True Left

New blog post: https://unitythroughnobility.blogspot.com/2026/01/double-standards-in-wwii-historiography.html

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"When an enterprise fails to sell its goods because it loses out in competition with other businesses for the same pool of consumers in a given area, workers also bear the risk of loss, as they are forced to accept wage reductions"

You are hallucinating. A standard employee contract guarantees a fixed minimum pay per month. This is not open to negotiation until the contract expires and the employee demands renewal of contract. (Even if they are fired, they are contractually guaranteed severance.) This means that, for the duration of each contract, the employee is working risk-free. And even if during renewal the employee agrees to takes a pay cut (and they can disagree and refuse to renew if they prefer), they are merely earning less; they never have to risk losing money outright. This is in fact the main appeal of being an employee, which is why so many people prefer employment to partnership etc..

“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.”

This is one of the most lucid analyses of the economic structure of National Socialism, and it corresponds with what Ludwig von Mises wrote in a letter to the editor of the New York Times that appeared on 21 June 1942:

The German pattern of socialism (Zwangswirtschaft) is characterized by the fact that it maintains, although only nominally, some institutions of capitalism. Labor is, of course, no longer a ‘commodity’; the labor market has been solemnly abolished; the government fixes wage rates and assigns every worker the place where he must work. Private ownership has been nominally untouched. In fact, however, the former entrepreneurs have been reduced to the status of shop managers (Betriebsführer). The government tells them what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. Business may remonstrate against inexpedient injunctions, but the final decision rests with the authorities. … Market exchange and entrepreneurship are thus only a sham. The government, not the consumers' demands, directs production; the government, not the market, fixes every individual's income and expenditure. This is socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism – all-round planning and total control of all economic activities by the government. Some of the labels of capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify something entirely different from what they mean in a genuine market economy.1

The subject of the present article, however, is not an analysis of the National Socialist economic system, but an analysis of Adolf Hitler's economic policy ideas – based on a broad range of sources.

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"A form of stratification based on the degree to which individuals understand empathy and the allocation of the means and results of production—ranging from those who understand it most to those who are least willing to do so—is the appropriate form of social stratification."

This form of social stratification is why you are only allowed to post in Questions & Debates whereas individuals such as Zea_mays who understand empathy:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/re-national-socialists-were-socialists-3223/msg30553/?topicseen#msg30553

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business-owners (which actually includes non-evil people

are allowed to post in all forums.

“... Thus, it was the conclusions of Gottfried Feder that caused me to delve into the fundamentals of this field with which I had previously not been very familiar. I began to study again, and now for the first time really achieved an understanding of the content of ... Karl Marx’s life effort. Only now did his Kapital become really intelligible to me ...” —Adolf Hitler, 1925

I want everyone to keep what he has earned subject to the principle that the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State. . . . The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners

[W]e will do what we like with the bourgeoisie. . . We give the orders; they do what they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly. . . You just tell the German bourgeoisie that I shall be finished with them far quicker than I shall with Marxism - Adolf Hitler

The small businessmen, who had previously been one of the mainstays of the party and who had expected great things from Chancellor Hitler, soon found themselves, many of them, exterminated and forced back into the ranks of wage earners. A law passed in October 1937 dissolved all companies with capital under $40,000 and prohibited the establishment of new companies with capital under $200,000. This quickly eliminated one-fifth of all small business enterprises. On the other hand, the large cartels, which had even been favored by the Republic, were further strengthened by the Nazis. In fact, by a law of July 15, 1933, they were made compulsory. The Ministry of Economics was empowered to organize new compulsory cartels or to order companies to join existing ones.

The system of various business and trade associations organized during the Republic was maintained by the Nazis, although by the basic law of February 27, 1934, they were reorganized on the principle of efficient leadership and placed under state control.

After the seizure of power this definition of the role of the entrepreneur was legally fixed in the 'Law for the Structuring of National Labour' (20 January 1934). 169 According to this law, the 'company leader' was the 'trustee of the state' and therefore obligated to the common good of the national community. This interpretation of the role of the owner or manager in the NS state was more important than Hitler's formal guarantee of private ownership. Because, as the reality of the Third Reich - particularly in the war years - showed, this definition of the role of the owner or manager had far-reaching consequences. The Volksgerichtshof [People's Court, the highest penal court in the Third Reich-H.B.], for example, handed down extremely harsh sentences against owners or managers who ignored the directives of the state plan

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We also see the socialist character of the Reichsbahn in something else. It is a warning about the exclusive claims of the doctrine of private capitalism. It is the living proof that it is very possible to run a nationalized enterprise without private capital tendencies and without private capital management - Adolf Hitler

In another table talk on 2 November 1941, during which he talked about the ‘time of struggle’ and his ‘contempt’ for the bourgeoisie which he had developed at this time, he said, ‘The Communists and us, those were the only ones who also had women who did not flinch when the shooting started. Those are decent people with whom alone you can maintain a state.’

The economy was comprehensively organized by industries und by territory. Geographical districts, Gaue, were defined, as were the chief economic sectors such as industry, handicrafts, commerce, banking, insurance, and power. These great sectors, or Reich Groups, were subdivided into numerous smaller groups, each under the command of a leader named or approved by the government. As a rule the leader was an executive in the respective industry who within his jurisdiction had considerable powers and responsibilities. All in all, this apparatus was very cumbersome; everyone in economic life without exception was a member and was subjected by it to all the regulations, instructions, and orders which the government was pleased to decree. From this system there was no escape.

Even before the war, managers were often told what to produce and by what methods, how much coal and raw materials would be available to them, what materials to use and not to use, what prices to pay and to charge, from whom to accept orders for delivery, to and through whom to sell, and in which order to fill requests. Thus, at some times government orders had priority, at other times export orders, and among government orders some- times those of the army, at other times those of government plants were first in line.

“’What is the difference between communism, socialism and national socialism?’ the riddle asks. ‘If you have six cows,’ the answer says, ‘the communists take all six, the socialists take three and leave you three, but the Nazis make you keep all six--and they take the milk.’”

He [Hitler] voiced his radical regrets: that he had not exterminated the German nobility, that he had come to power 'too easily', not unleashing a classical revolution 'to destroy elites and classes',' that he had supported Franco in Spain instead of the Communists, that he had failed to put himself at the head of a movement for the liberation of the colonial peoples, 'especially the Arabs', that he had not freed the working class from 'the bourgeoisie of fossils'. Above all he regretted his leniency, his lack of the admirable ruthlessness Stalin had so consistendy showed and which invited one's 'unreserved respect' for him. One of his last recorded remarks, on 27 April 1945, three days before he killed himself (whether by bullet or poison is disputed)

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"voluntary transaction activities do not result in a “non-violent” condition."

Yes, they do. Voluntary = non-violent.

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Disadvantages of a Market Economy

Disadvantage =/= violence.

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"I still maintain that ‘market laws’  that arise naturally and spontaneously constitute an obstacle to true freedom."

You are opposed to voluntary transactions, period. No rewording can save you.

Hitler's Reichs Press Chief Otto Dietrich writes in his memoirs that Hitler had sensed that

... the economic requirements of human large-area development had outgrown the structure of the former self-regulating private capitalistic economic system and that common sense demanded a new, more efficient economic structure, in other words a planned overall management. The economic principle he was envisaging can be expressed as follows: private capital production based on a belief in the common good and under state control!"?

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Wages and prices, which in the capitalist free enterprise system are left to the free play of forces of the market to regulate, were state-controlled in the Third Reich. Whilethere had already been a Reichs Price Commissioner in Germany since 1931, the creation of a new 'Reichs Commissioner for Price Formation' at the end of October 1936 was 'more than just the reactivation of an already familiar institution under a new name. Under the Four-Year Plan it developed into a central control institution for economic policy." The duties of the Price Commissioner did not consist of merely 'controlling and correcting market prices, but also of the 'official formation of the price'. The assignment of labour was also state-controlled by means of various instruments and meas ures. A directive issued in 1936 within the framework of the Four-Year Plan, for example, required every company in the iron and metal industry and the building trade to train a certain number of apprentices as a means of reducing the lack of skilled workers. "" In summary we can note that the state created a comprehensive planning instrument and by a number of direct and indirect measures controlled the allocation of raw materials, investments, wages, prices and in part also consumption."

You are just making meaningless statements in order to avoid admitting you have no clue what you are talking about.

Does this mean I am more similar to rightists who like firearms (and therefore own firearms) than to False Leftists who dislike firearms (and therefore refuse to own firearms)? No, it means that I am aware that rightists own firearms and therefore that leftists will be defeated by rightists in civil war unless they also own firearms! None of which implies that I have "closeness" to firearms! I wish firearms had never been invented in the first place FFS!

Your theory (that Hitler sincerely liked communism) cannot account for Operation Barbarossa, whereas my theory (that Hitler understood how dangerous communism was, which requires acknowledging its strengths) would be surprised if Operation Barbarossa had not happened.

For me, the most difficult decision in this war was the order to attack Russia. I have always believed that Germany must never fight on two fronts, and no one should doubt that I studied and reflected upon Napoleon’s experience in Russia more than anyone else. So, why was there a war against Russia? Why did I choose that path at the time?

There was no longer any hope for us to end the war in the West by attacking the British Isles. That country—led by fools—would refuse to recognize our leadership and reject an honest peace agreement as long as the powers within Europe that were essentially hostile to the Reich remained undefeated. The war would have to continue indefinitely; a war in which America was becoming increasingly involved behind the scenes. The human and material potential of the United States, its constant growth in military technology and new weapons—both on the enemy’s side and on ours—and the threatening proximity of the English coast—all of this forced us to try to prevent a prolonged war by every possible means. Time—always time!—would inevitably work against us at an ever-increasing pace.

The only way to force Britain to make peace was to destroy the Red Army and thereby eliminate their hope of opposing us on the continent with an equal adversary. We had no choice but to remove the Russian factor from the balance of power in Europe. There was a second reason of equal weight, which on its own would have been sufficient to justify this action: the latent danger posed by the existence of Bolshevism. An attack from that direction was certain to occur one day.

Our only chance to win a victory over Russia lay in anticipating their assault; for a defensive war against the Soviet Union was impossible for us. Under no circumstances could we allow the Red Army to enjoy the advantage of our terrain—our open ground suited for tank warfare, our highways ideal for the movement of their armored units, and our railways suitable for transporting their troops and materials. We could defeat the Bolsheviks in their forests, swamps, and open steppes if we acted in time—but we could never defeat them on terrain favorable to traffic and maneuver, such as our own lands. To wait for their attack would have meant opening the road for the enemy to march into Europe.

— Adolf Hitler, 15 February 1945

Hitler : "I shall do everything in my power to prevent cooperation between Britain and France. If I succeed in bringing in Italy and Britain on our side, the first part of our struggle for power will be greatly facilitated. Anyhow, we don't for a moment pretend to believe that this degenerate Jewish democracy has any more vitality than France or the United States. It will be my mission to see that at least an effort is made to inherit this disintegrating empire peacefully, so that conflict can be avoided entirely. But I shall not shrink from war with Britain if it is necessary. Where Napoleon failed, I shall succeed. Today there is no such thing as an island. I shall land on the shores of Britain. I shall destroy her towns from the mainland. Britain does not yet know how vulnerable she is today."

Hermann Rauschning : "But supposing Britain, France and Russia make an alliance?"

"That would be the end. But even if we could not conquer then, we should drag half the world into destruction with us, and leave no one to triumph over Germany. There will not be another 1918. We shall not surrender."

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Hitler : "We need space to make us independent of every possible political grouping and alliance. In the east, we must have the mastery as far as the Caucasus and Iran. In the west, we need the French coast. We need Flanders and Holland. Above all we need Sweden. We must become a colonial power. We must have a sea power equal to that of Britain. The material basis for independence grows with the increasing demands of technique and armaments. We cannot, like Bismarck, limit ourselves to national aims. We must rule Europe or fall apart as a nation, fall back into the chaos of small states. Now do you understand why I cannot be limited, either in the east or in the west?"

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"In the center I shall place the steely core of a Greater Germany welded into an indissoluble unity. Then Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia, western Poland. A block of one hundred million, indestructible, without a flaw, without an alien element, the firm foundation of our power. Then an Eastern alliance: Poland, the Baltic states, Hungary, the Balkan states, the Ukraine, the Volga basin, Georgia. An alliance, but not of equal partners; it will be an alliance of vassal states, with no army, no separate policy, no separate economy. I have no intention of making concessions on sentimental grounds, such as re-establishing Hungary, for example. I make no distinction between friends and enemies. The day of small states is past, in the west as well. I shall have a Western Union too, of Holland, Flanders, Northern France, and a Northern Union of Denmark, Sweden and Norway."

Raushcning writes on Voice of Destruction : Hitler's imagination ranged over the entire world. He would attack Britain at all its weakest points, India no less than Canada. He planned the occupation of Sweden as well as Holland. The latter country, in particular, seemed to him valuable jumping-off ground for air and underwater attacks on England.

Hitler : "In less than eight hours we shall break through to their coast, if they don't like it, they can try to drive me out. In any case they will have to bear the main burden of attack. The day of Britain's might at sea is past. Aircraft and the U-boat have turned surface fleets into the obsolete playthings of the wealthy democracies. They are no longer a serious weapon in decisive warfare."

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"You cannot even provide an example of how workers could be liberated from the practices of exploitation and extortion carried out by the owners of the means of production if the environment and economic activities continue to operate under the laws of the market and so-called ‘free enterprise."

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/re-national-socialists-were-socialists-3223/msg30564/#msg30564

You keep talking about workers being exploited by the private sector, but the sufficient solution is for the state to ensure that public sector jobs are readily available, so that workers dissatisfied with their private sector jobs can easily switch to public sector jobs. You, however, want to eliminate private sector jobs altogether. Then what if the public sector is exploitative? I want to maintain the private sector precisely to guard against this possibility, so that workers dissatisfied with their public sector jobs can also easily switch back to private sector jobs. But what is your solution for workers exploited by the public sector if no private sector exists as an alternative?

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Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight. - Joseph Goebbels, The New York Times, “HITLERITE RIOT IN BERLIN: Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler and Lenin,” (Nov. 28, 1925) p. 4. Note: according to Curt Riess, journalist, author, and Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany, Goebbels was “praising Lenin” and drawing “parallels between Bolshevists and the Nazis.” By April of 1926, Hitler told him to stop. (Joseph Goebbels: A Biography, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York (1948) p. 31

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The red color of our posters alone attracted them into our meeting-halls. The ordinary privileged class was quite horrified to see us using the red of the Bolsheviks and regarded it as very   curious scandal. The spirits among German Nationalists kept whispering to one another their suspicion that basically, we were only a variation of   Marxism, maybe even Marxists or some kind   of Socialists in disguise. These brains have still not grasped the difference between Socialism and Marxism. When they discovered that we omitted the standard greeting “ladies and gentlemen” and instead used “comrades” and that among ourselves we spoke only of “Party comrades”, many saw this as proof   of the Marxist ghost. How often we shook with laughter at these simpleminded, scared privileged class   rabbits with their clever guesswork about our origin, our intentions, and   our aim... - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ford Translation, page 346.

Sounds familiar? Somethings never change. Well, on second thought the "sacred privileged class rabbits" are no longer capable of "clever guesswork" these days. 

"Answer :"

You are illiterate.

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“Capitalism too had run its course, the nations were no longer willing to stand for it. The victors to survive would be Fascism, and National Socialism – maybe Bolshevism in the East.”

This means Hitler acknowledged that Bolshevism was more survivable, not that he preferred it. What Hitler is saying here is that capitalism cannot be counted upon to defeat Bolshevism. This is similar to how I keep saying that False Leftism will never defeat rightism, and that the future will eventually be either True Leftist or rightist. But no one here (I hope!) thinks I prefer rightism.

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For example, consider a factory that causes air pollution. This may not bother the owners of the factory but it is harmful to other members of society because the air they're breathing is damaging to their health.

Of course I would ban factories that cause air pollution, because causing air pollution is initiated violence, because people cannot choose to not breathe the polluted part of the air and breathe only the unpolluted part of the air. But people can choose to not visit the more expensive restaurant and visit only the less expensive restaurant if that is what they want to do in the original example. Therefore I would not ban the more expensive restaurant. But you would. This makes you the initiator of violence.

As Hans Mommsen has shown, the German opposition to Hitler, which recruited almost exclusively from the upper class and here primarily from the nobility, regarded National Socialism and Bolshevism as being identical. Trott said, for example: 'What presents itself to us as a dirty brown muck at home faces us with Asian hardness and brutality in Moscow'?' Hassell feared that 'socialism in the Hitlerian form' inevitably had the objective of destroying the upper classes through an Bolshevization And in a memorandum prepared by Lieutenant Commander Liedig at the end of 1939, which illuminates the opinions of the group around Oster in Intelligence and is also typical of the political concepts of Beck and Halder, it says: 'A revolutionary dynamics of destruction of all the historic links and all the cultural tie-ins which once made up the dignity and fame of Europe is the only, and the total, secret of his [Hitler's] statesmanship."

Thyssen reported after his defection from Nazi Germany in 1939 that: “Goering is an army man. He imagines that it is enough to give orders for industry to carry them out. If the industrialists declare that it is impossible, they are accused of sabotage. Soon Germany will not be different than Bolshevik Russia; the heads of enterprises who do not fulfill the conditions which the Plan prescribes will be accused of treason against the German people and shot.”

How Hitler Became a Believer in the State-Planned Economy by  Dr Rainer Zitelmann

In fact, to a certain extent we can only speculate on Hitler’s true position before 1933 because Hitler kept his plans strictly secret, primarily in order not to offend the businessmen. In his talks with Otto Wagener, the chief of the economic policy section of the NSDAP, Hitler underlined the importance of keeping his economic plans secret time and again. In September 1931, for example, he said:

“The conclusion from this is what I have said all along, that this idea is not to become a subject for propaganda, or even for any sort of discussion, except within the innermost study group. It can only be implemented in any case when we hold political power in our hands.And even then we will have as opponents, besides the Jews, all of private industry, particularly heavy industry, as well as the medium and large landholders, and naturally the banks.”

How important Hitler considered the question of state-controlled planning of the economy to be can be seen from the fact that in August 1936 he personally wrote a “Memorandum on the Four-Year Plan 1936.” In this memorandum his admiration and fear of the Soviet system of planned economy were expressed: “The German economy, however, will learn to understand the new economic tasks, or it will prove itself to be incapable of continuing to survive in these modern times in which the Soviet state sets up a gigantic plan.”

Hitler was convinced of the superiority of the Soviet planned economy system over the capitalist economic system. This must be regarded as an essential reason why he so vehemently demanded and enforced the extension of state control of the economy in Germany as well.

Hitler attributed the success of National Socialist economic policy primarily to state control of the economy. From 1940 at the latest, Hitler increasingly became a proponent of the state planned economy – partly because he was convinced of the superiority of the Soviet Union and its economic system. In his monologs to his inner circle (known as “table talks”) on July 27-28, 1941 Hitler said that “A sensible employment of the powers of a nation can only be achieved with a planned economy from above.”

About two weeks later he said: “As far as the planning of the economy is concerned, we are still very much at the beginning and I imagine it will be something wonderfully nice to build up an encompassing German and European economic order.” The statement that as far as the planning of the economy was concerned one was still at the very beginning is important because it shows that Hitler was not thinking at all of a reduction of state intervention – not even for the time after the war – but, on the contrary, intended to expand the instruments of state control of the economy even further.

On July 5, 1942 Hitler expressed the opinion that if the German economy had been able so far to deal with innumerable problems “… this was also due in the end to the fact that the direction of the economy had gradually become more controlled by the state. Only thus had it been possible to enforce the overall national objective against the interests of individual groups. Even after the war we would not be able to renounce state control of the economy, because then every interest group would think exclusively of the fulfillment of its wishes.”

Hitler’s view of the Soviet economic system apparently also changed from skepticism to admiration. In a table talk on July 22, 1942, Hitler vehemently defended the Soviet economic system and even the so-called “Stachanow System,” which it was “exceedingly stupid” to ridicule: “One has to have unqualified respect for Stalin. In his way, the guy is quite a genius! His ideals such as Genghis Khan and so forth he knows very well, and his economic planning is so all-encompassing that it is only exceeded by our own Four-Year Plan. I have no doubts whatsoever that there have been no unemployed in the USSR, as opposed to capitalist countries such as the USA.”

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Hitler’s admiration for the Soviet system is also confirmed in the notes of Wilhelm Scheidt, who—as adjutant to Hitler’s “representative for military history” Walther Scherff and a member of the Führer Headquarters group—had close contact with Hitler and sometimes even took part in briefings. Scheidt writes that Hitler underwent a “conversion to Bolshevism.” From Hitler’s remarks, he says, the following reactions could be derived: “Firstly, Hitler was enough of a materialist to be the first to recognise the enormous armament achievements of the USSR in the context of her strong, generous and all-encompassing economic organisation.”

“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.”

What the Nazis have introduced in Germany is a form of graduated Bolshevism, directing their first attack not against the capitalist class as a whole, but against Jewish capitalists, excoriated on racial rather than economic grounds. Yet once Jewish bankers, industrialists, and business men have been forced to surrender their property by methods no less drastic and brutal than those employed by Russian Communists in 1917, the Nazi government may train its guns on the Catholic Church, which owns vast properties, especially in Austria — again screening economic motives by denunciation of alleged religious interference in politics. Nor is there reason to expect that the Nazis will stop at this point, and that purely Aryan, non-religious property can consider itself permanently insured against expropriation.

Despite the views of many Western capitalist and conservative quarters of opinion, the Nazis represented a war against economic and political freedom in favor of a revolutionary form of totalitarianism. Henry Wolfe observed that “To begin with, Nazism is at war with the so-called capitalist world. There may still be some befuddled conservatives in the democracies who think they see in the Nazi movement a bulwark against communism. They should understand that Nazism is as fanatically opposed to the individualist capitalist society as Bolshevism; perhaps more so, in view of recent nationalist drifts in the USSR.”