur is prepared suddenly to admit that his property is not a right but a duty? That capital should no longer rule but be ruled? That it is not the life of the individual that matters but the totality? That the principle of the soldier’s sacrificial death should be transformed into the readiness of every working person—whether he be active in the economy or elsewhere—to sacrifice himself for the community?
It is such a far-reaching and complete conversion that the adult is no longer capable of it. Only youth can be converted, newly aligned and adjusted to the socialist sense of obligation toward the community. ...almost two thousand years the Gospel of Christ has been preached, for two thousand years the sense of community has been taught: love one another, care for one another, respect and help one another! But today, at the end of these two thousand years, economic liberalism flourishes as never before!
[...]
And in a couple of years we are supposed to make up for all this and to restore order where millenia have sinned? We’re to believe that we can restore the value of the word of God, the teaching of Christ, the truth of a holy religion, where generations upon generations, nations upon nations, the entire lifespan of a human cultural epoch, all were unable even to recognize the deep abyss in which they wandered or sojourned!
True, this misinterpretation of the Christian faith has become clearly evident only recently, through the mechanization of manual labor and the industrialization of the economy, which allowed the condition of pre-Christian slavery to be revived in new forms.
[...]
But when you see the masses streaming to join the SA, when you observe the enthusiasm of youth, when the cheerful hands of an innocent child reach for you, then you will sense the inner conversion; then you will realize that a new faith is awakening out of the lethargy of a corrupt epoch and taking to the march—the faith in divine justice, in heavenly truth; the faith in an unworldly, paradisiacal future, where the lust for power, force, and enmity gives way to equality and fraternity, the spirit of sacrifice, love and loyalty, and the will to stand before the throne of the Almighty with the open heart of one ready to believe in God. And they will have sufficient greatness to stammer out the prayer for their brothers and fathers, ‘Forgive them. Lord, for they knew not what they did.’
It is on this basis alone that the new world can be built! To lay this groundwork is our task. Our own hopes can aim no further. We must leave some things to be done by those who come after us. Your work will be a signpost for the future, a witness to our great intention, but in our time it will not be crowned with realization.”
He fell silent. His inner enthusiasm had driven the blood into his cheeks. His eyes glowed like bright lights. I thought of Strasser, of our plans. And I felt: Our thinking is so puny.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 55-57.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n85/mode/2up
Here is Wagener and Hitler having the same conversation about ideal Socialism's approach to business talent and the practical reality of what must happen at the beginning of a 1000-year-Reich in order for the state to be successful:
It is generally believed that competitors must be totally hostile to each other and constantly at each other’s throats. I hold the reverse to be true. We are accustomed to believe that struggle is necessary for that which is healthier and stronger—in this case, better—to prevail. That is said to be the case in the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom. And it cannot be otherwise, the belief holds, among men and in men’s work.
I often talked with Hitler about this question. He was radically committed to that view. Even applied to economics, he saw in the struggle for assertion of self and for preeminence the surest guarantee for progress and the general weal.
Clearly he had conflicting feelings. He was a socialist and determined to remain one. But his inner attachment to nature led him time and again to observe and acknowledge as a law of nature the struggle for existence, the struggle to defeat the other.
“But that is liberalism, pure and simple,” I told him on the occasion of one such discussion. “Man has been thinking and acting this way for two thousand years. With this watchword he overcame absolutism and created the system that today we call democracy, which put an end to the struggle of the individual for economic and spiritual freedom. But it is exactly this economic freedom that created new autocracies, in the factories and the large concerns, where the workers and clerical personnel were turned even more directly into slaves than they ever had been under the scepter of a feudal lord.”
“I know myself,” he answered, “that here is an intersecting point in the lines of my natural feelings and my logical and historical perception. In our program, we have even given expression to this hurdle by coining the maxim, ‘public need before private greed.’ Individual striving—yes, individual acquisitiveness—is the driving force that animates the world and the economy and that has engendered all major inventions and discoveries. If we eliminate it, the drive slackens and progress stagnates. But to stand still is to regress.
That is why we must preserve this driving force, we must nurture it, even reward it! We must take this striving, which is in itself selfish, and place it in the service of all, in the service of the whole nation — yes, perhaps in time in the service of all mankind.”
“If you believe [Wagener replied] that mankind can be trained to this end without very far-reaching interventions by the state, then, I believe, you have too high an opinion of mankind. Man’s aspirations are evil—we should say, selfish—from childhood; the Bible tells us something of the sort. Perhaps Christ was one of the first to contrast man’s liberalistic attitude with the socialist stance. But his teachings, which can still be found in pure and noble form in St. Paul and others, soon became falsified, even turned upside down, and little of Christianity remains in the churches that use its name today.”
“I know that, Wagener. I’m quite clear on that point. But perhaps it is easier to preach and find prophets for a socialism that corresponds to Marxist ideas or present-day communism than for the synthesis of reason that has the goal of putting the given traits of humanity in the service of the people. For if we permitted our Gauleiter and speakers to preach pure socialism of the customary order, we would be doing nothing different from the Bolsheviks. In that case, we would not have to do battle with them. But what we want is precisely to keep this destructive Bolshevism, which annihilates culture and economy, from taking further root, so that it destroys our life as well!
Communism results in a welfare state where the standards are averaged downward. We want a state that allows for free development of the personality, but in the last analysis, this must also be for the needs of the people — that is, in the service of the community, where the standard is to be raised as high as possible, and then higher yet.
This state, however, can come into being only in the fight for existence, in a competitive struggle that is as free as possible, connected purely and simply to the promotion of the commonweal—that is, gain for all: for the Volk community, for humanity.
You see, that’s what doesn’t quite make sense to me in your plans for economic organization, for a system of economic self-administration. It is too likely that these economic councils, this multiplicity of opinion, this chaos of interests, might inhibit, or even stifle, the development of individuality and personal initiative. This structure is necessary for the present, as long as the economy is in a slump, as long as millions of people cannot find work, as long as systematic state control of the economy must occur just to bring it back to full production. But the closer we come to normal times, the more the shackles and restraints that hinder the free play of the natural struggle must be loosened. The state must be, not a nursemaid, but the incarnation of the ethical conscience of a people and of each individual.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 114-116.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n143/mode/2up
I think with state control over reproduction and central direction of the economy, a balance could be found to prevent hyper-competitiveness from going unchecked, while not stifling the productivity that will unfortunately be necessary for the battles to come.
-
Summary and commentary:
In this chapter, Hitler and Wagener discuss the foreign policy goal of a Socialist federation of nations, with the hope that National Socialist Germany will serve as a shining example that could convince even democratic nations to eventually adopt Socialism.
Hitler also criticizes Oswald Spengler (he says he will strive against the "decline" predicted by Spengler, but Hitler advocates for regressing towards an ancient pre-Renaissance ideal of Socialism, whereas Spengler's "West" seems clearly post-Renaissance. Further, from reading a brief summary of Spengler's work, it seems like his view of history is "progressive" in the development of cultures, but Hitler is clearly "regressive" and also says he wants to dismantle the post-Renaissance order and radically replace it. In other words, Hitler is anti-Spengler, but from a leftist perspective, not a rightist Western-preservationist perspective.)
Hitler also mentions that industrialization is present almost exclusively in nations with "Nordic" elements. However, Hitler strongly criticizes industrialization and the slavery it entails. So, Hitler's desire to harness the "Nordic" character is a practical matter to redirect their talent away from their "natural" selfish-individualism and inventiveness towards strengthening the power of a National Socialist state.
This "Nordic" character is in contrast to the "Slavic" character, who have allowed themselves to become slaves to Judeo-Bolshevism. However, all the worst aspects of Communism were not developed by Russians or Slavs themselves, but by Jews, and then accepted by the Slavic peoples where Communism has prevailed.
Hitler also predicts an interesting three-front future Cold War between a future National Socialist EU, the US, and Communist nations. Hitler (correctly) predicts the heavily-industrialized US will eventually take over the UK's throne as a global military power, and Hitler thinks he needs an alliance with England and other future-EU nations to have the power for National Socialism to be triumphant over the internationalist-industrialist US bloc and the internationalist (false) Socialist USSR bloc.
In the next section Wagener summarizes six postulates on foreign policy at which he had arrived by the early 1930s: [...] (2) collaboration with Italy would be a mistake, since it would nourish the belief in the Soviet Union that the Nazis were mere fascists, [...] (3) in order to make possible an ideological rapprochement with the Soviet Union, Nazi plans for a "social economy" should be emphasized; [...] (5) by means of economic agreements and collaboration, Germany's neighbors in Central Europe should be won over to a federation that could serve as a bridge between East and West by means of which socialist conciliation could take place.
[...]
When he had finished, Wagener recounts, Hitler calmly responded as follows.
“I did not take the road of politics to smooth the way for international socialism, much less to preach a new, socialist religion. I am not made to be the founder of a religion, I am not one and have no desire to be one. Rather, I am a politician. I bring to the German Volk national socialism, the political doctrine of the Volk community, the solidarity of all who are part of the German Volk and who are ready and willing to feel themselves an inextricable but co-responsible particle of the totality of the Volk, having responsibility for it.
A Volk in the current political sense has ceased to be a racial unit, a racially pure community. The great migrations of world history, the military expeditions, the times of enemy occupation, and also, of course, the admixture that became ever more frequent as the result of international trade relations, have seen to it that all sorts of races and racial mixtures live side by side within the borders of any state.
Nevertheless, most nations—the United States of America forming the most notable exception—are the structures within certain areas where either the old tribal system has survived or a community has come into being over time that was consolidated into a Volk, possessing its own style, its own language, its own attitudes on ethics and morality, and its own culture. Such groups of people who feel that they belong together continue to unite under economic, political, and even purely geographic influences, and these groups rightly designate themselves a Volk. In this same way, America will in time turn into one Volk.
[...]
Our movement has adopted the mission of enabling the German Volk to change the Weimar constitution, so that it will correspond to the essence and will of the Volk. And this essence of the German Volk is socialist in the most profound sense. Any Volk community is, in the last analysis, always socialist.
Earlier, you mentioned the situation of the Jews in Soviet Russia. You call the Jew’s participation in the Bolshevik Revolution ‘midwifery’. Let us make no mistake! Thanks to the Jews, socialist movements all over the world have turned into mechanisms of battle against the organic development of the peoples! Their influence on nations is not constructive but destructive. They love the socialist idea, not for the sake of the idea, but for the possibility of using the concept to win over the disconnected masses to the struggle against the indigenous Volk leadership. Since, on the basis of the Biblical promise made to him, the Jew strives for power within all peoples, the indigenous leadership in every nation is his enemy! But when it has successfully been removed by a revolution, then the Jews do not actually introduce genuine socialism as they have promised—because it would wrest power from their hands again. Rather, they established the rule of the proletariat—or, as happened in Weimar, the rule of the revolutionaries—and they themselves take over the safeguarding of the attainments of the revolution and the representation of the proletariat.
The Jew is not a socialist! Once before he nailed to the cross the great Creator of the concept of socialist redemption! He will do so again whenever he can! For he is an individualist, an economic liberalist, an egotist—yes, he is a parasitic creature. In Russia, the Jews succeeded in directing the will to freedom of oppressed Slavic peoples against allegedly alien rulers. But then, themselves alien, they set themselves in the former rulers’ place. They still occupy it, and I have no reason to believe that the Slavs are making any attempts to oust them again. But as long as that is not the case, a National-Socialist Germany cannot enter into alliances with Russia. Rather, I see Jewry’s determination to use Russia as a springboard from which to direct the removal of the existing order in other nations as well! For the organization of the Comintern is purely Jewish!
That is why it becomes necessary to strengthen the peoples of Europe and all the world against this germ of destruction ...
[...]
... I have no doubt that gradually, but with absolute certainty, a socialist reorganization will take place in all democratic countries. Except in Russia! There the herd will be increasingly governed with the whip.
[...]
The international element of the communist movement that emanates from Russia is not really Russian, or Slavic; it is Jewish. And we must not make the mistake of believing that it is supported by a Russian-Slavic idea, which might even have some creative content. The current activities of the Comintern members are purely destructive.
There also exists a constructive international socialist idea. But it is altogether different. For, look here, once nations have begun to carry out a socialist and socio-economic reorganization within their own borders, the time is ripe for the totality of nations—that is, all the peoples and states—to give up fighting each other for power and supremacy, enslavement and exploitation, according to liberal principles—that is, acting according to imperialist principles. Then, even among them the time has come for giving consideration to pride of place, communal spirit, even ‘socialism.’ What first occurred on a small scale within the individual nations will then take place among the worldwide community of nations. Even the smallest of them will enjoy equal rights, even the have-nots will be able to share in the goods and the surplus of the elite’s international property. That is socialism of the nations! But it is quite different from the international socialism of a Marx or a Lenin!
[...]
But first, there will have to be national socialism. Otherwise the peoples and their governments are not ready for the socialism of nations. It is not possible to be liberal in one’s own country and demand socialism among nations. Education about and firm belief in national socialism must precede that change. But if we do not succeed in taking this road, we will either be given a world empire headed by a single state—the strongest, the most powerful, which will, in the end, have to resort to military methods to secure and maintain its power—or end up with international Bolshevism, which can equally be nothing but despotism. The first goal is obviously being striven for at present by North America, while Russia aims at the latter. Perhaps neither of them yet realizes what is happening. But, as I said: If we do not succeed in paving the way for the socialism of nations, then one or another of these two must set in!
[...]
The international powers that are at work to penetrate the unanimity of the national bodies, the states, the nations, to dissolve and undermine them, are therefore contrary to nature and hostile to the divine order. ... Such organizations can, at times, be stronger than the states! And herein lies their danger! Not only for the individual state, but especially for the possibility of creating the great socialist community of nations.
So, if we pursue the goal of such a community of nations—and it must, as I said, be pursued, and it will be the final goal of human politics on this earth—then we must first reconstruct the independence and autonomy of the nations, even the smallest, and drive the large international organizations back to their purely technical sphere of operations, eliminating every last possibility of their influence on governments and governmental organizations. This is a further basic perception.
[...]
I cannot believe that the civilized nations of the world are so blind that they will lacerate each other to smooth the way for Bolshevism. The contrary is essential: coalition, by groups, into confederacies of states, into families of nations, perhaps even here and there into federal states.
[...]
It is all the more important that we work at a coalition. And on that point I will tell you over and over again: without England it is not possible! England has the necessary power. We bring along only the idea and the will. I cannot imagine that England will not decide to climb down from its pedestal of arrogance and imperialism, which has been made outmoded by history, and to extend its hand to a community of nations. ...”
[...]
Hitler raised his voice for the final words. It was a last, and without a doubt a final, rejection of the policies I had proposed. But this rejection was at once so impressive and so convincing that, after long internal struggle, I decided to bow to it. Only two goals remained absolute for me: to smooth the way to the East, using economic negotiations and treaties that would avoid and make unnecessary armed confrontation; and the realization at the earliest possible moment of a socio-economic reorganization that might prompt even Russia to imitation and abandonment of its Bolshevik ideology.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 165-174.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n207/mode/2up
Note that last sentence. Rauschning (a rightist anti-Hitlerist) said Hitler expressed the same sentiment that Bolshevism will be forced to imitate and transform into a sort of National Socialism!!! Once again, this would make no sense if National Socialism was not a genuinely leftist Socialist ideology. I would recommend reading the passages from Rauschning again, as these are the strongest quotes I have seen about Hitler unambiguously stressing the leftism of his Socialism:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10718/#msg10718
-
Information from Otto Strasser's memoir "Hitler and I", published in 1940. In the book, he is bitterly anti-Hitler and anti-NSDAP.
Previously, we discussed numerous times how Hitler respected the Strassers, went out of his way to try to keep them in the party, and never criticized them for being leftist. Here is further evidence Strasser was indeed leftist/Socialist, and that he believed Hitler was leftist enough to be "used" to further the cause of Socialism.
Six months earlier the celebrated Kapp putsch had taken place in Berlin, on which occasion I had fought valiantly for the Weimar Republic. I had led three squads of Berlin workingmen against Colonel Erhardt’s Brigade and General Luttwitz’s Regiment.
[...]
I was a young student of law and economics, a Left-Wing student leader, and a leader of ex-soldier students.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 2-3.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
Gregor, as leader of the Nationalist ex-service men of Bavaria, had incorporated his followers in the National-Socialist movement that spring [1920]. He had founded the first provincial branch of the party, and was thus Hitler’s first Gauleiter.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 6-7.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
‘There is no question of revenge and there is no question of war,’ I replied. ‘Our Socialism must be “national” in order to establish a new order in Germany and not to set out on a new policy of conquests.’
‘Yes,’ said Gregor, who had been listening very seriously, ‘from the Right we shall take nationalism, which has so disastrously allied itself with capitalism, and from the Left we shall take Socialism, which has made such an unhappy union with internationalism. Thus we shall form the National-Socialism which will be the motive force of a new Germany and a new Europe.’
‘And,’ I continued, ‘the emphasis in this amalgamation must be on the socialism. Don’t you call your movement Nationalsozialist in a single word, Herr Hitler? German grammar tells us that in compound words of this kind the first part serves to qualify the second, which is the essential part.’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 9.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
Again, there was an understanding in the 1920s that Marx did not have a monopoly on the idea of Socialism:
The more persuasive Hitler tried to be, the more critical did I become. He stopped for breath and saw me smile.
‘You do not know the Jews, Herr Hitler, and permit me to tell you that you overestimate them,’ I replied. ‘The Jew, you see, is above all adaptable. He exploits existing possibilities, but creates nothing. He makes use of socialism, he utilizes capitalism, he would even exploit National-Socialism if you gave him the chance. He adapts himself to circumstances with a suppleness of which, apart from him, only the Chinese is capable. Marx invented nothing. Socialism has always had three sides. Marx, in collaboration with the good German Engels, studied its economic side, the Italian Mazzini examined its national and religious implications, and Bakunin, a Russian, developed its Nihilist side, from which Bolshevism was born. Thus you see that socialism was not of Jewish origin at all.’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 11.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
(For reference, Bakunin was very anti-Jewish.)
Like Hitler, the Strassers wanted a synthesis of Nationalism and Socialism:
As for Hitler, I thought him too servile towards the General, too quick in argument and in the art of isolating his opponent. He has no political convictions, he has the eloquence of a loudspeaker.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Gregor, ‘his corporal’s stripes are pinned to his body. All the same there’s something about him. He has a magnetic quality which it is difficult to resist. What fine things we could do if we could use him to express your ideas, employing Ludendorff’s energy and my own organizing ability to carry them out!’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 13.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
Ironically, the Strassers expressed disappointment that Hitler was making an actual synthesis of Nationalism and Socialism, as well as setting his sights on a radical and revolutionary transformation of politics. The Strassers were too bogged down in Western traditions...
Gregor had more solid arguments to justify his obstinacy.
I reminded him of Hitler’s successive acts of treachery.
‘We no longer talk the same language,’ I said. ‘We are socialists, and Hitler has already come to terms with the capitalists. We are republicans, and Hitler allies himself with the Wittelsbachs and even with the Hohenzollerns. We are European and liberal; we demand our liberty, but we also respect the liberty of others, while Hitler talks to his confidants of the domination of Europe. We are Christians; without Christianity Europe is lost. Hitler is an atheist.’
Gregor listened to me gravely, his brows contracted in a frown.
‘No!’ he exclaimed, ‘I won’t allow myself to be unhorsed. I shall tame him.’
Did Gregor really believe he would tame Adolf? Was he not bound to him by one of those obstinate fidelities that nothing could shake?
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 93.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
See the previous post of Hitler's conversations with Otto Strasser in 1930, where Hitler reaffirmed his Socialism and criticized Strasser for being too Marxist-sympathetic and not radical enough. (A different translation of that conversation is also included in the book I'm quoting from.)
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10620/#msg10620
Strasser speaks very negatively of Goebbels, but never does he portray Goebbels as a rightist. This occurred in 1925 I believe:
When Feder protested in Hitler’s name, Goebbels leapt to his feet and made a sensational speech in our support.
‘In these circumstances I demand that the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler be expelled from the National-Socialist Party,’ he thundered. I may add that he was loudly applauded.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 86.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
Otto Strasser claims Goebbels helped organize the coup attempt led by Stennes (which Otto Strasser supported). (This also means Stennes would have been a leftist Socialist. So many leftist factions within the NSDAP!)
On Good Friday, 1931, the Berlin S.A., in full uniform, with Stennes at their head, seized the building in which Goebbels lived and the Angriff was printed.
[...]
Stennes informed me of what had happened. ‘Goebbels is in flight, but the police are on the move against us,’ he said.
I immediately joined him at the Angriff building.
‘What are we to do?’ he asked me. ‘The revolt was planned in agreement with Goebbels, but at the last moment he betrayed us, warned the police, and fled to Munich to take refuge in Hitler’s bosom.’
‘A revolt which does not develop into a revolution,’ I replied, ‘is doomed in advance. We must hold out.’
The S.A. occupied the Angriff works for three days, publishing the paper on their own. Hitler and Goebbels were declared to have been dethroned. The Gauleiters of North Germany decided to support Stennes in the total revolution, and Goebbels’ second betrayal was reported in large type in all their papers.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 126-127.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
Strasser also claims Goebbels was assuring Roehm that the right-wing elements of the party would soon be purged, in the days leading up to the Night of the Long Knives! Strasser insults Goebbels for seemingly favoring whichever faction is more likely to emerge victorious, even if it means 'betraying' his Socialist ideals, but Strasser never suggests that Goebbels was insincere in his initial support of the leftist plotters of the party. He does not suggest Goebbels was a rightist in disguise who was trying to gain the confidence of the leftists!
Furthermore, the way Strasser describes things, Hitler was ready to side with Roehm and the leftist radical/revolutionary faction over the right-leaning faction of the party, but Hitler's hand was forced by President Hindenburg's threats of using the military against him if he couldn't control agitation within the party, the danger of alienating the industrial powers, and Goering siding with the military/industrialists.
(Note that when Strasser says "radical", he means leftist.)
The conversations between Roehm and Goebbels at the Bratwurst-Glockle became much more animated. When the landlord or the waiters entered their private room, they heard only fragments.
‘Mussolini demanded the sacrifice of the radicals... The reactionaries grow more and more insolent... The Marburg speech was a provocation... Adolf will put these gentlemen of the Herrenklub in their place... We’ll make a clean sweep.’
They didn't hear much, but it was too much.
When Hitler finally came down on the side of the reactionaries a few days later, it was important that nobody should be left alive who knew that a few days earlier Goebbels had been discussing with Roehm the liquidation of the capitalist and bourgeois clique.
[...]
Adolf need only have taken one further step to have created a fait accompli, but Roehm, the soul of the revolutionary movement, was absent, and Blomberg and even Goering kept silence.
[...]
He made up his mind to deal once and for all with the reactionary gentlemen, if not tomorrow, then next day or next week.
What he needed now was the President’s consent to the formation of a new Cabinet built on real Nazi lines.
[...]
Hitler was accompanied by Goebbels, by Hofmann the photographer, and by Herr Schreck, the leader of the S.S. These three represented the radical wing of the party in South Germany.
[...]
Did not Goering belong to the Party? Did he not owe everything to Adolf? Yet he dared come out on the side of the Reichswehr and the police against the Party and the S.A. Blomberg and Goering against Hitler and Roehm...
Goebbels reflected. From the corner of his eye he watched Hitler pass from violent anger to complete prostration. The little cripple had betrayed Gregor Strasser at Bamberg, he had betrayed Stennes in Berlin, and he would betray Adolf too if the latter were obstinate, for he knew that power was on the side of the Reichswehr ... But Hitler must realize that too ... Hitler would reflect, he had already reflected, he would go back on his original intentions. Goebbels was sure of it. Only one petty act of treachery would be necessary, and the Minister of Propaganda cheerfully reconciled himself to it. What, after all, had he promised Roehm? Nothing at all. Roehm must be sacrificed.
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 184-187.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
This is similar to how Rauschning said Hitler was considering regaining control of the party by leading the revolutionary leftist element of the SA himself, rather than purging them:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10719/#msg10719
Weeks before the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler again offered Gregor Strasser additional power in an attempt to retain his loyalty. There is no way Hitler would have offered Strasser the position of Minister of the National Economy had Hitler been a far-rightist trying to stamp out left-wing elements of the party! Furthermore, Otto Strasser's narrative that Hitler was basically right-leaning and had "betrayed" the Socialist aspects of National Socialism from the outset make little sense, given how willing Hitler was to continuously empower Gregor Strasser and Roehm (who Otto Strasser says was aligned with their overall Socialist goals).
He was at the cross-roads. One way led towards a peaceful German revolution and the regeneration of the country; this was the way of Roehm, Gregor Strasser, and General von Schleicher. The other was the Imperialist way of old Germany, which led inevitably to war. At this time I wrote a pamphlet, Social Revolution or Fascist War? of which thousands of copies were sold throughout the country.
On June 13, before leaving for Venice to meet the Duce, Adolf sent for Gregor; the two had not met since the stormy interview provoked by the intrigues of Papen, Goering, and Goebbels.
‘I offer you the Ministry of National Economy, Strasser. Accept, and between us we can still save the situation.’
‘I accept, Herr Hitler,' said Gregor, ‘on condition that Goering and Goebbels are removed; an honest man cannot work with these individuals.’
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 179.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
Even the former Marxist Mussolini was apparently worried about just how leftist National Socialism was. (And he even recommended purging Goebbels for his unrepentant leftism.)
Adolf had two meetings with Mussolini, on June 14 and 15. The Duce, however, failed to succumb to the German Chancellor’s charms. ... Mussolini, however, went still further. Would it not be prudent, he suggested, purely of course as a friend, to restrain somewhat the radical actions and speeches of the Left Wing of the National-Socialist Party? Would it not be wise to dissolve the S.A., which formed a state within the state, and was led by that notorious freebooter Roehm, in association with notorious characters such as Heines, Ernst, etc.? ...and of Goebbels, who dared speak of the possibility of a second revolution?
Otto Strasser. (1940). Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 181.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasser
These quotes once again demonstrate that the Strassers genuinely believed themselves to be Socialists, and Otto Strasser seems to believe Hitler only ultimately sided with the "reactionary"/non-Socialist-leaning faction of the party in 1934 when Hitler had to make political compromises to keep the NSDAP in power. Recall also that when Strasser was writing this, he was bitterly anti-Hitler and anti-NSDAP. So even if he was exaggerating things to make them seem worse than they were, even he cannot deny Hitler and the party's Socialism--even if he thinks Hitlerism betrayed "real" Strasserist Socialism.
We must ask ourselves, would the democratic and Marxist-sympathetic Strassers have been able to have more success than Hitler in furthering radical Socialism? I think this is unlikely. Socialist Otto Wagener also agreed that Hitler's synthesis of Socialism was likely more successful than a more conventional Marxist-leaning form of Socialism would have been:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10723/#msg10723
-
Ah, a lot of stuff to refute here:
1. Romanticism can be both left-wing and right-wing phenomenon. Romantics always exalt the heart above reason, irrational belief above rational enquiry and the remote past above modernity. This can lead to anarchism (Leftist) or to traditionalism (Rightist). You are correct that Hitler was a romantic, but he was a totalitarian, right-wing romantic. Dugin is another example. Compare him with William Blake, who represented a freedom oriented, proto-anarchist form of Romanticism.
2. Being against colonialism is not a good definition of leftism. Some European right-wing identitarians are also against colonialism. They see Europe as the natural habitat of White people, and also the Middle East as the natural habitat of Arabs and sub-Saharan Africa as the natural habitat of Blacks. This is a stance known as "pan-nationalism", which could be also called rightist internationalism.
My definition of Leftism is being opposed to hierarchy. In terms of economics, this means socialism. In terms of culture, this means support for social freedom (inclusivity). In terms of foreign policy this means belief that all ethnicities and cultures are equal. This cannot include Hitler, who believed that Jews and Slavs are inferior to Germans because of their innate characteristics.
3. It is possible to quote Mein Kampf selectively to show Hitler as a forerunner of post-WW2 American counterculture, just as it is possible to quote the Koran and Hadith selectively to show that Mohammed was a peaceful preacher.
"Would you say analogous things to Communists and supporters of "Enlightenment" liberalism/democracy whenever they speak positively of their views? (Personally, I do find their constant rehabilitation of their ideologists and dogmatic devotion to their failed ideologies to be creepy.)"
Whitewashing Lenin and Stalin is just as creepy as what you are doing here.
-
You can also read:
http://factmyth.com/factoids/hitler-was-a-left-wing-socialist-liberal/
-
You can also read:
http://factmyth.com/factoids/hitler-was-a-left-wing-socialist-liberal/
I can tell you right out the gate this author has no clue what they are talking about:
First off, let’s start by saying the fascism of the pre-WWII and WWII era was a left-right mix that drew from socialism but stood against liberalism. Especially the NAZI brand of fascism drew heavily from socialism and promised and implemented socialism for its in-group. This form of socialism was very different than communism in terms of theory (see communism vs. fascism), but it did draw from it and it did have left-wing elements. Despite this, fascism, including the NAZI brand, has a ton of right-wing elements and an overarching nativist and nationalist philosophy that tends to resonate with the right.
The author clearly doesn't understand the difference between tribalism and nationalism, as most Westerners do not. Their is NO in-group vs. out-group dichotomy(tribalism) in any form of true nationalism because it would simply cease being nationalism at all to begin with. It is an oxymoron.
Why should I even bother reading the rest of the article you linked when the author of it makes such a striking error in the very first couple paragraphs?
-
"Hitler was a romantic, but he was a totalitarian, right-wing romantic."
Hitler despised Joshua and Alexander, wanted Charles Martel to lose at Poitiers and hated Ferdinand and Isabella for the Reconquista. He sided with the Ottoman Empire against Greece in the Greek War of Independence. He sided with Lincoln against the Confederacy in the American Civil War. He sided with China against Germany in the Boxer Rebellion. He sided with Japan against Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. During WWII he supported India, Iraq and Egypt against Britain, Algeria against France, Bosnia against Serbia, Chechens against Russia, Native Americans against the "white" US government, and so on. And he sided with non-humans against humans. All of this is left-wing romanticism.
"Being against colonialism is not a good definition of leftism. Some European right-wing identitarians are also against colonialism. They see Europe as the natural habitat of White people, and also the Middle East as the natural habitat of Arabs and sub-Saharan Africa as the natural habitat of Blacks. This is a stance known as "pan-nationalism", which could be also called rightist internationalism."
I am aware of them. They are not really against colonialism. Those who claim to be against colonialism but who do not demand accountability for colonialists are not to be taken seriously. That these identitarians think "whites" still deserve to keep "Europe" for themselves after colonizing the whole world for 500 years instantly disqualifies them from seriousness.
Furthermore, they are unilaterally deciding where everyone else's respective "natural habitats" are, which presumes the entire planet belongs to "whites" in the first place to apportion to others as "whites" see fit, which is a colonialist attitude in itself. A better name for this would be global apartheid. (Speaking of which, they also support Israel.)
In any case, I did not claim that simply being against colonialism is the definition of leftism. Paleocons are against colonialism in the sense that they consider it a strategic mistake to share modern means with non-Westerners (which has reduced the competitive advantage of Western civilization over non-Western civilizations). They would have preferred Western civilization to have quietly kept building its competitive advantage for a few more centuries until the gap is so great that it can never be closed by non-Westerners, so that Western victory in any conflict is guaranteed. Paleocons are indeed not leftists, as their objective is final Western victory. Leftists are necessarily those who want final Western defeat.
"My definition of Leftism is being opposed to hierarchy."
This is egalitarianism, hence False Leftism.
"In terms of foreign policy this means belief that all ethnicities and cultures are equal. This cannot include Hitler, who believed that Jews and Slavs are inferior to Germans because of their innate characteristics."
Throwing out egalitarianism from leftist thinking is what we are here to do. True Leftism still believes in superiority and inferiority; the difference is that we believe the superior can be (and in reality are more often than not) defeated by the inferior in worldly competition (the colonial era being one example). In other words, True Leftism is divergence of the moral hierarchy from the natural hierarchy.
Socialism is then the attempt, given awareness of the above, to set things up in practice so as to help the superior (but less competitive) defeat the inferior (but more competitive). National Socialism furthermore believes that any such setup will not last long, therefore the superior must use its brief interval in power to destroy the inferior, or else the inferior - being more competitive - will eventually find a way around the setup to come back and win.
-
the remote past above modernity. This can lead to anarchism (Leftist) or to traditionalism (Rightist). You are correct that Hitler was a romantic, but he was a totalitarian, right-wing romantic.
In prior discussions, 90sRetroFan has summarized that leftist Romanticists draw inspiration from the ancient past, whereas rightists draw inspiration from the traditional past. (He may be able to expand on this point more.)
The ancient past that we are inspired by has very often ceased to have any real form of continuation into the present-day. The things we (Romanticist leftists) try to salvage from the ancient past are things which we deem to be noble and high quality, and we have no problems discarding low-quality and ignoble practices. We are not trying to perfectly recreate any traditions exactly as they were in the past, but to manifest an ideal new world entirely. As Romanticists, we open the doors that history has closed so we can take the path that should have been taken all along.
In contrast, rightists wish to preserve everything from the traditional past on the arbitrary basis of the customs/practices simply having existed in the past. There is no quality judgment there, merely identity.
As evidenced from the quotes provided, Hitler clearly (1) drew inspiration from a Romantic past whose customs no longer really existed in the recent world (i.e. he says he wants to resurrect the authentic Socialism of Jesus, which, in his words, has basically vanished since the Renaissance) and (2) wanted to completely dismantle post-Renaissance Western Civilization to replace it with something radically new.
This is in contrast to people like Himmler, who wanted to re-implement feudalist and mysticist traditions. Hitler criticized him for latching on to the traditional past and not being able to let go in order to manifest something entirely new. Hitler also criticized the Strasser-style leftists who were unable to dream big and merely wanted to push Western Civilization into its next phase.
In terms of foreign policy this means belief that all ethnicities and cultures are equal.
This kind of moral relativism has never been a part of any (ideologically-serious) type of anti-racist ideology. In principle, what is commonly called "equality" does not mean believing everyone is literally equal:
We now have to consider the bearing of these statements on the problem of human equality. It must be asserted with the utmost emphasis that equality as an ethical principle in no way depends upon the assertion that human beings are in fact equal in endowment. Obviously individuals in all ethnic groups vary greatly among themselves in endowment.
-UNESCO. (1950). "Statement on race".
We wish to emphasize that equality of opportunity and equality in law in no way depend, as ethical principles, upon the assertion that human beings are in fact equal in endowment.
-UNESCO. (1951). "Statement on the nature of race and race differences".
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000122962
In practice it means judging individuals and cultures by the same set of FAIR criteria, rather than applying double standards (e.g. arbitrary negative prejudice against an out-group, or arbitrary favoritism/ethno-nepotism for the in-group (which is just arbitrary positive prejudice)). Properly applied, "cultural relativism" isn't the complete abandonment of value standards, but was a (not-so-great) historic attempt to find _less arbitrary_ ways of judging cultures compared to the Eurocentric outlook which had been regarded as the only possible view.
Moral relativism (e.g. egalitarianism)--which has often been conflated with cultural relativism for the past 100 or so years--isn't even a serious belief, since moral relativists judge moral relativism as superior to non-moral-relativism. ;D
The ostensibly-positive aspects of "equality" do not mean the egalitarian belief that we have to believe everyone is literally the exact same, or treat everyone exactly the same, even when they are clearly different in ethical quality, ability, and motives. The positive aspects of "equality" mean judging everyone by the same set of standards and the elimination of double standards (i.e. FAIRNESS).
We could word this more strongly and say that the notion of egalitarianism/"equality" is a scam to mislead people from arriving at the conclusion that FAIRNESS IN JUDGMENTS is the real principle we yearn for, not literal equality and inability to make judgments even if individuals really do not deserve to be judged equally.
As one example of how this would apply to leftist foreign policy, this means that nations, cultures, ethnic groups/"races", or individuals who support apartheid are judged to be utterly inferior. (e.g. Western Culture is inferior). Any nation, culture, or individual who supports destroying apartheid is judged to be high quality and to be supported.
In terms of politics...well, even False Left supporters of democracy complain how the vote of "low information voters" and empathy-devoid far-rightists is worth the same value as a "high information voter" and someone who has empathy... In other words, even supposed supporters of egalitarianism aren't actually egalitarian, and desire a political system that fairly judges people based on their quality rather than unfairly assumes everyone's opinions are "equal".
It is possible to quote Mein Kampf selectively to show Hitler as a forerunner of post-WW2 American counterculture, just as it is possible to quote the Koran and Hadith selectively to show that Mohammed was a peaceful preacher.
Yes, because we are Romanticist leftists drawing inspiration from the positive aspects of the ancient past.
Because we are idealists who want to manifest a better world, unlike False Leftists who quote only the negative aspects of the past and completely ignore the potential in the positive aspects. We are also unlike rightists who are content with preserving both the bad and the "good" from the past. (I put "good" in quotations, since rightists often downplay the noble elements of the past in order to present a narrative which amplifies all the ignoble aspects of the past instead!)
-
Historians seem to consider Albert Speer's memoirs to be contradictory and opportunistically anti-Hitler in order to rehabilitate his own reputation. But there is some information which may be useful to catalog here.
Speer mentions that Hitler regretted supporting Franco in the Spanish Civil War and declared that in the future he would side with the Communists to overthrow him. If Hitler was a far-rightist, why would he ever think of such a thing? And why would those Communists invite Speer to spend Christmas with them if he was an enemy far-rightist? (And why would Hitler tell the Vichy French government/German work agency to treat these imprisoned Communists well if he was a far-rightist?)
Gloomily, I brood about the last three Christmases of the war. At the time I thought it my duty to spend the day with the Todt Organization crews; in 1942 on the Biscay coast, where bunkers were being built, in 1943 by the Arctic Ocean in northern Lapland; and the last time on the German-Belgian border.
[...]
When we celebrated Christmas of 1942 in the vicinity of Bordeaux, I heard from the head of the construction unit during the dinner that a group of former so-called Spanish Reds who were interned in a nearby camp had invited me to their Christmas party. Without an SS escort squad—right up to the end of the war this distinction was accorded only to Donitz, Bormann, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Funk, and Goebbels, in addition to Hitler and Himmler—I drove over to the camp with a small following, The party had already begun. A Spaniard made a short speech to introduce me; the throng responded with faint applause. Folk dances and other popular offerings followed, each time to stormy applause. The rather stiff attitude toward me relaxed only after I had a sizable supply of cigarettes and wine distributed. These Spaniards, who had fought on the side of the Republic, had fled across the Pyrenees to France at the end of the civil war. By now they had been held behind barbed wire for almost three years. They were people with likable, courageous faces; we sat together until late at night, and there was a note of cordiality in our goodbyes.
Two weeks later I told Hitler about the incident and asked him to authorize preferential treatment for these Spaniards. They hated Franco, who had defeated them, I said, and likewise the French brand of democracy that was keeping them imprisoned. “That’s highly interesting,” Hitler interrupted eagerly, “Did you hear that, Keitel? You know my opinion of Franco. Two years ago, when we were about to meet, I still thought he was a true leader, but I met a fat little sergeant who couldn’t at all grasp my far-reaching plans. We ought to keep these Red Spaniards on the back burner—there are many thousands of them, after all. They’re lost to democracy, and to that reactionary crew around Franco too—we have real chances there. I believe you to the letter, Speer, that they were impressive people. I must say, in general, that during the civil war the idealism was not on Franco’s side; it was to be found among the Reds. Certainly they pillaged and desecrated, but so did Franco’s men, without having any good reason for it—the Reds were working off centuries of hatred for the Catholic Church, which always oppressed the Spanish people. When I think of that I understand a good many things. Franco knows perfectly well why he objected only half a year ago to our employing these Spanish Reds. But one of these days”—Hitler stabbed the air with his finger—“one of these days we’ll he able to make use of them, When we call it quits with Franco. Then we’ll let them go home, And you’ll see what happens then! The whole thing will start all over again. But with us on the opposite side. I don’t give a damn about that. Let him find out what I can be like!”
Hitler had never been able to bear opposition, and he could not forgive the Spanish dictator for having refused to go along with his plans, in particular for the occupation of Gibraltar. Personal rancor of this sort invariably counted for much more with Hitler than ideological agreement. That same day he issued orders to treat the “Spanish Reds” well.
Albert Speer. Diary entry from December 26, 1950. Spandau, The Secret Diaries. (1975). Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1976). Pocket Books New York. Page 183-184.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.236711/page/n97/mode/2up
Hitler didn't mind if artists working for the party were sympathetic to Communism, which surprised Speer and others:
I wonder whether Hitler ever observed that in all the years before I became a cabinet minister I never uttered so much as one political phrase? I rather think he didn’t even notice. Just as it was only after we had been acquainted for years that he learned with surprise, but with no particular interest, that I had been a party member since 1931. It was a matter of supreme indifference to him whether the artists he esteemed, from Breker and Thorak to Hilz and Peiner or Furtwangler and Eugen Jochum, belonged to the National Socialist Party. He regarded them one and all as politically feeble-minded. In a certain sense he must have applied the same standard to me. In 1938, a few days before the opening of the annual exhibition in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, a small group of us sat in Hitler’s favorite Italian restaurant, the Osteria Bavaria in Munich. Out of a clear sky Adolf Wagner, the Gauleiter of Bavaria, began to relate that he had recently discovered a Communist proclamation that had been signed by a large number of artists. The manifesto in question had been published a little while before the seizure of power, and among others had borne the signature of Josef Thorak.
I stiffened, for Thorak was more or less “my” sculptor, who frequently designed statues and reliefs for my buildings and in the past year had just created the group of figures for the German pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair. Wagner went on to say that such a man could not be allowed to decorate the great buildings for the Nuremberg Party Rally, which for centuries to come would be an object of admiration and veneration. I was convinced that now Thorak would be lost to me. Had he occupied a Party office, Hitler would in fact have immediately ordered his dismissal. But in this case Hitler replied disdainfully, “Oh, you know I don’t take any of that seriously. We should never judge artists by their political views. The imagination they need for their work deprives them of the ability to think in realistic terms. Let’s keep Thorak on. Artists are simple-hearted souls. Today they sign this, tomorrow that; they don’t even look to see what it is, so. long as it seems to them well-meaning.”
Albert Speer. Diary entry from November 26, 1954. Spandau, The Secret Diaries. (1975). Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1976). Pocket Books New York. Page 288-289.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.236711/page/n167/mode/2up
We already saw many quotes about how Hitler respected the Socialist core of what Communism claimed to be. I suppose his "admiration" of Jews is due to their deep understanding of racial matters that the non-Jewish public did not understand.
It is generally admitted that Hitler admired what he hated; it is really more accurate to say that he hated what he admired. His hatred was admiration that he refused to acknowledge. That is true of the Jews, of Stalin, of communism in general.
Albert Speer. Diary entry from December 21, 1946. Spandau, The Secret Diaries. (1975). Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1976). Pocket Books New York. Page 31.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.236711/page/n21/mode/2up
Speer's rightist upper-class father thought the National Socialists were Socialists:
When he joined the Party in 1931, Speer had never given much thought to politics. He came from an upper-middle-class family, one of the most prominent in Mannheim, supported in high style by the father’s flourishing architectural practice and involved mainly in the cultural and social life of the city. Speer’s father did read the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung, an unusual paper for a conservative architect to have in his home, but he utterly rejected the Nazis because he believed them to be more socialist than nationalist.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Introduction by Eugene Davidson. Page xi-xii.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/n7/mode/2up
The NSDAP (National Socialist Party) had won 107 seats and was suddenly the chief topic of political discussion.
My father had the darkest forebodings, chiefly in view of the NSDAP’s socialist tendencies. He was already disturbed enough by the strength of the Social Democrats and the Communists.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 14.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/14/mode/2up
Business leaders assumed the economic system in Germany would continue to become more Socialist as the party gained efficiency:
On June 26 [1944] about a hundred representatives of the armaments industry gathered in the coffee room of the Platterhof. During our sessions in Linz, I had noticed that their disgruntlement was also partly concerned with the increasing interference of the party apparatus in economic affairs. Actually, a kind of state socialism seemed to be gaining more and more ground, furthered by many of the party functionaries. They had already managed to have all plants owned by the state distributed among the various party districts and subordinated to their own district enterprises. In particular the numerous underground plants, which had been equipped and financed by the state, but whose directors, skilled workers, and machinery had been provided by private industry, seemed destined to fall under state control after the war. Our very system of industrial direction in the interests of war production could easily become the framework for a state-socialist economic order. The result was that our organization, the more efficient it became, was itself providing the party leaders with the instruments for the doom of private enterprise.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 359.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/358/mode/2up
Commentary: Speer says Goebbels and Robert Ley were among those who kept pushing Hitler to be more ideological, after Hitler had become more practical-minded after taking power. As we saw in many prior posts, Goebbels was originally a Communist and firmly leftist throughout this time in the NSDAP. Himmler formed a separate (rightist) ideological camp and was mocked by Hitler, Goebbels, and others.
When ideology receded into the background after the seizure of power, efforts were made to tame down the party and make it more respectable. Goebbels and Bormann were the chief opponents of that tendency. They were always trying to radicalize Hitler ideologically. To judge by his speeches, Ley must also have belonged to the group of tough ideologists, but lacked the stature to gain any significant influence. Himmler, on the other hand, obviously was going his own absurd way, which was compounded of beliefs about an original Germanic race, a brand of elitism, and an assortment of health-food notions. The whole thing was beginning to assume far-fetched pseudoreligious forms. Goebbels, with Hitler, took the lead in ridiculing these dreams of Himmler’s, with Himmler himself adding to the comedy by his vanity and obsessiveness. When, for example, the Japanese presented him with a samurai sword, he at once discovered kinships between Japanese and Teutonic cults and called upon scientists to help him trace these similarities to a racial common denominator.
Hitler was particularly concerned with the question of how he could assure his Reich a new generation of followers committed to his ideas. The general outlines of a plan were drafted by Ley, to whom Hitler had also entrusted the organization of the educational system.
Albert Speer. (1969). Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 122.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/122/mode/2up
Robert Ley was part of the leftist wing of the party as well.
...Another Socialist who could have easily been purged for his alleged drunkenness and lack of administrative talent, had Hitler been interested in purging leftists?
Ley proved unswervingly loyal to Hitler, which led Hitler to ignore complaints about his arrogance, incompetence and drunkenness.[4] Ley's impoverished upbringing and his experience as head of the largely working-class Rhineland party region meant that he was sympathetic to those elements in the party who were open to socialism, but he always sided with Hitler in inner party disputes.
[...]
On 10 June 1932, following a further organizational restructuring by Strasser, Ley was named one of two Reichsinspecteurs with oversight of approximately half the Gaue. Furthermore, he was made the Acting Landesinspekteur for Bavaria with direct responsibility for the six Bavarian Gaue.[6] This was a short-lived initiative by Gregor Strasser to centralize control over the Gaue. However, it was unpopular with the Gauleiters and was repealed on Strasser's fall from power. Strasser resigned on 8 December 1932 in a break with Hitler over the future direction of the Party. Hitler himself took over as Reichsorganisationsleiter and installed Ley as his Stabschef (Chief of Staff).
[...]
By April, 1933 Hitler decided to have the state take over the trade union movement. On 10 May 1933, Hitler appointed Ley head of the newly founded German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF). The DAF took over the existing Nazi trade union formation, the National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation (Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation, NSBO) as well as the main trade union federation. But Ley's lack of administrative ability meant that the NSBO leader, Reinhold Muchow, a member of the socialist wing of the Nazi Party, soon became the dominant figure in the DAF, overshadowing Ley. Muchow began a purge of the DAF administration, rooting out ex-Social Democrats and ex-Communists and placing his own militants in their place.
[...]
The DAF and KdF's most ambitious program was the "people's car," the Volkswagen, originally a project undertaken at Hitler's request by the car-maker Ferdinand Porsche. When the German car industry was unable to meet Hitler's demand that the Volkswagen be sold at 1,000 Reichsmarks or less, the project was taken over by the DAF. This brought Ley's old socialist tendencies back into prominence. The party, he said, had taken over where private industry had failed, because of the "short-sightedness, malevolence, profiteering and stupidity" of the business class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ley
Another leftist in charge of the Labor Front? Why would a far-right party put a leftist in charge of important labor/economic tasks, considering all that Communists talk about is labor and economics?
Reinhold Muchow (21 December 1905 in Berlin – 12 September 1933 in Bacharach) was a Nazi Party politician. Especially prized in the early years of the movement for his organisational skills, he was associated with the economically left wing of the party.
A native of the gritty Neukölln district of Berlin, Muchow was one of the Alter Kämpfer of the Nazi Party.[1] He was associated with the Strasser brothers[2] and set up a Central Union of the Unemployed in an attempt to attract new members to the party before this initiative was closed down by the central leadership.[3] He became leader of the Greater Berlin Gau 1 in 1925 and here he established the Muchow Plan, a cell-based structure for Nazi Party organisation on a local level which proved important in the growth of the party.[1] Muchow's organisational talents impressed Joseph Goebbels and in 1928 he was given charge of organisation for the entire city where his plan became the standard for party structure across Germany.[1] In fact Muchow's structure was strongly influenced by the cell structure of the Communist Party.[4]
[...]
He died in an accident in the Rhineland in September 1933 and was widely mourned by the Nazi hierarchy.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Muchow
-
"90sRetroFan has summarized that leftist Romanticists draw inspiration from the ancient past, whereas rightists draw inspiration from the traditional past. (He may be able to expand on this point more.)"
I guess you are thinking of this quote:
Rightists have sneakily duped into their camp many people disillusioned with the drudgery of the present-day world and who seek answers in myth and ancient history by crudely associating leftism with modernity and deceptively presenting rightism as the only camp that offers connection with the past. To counter this, the True Left must distinguish itself from the False Left by heavily emphasizing that we too offer a connection with the past – merely not (unlike the rightists) with the traditional past which we justly abhor. The past which inspires us is the romantic past of chances missed, of paths untaken, of the long intellectual legacy of anti-tradition that dates back to ancient times.
You explained the same point very well in your post. The only thing I might put differently is:
"rightists wish to preserve everything from the traditional past on the arbitrary basis of the customs/practices simply having existed in the past. There is no quality judgment there, merely identity."
I would say rightists wish to preserve traditions on account of traditions having proven survivable for so long. The survivability of the traditions are the assurance to rightists that the traditions are compatible with natural selection. So rightists do make a quality judgement, just according to Demiurgic standards.
In contrast, that certain superior practices from the past (e.g. Catharism) failed to survive only ascertains their value in our eyes. It proves to us their ultimate incompatibility with natural selection, which we take as a compliment. Which is not to say that everything that failed to survive is superior (of course not, duh!). But something which is superior - which we deduce separately - is almost certain to not last long, because natural selection will not allow it to.
"we open the doors that history has closed so we can take the path that should have been taken all along."
I would say we reopen the doors that natural selection has closed.
"FAIRNESS IN JUDGMENTS is the real principle we yearn for"
This is true, but I also want to emphasize that another possible scenario we are trying to avoid is fairness in judgements but under BAD CRITERIA. For example, if it were decided that the only criterion for judging a civilization is its ability to innovate machines, then to conclude the superiority of Western civilization over all others would be a perfectly fair judgement. It would also be a terrible conclusion. Thus fair judgement alone is insufficient.
So, to clarify, we are not the only ones yearning for fairness in judgements. All absolutists yearn for fairness in judgements. We are distinguished from other absolutists by which criteria we want to be used for fair judgements.
-
"The author clearly doesn't understand the difference between tribalism and nationalism, as most Westerners do not. Their is NO in-group vs. out-group dichotomy(tribalism) in any form of true nationalism because it would simply cease being nationalism at all to begin with. It is an oxymoron."
I certainly don't understand it. If you abandon the in-group vs. out-group dichotomy, this is cosmopolitanism. As I understand it, nationalism defines the in-group as the citizens of a particular state, while tribalism defines the in-group as members of a certain ethnic group.
Hitler clearly believed that having German "blood" is more important than having German citizenship. So he was a tribalist, of course.
"Hitler despised Joshua and Alexander, wanted Charles Martel to lose at Poitiers and hated Ferdinand and Isabella for the Reconquista. He sided with the Ottoman Empire against Greece in the Greek War of Independence. He sided with Lincoln against the Confederacy in the American Civil War. He sided with China against Germany in the Boxer Rebellion. He sided with Japan against Russia in WWI. During WWII he supported India, Iraq and Egypt against Britain, Algeria against France, Bosnia against Serbia, Chechens against Russia, Native Americans against the "white" US government, and so on. And he sided with non-humans against humans. All of this is left-wing romanticism."
He wanted Britain and Russia to lose because they were rivals for domination in Europe. His practices in Central and Eastern Europe were nothing short of colonialism. If Hitler had established German domination in Africa, he would treat Blacks at least as bad as he treated Poles or Russians.
"It is generally admitted that Hitler admired what he hated; it is really more accurate to say that he hated what he admired."
It is also true with respect to you, 90s Retro Fan. You clearly admire Duginism. Take Dugin's points and replace "Russia" with "America" and vice versa - wow, we have 90s RF's points!
"we are Romanticist leftists drawing inspiration from the positive aspects of the ancient past."
I understand that. I like some points of your ideology, like original nobility or criticism of the technological society. But at least be honest and open against the flaws of those who inspired you, whether the Nazis, Islamists, or post-WW2 countercultural movements.
-
"Take Dugin's points and replace "Russia" with "America" and vice versa - wow, we have 90s RF's points!"
Thank you for confirming your illiteracy. Henceforth, all further posts by you will be moved here:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/re-national-socialists-were-socialists/
-
Excerpt from an essay by Léon Degrelle about Hitler's "social revolution". I'm not sure if Degrelle himself should be considered right-leaning or not, but the topics of this essay seem like something Bernie Sanders or any standard leftist today could have written--it is praising Hitler for improving the social and economic conditions of the "working class". From what I can tell, this was written in 1992. So, Hitler's pro-labor social reforms were important enough for Degrelle, 50 years later, to give his reflections on them in the final years of his life.
The primary False Left argument to "discredit" National Socialists from being called Socialists is the allegation that they did not care about "the workers". Which is clearly false:
One of the first labor reforms to benefit the German workers was the establishment of annual paid vacation. The Socialist French Popular Front, in 1936, would make a show of having invented the concept of paid vacation, and stingily at that, only one week per year. But Adolf Hitler originated the idea, and two or three times as generously, from the first month of his coming to power in 1933.
[...]
And already the steel spades of the sturdy young lads of the National Labor Service could be seen gleaming along the highways. The National Labor Service had been created by Hitler out of thin air to bring together for a few months in absolute equality, and in the same uniform, both the sons of millionaires and the sons of the poorest families. All had to perform the same work and were subject to the same discipline, even the same pleasures and the same physical and moral development. On the same construction sites and in the same living quarters, they had become conscious of their commonality, had come to understand one another, and had swept away their old prejudices of class and caste. After this hitch in the National Labor Service they all began to live as comrades, the workers knowing that the rich man's son was not a monster, and the young lad from the wealthy family knowing that the worker's son had honor just like any other young fellow who had been more generously favored by birth. Social hatred was disappearing, and a socially united people was being born.
Hitler could already go into factories—something no man of the so-called Right before him would have risked doing—and hold forth to the mob of workers, tens of thousands of them at a time, as in the Siemens works. "In contrast to the von Papens and other country gentlemen," he might tell them, "In my youth I was a worker like you. And in my heart of hearts, I have remained what I was then." In the course of his twelve years in power, no incident ever occurred at any factory Adolf Hitler ever visited. When Hitler was among the people, he was at home, and he was received like the member of the family who had been most successful.
I think the proper title of this essay is:
Léon Degrelle. (1992). "How Hitler Consolidated Power in Germany and Launched a Social Revolution."
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitlerCollection/Hitlers%20Social%20Revolution/page/n3/mode/2up
The way Degrelle describes the Reich Labour Service is almost identical to what Maoist Communist labor policies theoretically wanted to achieve (except far less authoritarian, since the National Socialists didn't force people to move across the country like cogs in a machine--which would be an anti-social act, since it makes people bitter towards the state and prevents a community from socially strengthing, since people are being forced to work in a random place with complete strangers.)
Hu Rongfen had no choice. On November 14, 1971, in the whirlwind of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, the slender and soft-spoken middle school graduate was dispatched from Shanghai to a far-flung village in East China's Anhui Province to work in the country.
This wasn't a punishment for any wrongdoing -- on the contrary, the quiet girl was a top student in class. The migration was an order from the central government to every urban household -- at least one of their teenage children needed to leave the city to work on the farm indefinitely.
The ruthless political command lasted from 1966 until the mid-1970s and intended that the privileged urban "intellectual" youth learn from farmers and workers. As a result, China's "lost generation" emerged -- deprived of the chance of education and the right to live with their families.
"We were told that city dwellers never move their limbs and could not distinguish different crops," says Hu, now 58. "So we were banished to labor and learn skills and grit from peasants." Hu spent four years (1971-1974) planting rice, spreading cow dung and chopping wood in Jin Xian, a mountainous county.
Known in Chinese as "up to the mountains and down to the farms," the urban-to-rural youth migration was part of China's decade-long Cultural Revolution, a social political movement initiated to implement Communism and Maoism in China by eliminating any capitalist, feudalistic and cultural elements.
[...]
"I still can't bear to recall my youth spent on the farm," she says.
https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/24/world/asia/china-lost-generation/
As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_the_Countryside_Movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sent-down_youth
----
Two articles about National Socialist social services/welfare used by Allied intelligence and used at the Nuremberg Trials. The first article is written by someone from the US, and is anti-NS, but still admits that NS Germany's social welfare services were extensive. The second article was written by a National Socialist, but was apparently considered unbiased enough that it was of use by the Allied intelligence agencies and Nuremberg prosecutors.
Page 1-6 is:
Hertha Kraus. (1944?). Social Policy in the National Socialist State: The Role of Social Welfare and Health Services.
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150
Page 7-22 is:
Ralf Zeitler. (1939). Principles of Public Welfare in the Third Reich. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege, vol 14, part 12, March 1939, page 645-654. Translated by Lois Armour. (1944?)
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150
Anti-NS article written by an American and used by Allied intelligence:
Nazi Germany has taken over from the Weimar Republic (and also from the monarchy preceding it) a highly developed network of public and private welfare services.
[...]
Frequently public welfare agencies throughout Germany made collective arrangements for institutional care for the sick the aged, the handicapped and for dependent children with private organizations who received regular fees for such services. Similar arrangements were developed for day care for both children and adults and for the provision of work camps. There was a great deal of interaction, as well as interdependence, between public and private services.
[...]
The Nazi regime has not changed this framework to any considerable degree, but it has strongly influenced the practice of social service by changing its direction and motivation.
With slight modifications (mostly abolishing the representations of different groups and the committee structure) all major public welfare and social insurance laws have been continued. Some of the private agencies have been continued without substantial change; others have boon taken over (including their considerable property and real estate) and are now affiliated with the newly created national Welfare Agency of the National Socialist Party and its three major subsidiaries (see Chart II).
[...]
In addition to these employed workers, very large numbers of volunteers have been used by both the public welfare and the voluntary NSV services, as a means of extending the party influence.
[...]
In extending public and voluntary welfare and health services very widely and very freely, in a selective manner, National Socialism has used social policy in line with the general policy of the totalitarian state. Social policy has been given a clearly defined task: in its particular field, it helps to achieve the ends which are fixed for the whole nation by National Socialism ...
[...]
The following article [Ralf Zeitler article?] may help to clarify totalitarian social policy, which has become one of the most effective weapons of the totalitarian state.
Hertha Kraus. (1944?). Social Policy in the National Socialist State: The Role of Social Welfare and Health Services.
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150
Commentary and summary:
This article summarizes the attitude with which the National Socialist government approached welfare. Welfare is not a mere "handout", but embodies both service and sacrifice--from both the state and the individual receiving the welfare. Individuals must try to seek work, etc. before seeking public welfare, but, if it is truly necessary, the state will give them adequate help to live--not just "half-measures" that don't help. NS Germany is also a "Worker's State", and everyone who seeks employment will have help in finding it, thereby further lessening the need for "handouts". The NS approach to welfare is to eliminate the social/economic causes that make people unable to support themselves in the first place, rather than merely treat the symptoms. Volunteer work and volunteer agencies are an important part of rendering welfare and other service to the community (particularly in situations where an individual's need may not meet the threshold to receive direct aid/welfare from the state itself).
If one surveys the past six years since the assumption of power, during which the Nationalist Socialist movement has become responsible for a new form of our national life, a fundamental change even in public welfare is observable. This too has obtained new National Socialist principles for its guidance and direction. While preserving the fundamentals of previous organization, National Socialism has approached public welfare with a new attitude toward men and objects and has transformed it with its new philosophy.
The keynote of this philosophy today is the Folk-Community.
[...]
The individual must conform in his wishes and demands to the life of the nation. He no longer stands with his needs and claims in the center of things, as Liberalism and Marxism would have it. Rather conformation and subordination are expected of him and, consequently, even the needy has his responsibilities and obligations in the now German welfare system.
[...]
To be sure, wherever undeserved poverty exists, wherever the force of unfortunate circumstances has proved stronger than the strength of the individual to resist, there the assistance of public welfare naturally steps in, but always with the attitude that it is of special importance to develop and strengthen the afflicted person's will to live and will to maintain himself independently. The Fuehrer once said that National Socialism is not a doctrine of indolence but of struggle, not a doctrine of chance and luck, but of work and striving, and therefore, a doctrine of sacrifice.
[...]
Therefore, while the basis of public welfare assistance is that public assistance should be sought only as a last resource, when all other possibilities of private and foreign aid have failed, the second characteristic of public welfare is individualization, which requires that the kind and extent of aid should suit the individual case, the local conditions and the personal situation. In this way public welfare agencies avoid giving more assistance than is needed, an error, which is more destructive than constructive. On the other hand, individualization insures adequate help and not just half-way measures, which would make public welfare of questionable benefit.
[...]
In addition to tho above mentioned characteristics of the welfare system, another matter of importance should be mentioned.
The Third Reich is a "Workers' State." That means that on the one hand the right to work not only is a statement made on paper, but also is realized in actuality; everyone, who seriously wishes to work, will obtain work suitable to his knowledge and ability and in this way the necessity for the interference of public welfare is prevented. On the other hand in the term "Workers' State" there is expressed the obligation to work which no one can avoid, if he does not wish to be excluded from the Folk-Community. For public welfare this is of extreme importance.
[...]
With this challenge the present welfare system differs from that of the past, which did not ask, whether the elements of a successful and promising welfare system were followed. They saw as their only duty the immediate alleviation of a temporary emergency instead of tracing the conditions to their sources and getting rid of the causes of the conditions.
[...]
Everyone, who has to do with welfare work is aware of the fact that he is not only concerned with economic welfare but also with its closely allied branches, health and educational welfare.
[...]
Public welfare must be organized so that it can meet any and every exigency. Experience has proven that the individual always turns to the community for help in case of need and ho has a right to expect assistance from it. Therefore, even in case of war the community will have to meet every war emergency situation efficiently. The community must be prepared to take care of the nourishment of its population, provide doctors and hospitals for the wounded, lodging for the homeless, a solution for every catastrophe, etc.
[...]
Just as a modern and National Socialist state system is inconceivable without uniform and comprehensive public welfare, so history and experience teach, that besides public welfare "free" welfare is also needed. Public welfare is an expression of the national idea, which understands welfare service as a state duty, the state being responsible for the good of its people. In contrast to the state welfare agencies then we have "free" welfare services, which are the voluntary institution of socially conscious and active folk-comrades. The "free" welfare agencies have the special responsibility of supplementing the welfare work of the public welfare agency.
Chief Official Leader Pg. Hilgenfeldt says that the National Socialist welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities because no laws bind them. The National Socialist philosophy is the activating force behind their welfare work and this has its origin in the voluntary self-sacrifice of the people themselves. Their performance does not follow the letter of the law but the law of their hearts.
Ralf Zeitler. (1939). Principles of Public Welfare in the Third Reich. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege, vol 14, part 12, March 1939, page 645-654. Translated by Lois Armour. (1944?)
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg/catalog/nur:01150
Look at that last paragraph--"National Socialist welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities". Unlimited welfare! Did Communist governments even promise such a thing?! Can you imagine Bernie Sanders demanding that "welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities because no laws bind them"? LOL!
Again, this document was considered important enough that it was used by Allied intelligence and one of the many documents used at the Nuremberg Trials.
Hilgenfeldt was the leader of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), which according to Wikipedia was the second-largest NS organization (second only to the German Labor Front (labor unions organization)). In other words, the top man himself said: "National Socialist welfare agencies are without limitation as to the sphere and extent of their activities because no laws bind them"!!!
And False Leftists have the nerve to try to say National Socialists didn't care about welfare and social policies?
Hilgenfeldt worked as office head at the NSDAP Office for People's Welfare and in close association with the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (NSV), or the National Socialist People's Welfare. By organizing a charity drive to celebrate Hitler's Birthday on 20 April 1931, Joseph Goebbels named him the head of the NSV. The NSV was named the single Nazi Party welfare organ in May 1933.[3] On 21 September 1933 he was appointed as Reich Commissioner for the Winterhilfswerk (Winter Support Programme). Under Hilgenfeldt the programme was massively expanded, so that the régime deemed it worthy to be called the "greatest social institution in the world." One method of expansion was to absorb, or in NSDAP parlance coordinate, already existing but non-Nazi charity organizations. NSV was the second largest Nazi group organization by 1939, second only to the German Labor Front.[3][4]
From November of the same year, Hilgenfeldt was a member of the Reich Work Chamber (Reichsarbeitskammer), as well as the Academy for German Law and Honorary Judge at the Supreme Honour and Disciplinary Court.[citation needed] As NSV leader, he was also Reich Women's Leader (Reichsfrauenführerin) Gertrud Scholtz-Klink's superior.[5] Also by virtue of his NSV office, he was the head of the German union of private charitable organizations, which included among its members the Protestant Inner Mission organization and the Catholic Caritas, as well as the NSV itself.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Hilgenfeldt
-
Our enemies also help with our research. Far-right WNs who reject Neo-Nazism frequently outline how National Socialism does not resemble their far-right and pro-Western views at all. Both WNs and mainstream conservatives like to make comparisons between National Socialists and Communists/liberals/leftists in general in an attempt to smear leftism as bad. Sometimes False Left useful idiots will write articles compiling quotes about National Socialists' views on anti-capitalism and Socialism, just to reject it using the circular logic that they don't follow Communist definitions of anti-capitalism and Socialism, and therefore that is somehow proof the National Socialists were insincere. (LOL, thanks for helping us compile quotes.)
----
This quote is posted on the wacko-rightist propaganda site Conservapedia. I haven't found the original newspaper article, but the book it quotes from is from a mainstream historian, so presumably it is accurate.
Hitler himself echoed basically the same theme. In an article published in 1930 for the UK Daily Express, Hitler stated:
'Socialist' I define from the word 'social; meaning in the main ‘social equity’. A Socialist is one who serves the common good without giving up his individuality or personality or the product of his personal efficiency. Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not. Marxism places no value on the individual, or individual effort, of efficiency; true Socialism values the individual and encourages him in individual efficiency, at the same time holding that his interests as an individual must be in consonance with those of the community.
Frank McDonough. (2003, 2nd ed. 2012). Hitler and the Rise of the Nazi Party. Page 120.
https://books.google.com/books?id=rE7JAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA120
(Conservapedia also claims Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a form of National Socialism, nice!)
Simple Alt-Right propaganda emphasizing the pro-labor and social policies of NS Germany. They even make the obvious connection of how the present-day SJW complaints about "the 1%" are the same as the NS complaints about the Jewish elite. (Since, you know, National Socialists called themselves social justice advocates.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20210301052410/https://louderwithcrowder.com/myth-busted-actually-yes-hitler-was-a-socialist-liberal/
----
Rightist-libertarian/non-Alt-Right article which cites how influential mainstream conservative/libertarian economist F.A. Hayek believed National Socialists were genuinely Socialist.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211006060429/https://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-with-it-b7f12cc53b6f
Friedrich August von Hayek (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-British economist, and philosopher who is best known for his defence of classical liberalism.[1] Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for their work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.[2] His account of how changing prices communicate information that helps individuals coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics, leading to his prize.[3][4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
However uncomfortable to opinion shapers, alternative views of the Third Reich exist and were written by the finest minds of their time. Opinions of the period perhaps carry more weight because they are unburdened by the aftermath of the uniquely heinous Nazi crimes. ‘The Road to Serfdom’ by FA Hayek is one such tract. Published in 1944 it remains a classic for young people on the political right discovering their intellectual roots. A sort of academic ‘1984,’ it warns of socialism’s tendency toward planned states and totalitarianism.
But one aspect of the book can shock the conscience. Hayek describes Nazism as a “genuine socialist movement” and thus left wing by modern American standards. Indeed, the Austrian-born Hayek wrote the book from his essay ‘Nazi-Socialism’ that countered prevailing opinion at the London School of Economics where he taught. British elites regarded Nazism as a virulent capitalist reaction against enlightened socialism — a view that persists today.
The shock comes from academic and cultural orthodoxy on National Socialism. From the moment they enter the political fray, young right-wingers are told ‘you own the Nazis.’ At best, the left concedes it owns communism.
[...]
The left believes the opposite. These people are distrustful of the excesses and inequality capitalism produces. ... They believe it is the government’s responsibility to solve social problems.
[...]
By these definitions the Nazis were firmly on the left. National Socialism was a collectivist authoritarian movement run by “social justice warriors.”
[...]
As Hayek wrote in 1933, the year the Nazis took power:
It is more than probable that the real meaning of the German revolution is that the long dreaded expansion of communism into the heart of Europe has taken place but is not recognized because the fundamental similarity of methods and ideas is hidden by the difference in phraseology and the privileged groups.
[...]
Nazism and socialism competed with the Enlightenment-based individualism of Locke, Smith, Montesquieu, and others who profoundly influenced the American founding and define the modern American right at its best.
[...]
Hitler’s first “National Workers Party” meeting while still an Army corporal featured the speech “How and by What Means is Capitalism to be Eliminated?”
The Nazi charter published a year later and coauthored by Hitler is socialist in almost every aspect. It calls for “equality of rights for the German people.” The subjugation of the individual to the state; breaking of “rent slavery,”; “confiscation of war profits,”; the nationalization of industry; profit sharing in heavy industry; large scale social security; the “communalization of the great warehouses and there being leased at low costs to small firms”; the “free expropriation of [privately owned] land for the purpose of public utility”; the abolition of “materialistic” Roman Law; the nationalization of education; the nationalization of the army; the nationalization of healthcare for the mother and child; state regulation of the press; and strong central power in the Reich.
[...]
These attitudes shouldn’t be surprising given the socialist thinkers that provided the theoretical basis for Nazism abhorred English “commercialism” and “comfort.” As Hayek described, “From 1914 onward there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hardworking laborer and idealist youth into the National Socialist fold.”
[...]
As late as 1941 with the war in bloom [Hitler] stated “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same” in a speech published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
[...]
Nazi propaganda minister and resident intellectual Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary the Nazis would install “real socialism” after Russia’s defeat in the East. And Hitler favorite Albert Speer, the Nazi armaments minister whose memoir became an international bestseller, wrote Hitler viewed Stalin as a kindred spirit, ensuring his POW son received good treatment, and even talked of keeping Stalin in power in a puppet government after Germany’s eventual triumph. His views on Churchill and Roosevelt were decidedly less kind.
And at the bitter end, as Bolshevik shells exploded just above him, when he had no more reason to lie or obfuscate, whom did Hitler blame for his downfall? Not the communists whose cunning and determination had ultimately ruined his plans, but the evil ‘Jewish capitalistic system.’
[...]
The Nazis and communists not only struggled for street-war supremacy but also recruits. And these recruits were easily turned because both sides were fighting for the same men. Hayek recalls
the relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. Many a University teacher during the 1930s has seen English or American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain they hated Western liberal civilization. . . . To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince is the liberal of the old type.
[...]
George Orwell remarked, “Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a socialist state.” Max Eastman an old friend of Vladimir Lenin described Stalin’s brand of communism as “super fascist.” British writer FA Voight after several years on the continent concluded “Marxism has led to Fascism and National Socialism because in all essentials it is Fascism and National Socialism.”
[...]
Hitler described the bourgeoisie as “worthless for any noble human endeavor, capable of any error of judgment, failure of nerve and moral corruption.” In 1931 as the Nazis gained power in elections, Goebbels wrote an editorial warning about these newcomer so-called “Septemberlings,’ the bourgeoisie intellectuals who thought they could wrest the party from what they considered the “demagogue” old guard.
[...]
The more vehemently the left, particularly academics, argue their dissociation with the Nazis the more they protest “too much.” Indeed, the failure here is as much one of academic prejudice as any willful wish to avoid truth.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211006060429/https://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-with-it-b7f12cc53b6f
Some commentary on Frederick Augustus Voigt. He was a rightist champion of Western Civilization, and saw Western Civilization to be gravely threatened by National Socialism.
He came to regard both Fascism/Nazism and Communism as pseudo-religious ideologies that seriously threatened the essentially Christian civilization of Europe, and could only be opposed if the Western democracies committed to defend that civilization.
After World War II he became a leading exponent of what George Orwell termed “neo-toryism”, regarding the maintenance of British imperial power as an invaluable bulwark against Communism and as being indispensable to the creation and continuation of international peace and political stability.
[...]
The central thesis of Unto Caesar is that Communism and National Socialism were “revolutionary secular religions arising from the arrogant endeavour of man to transform religious promises directly into worldly reality” (Markus Huttner). Voigt argues that such 'secular religions' pose a threat to the fundamentals of European civilization by seeking to “render to Caesar what is God's” and can only be defeated if the western democracies, particularly Britain, stand up and actively defend Christianity and Civilization against the totalitarian onslaught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Augustus_Voigt
A. James Gregor seemed to have a similar thesis about Marxist Socialism, National Socialism, and Fascism being "revolutionary secular religions" (e.g. his book Totalitarianism and Political Religion: An Intellectual History, (2012).
-
Article by conservative scholar George Watson. He references Wagener and Rauschning many times, and I have already posted most of the relevant quotes Watson brings up in this article.
Hitler and the socialist dream
He declared that 'national socialism was based on Marx' Socialists have always disowned him. But a new book insists that he was, at heart, a left-winger
22 November 1998
The Lost Literature of Socialism by George Watson is published by Lutterworth, pounds 15
[...]
It is the issue of race, above all, that for half a century has prevented National Socialism from being seen as socialist. The proletariat may have no fatherland, as Lenin said. But there were still, in Marx's view, races that would have to be exterminated. That is a view he published in January-February 1849 in an article by Engels called "The Hungarian Struggle" in Marx's journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and the point was recalled by socialists down to the rise of Hitler. It is now becoming possible to believe that Auschwitz was socialist-inspired. The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism was already giving place to capitalism, which must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire races would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age; and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history.
[...]
Addressing his own party, the NSDAP, in Munich in August 1920, he pledged his faith in socialist-racialism: "If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites - and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose." There was loud applause. Hitler went on: "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?"
[...]
Harold Nicolson, a democratic socialist, and after 1935 a Member of the House of Commons, conscientiously studied a pile of pamphlets in his hotel room in Rome in January 1932 and decided judiciously that fascism (Italian-style) was a kind of militarised socialism; though it destroyed liberty, he concluded in his diary, "it is certainly a socialist experiment in that it destroys individuality". The Moscow view that fascism was the last phase of capitalism, though already proposed, was not yet widely heard. Richard [Crossman] remarked in a 1934 BBC talk that many students in Nazi Germany believed they were "digging the foundations of a new German socialism".
[...]
The planned economy had long stood at the head of socialist demands; and National Socialism, Orwell argued, had taken from socialism "just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes". Hitler had already come close to socialising Germany. "Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a socialist state." These words were written just before Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union.
[...]
At its height, Hitler's appeal transcended party division. Shortly before they fell out in the summer of 1933, Hitler uttered sentiments in front of Otto Wagener, which were published after his death in 1971 as a biography by an unrepentant Nazi. Wagener's Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, composed in a British prisoner-of-war camp, did not appear until 1978 in the original German, and arrived in English, without much acclaim, as recently as 1985. Hitler's remembered talk offers a vision of a future that draws together many of the strands that once made utopian socialism irresistibly appealing to an age bred out of economic depression and cataclysmic wars; it mingles, as Victorian socialism had done before it, an intense economic radicalism with a romantic enthusiasm for a vanished age before capitalism had degraded heroism into sordid greed ...
Socialism, Hitler told Wagener shortly after he seized power, was not a recent invention of the human spirit, and when he read the New Testament he was often reminded of socialism in the words of Jesus. The trouble was that the long ages of Christianity had failed to act on the Master's teachings. Mary and Mary Magdalen, Hitler went on in a surprising flight of imagination, had found an empty tomb, and it would be the task of National Socialism to give body at long last to the sayings of a great teacher: "We are the first to exhume these teachings." The Jew, Hitler told Wagener, was not a socialist, and the Jesus they crucified was the true creator of socialist redemption. As for communists, he opposed them because they created mere herds, Soviet-style, without individual life, and his own ideal was "the socialism of nations" rather than the international socialism of Marx and Lenin. The one and only problem of the age, he told Wagener, was to liberate labour and replace the rule of capital over labour with the rule of labour over capital.
These are highly socialist sentiments, and if Wagener reports his master faithfully they leave no doubt about the conclusion: that Hitler was an unorthodox Marxist who knew his sources and knew just how unorthodox the way in which he handled them was. He was a dissident socialist. His programme was at once nostalgic and radical. It proposed to accomplish something that Christians had failed to act on and that communists before him had attempted and bungled. "What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish," he told Wagener, "we shall be in a position to achieve."
That was the National Socialist vision.
[...]
To relive it again, in imagination, one might look at an entry in Goebbels's diaries. On 16 June 1941, five days before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Goebbels exulted, in the privacy of his diary, in the victory over Bolshevism that he believed would quickly follow. There would be no restoration of the tsars, he remarked to himself, after Russia had been conquered. But Jewish Bolshevism would be uprooted in Russia and "real socialism" planted in its place - "Der echte Sozialismus". Goebbels was a liar, to be sure, but no one can explain why he would lie to his diaries. And to the end of his days he believed that socialism was what National Socialism was about.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210227034306/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html
I previously posted a larger portion of the passage where Hitler tells Wagener, "What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish, we shall be in a position to achieve."
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10723/#msg10723
As some commentary, Richard Crossman was a (non-Jewish?) Zionist and left-wing Labour Party politician, so he would have no reason to speak positively of the 'new German socialism' if this was not an accurate characterization of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Crossman
Indeed, Crossman’s own broadcast discusses what impression his listeners will get, ‘If you go to Germany as a tourist.’[17] Nevertheless, Crossman’s first-hand knowledge of Germany was much closer than that of most Britons. For academic and marital reasons, he had paid repeated visits and lived there for considerable lengths of time over the previous four years.[18] His emphasis upon the ideas of German youth and their visions of a community of the soil had an even more proximate cause. In April 1934 he had visited a Nazi-organised youth labour camp in Schleswig-Holstein: a visit described in a previous radio talk on 2 May, published in The Listener on 16 May, which vividly conveyed the spirit of the young officers and students and their ‘belief that they are digging the foundation of a new German Socialism, not of the town and the machine but of the fields and the spade.’[19]
[...]
Crossman subsequently turned his radio talks into a book, Plato Today, published a year later in June 1937.[24]
[...]
Freed from BBC constraints, in Plato Today Crossman states his political views with more forthrightness and in a very different form, exploiting with greater creativity the fiction of Plato being alive in the modern world. Nowhere is this more evident than in Chapter 9, ‘Plato looks at Fascism’. The chapter imagines Plato writing to Aristotle an account of his experiences during a visit to Nazi Germany, focusing on the speeches at amass public meeting in Berlin. One of the speeches comes from an academic philosopher, a student of Plato, newly converted to National Socialism from his former liberal views. Arguing that Plato ‘was a prototype of National Socialism’ who ‘preached the revolution which Adolf Hitler has so wonderfully carried through’, the philosopher expounds his view of the sources of Plato’s views ...
[19] Richard Crossman. ‘German labour camps’, The Listener, vol. 11 (16 May 1934), 813.
[24] Richard Crossman. (1937). Plato Today, London.
Stephen Hodkinson. (2010). Sparta and Nazi Germany in Mid-20th-Century British Liberal and Left-Wing Thought. In: A. Powell & S. Hodkinson (eds.), Sparta: The Body Politic, Swansea (The Classical Press of Wales), 2010.
https://www.academia.edu/35634339/Sparta_and_Nazi_Germany_in_mid_20th_century_British_liberal_and_left_wing_thought_2010_
(It seems Crossman eventually soured on the new socialism, and tried to claim NS Germany is analogous to ancient Sparta. Crossman's Plato criticizes the philosopher who calls the supposedly "Spartan" NS Germany a representative of real Platonic ideas. Of course, Spartanism is negative, but NS Germany isn't "Spartan" at all, and really was closer to the Platonic Republic than any other government that I am aware of...)
-
Continuing from the previous post, Watson translated the term "Völkerabfälle"--used by Marxist theorist Friedrich Engels--as "racial trash". Communists claim that is an inaccurate translation, but to me it seems accurate. It is not the dumb tribalism of when white supremacists call "blacks" "racial trash", but a qualitative term which is based in a very long-sighted view of history.
Völkerabfälle is a term used by Frederick Engels to describe small nations which he considered residual fragments of former peoples who had succumbed to more powerful neighbours in the historic process of social development and which Engels considered prone to become "fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution".
[...]
Engels was referring also specifically to the Serb uprising of 1848–49, in which Serbs from Vojvodina fought against the previously victorious Hungarian revolution. Engels finished the article with the following prediction:
But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerabf%C3%A4lle
(Yet False Leftist liberals and Communists will claim Hitler is "racist" when he said nearly identical things about "Slav barbarians" and how "entire reactionary peoples" need to disappear from the face of the Earth to enact real Socialism... Hitler was not motivated by petty ethno-tribalist squabbles, but a long-sighted view of history and revolution, just like Engels and Marx. Maybe he even got the idea from them directly.)
----
Let's look at the 3 full articles Engels published on this topic, since the full context is even more brutal than the brief quote above.
First, just to emphasize, Engels was absolutely integral to the development of Marxism/Communism:
Engels developed what is now known as Marxism together with Karl Marx. In 1845, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in English cities. In 1848, Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx and also authored and co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works. Later, Engels supported Marx financially, allowing him to do research and write Das Kapital. After Marx's death, Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital. Additionally, Engels organised Marx's notes on the Theories of Surplus Value which were later published as the "fourth volume" of Das Kapital.[8][9] In 1884, he published The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State on the basis of Marx's ethnographic research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels
Secondly, Marx himself was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper where Engels published the articles, so he probably wouldn't have allowed 3 such articles to be published if he strongly disagreed with them:
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie ("New Rhenish Newspaper: Organ of Democracy") was a German daily newspaper, published by Karl Marx in Cologne between 1 June 1848 and 19 May 1849.
[...]
The paper was established by Karl Marx, Frederich Engels, as well as leading members of the Communist League living in Cologne immediately upon the return of Marx and Engels to Germany following the outbreak of the 1848 Revolution.[1] The paper's editorial staff included Joseph Weydemeyer, with Marx serving as editor-in-chief.
[...]
The great bulk of the journalism of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the NRZ became systematically accessible to an English readership only in 1977, with the publication of volumes 7, 8, and 9 of the Marx-Engels Collected Works. It was then that a total of 357 of the 422 articles contained therein were published in English for the first time.[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Rheinische_Zeitung
Engels speaks positively of the fighting spirit of the "revolutionary" pro-democracy Hungarians fighting against numerically-superior "counter-revolutionary" Slavs in Austria.
Engels gives a brief history of Austria-Hungary and how various ethnic groups were becoming more oppressed under the dynastic class, yet were apparently willing to support them since the rulers knew how to play into their interests. In the 1848 revolution in Austria-Hungary, Engels writes: "the Germans, Poles, and Magyars took the side of the revolution; the remainder, all the Slavs, except for the Poles, the Rumanians and Transylvanian Saxons, took the side of the counter-revolution."
Engels then goes on to say:
How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis?
The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the nationalities in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these nations, large and small.
All the earlier history of Austria up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality--the Germans, the Poles, and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary.
All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary.
[...]
Let us, however, also remark at the outset that the Poles have revealed great political understanding and a true revolutionary spirit by now entering into an alliance with their old enemies, the Germans and Magyars, against the Pan-Slav counter-revolution. A Slav people for whom freedom is dearer than Slavism proves its vitality by this fact alone, and thereby already assures a future for itself.
Engels then claims the Slavs were not able to form any real cultural movements without the "help" of Germans, Hungarians, or Ottomans. He goes on to praise Hungarians:
And if the Magyars were a little behind the German Austrians in civilisation, they have recently brilliantly overtaken them by their political activity. Between 1830 and 1848 there was more political life in Hungary alone than in the whole of Germany, and the feudal forms of the old Hungarian Constitution were better exploited in the interests of democracy than the modern forms of South-German constitutions. And who was at the head of the movement here? The Magyars. Who supported the Austrian reaction? The Croats and Slovenes.
Against the Magyar movement, as also against the reawakening political movement in Germany, the Austrian Slavs founded a Sonderbund--pan-Slavism.
[...]
In its basic tendency, pan-Slavism is aimed against the revolutionary elements of Austria and is therefore reactionary from the outset.
Pan-Slavism immediately gave proof of this reactionary tendency by a double betrayal: it sacrificed to its petty national narrow-mindedness the only Slav nation which up to then had acted in a revolutionary manner, the Poles; it sold both itself and Poland to the Russian Tsar.
The direct aim of Pan-Slavism is the creation of a Slav state under Russian domination, extending from the Erzgebirge and the Carpathians to the Black, Aegean and Adriatic seas ...
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc
Throughout this article, Engels refers to Slavs as "barbarians" a number of times and continuously criticizes the national/cultural character of these Slav nations.
And what nations are supposed to head this great Slav state? Precisely those nations which for a thousand years have been scattered and split up, those nations whose elements capable of life and development were forcibly imposed on them by other, non-Slav peoples, small, powerless nationalities, everywhere separated from one another and deprived of their national strength, numbering from a few thousand up to less than two million people! They have become so weak that, for example, the race which in the Middle Ages was the strongest and most terrible, the Bulgarians, are now in Turkey known only for their mildness and soft-heartedness and set great store on being called dobre chrisztian, good Christians! Is there a single one of these races, not excluding the Czechs and Serbs, that possesses a national historical tradition which is kept alive among the people and stands above the pettiest local struggles?
Spoiler alert: even 150 years later the answer was no:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Wars
Pan-Slavism was at its height in the eight and ninth centuries, when the Southern Slavs still held the whole of Hungary and Austria and were threatening Byzantium. If at that time they were unable to resist the German and Magyar invasion, if they were unable to achieve independence and form a stable state even when both their enemies, the Magyars and Germans, were tearing each other to pieces, how will they be able to achieve it today, after a thousand years of subjection and loss of their national character?
There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples, the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historic development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says,[1] these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against historical revolution.
[...]
Such, in Austria, are the pan-Slavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but the residual fragment of peoples, resulting from an extremely confused thousand years of development. That this residual fragment, which is likely extremely confused, sees its salvation only in a reversal of the whole European movement, which in its view ought to go not from west to east, but from east to west, and that for it the instrument of liberation and the bond of unity is the Russian knout--that is the most natural thing in the world.
Already before 1848, therefore, the Southern Slavs had clearly shown their reactionary character.
[1] See G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Einleitung.
To sum up:
In Austria, apart from Poland and Italy, it is the Germans and Magyars in 1848, as during the past thousand years already, who have assumed the historical initiative. They represent the revolution.
The Southern Slavs, who for a thousand years have been taken in tow by the Germans and Magyars, only rose up in 1848 to achieve their national independence in order thereby at the same time to suppress the German-Magyar revolution. They represent the counter-revolution.
[...]
The Magyars are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall gloriously, as the last heroes of the 1848 revolution, and only for a short time. Then for a time the Slav counter-revolution will sweep down on the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarity, and the camarilla will see what sort of allies it has. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
Frederick Engels. (January 13, 1849). The Magyar Struggle. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 194. Republished in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works. (1977). Volume 8: 1848-49. Progress Publishers, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., and International Publishers Co. Inc. Page 227-238.
https://archive.org/details/karlmarxfrederic0008marx/page/226/mode/2up
So, to summarize, Engels views the "Pan-Slav" ambitions to be a continuation of petty historic tribalism, and not a revolutionary progression into the next stage of history by overthrowing the dynastic elite class to form a democracy. These counter-revolutionary ethnic groups will "perish" in the long term--not necessarily by ethnic cleansing (although Engels strongly implies this is what must be done), but, due to their counter-revolutionary attitudes, they are of no use for long-reaching political goals and one way or another will not leave their mark on the future.
To put it more simply, "Pan-Slavism" is not a "prole class"-based struggle, and therefore needs to get out of the way so a "real" revolution can proceed. Further, "Pan-Slavism" is not even a real nationalist movement seeking to unite small ethnic groups into a new nation, but a hollow attempt for Slav nations to imitate the dynastic classes of Austria-Hungary that had previously ruled them (with the added insult of becoming part of the Russian Empire's sphere).
One way or another, history will sweep them aside during the coming Communist "revolutionary world storm", and they will not continue on into the future as unique ethnic groups/nationalities.
How will this happen? Presumably the simplest way would be for the high quality elements of those ethnic groups will be integrated into the "revolutionary" nationalities (although Engels disagrees this is possible in the follow-up articles posted below), and those low quality elements who remain counter-revolutionary will be sent to gulags, where their culture and bloodlines end forever.
This would be the politest way, but Engels puts it more ruthlessly--when (not if) the next world war breaks out, there will be a "bloody revenge" which will wipe out the Slav nations "down to their very names", causing "the disappearance from the face of the earth...entire reactionary peoples." (For fun, next time you see a Communist you can imply Hitler said that, and see how they react when you reveal it was their beloved Engels.)
Engels also says counter-revolutionaries will remain a persistent problem until their "complete extirpation":
extirpation
1. Biology, Ecology. (of a species) the state or condition of having become locally or regionally extinct
2. Medicine/Medical. the removal or excision of a tumor, organ, etc.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/extirpation
early 15c., "removal;" 1520s, "rooting out, eradication," from Latin extirpationem/exstirpationem (nominative extirpatio/exstirpatio), noun of action from past-participle stem of extirpare/exstirpare "root out," from ex "out" (see ex-) + stirps (genitive stirpis) "a root, stock of a tree."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/extirpation
Ok, I guess his desire for the destruction of Slavic peoples wasn't "implicit", but pretty explicit.
-
Continuing from the previous post.
A month later, Engels published two follow-up articles titled "Democratic Pan-Slavism".
We have often enough pointed out that the romantic dreams which came into being after the revolutions of February and March, such as ardent fantasies about the universal fraternal union of peoples, a European federative republic, and eternal world peace, were basically nothing but screens hiding the immeasurable perplexity and inactivity of the leading spokesmen of that time. People did not see, or did not want to see, what had to be done to safeguard the revolution; they were unable or unwilling to carry out any really revolutionary measures; the narrow-mindedness of some and the counter-revolutionary intrigues of others resulted in the people getting only sentimental phrases instead of revolutionary deeds.
[...]
People have learned by bitter experience that the "European fraternal union of peoples" cannot be achieved by mere phrases and pious wishes, but only by profound revolutions and bloody struggles; they have learned that the question is not that of a fraternal union of all European peoples under a single republican flag, but of an alliance of the revolutionary peoples against the counter-revolutionary peoples, an alliance which comes into being not on paper, but on the battlefield.
He is not mincing words about what needs to happen to the "counter-revolutionary peoples"...
In this article, he says the spirit of the revolution is weakly kept alive by democratic pan-Slavists, but these democratic pan-Slavists do not have the martial spirit necessary to bring the goals of a revolution into reality by whatever means necessary. Engels strongly criticizes an article by Mikhail Bakunin, who praises the democratic pan-Slavists and thinks they will be able to accomplish something. (Engels also praises how the US conquered large amounts of Mexico, declaring the US was more "civilized" and would bring "progress" to the regions, yikes.)
We repeat: apart from the Poles, the Russians, and at most the Turkish Slavs, no Slav people has a future, for the simple reason that all the other Slavs lack the primary historical geographical, political and industrial conditions for independence and viability.
Peoples which have never had a history of their own, which from the time when they achieved the first, most elementary stage of civilisation already came under foreign sway, or which were forced to attain the first stage of civilisation only by means of a foreign yoke, are not viable and will never be able to achieve any kind of independence.
And that has been the fate of the Austrian Slavs.
Of course, matters of this kind cannot be accomplished without many a tender national blossom being forcibly broken. But in history nothing is achieved without violence and implacable ruthlessness, and if Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon had been capable of being moved by the same sort of appeal as that which pan-Slavism now makes on behalf of its ruined clients, what would have become of history!
[...]
In short, it turns out these "crimes" of the Germans and Magyars against said Slavs are among the best and most praiseworthy deeds which our and the Magyar people can boast of in their hostory.
If at any epoch while they were oppressed the Slavs had begun a new revolutionary history, that by itself would have proved their viability. From that moment the revolution would have had an interest in their liberation, and the special interest of the Germans and Magyars would have given way to the greater interest of the European revolution.
Precisely that, however, never happened. The Slavs--once again we remind our readers here we always exclude the Poles--were always the main instruments of the counter-revolutionaries. Oppressed at home, outside their country, wherever Slav influence extended to, they were the oppressors of all revolutionary nations.
Let no one object that we speak here on behalf of German national prejudices. In German, French, Belgian and English periodicals, the proofs are to be found that it was precisely the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung who already long before the revolution most decisively opposed all manifestations of German narrow-mindedness. ... they have always recognized the superiority of the great historical nations of the west, the English and the French, compared with the backward Germans. But precisely for that reason we should be permitted not to share the fantastic illusion of the Slavs and allowed to judge other peoples as severely as we have judged our own nation.
But, once again, what was the composition of the armies which best let themselves be used for oppression and for whose savage acts the Germans were blamed? Once again, they consisted of Slavs. Go to Italy and asked who suppressed the Milan revolution; people will no longer say: the Tedeschi [Germans]--since the Tedeschi made a revolution in Vienna they are no longer hated--but the Croati. That is the word which Italians now apply to the whole Austrian army, i.e. to all that is most deeply hated by them: i Croati!
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
See also:
Even Himmler was dismayed with the barbarity of the Croatian state during WWII, and from the beginning of this Croatian state's existence a German general said German troops had to frequently intervene against criminal acts by Croatian forces. ...But their crimes remain broadly blamed on the "Axis" and Germany in particular:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_State_of_Croatia#Influence_of_Nazi_Germany
Nevertheless, these reproaches would be superfluous and unjustified if the Slavs had anywhere seriously participated in the movement of 1848, if they had hastened to join the ranks of the revolutionary peoples.
[...]
The revolution of 1848 compelled all European peoples to declare themselves for or against it. In the course of a month all the peoples ripe for revolution had made their revolution, and all those which were not ripe had allied themselves against the revolution. At that time it was a matter of disentangling the confused tangle of peoples of Eastern Europe. The question was which nation would seize the revolutionary initiative here, and which nation would develop the greatest revolutionary energy and thereby safeguard its future. The Slavs remained silent, the Germans and Magyars, faithful to their previous historical position, took the lead. As a result, the Slavs were thrown completely into the arms of the counter-revolution.
But what about the Slav Congress in Prague?
We repeat: the so-called democrats among the Austrian Slavs are either scoundrels or fantasts, and the latter, who do not find any fertile soil among their people for the ideas imported from abroad, have been continually led by the nose by the scoundrels.
That last paragraph sounds similar to how Hitler describes "Judeo-Bolshevism" leading the Russians and other Slavs astray from authentic Socialist revolution.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10718/#msg10718
But let us not harbour any illusions. Among all the pan-Slavists, nationality, i.e. imaginary common Slav nationality, takes precedence over the revolution. The pan-Slavists want to join the revolution on the condition that they will be allowed to constitute all Slavs without exception, regardless of material necessities, into independent Slav states. ... But the revolution does not allow of any conditions being imposed upon it. Either one is a revolutionary and accepts the consequences of the revolution, whatever they are, or one is driven into the arms of the counter-revolution ...
[...]
The demand is put to us and the other revolutionary nations of Europe that the hotbeds of counter-revolution at our very door should be guaranteed an unhindered existence and the free right to conspire and take up arms against the revolution; it is demanded that we should establish a counter-revolutionary Czech state in the very heart of Germany ...
We have no intention of doing that. To the sentimental phrases about brotherhood which are being offered here on behalf of the most counter-revolutionary nations of Europe, we reply that hatred of Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution. We know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated, viz. in Russia and the Slav regions of Austria, and no fine phrases, no allusions to an undefined democratic future for these countries can deter us from treating our enemies as enemies.
And if Bakunin finally exclaims:
Truly, the Slav should not lose anything, he should win! Truly, he should live! And we shall live. As long as the smallest part of our rights is contested, as long as a single member is cut off from our whole body, so long will we fight to the end, inexorably wage a life-and-death struggle, until the Slavs have their place in the world, great and free and independent--
if revolutionary pan-Slavism means this passage to be taken seriously, and in its concern for imaginary Slav nationality leaves the revolution entirely out of account, then we too know what we have to do.
Then there will be a struggle, an "inexorable life-and-death struggle", against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror--not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!
Frederick Engels. (February 15, 1849). Democratic Pan-Slavism. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 222. page 362-371.
Frederick Engels. (February 16, 1849). Democratic Pan-Slavism. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 223. page 371-378.
Republished in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works. (1977). Volume 8: 1848-49. Progress Publishers, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., and International Publishers Co. Inc.
https://archive.org/details/karlmarxfrederic0008marx/page/362/mode/2up
Wow. Those final two paragraphs...
I would not be surprised if Hitler had read these articles by Engels. Note the obvious parallels between Hitler's emphasis on the concept of struggle in history, and obviously on what had to be done to safeguard the National Socialist revolution against reactionary "Judeo-Bolshevik"-following Slavs. (And Hitler obviously allied with Slavic nations willing to embrace the revolution, e.g. Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria.)
...I will also point out how we outlined in a different thread how the Communist USSR engaged in settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing of many ethnic groups:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/western-revisionism-of-wwi-and-wwii/msg6582/#msg6582
I'll let someone else figure out if they were all "counter-revolutionaries" who deserved that or not...
-
From an anti-NS False left article criticizing anti-NS rightists:
A similar argument is propounded in the 2017 book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left by Dinesh D’Souza, who maintains that Adolf Hitler himself was a “dedicated socialist”:
In statement after statement, Hitler could not be clearer about his socialist commitments. He said, for example, in a 1927 speech, “We are socialists. We are the enemies of today’s capitalist system of exploitation … and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20211218084848/https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/
Unsurprisingly, the rightist D'Souza suffers from shoddy scholarship. This quote was actually from Gregor Strasser. It was published in June 1926, and recall that Hitler had ideologically reconcilced with the Strassers and Goebbels by April 1926, indicating Hitler almost certainly did not have a problem with this publication. (And, as covered previously, the Strassers were highly esteemed by Hitler, and Hitler had no problems with the Strassers being leftist Socialists:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10620/#msg10620 )
Perhaps ironically, that article opens with a tidbit of literally rewritten history, misattributing a quote by Nazi party member Gregor Strasser to Adolf Hitler:
We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!
While Hitler may have co-opted elements of this language when it was politically expedient, they are not his words. Instead, these are the words of early Nazi party official Gregor Strasser, printed in a 1926 pamphlet titled Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220113190014/https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hitler-nazis-capitalist-system/
Back to the other article:
[Hitler] having declared, at various times, “I am a socialist,” “We are socialists,” and similar avowals ...
[...]
This excerpt from a speech Hitler gave in 1922 (quoted in William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, published in 1960) is indicative:
Whoever is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an extent that he knows no higher ideal than the welfare of the nation; whoever has understood our great national anthem, “Deutschland ueber Alles,” to mean that nothing in the wide world surpasses in his eyes this Germany, people and land — that man is a Socialist.
And this is what came out of Adolf Hitler’s mouth on another occasion when a comrade riled him by harping on socialism (as reported by Henry A. Turner, author of German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, published in 1985):
Socialism! What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211218084848/https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/
The article is quite funny, isn't it? All the "information" to attempt to demonstrate National Socialism wasn't Socialist are quotes from random historians giving their opinions. All the actual quotes from Hitler and other National Socialists were quotes explicitly saying they viewed themselves as Socialists! It's literally the Big Lie tactics--repeat something enough times and people will believe it.
----
For reference, in that final quote, Hitler is giving an exasperated, super-simple, and practical definition of Socialism, since he seems frustrated the person he's talking to would likely reject a practical alliance due to overly-theoretical definitions of Socialism:
Thereupon I clothed my answer in a conditional sentence: If he negotiated with Alfred Hugenberg,[29] he could also negotiate with Brüning.
From this sentence Hitler heard at first and primarily only the criticism. In a fervent voice, therefore, he praised Hugenberg as an outstanding economic leader and a true nationalist who already had had dealings with him, Hitler, when the Nazi party was small and insignificant. Now, to be sure, all the others came running, not just rich Germans, but Americans, Frenchmen, even Jews. Then Hitler asked me what I had against Hugenberg. When I expressed doubts about the good nationalist attitude of Hugenberg because it had no culmination in social attitudes, Hitler caught me up: "Socialism! What is Socialism, then? When the people have enough to eat and their pleasure, then they have their Socialism. That's just what Hugenberg thinks!" My objection that it had less to do with food and pleasure than with the development and uplifting of the talented and healthy hereditary core of the nation, he dismissed with a few remarks about trade union ideology.
[29] Alfred Hugenberg, Germany's greatest newspaper magnate, was the reactionary leader of the DNVP. He had collaborated with Hitler in the Young Plan plebiscite, as described above, and within a year of the incident described here was to join Hitler in the Harzburg Front, a confederation of rightist parties. When Hitler took office in 1933 it was actually in coalition with Hugenberg's party.
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 173.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/172/mode/2up
A constant theme of Hitler's speeches is that he was willing to transcend the constraints of the mainstream left and right in order to build a revolutionary new ideology, by whatever means necessary. Chancellor Brüning was in negotiations to potentially form a coalition with the NSDAP, and Hitler viewed him as an adversary, whereas Hitler was angered Krebs made a parallel that implied Hugenberg was a similar adversary, rather than believing in the most basic aspects of Socialism enough to be considered a genuine collaborator.
Krebs was part of the Strasserist faction and apparently quite critical of the NSDAP absorbing/making alliances with right-leaning parties (not just in this passage.) He was expelled from the party for agitation in 1932. Briefly skimming his memoir, he seems anti-Hitler with the view that Hitler betrayed the "real" Socialism that the Strasserist faction was developing.
If the accounts of Krebs and Otto Strasser (see the 1930 debate between Hitler and Strasser posted previously) are accurate, Hitler seemed to have a short temper with Strasserists whose understanding of Socialism was tainted by Marxism:
No matter what a Nazi fought against, whether Versailles, capitalism, the Red Front, the department stores, or the democratic parties of fulfillment, it was always one and the same enemy. To destroy him meant to destroy the causes of Germany's misery with one stroke. Therefore, it was a mistake to be overly concerned with any single problem, such as socialism. That only turned you away from the real goal of the struggle. "What is socialism?" Hitler screamed at me in 1930. "A Jewish invention to incense the German folk against itself!"
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 46-47.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/46/mode/2up
However, Hitler was clear to others in his private conversations that his goal was to purify Socialism of the Marxist elements that were dragging it down and preventing it from succeeding. For example, see this previous post:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10718/#msg10718
Krebs acknowledges the party synthesized various political currents, including Marxist Socialism:
Seen as a whole, the party was thus an organization of "new men" who were breaking into the domain of politics with youthful obstreperousness, full of faith in their own mission and determined to use their eagerness at risk-taking to make the impossible possible. From the spiritual heritage of the past they took whatever they thought useful for their goals and purposes. That produced, especially in the beginning, a remarkable mixture of liberal, conservative, Marxist, reactionary, and revolutionary elements, though probably very few of them were aware of this.
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 242-243.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/242/mode/2up
Krebs describes some of the far-left Socialists in the National Socialist party who he met during his time as Gauleiter of Hamburg (leader of the Hamburg NSDAP political district) in 1926-1928:
Less complicated personalities than Böckenhauer were Dr. Schranz and Arnold Peters, who were practically the first and the only ones among the leadership in those early years whose socialism went beyond practical considerations. To be sure, they came to their socialism from diverse directions.
[...]
On the basis of his studies after the war and of his experience in various businesses, Dr. Schranz came to the conclusion that traditional economic liberalism was socially unjust and economically outmoded both in theory and in practice ... Like many reformers of those years he saw the cure in combatting finance capitalism, a retreat from the gold standard, and the establishment of the fundamental thesis that all value is created by labor.
In any event, there was less favor in the Hamburg party in those days for unambiguously clear formulations than there was acceptance of a revolutionary socialism. Thus Dr. Schranz played an essential role in the determination of the Hamburg Party's development.
[...]
What for Dr. Schranz had been the result of an intellectual blending of experience and systematic study was for Arnold Peters an emotion formed from youthful adventures. When I first met him, he was a lad of seventeen years whose appearance and personality were a joy to behold. He came from a Hamburg working-class family in which adherence to the Marxist-Socialist labor movement was taken as a matter of course. Thus Peters had become a member of the Red Falcons and later of the Young Socialist Workers. Exactly what impelled him to leave these organizations I was never able to discover. From the point of view of social attitudes, Peters still lived completely in the world in which he had been brought up. He considered himself passionately and unqualifiedly as a National Socialist without troubling himself too much about the theoretical differences between that and Marxism, apart from those which centered about the antithesis "national vs. international."
Albert Krebs. (1959). The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs. 1923-1933. Edited and translated by William Sheridan Allen. (1976). New Viewpoints, Franklin Watts. Page 50-51.
https://archive.org/details/infancyofnazism0000unse/page/50/mode/2up
I didn't look through this book too much, but there is probably a lot more information about the Strasserist left-wing and other leftists in it. Although I did notice on page 240 that he mentions Roehm and Gregor Strasser were two opposed factions, similar to Rauschning's account--i.e. the two major opposition factions in the party were leftist! On page 192 he mentions a rumor that Goebbels was part of a Communist student group around 1920, indicating Goebbel's far-leftism was well known. (Recall the earlier post in the thread where Rosenberg said Goebbels could have easily joined the Communist party instead of the NSDAP). As we saw in a different post, Goebbels wrote as late as 1924 (when he joined the NSDAP) that he was a Communist:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621
Recall also that Rosenberg was jealous about how close Goebbels became to Hitler, indicating Goebbels and Hitler must have been very closely ideologically aligned in order for them to grow so close:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10804/#msg10804
Recall also that Albert Speer mentioned Goebbels was among those who was constantly pushing Hitler to remain ideological and not make practical compromises (and how they mocked the rightist Himmler):
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11108/#msg11108
Leftism overload.
-
Thus far, I have avoided relying on commentary from historians for 4 main reasons:
(1) Historians write their works by reading and synthesizing primary sources (i.e. the exact same process of what we are doing here by quoting National Socialists in their own words). If we want an actual understanding of the truth, we might as well cut out the middle-men.
(2) It is possible for two historians/individuals to read the EXACT SAME sources, but write two completely different narratives, depending on their own personal attitudes and values. (e.g. Rightists can quote the "great minds" of Western Civilization with admiration, while leftists like us can quote the same sentences and express our disgust.) Again, it is best to cut out the middle-men who try to tell us what to believe, and just read the original documents and decide for ourselves.
(3) Every time we quote a historian who acknowledges the Socialism of National Socialism, our enemies could quote a dozen other historians who claim National Socialism is far-rightism. The only way to cut through the propaganda and biased narratives to get down to the truth is by reading the actual primary source documents of what National Socialists believed in their own words.
(4) In any case, relying exclusively on a historian's opinion rather than the content of the actual source documents is an appeal to authority (a logical fallacy) and intellectual laziness.
----
However, the fact that many mainstream historians do acknowledge the leftism/Socialism of National Socialism demonstrates that even within Western academia there is far from a unanimous agreement that National Socialism was some far-right ideology. These historians will obviously quote excerpts of National Socialist writings in order to demonstrate their point--pointing us to valuable information for further study. Until we can find a full copy of the original source documents, then commentary from these historians will have to suffice.
----
Below is the book from which Wikipedia and other sources cite the following quote.
According to the idea of the NSDAP, we are the German left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national ownership block.
-Der Angriff (The Attack), (6 December 1931)
Wolfgang Venohr, Hellmut Diwald, and Sebastian Haffner. (1983). Dokumente deutschen Daseins: 500 Jahre deutsche Nationalgeschichte, 1445-1945 (Documents of German existence: 500 years of German national history 1445-1945). Krefeld: SINUS-Verlag. Page 279.
https://archive.org/details/dokumentedeutsch00veno/page/278/mode/2up
See the previous post about this and other Joseph Goebbels quotes. Hitler would have been fully aware of Goebbel's leftism for years at this point.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621
----------------
Page 276-277.
HAFFNER
Ich würde so sagen: Die Weimarer Parteien haben den nationalen Bereich nicht völolig ignoriert. Die Deutsch-Nationalen rührten ja auch die _nationale_ Trommel. Un die Sozialdemokraten rührten die _sozialistische_ Trommel. Aber die beiden Sachen mal zusammenzubringen: Das war eine bedeutende Idee! Und das zeigt, daß Hitler kein verächtlicher Politiker war, solange er sich noch Mühe gab, einer zu sein. Dieser Versuch, zwei großbe, damals ungeheurer schlagkräftige Ideen--den Nationalismus un den Sozialismus--miteinander zu fusionieren, das war eine große Sache!
Prof. DIWALD
Das allein hat aber das Besondere des Nationalsozialismus noch nich ausgemacht. Als drittes Moment ist dazu der ganz brutale Rassenantisemitismus gekommen! Es ist ein Phänomen, das es weder in Deutschland noch in der gesamten politischen Geschichte vorher in dieser Prägnanz und Entschiedenheit gegeben hat...
HAFFNER
Ja, das simmt schon, un ich mach' es auch den Deutschen etwas zum Votwurf, daß sie da nicht genauer hingehört haben, daß sie das sozusagen in Kauf genommen haben. Aber eines muß man da sagen: Hitler hat in der Zeit 1930 bis 1933 gerade den Antisemitismus verhältnismäßig in den Hintergrund treten lassen. Da redete er hauptsächlich von der sozialen Not und dem Versagen der Parteien und diesen Dingen.
Und bei der Gelegenheit möchte ich doch eines auch sagen: Daß Hitler nur das Werkzeug der Kapitalisten war, das ist ja Unsinn! Die Kapitalisten mißtrauten ihm sogar noch in der Zeit seines Erfolges 1930/31, und erst 1932 hat er sie--ich möchte mal hamburgisch sagen--"begöscht", mit der berühmten Rede in Düsseldorf vor dem Rhein-Ruhr-Club der Industriellen.
Prof. DIWALD
Ja, Seihne Ausrichtung auf den Arbeiter, die lief damals durchaus in dem, was man als sozialistisch oder links bezeichnet hat (natürlich nict zu verwechseon mit dem, was man heute unter links oder sozialistisch versteht). Die Hauptpropaganda, die hat er ausgerichtet auf den einfachen Bürger, auf den Bauern und auf den Arbeiter!
HAFFNER
Wobei immerhin zu beachten ist: beim Bauern und beim Kleinbürger hatte er sofort großen Erfolg. Beim Arbeiter zunächst nicht! Das kam erst später. Bis 1933 wählten die Arbeiter kommunistisch oder sozialdemokratisch; mit einer Linksverschiebung. Zuerst mehrheitlich sozialdemokratisch, dann wurde die Mehrheit immer dünner. Aber was die Sozialdemokraten verloren, gewannen nicht die Nazis. Das gewannen die Kommunisten! Nach 1933/34 hat er dann auch die Arbeiter 'rumgekreigt.
Prof. DIWALD
Es kommt noch dazu, und das ist eine der Erklärungen, die man nicht vergessen darf: Die Parteien hatten bis zu den Präsidialkabinetten gezeigt, daß sie nicht in der Lage warren, mit den Schwiergkeiten fertigzuwerden. Hitler hat den Konterpart gespielt. Er hat gesagt, ich werde mit allem fertig...
Google translate:
HAFFNER
I would put it this way: the Weimar parties have not completely ignored the national sphere. The German nationalists also beat the _national_ drum. And the Social Democrats beat the _socialist_ drum. But to bring the two things together: That was an important idea! And that shows that Hitler was not a contemptible politician while he still tried to be one. This attempt to fuse two great ideas, which at the time were enormously powerful -- nationalism and socialism -- was a big deal!
Prof. DIWALD
But that alone did not make up what was special about National Socialism. The third moment was the very brutal racial anti-Semitism! It is a phenomenon that has never existed before in Germany or in all of political history with such conciseness and decisiveness...
HAFFNER
Yes, that's true, and I also blame the Germans for not listening more carefully, for accepting it, so to speak. But one thing has to be said: in the period from 1930 to 1933 Hitler allowed anti-Semitism to recede into the background. He talked mainly about the social misery and the failure of the parties and things like that.
And I would like to take this opportunity to say one thing: hat Hitler was only the tool of the capitalists, that's nonsense! The capitalists mistrusted him even during the period of his success in 1930/31, and it was not until 1932 that he--I would like to say Hamburgian--"begged" them with the famous speech in Düsseldorf before the Rhein-Ruhr-Club of the industrialists.
Prof. DIWALD
Yes, his orientation towards the worker was definitely part of what was called socialist or left (of course not to be confused with what is meant by left or socialist today). The main propaganda he aimed at the simple citizen, at the peasant and at the worker!
HAFFNER
However, it should be noted that he immediately had great success with the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie. Not with the worker at first! That came later. Until 1933 the workers voted communist or social democratic; with a left shift. At first the majority was social democratic, then the majority became thinner and thinner. But what the Social Democrats lost, the Nazis did not gain. The communists won! After 1933/34 he then also 'round the workers' around.
Prof. DIWALD
What's more, and this is one of the explanations that must not be forgotten: the parties had shown up to the presidential cabinets that they were unable to cope with the difficulties. Hitler played the counterpart. He said I can handle anything...
----
Page 278-278.
Der Stabchef der SA, Ernst Röhm, hatte auf dem Neujahrsempfang des diplomatischen Korps in Berlin, zu Beginn des Jahres 1934, damit gedroht, daß SA bald zur "zweiten Revolution" schreiten würde, zu einer Revolution, in der mit dem Sozialismus in Deutschland ernst gemacht werden sollte. Die Bourgeoisie war auf's höchste alarmiert! Sie setze Himmel und Hölle in Bewegung, Hitler--vor allem auf dem Umweg über die Heeresgeneralität--under Druck zu setzen und gegen seine "alten Kämpfer" zu mobilisieren, indem man frei erfundene Gerüchte in die Welt setzte, die SA wollen gegen ihren eigenen Führer und Reichskanzler putschen.
Tatsächlich gab es starke sozialistiche bzw. sozialrevolutionäre Kräfte in der NSDAP; vor allem im Raum Berlin-Brandenburg. Hier herrschte so etwas wie Horst-Wessel-Geist, und ganz in diesem Sinne schrieb der NS-Gauleiter von Großberlin, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, am 6. 12. 1931 im "Angriff", dem Berliner Kampfblatt der Hitlerbewgung:
"Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhaßter als der rechtsstehende nationale Besitzbürgerblock." Und zehn Monate später, am 9. 10. 1932--also nur ein Vierteljahr vor der Machtäbernahme!--erklärte er, daß es die große Idee Adolf Hitlers sei, "aus Deutschland den sozialistischen Arbeiterstaat zu machen".
Das fiel vor allem bei der kämpferischen SA auf fruchtbaren Boden. Das Wort von der "antikapitalistchen Sehnsucht", das einer der höchsten NS-Funktionäre, Gergor Strasser, vor dem Deutschen Reichstag gesprochen hatte, gab exakt die Gefählslage in diesen bärgerkreigserprobten Formationen wieder.
Von konkreten Putschplänen der SA gegn Hitler konnte im Ernst keine Rede sein; Wohl aber vom Anwachsen einer vorrevolutionären Stimmung, die sich immer deutlicher gegen das Großkapital richtete. Im Südwesten des Reiches ließ SA-Gruppenführer Hanns Ludin den Nationalkommunisten Richard Scheringer Schulungsvorträge über den Weg zum deutschen Sozialismus vor seinem Führerkorps halten. In Berlin-SIemensstadt veruschten SA-Leute in spontaner Aktion, das Großunterehmen Siemens zu sozialisieren und dort die Macht zu übernehmen. Sa-Gruppenführer Karl Ernst von Berlin-Brandenburg erklärte dem KPD-Richstagsabgeordneten Torgler, man werde wohl bald gemeinsam gegen die Bourgeoisie marschieren.
Der Antifaschist Willy Brandt schrieb in der Zeitschrift "Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei" im Jahre 1932 treffend: "Das sozialistiche Element im Nationalsozialismus, im Denken seiner Gefolgsleute, das subjektiv Revolutionäre an der Basis, muß von uns erkannt werden." Das deutsche Großkapital sah die Hitlerpartei ganz genauso! und umischtig sorgte es dafür, daß die nationalen Sozialisten der NSDAP rechtzeitig liquidiert wurden.
Google translate:
At the New Year's reception of the diplomatic corps in Berlin in early 1934, the Chief of Staff of the SA, Ernst Röhm, had threatened that the SA would soon proceed to the "second revolution", a revolution in which socialism in Germany was taken seriously should be done. The bourgeoisie was extremely alarmed! They set heaven and hell in motion to put pressure on Hitler--above all by way of the army generals--and to mobilize against his "old fighters" by spreading fictitious rumors that the SA wanted against theirs own leaders and chancellors.
In fact, there were strong socialistic or social-revolutionary forces in the NSDAP; especially in the Berlin-Brandenburg area. Something akin to the Horst Wessel spirit prevailed here, and it was in this spirit that the Nazi Gauleiter of Greater Berlin, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, on December 6, 1931 in "Angriff", the Berlin newspaper of the Hitler movement:
"According to the idea of the NSDAP, we are the German left. Nothing we hate more than the right-wing national property-owning block." And ten months later, on October 9, 1932--that is, only three months before the seizure of power!--he declared that Adolf Hitler's great idea was "to turn Germany into a socialist workers' state."
This fell on fertile ground, especially in the militant SA. The phrase "anti-capitalist longing" spoken by one of the highest NS officials, Gergor Strasser, before the German Reichstag, accurately reflected the emotional state of these formations, which had been tried and tested in the Civil War.
There could seriously be no talk of concrete putsch plans by the SA against Hitler; But it was due to the growth of a pre-revolutionary mood, which was directed more and more clearly against big business. In the southwest of the Reich, SA group leader Hanns Ludin had the national communist Richard Scheringer give training lectures to his leadership corps on the road to German socialism. In Berlin-Siemensstadt, SA men attempted spontaneous action to socialize the large company Siemens and take over power there. SA group leader Karl Ernst from Berlin-Brandenburg explained to Torgler, a KPD [Communist party] member of the Reichstag, that they would soon march together against the bourgeoisie.
The anti-fascist Willy Brandt wrote in the magazine "Socialist Workers' Party" in 1932: "The socialistic element in National Socialism, in the thinking of its followers, the subjectively revolutionary at the base, must be recognized by us." German big capital saw the Hitler party in exactly the same way! and it cunningly ensured that the national Socialists of the NSDAP [die nationalen Sozialisten der NSDAP] were liquidated in good time.
The last sentence seems to be specifically stressing the Socialist elements of the NSDAP, since "Nationalsozialist" (referring to the ideology and party name) is a single word in German. These historians also suggest the evidence of Roehm/the SA planning to commit a coup was fabricated by rightists in order to force a purge of the leftist agitators who were unwilling to make practical compromises. As we saw previously, even Otto Strasser (who had been expelled from the party and bitter at that point) acknowledged that Hitler did not actually want to purge Roehm or other leftists, but his hand was forced by President Hindenburg and others. Perhaps I was too critical of Roehm in earlier posts.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10915/#msg10915
To add some commentary on the last paragraph of the quote, from 1931 to the end of WWII, Willy Brandt was part of the (Communist/Marxist) Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. Apparently he drifted towards the "right-wing" of the mainstream Social Democratic Party by the time he became Chancellor. Consider the significance of this--a (future) German Chancellor acknowledged the leftism of National Socialism while being a member of a Communist party!!
Willy Brandt (18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen cooperation in western Europe through the EEC and to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe.[1] He was the first Social Democrat chancellor[2] since 1930.
Fleeing to Norway and then Sweden during the Nazi regime and working as a left-wing journalist, he took the name Willy Brandt as a pseudonym to avoid detection by Nazi agents, and then formally adopted the name in 1948. Brandt was originally considered one of the leaders of the right wing of the SPD, and earned initial fame as Governing Mayor of West Berlin. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's cabinet, and became chancellor in 1969.
As chancellor, he maintained West Germany's close alignment with the United States and focused on strengthening European integration in western Europe, while launching the new policy of Ostpolitik aimed at improving relations with Eastern Europe. Brandt was controversial on both the right wing, for his Ostpolitik, and on the left wing, for his support of American policies, including the Vietnam War, and right-wing authoritarian regimes. The Brandt Report became a recognised measure for describing the general North-South divide in world economics and politics between an affluent North and a poor South. Brandt was also known for his fierce anti-communist policies at the domestic level, culminating in the Radikalenerlass (Anti-Radical Decree) in 1972.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Brandt
While the most important focus of this thread is how National Socialists viewed Socialism in their own words, further evidence that non-NS leftists (especially those who were contemporaries with the living National Socialist movement) viewed National Socialism as a genuinely Socialist/leftist ideology is welcome as well.
-
Pamphlet translated as "Those Damned Nazis" [Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken.], by Joseph Goebbels. It was first published in 1929 and republished in 1932. The source doesn't say if it was published more than this.
Just like Goebbels's "Nazi-Sozi" pamphlet:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621
this pamphlet is clearly writing for a leftist audience to convince them of the Socialist merits of National Socialism.
We are nationalists because we see the nation as the only way to bring all the forces of the nation together to preserve and improve our existence and the conditions under which we live.
[...]
Nationalism has turned into bourgeois patriotism and its defenders are battling windmills.
[...]
Bourgeois patriotism is the privilege of a class. It is the real reason for its decline. When 30 million are for something and 30 million are against it, things balance out and nothing happens. That is how things are with us. We are the world’s Pariah not because we do not have the courage to resist, but rather because out entire national energy is wasted in eternal and unproductive squabbling between the right and the left. Our way only goes downward, and today one can already predict when we will fall into the abyss.
[...]
From this understanding, the young nationalism draws its absolute demand. The faith in the nation is a matter for everyone, never a group, a class or an economic clique. The eternal must be distinguished from the temporal. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.
[...]
If a Communist shouts “Down with nationalism!”, he means the hypocritical bourgeois patriotism that sees the economy only as a system of slavery. If we make clear to the man of the left that nationalism and capitalism, that is the affirmation of the Fatherland and the misuse of its resources, have nothing to do with each other, indeed that they go together like fire and water, then even as a socialist he will come to affirm the nation, which he will want to conquer.
That is our real task as National Socialists. We were the first to recognize the connections, and the first to begin the struggle. Because we are socialists we have felt the deepest blessings of the nation, and because we are nationalists we want to promote socialist justice in a new Germany.
A young fatherland will rise when the socialist front is firm.
Socialism will become reality when the Fatherland is free.
Why Are We Socialists?
We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.
Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to breaking the present slavery and regaining German freedom. Socialism, therefore, is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only through a total fighting brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the fatherland!
The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism into a question of wages and the stomach, putting it in conflict with the state and its national existence. An understanding of both these facts leads us to a new sense of socialism, which sees its nature as nationalistic, state-building, liberating and constructive.
The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. [...] It is not merely a matter of wages, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day — though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform [...] The bourgeoisie does not want to recognize the strength of the working class. Marxism has forced it into a straitjacket that will ruin it. While the working class gradually disintegrates in the Marxist front, bleeding itself dry, the bourgeoisie and Marxism have agreed on the general lines of capitalism, and see their task now to protect and defend it in various ways, often concealed.
[...]
We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces.
[...]
The lines of German socialism are sharp, and our path is clear.
We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism!
We are against Marxism, but for true socialism!
We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature!
We are for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!
[...]
Marxist nonsense claimed to free labor, yet it degraded the work of its members and saw it as a curse and disgrace. It can hardly be our goal to abolish labor, but rather to give new meaning and content. The worker in a capitalist state — and that is his deepest misfortune — is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker.
He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.
[...]
We are a workers’ party because we see in the coming battle between finance and labor the beginning and the end of the structure of the twentieth century. We are on the side of labor and against finance. Money is the measuring rod of liberalism, work and accomplishment that of the socialist state. The liberal asks: What are you? The socialist asks: Who are you? Worlds lie between.
We do not want to make everyone the same. Nor do we want levels in the population, high and low, above and below. The aristocracy of the coming state will be determined not by possessions or money, but only on the quality of one’s accomplishments. One earns merit through service. Men are distinguished by the results of their labor. That is the sure sign of the character and value of a person. The value of labor under socialism will be determined by its value to the state, to the whole community.
[...]
We oppose the Jews because we are defending the freedom of the German people. The Jew is the cause and beneficiary of our slavery He has misused the social misery of the broad masses to deepen the dreadful split between the right and left of our people, to divide Germany into two halves thereby concealing the true reason for the loss of the Great War and falsifying the nature of the revolution.
The Jew has no interest in solving the German question. He cannot have such an interest. He depends on it remaining unsolved. If the German people formed a united community and won back its freedom, there would be no place any longer for the Jew.
[...]
That is why we oppose the Jew as nationalists and as socialists.
[...]
What does anti-Semitism have to do with socialism? I would put the question this way: What does the Jew have to do with socialism? Socialism has to do with labor. When did one ever see him working instead of plundering, stealing and living from the sweat of others? As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation’s goods.
[...]
Peace among productive workers! Each should do his duty for the good of the whole community. The state then has the responsibility of protecting the individual, guaranteeing him the fruits of his labor.
[...]
The gallows for profiteers and usurers!
https://web.archive.org/web/20210322034535/https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm
I don't speak German, so I will refrain from getting into a battle of definitions and etymologies, but one major point of debate regarding a translation/mistranslation of NS words is the idea of "creativity". Rightist (pro-Western) Neo-Nazis have interpreted the translation "creativity" to mean high IQ and inventiveness. However, in this pamphlet, at least, Goebbels uses "creator" to mean "a worker who does productive labor". So, "creativity" is not a boasting about high IQ, but about productive vs non-productive labor.
We call ourselves a workers’ party because we want to rescue the word work from its current definition and give it back its original meaning. Anyone who creates value is a creator, that is, a worker.
[...]
The Jew is uncreative. He produces nothing, he only haggles with products.
And as we saw in Hitler's speech at Schleiz, Thuringia, on January 18, 1927, he places the highest value on what we would today call "essential work"--i.e. those who are viewed the lowest by capitalism, such as janitors or simple farmers, yet actually do the most important labor.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10616/#msg10616
So, in terms of labor, too, the most important productive labor is not inventing new machines or whatever, but doing the most simple and basic tasks that contribute to society. Jews do not contribute 'productive labor' to society and hence are called "uncreative", despite having very high IQ and talent at politics, finance, and science.
-
As National Socialism's influence grew beyond Germany, Hitler seems stunned by the party's rapid elevation to a global movement. It seems he began thinking more global-mindedly soon before WWII began.
We see in this quote that Hitler was willing to form alliances with anti-Westerners of all ethnic backgrounds! I will make the contention that, just because he became more globally-minded over time when it came to political matters, doesn't necessarily mean he was racist to begin with and then became less racist over time. If anything, his readiness to expand alliances to the whole world immediately after realizing the global influence of National Socialism can be taken as evidence he wasn't racist to begin with. He did not need time to reflect to challenge and change his views--he immediately accepted the doors that had opened up.
Wagener agreed with Hitler that such anti-Western alliances would be completely in line with the Socialism of the National Socialist party.
Wagener then tells of a visit paid to Hitler by an Arab emissary. The emissary informed Hitler that he and his movement were held in high regard in the Arab world and expressed the hope that Germany might free itself from the chains of its oppressors. The Arabs, he reported, were especially impressed that the NSDAP was the first political movement in modern Europe to recognize correctly the dangers of Jewry. His commission was to ask Hitler not to send the Jews of Germany to Palestine or any other part of the Arabic world if he expelled them from Germany.
“Strange,” Hitler said to me after the conference. “Until now I never considered the idea of expelling the Jews from Germany. And since our objective is peace, I don’t even think such a move is necessary. If we were to be entangled in a war, as in the First World War, one would have to make sure of the Jews. Because they were the ones who at that time sharpened the dagger which the elected representatives of the German Volk plunged into the back of the government of the Volk and its fighting men at the front.
“But the Semites seem to recognize their racial compatriots. Furthermore, it seems to me that they understand and know more about race than Europe does. The whitewashed good manners of our continent have seen to it that everything that might contribute to lucidity and truth was overlaid with a coat of uniform gray.
“Let us not lose sight of an alliance with the Arab League. We Germans have gotten into the habit of looking for friends only in Europe—if possible, among people of the same race. Perhaps that’s a mistake. Perhaps it’s much easier to find friends among other races. If the Arabs know that we—that is, a new Germany—can offer them understanding, support, and firm backing in their own struggles for freedom, and that we consider them competent to enter into alliances—welcome them, in fact—such a realization might have significant repercussions on our position in Europe as well. Furthermore, an alliance of interests between Germany and the Arabic-Semitic race might also have far-reaching significance for our relations with the millions of the African, Indian, and yellow peoples.
“A whole new perspective is opening up for me!”
But then Hitler rubbed his hand across his eyes and continued in a calmer voice:
“I have to sleep on it. It seems to me that it will have to be a long-term goal. Practical politics ties us to England.”
“Nor would England sit idly by,” I interjected, “while we begin to sympathize with the very nations England has always considered its vassals. Either we pursue a joint policy with England—in which case we would have to drop the idea you just presented or at least let it take a back seat, tempting and appropriate to our socialist thinking though it might be. On the other hand, if we could and should pursue a purely socialistic policy, these trains of thought would present prospects that could offer a different picture to the whole world.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 227-228.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n269/mode/2up
It looks like this meeting was immediately prior to the war in 1939:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Arab_world#Nazi_perceptions_of_the_Arab_world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Al_Hud_Al_Gargani
After the war began, he fully embraced all these anti-Western alliances, including in India (e.g. with anti-British Socialist Subhas Chandra Bose) and Africa (hence the book series Black Nazis).
-
"I don't speak German, so I will refrain from getting into a battle of definitions and etymologies, but one major point of debate regarding a translation/mistranslation of NS words is the idea of "creativity". Rightist (pro-Western) Neo-Nazis have interpreted the translation "creativity" to mean high IQ and inventiveness. However, in this pamphlet, at least, Goebbels uses "creator" to mean "a worker who does productive labor". So, "creativity" is not a boasting about high IQ, but about productive vs non-productive labor."
Thank you very much for this. I mentioned this point on the main site also:
Neo-Nazis, unlike authentic National Socialists, have no awareness of this distinction. Part of their ignorance is linguistic: they read Hitler’s positive statements on what has been disastrously translated into English language as “creativity” with the presumed meaning of innovativeness, without realizing that the corresponding word in the original German language was “schaffenskraft” with the very different meaning of self-reliant productivity, which is what Hitler really means each time he makes use of the term.
(https://trueleft.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Faryanism.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fschaffen.jpg&hash=0211722a58f1aef817e0617d475c29255748cd6f)
This poster illustrates what Hitler was thinking of when he used the term "schaffendes".
As for our enemies, their obsession with innovation is leading them to embrace not just high IQ test scores, but also personality traits that they believe will increase innovativeness, and trying to come up with reproductive strategies to increase the occurrence of such traits:
https://vdare.com/articles/why-were-so-many-geniuses-born-prematurely
Then there is the genius personality. New ideas almost always offend, but geniuses don’t care about this because they tend to be high in autism traits. Scientific geniuses, at least, are obsessed with systematizing and are thus low in empathy, as these sit on the opposite ends of a spectrum: they are focused on the truth. Prematurity is a significant predictor of autism.
In many cases, as with Isaac Newton, geniuses are also high in psychopathic personality traits and thus simply don’t care if their ideas offend. Related to this, they have problems with impulse control and with following the rules. Not being rule-bound, they will “think outside the box” and thus dare to consider things that ordinary people would not. And preemies have elevated levels of psychopathic personality, due to abnormal brain development.
...
The group with the optimum low level of geniuses—too high and you have too many anti-social people—will triumph over other groups due to superior weapons or leaders that inspire greater ethnocentrism-inducing religiosity, where the group is certain that it is blessed by the gods. There would need to be a mechanism for this.
This mechanism has to be neurodiversity. And one means of achieving that mechanism, other than unlikely genetic combinations rendering the offspring very different from the parents, would be often older or stressed mothers who expose their fetuses to atypical doses of hormones and other chemical signallers. These may, among other things, better condition the fetus to survive a premature birth. And the fact of this birth, and the infant’s level of development at birth, would further interfere with the infant’s neural development. All of which could lead to the development genius characteristics.
This is why they must not be allowed to win.
-
That poster also reminds me of the National Socialist labor recruitment posters targeted at "Slavic" people.
Polish-language poster, c. 1940-1941:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Chod%C5%BAmy_na_roboty_rolne_do_Niemiec.jpg)
Let's go to Germany for agricultural work! Report immediately to your mayor.
Russian-language poster:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Nazi_poster.jpg)
I live with a German family and feel just fine. Come to Germany to help with household chores.
In other words, Hitler's views on the "Slavic people" were more favorable than even Marxists, since Friedrich Engels doubted they could be integrated into the nations of "revolutionary peoples", and would instead have to be completely exterminated:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11178/#msg11178
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11179/#msg11179
----
Wochenspruch der NSDAP was a propaganda poster/wall newspaper issued by the party from 1937-1944. The images below are particularly useful in demonstrating the importance of Socialism to National Socialists, since they're literally one-sentence propaganda posters printed for mass distribution. Long speeches and writings are one thing, but it is pretty difficult to argue National Socialists were anti-Socialist when their own, most basic, forms of propaganda called themselves Socialists. ;D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wochenspruch_der_NSDAP
Note that the word Socialism is printed in a different color to emphasize it:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/8/83/20200629010253%21Wochenspruch_der_NSDAP_8_June_1941.jpg)
True socialism, however, is the doctrine of the strictest performance of duty.
-Wochenspruch der NSDAP ("Weekly Quotation of the National Socialist Party"), June 8-14, 1941.
(https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/images/ws/ws-27Aug1939.jpg)
“There is no socialism that does not apply to one’s own people. -Adolf Hitler.”
-Wochenspruch der NSDAP ("Weekly Quotation of the National Socialist Party"), August 27-September 2, 1939.
-
At this point, I have posted nearly all of the information that I've stumbled across during my preliminary search into the Socialist attitudes of National Socialists.
I say this is a preliminary search, because I have basically just dug a tiny bit deeper to double-check the quotations that can be found in various articles and forum posts scattered around the internet. Yes, the massive walls of quotes in this thread are just scratching the surface.
I think we have abundantly proven our point with the information contained here. As far as I am aware, this is the largest collection of quotes that has ever been compiled on the internet regarding the leftist Socialist attitudes of National Socialists.
----
To summarize the sources:
• Hitler's public speeches, writings, and interviews.
• Hitler's private conversations:
◦ sourced from rightist anti-Hitlerists (Hermann Rauschning (including where Hitler said he is literally going to be the "Executor of Marxism")).
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10718/#msg10718
◦ sourced from leftist anti-Hitlerists (Albert Krebs, Otto Strasser (including Hitler's debate with Strasser where he told him Strasserist Socialism wasn't authentically Socialist enough)).
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10620/#msg10620
◦ sourced from leftist Hitler loyalists (Otto Wagener, Alfred Rosenberg, and Albert Speer (if you count him as 'loyal'/leftist)).
• Official party propaganda, particularly that which was written/edited/approved by Joseph Goebbels. (Much of which was clearly written for leftist audiences).
• Private diary entries of Joseph Goebbels's personal opinions. (Where he literally said he is a Communist and other very leftist things).
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621
• Memoirs from Albert Speer, Alfred Rosenberg, Herman Goering, and Otto Strasser indicating how Hitler favored Goebbels heavily and was ideologically influenced by him.
• Information from Otto Strasser declaring Goebbels had initially supported Walter Stennes's leftist coup in the SA, and how Goebbels assured Ernst Roehm that Hitler would soon purge the rightist elements of the party (and how Strasser believed Hitler genuinely intended to do this, and how Strasser believed Goebbels was genuinely leftist rather than a rightist infiltrator).
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10915/#msg10915
• Basic biographical/historical information:
◦ from Wikipedia acknowledging that various other party figures were leftists/Socialists (or at least within "the left wing of the NSDAP"). Wikipedia isn't a perfect source on history, but it is generally good at presenting the "mainstream consensus narrative"--i.e. the historians being referenced on those pages were likely willing to admit the leftist tendencies of many members.
◦ from Hermann Rauschning and Otto Strasser revealing how the three major opposition factions in the party (Walter Stennes's SA faction, Ernst Roehm's SA faction, and the Strasserist faction) were all leftists!!! (And how Hitler had invited leftist Ernst Roehm to come back to Germany to lead the SA after the Stennes coup was put down!!! And how Hitler made constant concessions to the Strassers to keep them in the party!!!)
• Information about the social welfare policies of National Socialist Germany:
◦ sourced from documents used by Allied intelligence and were later used at the Nuremberg Trials.
◦ sourced from National Socialist propaganda (which was considered accurate enough to also be used by Allied intelligence and Nuremberg Trial prosecutors).
◦ sourced from an essay by Léon Degrelle written in the final years of his life, indicating the lasting importance of these policies in his mind.
• Quotes from non-National-Socialists acknowledging the leftist Socialist elements:
-From leftists:
◦ Willy Brandt, a member of a Communist party and later the Chancellor of West Germany from 1969-1974.
◦ Bertrand Russell, who acknowledged in his "History of Western Philosophy" that Hitler and Mussolini fell within the branch of Romanticist leftism.
◦ Richard Crossman (British Labour Party politician who had visited Germany in the 1930s).
◦ Konrad Heiden (a Jewish journalist from the 1930s; I assume he was liberal/left-leaning).
-From Western-Civilization-admiring rightists:
◦ F. A. Hayek, Frederick Augustus Voigt.
◦ 21st-century propaganda articles by rightists of various camps.
• Opinions from historians:
◦ George Watson's article "Hitler and the socialist dream", which has many quotes, which I have confirmed and posted separately from his article.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11177/#msg11177
◦ Wolfgang Venohr, Hellmut Diwald, and Sebastian Haffner, who explicitly acknowledged Hitler's attitudes were "socialist or left". (And they also included the quote from Goebbels's newspaper where he says, "According to the idea of the NSDAP, we are the German left.")
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11181/#msg11181
◦ A. James Gregor (who wrote about Mussolini and Fascism's development from Socialism and Marxism).
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10717/#msg10717
• Parallelism with Marxists/Communists:
◦ Frederick Engels's declaration that during the next revolution/world war there needs to be "the disappearance from the face of the earth...of entire reactionary peoples." George Watson drew the obvious parallel between the revolutionary acts Engels advocated for and what Hitler did.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11178/#msg11178
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11179/#msg11179
◦ I've said before that things like Stalin's policy of "Socialism in one country" is an indication that even Communism in the early USSR moved towards nationalist-socialism and away from orthodox Marxism (contrast it to the internationalism of the Trotskyist faction that Stalin purged).
----
To summarize what we have learned:
• Hitler and many of his key associates viewed themselves as genuine Socialists.
• Hitler made it clear both in public and private that he aimed to essentially "purify" and correct the errors that Marxists/Communists had made to Socialism, which prevented their Socialism from living up to its idealistic promises.
• Hitler and Goebbels made clear that the reason National Socialists were anti-Zionists is because Jews were the elite beneficiaries of capitalism and profiteers in an unjust system.
• Hitler, Goebbels, and Rosenberg declared National Socialists were motivated by concerns for "social justice".
• Hitler was thoroughly against post-Renaissance Western Civilization and wanted to replace it with a radically new Civilization. (I.e., unlike rightists, he did not admire it nor want to preserve it.)
• The National Socialist party had many leftist factions which constantly battled for control of the party--from its early days all the way to even after Hitler became Chancellor.
• We have multiple quotes from National Socialists and non-National-Socialists literally saying the NSDAP was a party of the "left".
• We have evidence from Hitler's rightist enemies (formerly) within the party, Hitler's leftist enemies (formerly) within the party, Hitler's leftist enemies who never joined the party, and Hitler's rightist enemies who never joined the party emphasizing the Socialism of his ideology. We also have evidence of leftist and rightist historians emphasizing the leftism and Socialism of his ideology.
• We have evidence that the National Socialist party and Communist party were competing for left-wing supporters--which was apparent even to non-National-Socialists in the 1930s like Konrad Heiden and F. A. Hayek.
• We have evidence used by Allied intelligence and Nuremberg Trial prosecutors outlining the social welfare policies of National Socialist Germany--showing that pre-NS welfare systems were expanded upon.
• We have evidence of Hitler declaring his intent to forge alliances with anti-Westerners of diverse ethnic backgrounds around the world. (And he would later put that into practice, although we didn't discuss the details in this thread).
• We have evidence that the (rightist, Western-Civilization-admiring) Neo-Nazi emphasis on words translated as "creativity" is a misunderstanding of "productive" vs "non-productive" labor--not IQ scores or 'genetic genius'.
• We have seen that the National Socialist war-time policy to (allegedly) result in "the disappearance from the face of the earth...of entire reactionary peoples" may in fact have been an idea Hitler got from Marxist theorist Frederick Engels. At the very least, the obvious parallelism between Marxist theory and National Socialist practice here indicates there was nothing remarkable about National Socialist war-time actions. The narrative that NS actions during the war were somehow a "uniquely" evil machination of their twisted minds is forever proven to be nonsense. (And, in any case, their polices were far less successful than the Western ethnic cleansing of both North and South America, but I digress.)
• Hitler, Otto Strasser, Mussolini, historian A. James Gregor, philosopher Bertrand Russell, and others agree with our 'big picture' argument that Marxist Socialism is merely one variety of Socialism among many.
----
----
I would have been skeptical about all these claims had I not read all these quotes myself. What else remains to be learned, buried under a lifetime of propaganda and lies?
-
What work remains to be done?
I think the information we have compiled here is sufficient to demonstrate that historic National Socialists viewed themselves as genuine Socialists.
Now, the task is to flesh out a classification of leftism to properly contextualize Marxist Socialism/Communism as merely one type of Socialism among many. Comparing the similarities and contrasting the key differences between 'orthodox Marxist' and Communist ideological positions vs National Socialist ideological positions will be a major task in this. I think it would be useful to consult the works of A. James Gregor for this, as this seems to have been the focus of his career (although he was mostly focused on Fascism and Marxism/Communism, and less so on National Socialism).
Additionally, we must trace the roots of Socialist ideology back further in time beyond Marxism and the so-called "Enlightenment", just as Hitler began to do by declaring his Socialism was inspired by Jesus. (And even the Marxist slogan, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," has been argued to be inspired from the New Testament.)
Lastly, we can outline ways to "purify" present-day leftist/Socialist ideologies which have thoroughly diverged from orthodox Marxism, in order to fully cut the string needlessly attaching them to Communism and Marxism attitudes (e.g. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, things like Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality).
Such discussions can probably be taken to a new thread, leaving this one for continued curation of historic information.
-
Where did the new thread go, could have swore I saw one a day or two ago?
I know Chris Hedges has made quite a few lectures on the topic of different forms of socialism in the past, I'll have to try and dig them up. Perhaps there are facts and examples in those that we can use as a spring board into a wider discussion on the topic? I haven't been listening to a whole lot of leftist radio the last couple of years, so I may be a little out of touch on this subject.
KPFA and KPFK often host people who speak about other forms of leftism and socialism as well, here is one example I just found: Ecomodernism and Degrowth: https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-march-16-2021/
Just one example. Perhaps when I get some time I'll spend it scouring the net to see what I can find....
Also, should we not do a thorough breakdown of people like John Locke from our perspective as perhaps a start to what you described above?
-
Where did the new thread go, could have swore I saw one a day or two ago?
For reference (so others can easily find them). I made a new thread for discussing leftist ideological differences here:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/leftist-ideological-camps-in-the-big-picture-socialism-marxism-true-leftism-etc/
There is also this thread which was split off, which seems more like off-topic discussion deriving from here:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/re-national-socialists-were-socialists/
-
https://youtu.be/9-SLqdhkvJo
Thoughts?
-
Previously, we saw how Goebbels wrote in his diary that he was a communist:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10621/#msg10621
And how Otto Strasser was part of a leftist/communist militia during the 1918-1919 revolution.
What about Hitler? It seems that his very first political involvement was on the side of the socialists in Bavaria during the 1918-1919 revolution--including the final stage during the most thoroughly communist part. While he likely never admitted he was part of the revolution, the evidence is pretty convincing.
This would explain why he was so close to Goebbels and spent so much effort trying to keep Strasser in the party.
The German Revolution of 1918–1919 was kicked off by mutinying soldiers, and Hitler's unit in Bavaria was one of the units which supported the revolution in Bavaria.
The People's State of Bavaria (German: Volksstaat Bayern)[nb 1] was a short-lived socialist state in Bavaria from 1918 to 1919. The People's State of Bavaria was established on 8 November 1918 during the German Revolution, as an attempt at a socialist state to replace the Kingdom of Bavaria. The state was led by Kurt Eisner until his assassination in February 1919, and co-existed with the rival Bavarian Soviet Republic from 6 April 1919, with its government under Johannes Hoffmann exiled in Bamberg. The People's State of Bavaria was dissolved upon the establishment of the Free State of Bavaria on 14 August 1919.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_State_of_Bavaria
In the final phase, it descended into anarchy and Bolshevism. However, even in this stage, Hitler lent his services to the revolutionary republic!
Though he advocated a socialist republic, Eisner distanced himself from the Russian Bolsheviks, declaring that his government would protect property rights.
[...]
On Saturday 12 April 1919, only six days into Toller's regime, the Communist Party seized power, led by three Russian Bolsheviks, with Eugen Leviné as head of state and Max Levien as the chairman of the Bavarian KPD.
[...]
Having received the blessings of Lenin – who at the annual May Day celebration in Red Square said: "The liberated working class is celebrating its anniversary not only in Soviet Russia but in ... Soviet Bavaria"[17][19][13] – Leviné began to enact more hardline communist reforms, which included forming a "Red Army" from factory workers, seizing cash, food supplies, and privately owned guns, expropriating luxurious apartments and giving them to the homeless and placing factories under the ownership and control of their workers. One of Munich's main churches was taken over and made into a revolutionary temple dedicated to the "Goddess of Reason." Bavaria was to be in the vanguard of the Bolshevization of Europe, with all workers to receive military training.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Soviet_Republic
Recall that during this time period, anti-Hitler Jewish journalist Konrad Heiden wrote that Hitler considered the mainstream Majority Socialist faction of the Social Democratic Party to be "too rightist" for his taste:
Hitler had spent the winter months of 1918-19 with a reserve battalion of his regiment at Traunstein, in Upper Bavaria. At the time when the Soviet Republic was set up, he was again serving with his regiment in Munich. People who knew him at this time have stated that he professed himself a Majority Socialist, and that he even declared his intention of joining that Party. If this is true, then it was certainly as a matter of tactics and not of principle. The Majority Socialist Party was at that time regarded by many as a Party of the Right because it had lost its pre-War programme and not yet found a new one.
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London: Methuen and Co. Page 8.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17342/page/7/mode/2up
The respected mainstream historian Ian Kershaw wrote that during the German Revolution of 1918-1919 Hitler was chosen as a representative in the communist Munich Soviet Republic—even after the Soviet Republic called new elections to ensure soldiers' representatives reflected the will of the soldiers and were loyal to the new leadership of the Soviet Republic. Now we know why Heiden could say that the SPD was too rightist for Hitler at the time! Going further, Kershaw outlines that many trusted NSDAP members had aided the communists during the uprising.
On 21 November 1918, two days after leaving the hospital in Pasewalk, Hitler was back in Munich. ... He came back to a Munich he scarcely recognized. The barracks to which he returned were run by soldiers' councils. The revolutionary Bavarian government, in the shape of a provisional National Council, was in the hands of the Social Democrats and the more radical Independent Social Democrats. ...
[...]
One of the most remarkable aspects of the biographical parts of Mein Kampf is how quickly Hitler passed over his own experience of the traumatic revolutionary period in Bavaria. After all, he witnessed for the most part at close quarters the turmoil which so deeply scarred his psyche. He was based in Munich, at the epicentre of events, for the whole period that saw the descent into political chaos following the assassination of Eisner and culminated in the violent end of the 'council's republic'. Yet the entire treatment of the months between the November revolution and the suppression of the Räterreplik covers a mere page of his otherwise expansive book. Finding the soldiers' councils in charge of his regiment so repelled him, he wrote, that he decided to leave again as soon as possible. ... returning to Munich in March 1919. During the Räterpublik—the 'passing rule of Jews' as he dubbed it—Hitler claimed he pondered what could be done, but repeatedly realized that, since he was 'nameless', he 'did not possess the least basis for any useful action'. ...
[...]
The gulf between the momentous nature of the events taking place before his eyes and this brief and laconic account came not unnaturally to fuel speculation that Hitler was trying to obfuscate his own actions and conceal a role which might prove embarrassing to the later nationalist hero. It does seem likely that this was indeed his aim, and to a considerable extent he succeeded in it. What Hitler did, how he reacted to the drama unfolding around him in Munich in the first half of 1919, remains for the most part a dark spot in his personal history. Even so, the evidence, patchy in the extreme though it is, reveals one or two surprises.
The German Revolution ... was a messy, largely spontaneous and uncoordinated affair. ...
[...]
The revolution in Bavaria had preceded that in the Reich itself. ...
[...]
When, with a cry of 'off to the barracks', workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors attending a huge peace demonstration on Munich's Theresienwiese on 7 November 1918, addressed by Eisner, had headed for the city's main garrison area, they had met with no resistance from the troops.[8] [...] Without support from the army, the monarchy was finished. The ailing King Ludwig III and his family fled that night. Hitler, over two decades later, was to remark that at least he had to thank the Social Democrats for ridding him of 'these courtly intersts'.[10]
[...]
The assassination of Eisner...on 21 February 1919...provided then the signal for a deterioration into chaos and near anarchy.[12]
With 'Red Guards' trampling the corridors and rooms of the Wittelsbach Palace...a meeting...dominated by members of the USPD and anarchists, proclaimed a 'Councils Republic' in Bavaria. Majority Socialists and Communists—the latter dubbing it a 'Pseudo-Councils Republic' (Scheinräterpublik)—refused to participate.[14] An attempt to unseat it by using troops loyal to the elected government...failed on 13 April. But the initial failure of the counter-revolution simply strengthened the resolve of the revolutionary hot-heads and ushered in the last phase of the Bavarian revolution: the full Communist takeover in the second, or 'real' Räterpublik—an attempt to introduce a Soviet-style system in Bavaria. 'Today, Bavaria has finally erected a dictatorship of the proletariat', ran the proclamation of the new Executive Council under the direction of the Communist Eugen Leviné, a veteran of the 1905 Russian revolution.[15] It lasted little more than a fortnight. But it ended in violence, bloodshed, and deep recrimination, imposing a baleful legacy on the political climate of Bavaria.
[...]
... propaganda througout the Reich as well as in Bavaria itself, was that of alien—Bolshevik and Jewish—forces taking over the state, threatening institutions, tradition, order, and property...
[...]
For Hitler himself, the significance of the period of revolution and Räterpublik in Munich can hardly be overrated. It has been said that Hitler did not decided to become a politician; rather, through the revolution and the rule of the Councils, politics came to him, into the barracks.[22] It is time to explore the truth of that assertion.
[...]
Both, according to Schmidt, were repelled by the changed conditions in the Munich barracks, now in the hands of the Soldiers' Councils...[24] If that was indeed the reason for volunteering, Hitler and Schmidt could have found no improvement on reaching Traunstein. The camp...was also run by the Soldiers' Councils which Hitler allegedly so detested. ...Probably in late January, as Schmidt hinted, Hitler returned to Munich.[26]
[...]
As we have noted, Hitler spoke of his involvement in the investigatory commission following the suppression of the Räterpublik as his first political activity. Evidence recently come to light of Hitler's actions during the revolutionary era does not accord with this assertion. It also helps to suggest why Hitler was so reticent about his behaviour during the months that the 'November criminals', as he later repeatedly called them, ruled Munich.
A routine order of the demobilization battalion on 3 April 1919 referred to Hitler by name as the representative (Vertrauensmann) of his company. The strong likelihood is, in fact, that he had held this position since 15 February. The duties of the representatives (Vertrauensleute) included cooperation with the propaganda department of the socialist government in order to convey 'educational' material to the troops.[33] Hitler’s first political duties took place, therefore, in the service of the revolutionary regime run by the SPD and USPD. It is little wonder that he later wished to say little of his actions at this time.
In fact, he would have had to explain away the even more embarrassing fact of his continued involvement at the very height of Munich's 'red dictatorship'. On 14 April, the day after the Communist Räterepublik had been proclaimed, the Munich Soldiers' Councils approved fresh elections of all barrack representatives to ensure that the Munich garrison stood loyally behind the new regime. In the elections the following day Hitler was chosen as Deputy Battalion Representative.[34] Not only, then, did Hitler do nothing to assist in the crushing of Munich's 'Red Republic'; he was an elected representative of his battalion during the whole period of its existence.
How to interpret this evidence is, nevertheless, not altogether clear. Since the Munich garrison had firmly backed the revolution since November, and again in April supported the radical move to the Räterepublik, the obvious implication must be that Hitler, in order to have been elected as a soldiers' representative, voiced in these months the views of the socialist governments he later denounced with every fibre of his body as 'criminal'. At the very least it would appear that he could not have put forward strongly opposed views. Already in the 1920s, and continuing into the 1930s, there were rumours, never fully countered, that Hitler had initially sympathized with the Majority SPD following the revolution. Since the rumours tended to come from left-wing journalists, seeking to discredit Hitler, they were presumably not taken too seriously. But comments, for example, in the socialist Münchener Post in March 1923 that Hitler had assisted in the indoctrination of troops in favour of the democratic-republican state match the evidence, which we have noted, that he served, probably from February 1919 onwards, in such a capacity as Vertrauensmann of his company.[35] Similar rumours circulated in the socialist press in the early 1930s.[36] Ernst Toller reported that a fellow-prisoner also interned for involvement in the Räterepublik had met Hitler in a Munich barracks during the first months after the revolution, and that the latter had then been calling himself a Social Democrat.[37] Konrad Heiden remarked that, during the time of the Councils Republic, Hitler had, in heated discussions among his comrades, voiced support for the Social Democratic government against that of the Communists. There were even reported rumours – though without any supportive evidence – that Hitler had spoken of joining the SPD.[38] In a pointed remark when defending Esser in 1921 against attacks from within the party, Hitler commented: 'Everyone was at one time a Social Democrat.'[39]
In itself, Hitler’s possible support for the Majority Social Democrats in the revolutionary upheaval is less unlikely than it might at first sight appear. The political situation was extremely confused and uncertain. A number of strange bedfellows, including several who later came to belong to Hitler’s entourage, initially found themselves on the Left during the revolution. Sepp Dietrich, later a general in the Waffen-SS and head of Hitler's SS-Leibstandarte, was elected chairman of a Soldiers' Council in November 1918. Hitler’s long-time chauffeur Julius Schreck had served in the 'Red Army' at the end of April 1919.[40] Hermann Esser, one of Hitler’s earliest supporters, who became the first propaganda chief of the NSDAP, had been for a while a journalist on a Social Democratic newspaper.[41] Gottfried Feder, whose views on 'interest slavery' so gripped Hitler’s imagination in summer 1919, had sent a statement of his position to the socialist government headed by Kurt Eisner the previous November.[42] And Balthasar Brandmayer, one of Hitler's closest wartime comrades and a later fervent supporter, recounted how he at first welcomed the end of the monarchies, the establishment of a republic, and the onset of a new era. His subsequent disillusionment was all the greater. 'Unfortunately,' he added, 'we only changed the marionettes,' while the people continued to slave and starve. 'We hadn't bled for a councils government (Räteregierung)'; 'the thanks of the Fatherland were missing,' he concluded bitterly.[43] Similar sentiments, in which, as was the case with Brandmayer, aggressive nationalism and antisemitism intermingled with a form of radicalism born of a sense of social grievance that was rapidly switched from the old monarchical regime to the new republic itself, were widespread following the war. Ideological muddle-headedness, political confusion and opportunism combined frequently to produce fickle and shifting allegiances.
[...]
... In Pasewalk, he did not denounce to his superiors (as patriotic duty would have demanded) the sailors who arrived in the hospital preaching sedition and revolution.[46] On leaving the hospital, he avoided committing himself politically, and made no attempt to join any of the numerous Freikorps units which sprang up to engaged in the continued fighting on the eastern borders of the Reich and the suppression of left-wing radicalism within Germany, not least in Munich itself. After his return to Munich from Taunstein in February 1919, he most likely took part, since his regiment had issued orders to participate, in a demonstration march of about 10,000 left-wing workers and soldiers in Munich. Probably in April 1919, with Munich ruled by the Communist Councils, he wore, along with almost all the soldiers of the Munich garrison, the revolutionary red armband.[47] That Hitler stood back and took no part whatsoever in the 'liberation' of Munich from the Räterpunlik is said to have brought him later scornful reproaches from Ernst Röhm (who was to head the Nazi stormtroopers), Ritter von Epp (after 1933 Reich Governor in Bavaria), and even Rudolf Heß (who would serve as Hitler's private secretary and subsequently become Deputy Leader of the Party).[48]
Only after the German military put down the revolution did Hitler find himself fully engaged in anti-Bolshevik activities:
With the Bavarian government 'exiled'...Munich...was throughout the spring and summer a city effectively under military rule.[57] ... The 'education' of the troops in a 'correct' anti-Bolshevik, nationalist fashion was rapidily regarded as a priority, and 'speaker courses' were devised in order to train 'suitable personalities from the troops' who would remain for some considerable time in the army and function as propaganda agents (Propagandaleute) with qualities of persuation capable of negating subversive ideas.[58] The organization of a series of 'anti-Bolshevik courses', beginning in early June, was placed in the hands of Captain Karl Mayr, who, a short while earlier, on 30 May, had taken over the command of the Information Department.[59]
[...]
Within days he [Hitler] had been assigned to the first anti-Bolshevik 'instruction courses' to take place in Munich University between 5 and 12 June 1919. ... Among the speakers...Gottfried Feder...made a deep impression on Hitler, and eventually led to Feder's role as the economics 'guru' of the early Nazi Party.
[...]
The task of the squad was to inculcate nationalist and anti-Bolshevik sentiments in the troops, described as 'infected' by Bolshevism and Spartacism.[66]
Ian Kershaw. (1999). Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 109-123.
https://archive.org/details/hitlerhubris00kers
-
In Mein Kampf, Hitler says his first political interest was the socialism of the SPD, but he became "Jew aware" and turned on the party while in Vienna before WWI.
This does not line up with the evidence, and it seems likely Hitler was trying to rewrite his past.
Given the facts, it seems more likely Hitler was one of the many soldiers who were swept up in politics for the first time during the 1918-1919 revolution. Jews were in leadership positions in all stages of the revolution in Bavaria, so Hitler couldn't have been ignorant of this fact. Yet he served (multiple times) as a representative anyway.
Hitler's description in Mein Kampf about becoming aware of all the Jews in the SPD and existing socialist parties, the existence of a "ruthless struggle" between ideologies, learning about the importance of speaking, and studying Marxist ideology in detail lines up very well with his time in the military (both as a participant in the revolution and subsequent assignment to anti-bolshevik activities) in 1919, rather than his time in Vienna.
Accordingly I had no feeling of antipathy towards the actual policy of the Social Democrats. That its avowed purpose was to raise the level of the working classes—which in my ignorance I then foolishly believed—was a further reason why I should speak in favour of Social Democracy rather than against it.
[...]
And so at the age of seventeen the word 'Marxism' was very little known to me, while I looked on 'Social Democracy' and 'Socialism' as synonymous expressions. It was only as the result of a sudden blow from the rough hand of Fate that my eyes were opened to the nature of this unparalleled system for duping the public.
If Social Democracy should be opposed by a more truthful teaching, then, even though the struggle be of the bitterest kind, this truthful teaching will finally prevail, provided it be enforced with equal ruthlessness.
[...]
I am thankful now for the ordeal which I had to go through at that time; for it was the means of bringing me to think kindly again of my own people, inasmuch as the experience enabled me to distinguish between the false leaders and the victims who have been led astray.
We must took upon the latter simply as victims.
Adolf Hitler. (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translated by James Murphy (1939). London: Hurst and Blackett Ltd. Page 44-50.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n45/mode/2up
Now re-read the section about Hitler's actions during the Räterepublik and compare it. Incredible.
Even more incredible is how all of this evidence of Hitler and other future National Socialists starting their political careers as communists has been compiled by a mainstream historian, yet people still have the nerve to declare National Socialism as the world's most rightist ideology!
-
True Left's Statement that Hitler write Mein Kampf only for gain winning on democratic elections, not for ideological purpose are confirmed
“But if what you say is true, you should not have written Mein Kampf beforehand,” I objected.
“Quite right. And I frequently regret that I did. But at the time, when I was in Landsberg after November 9, 1923, I thought everything was over. I was in captivity, I was deprived of my freedom, the party was expropriated, dissolved—everything seemed at an end, even worse than Germany after the Great War. I wrote Mein Kampf as a kind of report to the German Volk, chiefly in memory of the martyrs of November 9. I wrote it out of the narrowness of my cell.
“When I was released, I had Mein Kampf printed. Perhaps, I hoped, it would serve to rally my old friends. And that really happened! That is how it came about.
“But gradually, I saw that many things were, after all, different from the way I had seen them through prison bars and from the way I had figured them out. And soon I set out to draft changes, improvements. But they only turned out to be changes for the worse. I thought about withdrawing the book. But it was too late. It made its way through Germany, it was even spread abroad, and what was right and positive about it did not miss its mark. So I kept hands off. I made no more changes. The book even gave me the financial basis for reconstructing the party. If I were to write it today, a lot would be different. But today, I would not write it at all
Wagener - Hitler Memoirs of a Confidant page 273
So, learn about National Socialism ideology cannot only from reading Mein Kampf, or even we must abandon it
-
Our enemy Culture Critic accurately recognizes that democracy is pro-Western:
https://twitter.com/Culture_Crit/status/1638637841537462272
Reminder that nobody ever voted for this.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr2cVqTXwAEGaca?format=jpg&name=medium)
but better still, this led to the following conversation in the replies where our enemies agree that National Socialism is indeed anti-Western:
that building in Manchester looks like one of the buildings the Nazis (whose architecture SUCKED) built in Germany.
The German ministry of finance, built in that era, looks brutalist.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr228XfXgAAHOnd?format=jpg&name=small)
Nazi is brutalism. They're virtually the same thing - walls of the State's jails.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr247LCXgAEFPCK?format=jpg&name=medium)
Birmingham had a bit of help from the Germans.
The Luftwaffe was involved in blitzkrieg. Dive bombing campaigns by Stukas we're a large part of it. In addition there was a bombing campaign of England called the Blitz in 1940 and 1941
Blame the blitz
I am happy to reach academic agreement with our enemies. Now would be a good time for me to repost my post from the old forum where I was making the same point (long before our enemies did).
OLD CONTENT
By the way, one of the best ways to demonstrate that the Third Reich is not part of Western civilization, but instead an attempt to overthrow it, is to look at its architecture, which deliberately eschews complexity and outright celebrates austerity (notice in particular the frequent use of square columns, and also flat roofs):
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1988-092-32%2C_Berlin%2C_Neue_Reichskanzlei.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1979-105-02%2C_Berlin%2C_Ehrenhof_der_Neuen_Reichskanzlei.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S22310%2C_M%C3%BCnchen%2C_K%C3%B6nigsplatz%2C_Ehrentempel.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Berlin%2C_Mitte%2C_Wilhelmstra%C3%9Fe%2C_Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus.jpg/1024px-Berlin%2C_Mitte%2C_Wilhelmstra%C3%9Fe%2C_Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Foreign_Office_Berlin_2007_003.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/1936_Olympics_Stadium_-_Berlin.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Braunschweig_HJ-Akademie_Ehrenhalle_von_Suedosten_%282006%29.JPG/1024px-Braunschweig_HJ-Akademie_Ehrenhalle_von_Suedosten_%282006%29.JPG)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Haus_der_deutschen_Kunst_1939.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1990-073-26%2C_M%C3%BCnchen%2C_Haus_der_Deutschen_Kunst_crop.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F089316-0001%2C_M%C3%BCnchen%2C_Haus_der_Kunst.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Zeppelin_Field_1937.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Reichsparteitagsgelaende_Zeppelinfeld_Tribuene_68.JPG/1024px-Reichsparteitagsgelaende_Zeppelinfeld_Tribuene_68.JPG)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Reichsparteitagsgelaende_Zeppelinfeld_63.JPG/1024px-Reichsparteitagsgelaende_Zeppelinfeld_63.JPG)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/ProraLandseite.jpg/1024px-ProraLandseite.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/ProraSeeseite.jpg/1024px-ProraSeeseite.jpg)
For contrast, Western architecture in Germany/Austria a.k.a. more of the same extremely ugly Homo Hubris self-titillation found throughout Western civilization:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Ulmer_M%C3%BCnster-Westfassade.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Drezno%2C_Zwinger%2C_Pawilon_Wa%C5%82owy%284%29.jpg/1024px-Drezno%2C_Zwinger%2C_Pawilon_Wa%C5%82owy%284%29.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Die_Frauenkirche_in_Dresden_1.jpg/768px-Die_Frauenkirche_in_Dresden_1.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Semperoper-Front.JPG/1024px-Semperoper-Front.JPG)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Typical_Aachen_street_with_early_20th-century_Gr%C3%BCnderzeit_houses_%282%29.JPG/1024px-Typical_Aachen_street_with_early_20th-century_Gr%C3%BCnderzeit_houses_%282%29.JPG)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Leipzig_Palais_Ro%C3%9Fbach.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Pommersfelden_Schloss_Wei%C3%9Fenstein_002.JPG/1024px-Pommersfelden_Schloss_Wei%C3%9Fenstein_002.JPG)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Gartenseite_Sanssouci.jpg/1021px-Gartenseite_Sanssouci.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Wien-Innere_Stadt_-_Josefsplatz_5_-_Portal_des_Palais_Pallavicini.jpg/768px-Wien-Innere_Stadt_-_Josefsplatz_5_-_Portal_des_Palais_Pallavicini.jpg)
END OF OLD CONTENT
See also:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/jews-have-nothing-in-common-with-us!/msg11512/?topicseen#msg11512
Hitler having zero qualms about destroying Western architecture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw
German forces dedicated an unprecedented effort to razing the city, destroying 80–90% of Warsaw's buildings, including the vast majority of museums, art galleries, theaters, churches, parks, and historical buildings such as castles and palaces. They deliberately demolished, burned, or stole an immense part of Warsaw's cultural heritage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Castle,_Warsaw#During_World_War_II
On 4 October 1939 in Berlin, Adolf Hitler issued the order to blow up the Royal Castle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Palace
the Saxon Palace was blown up by the Germans as part of their planned destruction of Warsaw.[2][3]
etc. etc. (Hail Hitler!)
One more excerpt from the enemy conversation:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr2gf4yXwAQ9wMg?format=jpg&name=medium)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr2gf42WcAMLoIU?format=jpg&name=large)
Why do you think Hitler despised France?
-
I think Zea_mays has already answered this, but is there a way we can successfully associate true authentic socialism with anti-tribalism?
-
I think Zea_mays has already answered this, but is there a way we can successfully associate true authentic socialism with anti-tribalism?
Still no way, we must implement National Socialism through different form.
-
Classic Music:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sALXH1Mhaiw" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ke3sDDOdMrQ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
-
National Socialist economy were autocratic socialist
Peter Temin wrote about this in Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning, stating:
Both governments reorganized industry into larger units, ostensibly to increase state control over economic activity. The Nazis reorganized industry into 13 administrative groups with a larger number of subgroups to create a private hierarchy for state control. The state could therefore direct a firm’s activities without acquiring direct ownership of enterprises. The pre-existing tendency to form cartels was encouraged to eliminate competition that would destabilize prices.
...
The Nazis, ironically, called this reorganization “privatization,” although the owners of these corporations were either removed from board positions and replaced by Nazi Party members or sold out and became Nazi Party members. ...
...
This German businessman also complained of “arbitrary government decisions concerning quantity, quality, and prices of foreign raw materials.” But businessmen were not the only members of the private sector who faced mass amounts of bureaucracy and control. The farmers faced it as well.
...
Farming price subsidies were also common in the Nazi Reich even before World War II broke out. The RNS was created to fix prices and create production controls in agriculture. In his book Hitler’s Beneficiaries, German historian Götz Aly describes the measures the German government took in the farming sector.
Götz states, “The prices producers were paid for milk and potatoes were raised by 25 to 35 percent in the course of the war.” These subsidies would cause shortages as early as August 1939, when meat and eggs rationing was imposed to keep the industry focused on grain production.
...
Because of this, people may reach the conclusion that prewar life was bad for the Jews, but beneficial for non-Jewish citizens. It is true that Jews suffered immensely, not only socially but also economically. At the start of 1933, there were an estimated hundred thousand Jewish businesses; by 1938, only 39,552 remained. In the same year, a capital levy was put on Jews; they needed to register all their assets with the local tax office, which placed a 20 percent and later a 25 percent capital levy on them.
But for ordinary non-Jewish citizens, life was also hard. Private sale negotiations were subject to official rules, these rules being set selling prices for whatever good someone had. If a dealer wanted to increase his prices, he must get a special permit from a price commissar, who needed a detailed statement of necessity and other data such as production and distribution costs.
Source :
Yes, They Were Socialists: How the Nazis Waged War on Private Property, John Kennedy, 5th July 2022
https://mises.org/wire/yes-they-were-socialists-how-nazis-waged-war-private-property
-
Mainstream journalism finally acknowledges it:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/far-left-hatred-jews-today-090057215.html
Far-left hatred of Jews today echoes the socialism and antisemitism of Hitler in the 1930s
...
far-left groups flooded college campuses recently accusing Jewish people of global conspiracies — and then demanding that Israel be destroyed.
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), for example — a network of pro-Palestinian student groups — wrote in its "Day of Resistance Toolkit" that "the forces of Zionism engage in media campaigns which attack our people." It calls for "resistance from all sides," as it shared on campuses nationwide in October.
The toolkit demands the "decolonization" of Israel with "confrontation by any means necessary."
...
The group argues that the United States and Canada are illegitimate colonizing powers — just as the group believes Israel is as well.
It turns out these toxic tenets of socialism and antisemitism have very deep roots — roots planted by the notorious National Socialist German Workers Party in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. This far-left hate group is known to most people today as Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.
The National Socialists seized total control of Germany by spewing both rage against capitalism and rage against Jews.
...
The party's very public war on "bourgeois" capitalism and private enterprise, however, today appears to be forgotten, ignored or rewritten by some academics and leftists who deny Hitler's National Socialists were actually socialists.
Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, told Fox News Digital on this topic, "Nazi taxation and subsidies for most people were more or less purely socialist, as it professed."
...
here are five ways that far-left antisemitism in the public square appears to flow from the platform of the National Socialist German Workers Party — the Nazis — the original left-wing hate group, judging by both words and actions.
The National Socialist German Workers Party platform offered a wish list of collectivist economic ideas.
"We demand," the party's 25 Theses stated, "abolition of incomes unearned by work [investment income] … the ruthless confiscation of all war profits … nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations … profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises."
The National Socialists also promised, and delivered on, centralized control of education, media and information.
...
National Socialist doctrine also demanded and secured individual devotion to the state, ruled by one man — and the elimination of a legislative branch with authority to challenge the party leader.
"The National State must work untiringly to set all government … free from the principle of control by majorities," Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf," all about a world with no democracy, no capitalism and no Jews.
The National Socialist German Workers Party wasted no time in savaging private enterprise when it seized control of Germany in 1934.
...
Many leftists and academics today claim that "right-wing" Nazis co-opted the word "socialist" and that Hitler’s National Socialism was different than the beneficent socialism they preach.
...
Hitler never wavered from his socialist identity. "An inexorable National Socialist and a fighter for my people," he thundered about himself in his last major radio address on Jan. 30, 1945, while vilifying Judaism and capitalism until the very end.
...
the far-left dictatorship has been recast in popular opinion as a right-wing hate group, even though that label is refuted by the party's own language, philosophy, platform, actions and self-identity.
...
Hitler’s rage against capitalism and Judaism stemmed from the belief that Jews controlled media and financial markets and profited from Germany’s defeat in World War I.
...
Hamas also echoes Hitler's National Socialist conspiracies of global Jewish dominance and war profiteering in its founding platform.
"With their money, [Jews] took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others," Hamas states in its 1988 charter.
Jews "were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources … They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state."