Myth: Hitler was a leftist.



Fact: Nearly all of Hitler's beliefs placed him on the far right.







Summary



Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.







Argument



To most people, Hitler's beliefs belong to the extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and you arrive at Hitler's warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To deflect such criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack, claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the political left, not the right.



The primary basis for this claim is that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word "National" evokes the state, and the word "Socialist" openly identifies itself as such.



However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this term: it was a misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Liberal Democrat" party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether Hitler called his party "socialist," but whether or not it actually was.



In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people -- after all, wasn't the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and political parties have called themselves "socialist," but none have actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few basic political terms.



Perhaps the primary concern of any political ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This includes factories, farmlands, machinery, etc. Generally there have been three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are excluded. The third (and untried) approach is socialism, where everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at the other.



Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own companies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production.



The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a "socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-socialist.



And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke. It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism. Technically, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of production. The Nazi "Charter of Labor" gave employers complete power over their workers. It established the employer as the "leader of the enterprise," and read: "The leader of the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise." (1)



The employer, however, was subject to the frequent orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed, making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following Keynesian-like policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful without resorting to dictatorship or war.)



Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:

"The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly 'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it." (2)

Individualism over collectivism.

over collectivism. Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.

over racial tolerance. Eugenics over freedom of reproduction.

over freedom of reproduction. Merit over equality.

over equality. Competition over cooperation.

over cooperation. Power politics and militarism over pacifism.

over pacifism. One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.

over democracy. Capitalism over Marxism.

over Marxism. Realism over idealism.

over idealism. Nationalism over internationalism.

over internationalism. Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.

over inclusiveness. Meat-eating over vegetarianism.

over vegetarianism. Gun ownership over gun control

over gun control Common sense over theory or science.

over theory or science. Pragmatism over principle.

over principle. Religion over secularism.

"The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." (4)



"The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogenous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence as a race Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the preservation of those original racial elements which bestow culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which assures the preservation of this nationality " (5)



"The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of raising them to a dominant position." (6)

"In [the Aryan], the instinct for self-preservation has reached its noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands it, even sacrifices it." (7)



"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture." (8)

"All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan." (9)



"Aryan races -- often absurdly small numerically -- subject foreign peoples, and then develop the intellectual and organizational capacities dormant within them." (10)



"If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture." (11)



"Every racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline of the hybrid product " (12)



"It is the function above all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a fundamental halt to any further bastardization." (13)



"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood " (14)

"The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself " (15)



"The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of all life. It must take care to keep it pure It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the nation. Here the state must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and therefore pass it on " (16)

"The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence. But as in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from above, but must struggle through for themselves " (17)



"It must not be lamented if so many men set out on the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will in this way be recognized, and will be the victor." (p. 512.)

"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." (18)



"It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions." (19)



"The idea of struggle is old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself in the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won." (20)

"Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitler's ideas can be reduced to a simple claim for power which recognizes only one relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that of force." (21)

"If the German people in its historic development had possessed that herd unity [defined here by Hitler as racial solidarity] which other peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of the globe. World history would have taken a different course, and no one can distinguish whether in this way we would not have obtained what so many blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining and whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious sword of a master people, putting the world into the service of a higher culture." (22)



"We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost territories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms." (23)



"In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism." (24)

"The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion." (25)



"The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!" (26)



"By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature " (27)



"For there is one thing we must never forget the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards." (28)



"There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word 'council' must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man." (29)



"When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes." (30)



"The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism " (31)



"Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to comprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy." (32)

"While Hitler's attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt, towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he detested -- mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism." (33)

"The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism." (34)



"In the years 1913 and 1914, I expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism." (35)



"In the economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the political sphere." (36)



"The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extinction." (37)



"Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews." (38)



"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight." (39)

"We are not simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever be possible to bring about a perfect era. But this relieves no one of the obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome weaknesses, and strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own accord will create only too many limitations. For that very reason, however, man must try to serve the ultimate goal, and failures must not deter him, any more than he can abandon a system of justice merely because mistakes creep into it " (40)



"The same boy who feels like throwing up when he hears the tirades of a pacifist 'idealist' is ready to give up his life for the ideal of his nationality." (41)

"The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when their international poisoners are exterminated." (42)



"The severest obstacle to the present-day worker's approach to the national community lies not in the defense of his class interests, but in his international leadership and attitude which are hostile to the people and the fatherland." (43)



"Thus, the reservoir from which the young [Nazi] movement must gather its supporters will primarily be the masses of our workers. Its work will be to tear these away from the international delusion and lead them to the national community " (44)

"Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on earth." (45)



"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others." (46)

"Curiously, shortly after her death, Hitler looked with disdain on a piece of ham being served during breakfast and refused to eat it, saying it was like eating a corpse. From that moment on, he refused to eat meat." (47)

"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." - Adolf Hitler

"The Nazi Party did not ride to power confiscating guns. They rode to power on the inability of the Weimar Republic to confiscate their guns. They did not consolidate their power confiscating guns either. There is no historical evidence that Nazis ever went door to door in Germany confiscating guns. The Germans had a fetish about paperwork and documented everything. These searches and confiscations would have been carefully recorded. If the documents are there, let them be presented as evidence."

"The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again In many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and earning his living in a definite field." (48)



"Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life." (49)



"The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling." (50)



"A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth." (51)

"The question of the movement's inner organization is one of expediency and not of principle." (52)

"We can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that its power of resistance does not lie in its lesser or greater adaptation to the scientific findings of the moment, which in reality are always fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once established, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of faith. And so it stands today more firmly than ever." (53)

"The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, [religious] faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute. As long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by fools or criminals." (54)

"For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else he has no right to be in politics " (55)



"Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties." (56)



"Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends." (57)



"Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other." (58)

"'Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas-lamp I could see four people sitting around a table ' As Hitler frankly acknowledges, this very obscurity was an attraction. It was only in a party which, like himself, was beginning at the bottom that he had any prospect of playing a leading part and imposing his ideas. In the established parties there was no room for him, he would be a nobody." (59)

"On 26 April 1933 Hitler had a conversation with Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann [the Catholic leadership in Germany]. The subject was the common fight against liberalism, Socialism and Bolshevism, discussed in the friendliest terms. In the course of the conversation Hitler said that he was only doing to the Jews what the church had done to them over the past fifteen hundred years. The prelates did not contradict him." (60)