I saw your article asking about National Socialism and am sending the above
link.
The above link is to one of many English translations of the Party Platform of the Nazi party. Once you get to around paragraph 11.
you start to see, from the original source document, that especially for the
times in question, they were a brand of socialism. I would suggest
you simply look for the Nazi Party Platform on your search engine to get other
translations of the original source document if you are interested.
To the extent practical politics deviated from party platform, this is a
common occurrence in modern times and one suspects it was no different then.
Compared to USA at the time, which had no federal minimum wage/ maximum
hours laws, no unemployment insurance, no social security, no federal pension
laws, no federal welfare benefits, and so forth, these proposals would have
seemed far reaching, national and socialist at the time.
Obviously, I understand you are not in favor of this group, its history,
and personalities; and I am not a fan either. I hope you find this
interesting and a good place to start, in answering your question about the
brand of socialism, if any, there was in Nazi Germany.
The Nazis and the communists had a lot in common. The first thing is they needed a police state to inflict their brand of socialism on their people.
ReplyDeleteThey're still sending ex-Nazis to jail. I'm in favor of turning the page on this part of history though.
ReplyDeleteI see no point in locking up an 80-something that almost had no choice but to join decades ago.
BTW, a bit off topic, but I don't see why CA is considered a sanctuary state & not FL &/or TX.
If there are a ton there, they are surviving somehow. Also, maybe NV & AZ could be thrown in as well.
Maybe that's a good topic for discussion somewhere.
ReplyDeletesaying that the National Socialist Worker's Party was socialist seems a bit of a stretch...
it's only right their in the name after all but that's asking a bit much of the mentally handicapped don't you think?
I have learned a great deal from Marxism. I admit that without hesitation. Not from that boring social theory and materialist conception of history, not at all from that absurd nonsense…. But I’ve learned from their methods. Only I seriously went about doing what these little tradesmen and secretary minds timidly started. The whole of National Socialism is implicit in that. Just examine it closely…. These new methods of political struggle do go back to the Marxists in their essentials. I needed only to take over these methods and develop them, and in essentials I had what we needed. I needed only to pursue consistently what the Social Democrats interrupted ten times over, because they wanted to carry out their revolution within the framework of a democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism could have been had it freed itself from the absurd, artificial link with a democratic system.
ReplyDeleteJoachim Fest, Hitler, p.126
What they said and what they did are do very different things. Hitler laid it all out what the real game plan was in "Mein Kampf"
ReplyDeleteDuh, of COURSE Nazi's were socialist, the Nazi MEANS national socialist.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, there is a VAST OCEAN of difference between NATIONAL socialism as practiced by Nazi's and INTERNATIONAL Socialism. International Socialism is what we are currently living under here in the states. It's the open borders, pro-women, pro gay anti-family values cultural marxist HELL that's forced upon us. I would pick NATIONAL socialism over our current system every day of the week.
The NSDAP or 'National Socialist German Worker's Party', what we call the 'Nazi Party' today, indeed started out with a strong (indeed, radical) anti-bank, anti-capitalism, socialist platform. It was at the time a fringe party with a few dozen members. Then along came a brilliant speaker by the name of Adolph Hitler...
ReplyDeleteIt was hardly a harmonious or homogenous group. There were always undercurrents of discord and about the only thing all members agreed on were nationalism and anti-Semitism. One of the biggest disagreements concerned socialism. Paradoxically, Hitler purged the Party of extreme socialists at about the same time as the Party officially took the title 'socialist'. The form was kept and the platform retained to appeal to the more left-wing, but the reality is that the leader of the party, the one man who held it together – Hitler – despised socialism.
With Hitler's gifted oratory and street organization smarts, the Party gained power in 1933. It now faced a major challenge. Its left wing was dominated by men committed to the socialism the Party had promised, including a paramilitary SA numbering close to 3 million men – generally working class and often socialist. Their leader, Ernst Röhm, possessed great power within the party and on the streets. He wanted to take over the German Army, integrating it with the SA. The SA became a destabilizing, decentralizing force.
In late June 1934, Hitler struck. The 'Night of the Long Knives' (actually lasting two or three days) had dozens of leading SA figures, anti-Nazi conservative politicians and left-wing Nazi Party socialists being murdered, some quite publicly. With that bloody purge, the power of socialism within the NSDAP was forever broken. The name NSDAP was retained, but socialism was a dead issue. Kindasorta like the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' – not democratic, not responsible to the people and a de facto monarchy vice a republic. Names are useful tools.
Germany became in effect a kleptocracy. Bribes, favours and payoffs were the emollients of power. With a few exceptions in which the owners weren't willing to play ball with the Party, any talk of confiscating industry was just that – talk. The Fuehrer Principle (meaning that whatever a leader said was alway right) led to a wide range of decisions and programs, some of which were indeed mildly socialist in nature, some of which appeared socialist but were mere smoke and mirrors. In reality, socialism was less pervasive than in present-day USA unions.
So, yeah, the Nazis started out very socialist. That lasted about 18 months after they took power. Not the first time, not the last time that politicians said one thing, campaigned on one thing and then turned 180° after power came their way.
The Nazi's were a Socialist Party at first then it just went awry. They built roads had social programs for the German Citizen and even would give their Citizenry every year a chance to go on vacation. If that is not Socialism i do not know what is!
ReplyDeleteRemember when the Nazi's came power the German economy was in shambles after the World War I and when the worlds stock market crashed it got even worse.
The people were desperate and needed a group that can come in and change things. The Nazis talked a big game and sold the people. Tell a lie long enough and the people will begin to believe. People wanted to work so the Nazis started huge Government projects so that everyone had a job and get a working wage.
Not only that the Volkswagen Beetle was designed by Hitler and put into production the so called "People's Car" hence the name "Volkswagen" made it possible for everyone to have a car in Germany.
Again Socialism at work!
But there was a problem! As the bills piled up as Socialism usually does there was a need for the Goverment to make money so the easiest way was through War and take land, money and valuable resources for them to exploit and continue to fund their Socialist project.
In the US it seems like we are heading down the same road. Social programs out of the ying yang, the country is in debt up to out eye balls and people like Trump who is causing up a stir in the debates is actually becoming more and more popular. The people are ready for a change or so they think!
But in the end the Nazis were Socialist first then once they got what they wanted they turn it loose on everyone who stood in the way!