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#Post#: 10621--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 17, 2022, 12:46 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's most loyal party members,
worked for the Strassers when he joined the party. In 1926,
Goebbel's own faith in Hitler was shaken when Hitler made clear
he would not compromise on his break from Marxist Socialism.
Reading between the lines, Goebbels was a straight up Marxist
far-left Socialist when he joined the party!!! Hitler was able
to convince Goebbels of the merits of a fully anti-Marxist
Socialism, but not the Strassers.
[quote]In late 1924, Goebbels offered his services to Karl
Kaufmann, who was Gauleiter (Nazi Party district leader) for the
Rhine-Ruhr District. Kaufmann put him in touch with Gregor
Strasser, a leading Nazi organiser in northern Germany, who
hired him to work on their weekly newspaper and undertake
secretarial work for the regional party offices.[40] He was also
put to work as party speaker and representative for
Rhineland-Westphalia.[41] Members of Strasser's northern branch
of the Nazi Party, including Goebbels, had a more socialist
outlook than the rival Hitler group in Munich.[42] Strasser
disagreed with Hitler on many parts of the party platform, and
in November 1926 began working on a revision.[43]
Hitler viewed Strasser's actions as a threat to his authority,
and summoned 60 Gauleiters and party leaders, including
Goebbels, to a special conference in Bamberg, in Streicher's Gau
of Franconia, where he gave a two-hour speech repudiating
Strasser's new political programme.[44] Hitler was opposed to
the socialist leanings of the northern wing, stating it would
mean "political bolshevization of Germany."
[...]
Goebbels was horrified by Hitler's characterisation of socialism
as "a Jewish creation" and his assertion that a Nazi government
would not expropriate private property. He wrote in his diary:
"I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That's the terrible thing:
my inner support has been taken away."[45]
After reading Hitler's book Mein Kampf, Goebbels found himself
agreeing with Hitler's assertion of a "Jewish doctrine of
Marxism".[46] In February 1926, Goebbels gave a speech titled
"Lenin or Hitler?" in which he asserted that communism or
Marxism could not save the German people, but he believed it
would cause a "socialist nationalist state" to arise in
Russia.[47] In 1926, Goebbels published a pamphlet titled
Nazi-Sozi which attempted to explain how National Socialism
differed from Marxism.[48]
In hopes of winning over the opposition, Hitler arranged
meetings in Munich with the three Greater Ruhr Gau leaders,
including Goebbels.[49] Goebbels was impressed when Hitler sent
his own car to meet them at the railway station. That evening,
Hitler and Goebbels both gave speeches at a beer hall rally.[49]
The following day, Hitler offered his hand in reconciliation to
the three men, encouraging them to put their differences behind
them.[50] Goebbels capitulated completely, offering Hitler his
total loyalty.[/quote]
HTML 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!)
HTML https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels
[quote]Communism. Jewry. I am a German Communist.
-(diary entry: 1924) Published in: Peter Longerich. (2015).
Goebbels: A Biography. “Erinnerungsblätter,” 27, Part 1, Volume
1, page 27.[/quote]
[quote]The social is a stopgap. Socialism is the ideology of the
future.
-Open Letter to Ernst Graf zu Reventlow in the Völkische
Freiheit, 1925, as quoted in Goebbels: A Biography, Peter
Longerich (2015), p. 55[/quote]
[quote]You and I, we are fighting each other but we are not
really enemies. By doing so we are dividing our strength, and we
shall never reach our goal. Maybe the final extremity will bring
us together. Maybe.
-Nationalsozialismus oder Bolschewismus? (National Socialism or
Bolshevism), open letter to “My Friends on the Left,”
Nationalsozialistische Briefe (National Socialist Letters),
(Oct. 15, 1925); Joseph Gobbles, Quoted in The Devil’s
Disciples, Anthony Read, W. W. Norton & Company, 2005, p.
142[/quote]
The "Lenin or Hitler" speech was not a red scare speech directed
towards rightists, but a speech to convince leftists that
National Socialism was superior to Communism!
[quote]Düsseldorf; big red posters up. Lenin or Hitler!
Thundering attendance. All of them communists. They want to
state a disturbance. I grip them in no time and do not let go
for two hours. We are making progress.
-9 October 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut
Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New
York, (1963)[/quote]
[quote]Communism is nothing but a grotesque distortion of true
Socialist thought. We and we alone could become the genuine
Socialists in Germany, or for that matter, in Europe.
-Letter to Count E. Von Reventlow (mid 1920s), quoted in Joseph
Goebbels: A Biography, Curt Riess, Hollis and Carter, London
(1949) p. 37
[Perhaps written after 1926, when Hitler had fully convinced
Goebbels of the merits of anti-Marxist Socialism.][/quote]
[quote]One class has fulfilled its historical mission and is
about to yield to another. The bourgeoisie has to yield to the
working class ... Whatever is about to fall should be pushed. We
are all soldiers of the revolution. We want the workers' victory
over filthy lucre. That is socialism.
-Quoted in Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death, Roger Manvell,
Heinrich Fraenkel, New York, NY, Skyhorse Publishing, 2010 p.
25, conversation with Hertha Holk[/quote]
[quote]And in the last analysis better to go down with
Bolshevism than live in eternal capitalist servitude.
-23 October 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut
Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New
York, (1963)[/quote]
[quote]National and socialist! What comes first and what second?
For us in the West there can be no doubt. First the socialist
redemption, then, like a hurricane, national liberation.
-11 September 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926,
Helmut Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger,
New York, (1963)[/quote]
[quote]Speech in the evening. Almost exclusively port workers.
One proper communist. I am almost at one with him.
-14 November 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut
Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New
York, (1963)[/quote]
[quote]Because we are socialists we have felt the deepest
blessings of the nation, and because we are nationalists we want
to promote socialist justice in a new Germany.
-Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken
(1932)[/quote]
(Holy shit, Goebbels was a SJW?!?)
[quote]We demand a strict social justice, work and livelihood
for the broad masses, residences and bread and thus life joy for
the German worker.
-“The German Worker,” Der Angriff (24 August 1930), as quoted
in English translation Attack: Essays from the Time of Struggle,
RJG Enterprises (2010) p. 292[/quote]
[quote]According to the idea of the NSDAP, we are the German
left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national
ownership block.
-Der Angriff (The Attack), (6 December 1931), quoted in
Wolfgang Venohr’s book: Documents of German existence: 500 years
of German national history 1445-1945, Athenäum Verlag, 1980, p.
291.
In German: "Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die
deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhaßter als der rechtsstehende
nationale Besitzbürgerblock"[/quote]
[quote]We are socialists because we see the social question as a
matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a
state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting
sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that
corresponds to what he produces. We have no intention of begging
for that right… Since the political powers of the day are
neither willing nor able to create such a situation, socialism
must be fought for. It is a fighting slogan both inwardly and
outwardly. It is aimed domestically at the bourgeois parties and
Marxism at the same time, because both are sworn enemies of the
coming workers’ state. It is directed abroad at all powers that
threaten our national existence and thereby the possibility of
the coming socialist national state.
-“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?” written by Joseph
Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum
Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher,
1932)[/quote]
----
This is only a tiny fraction of the leftist content from
Goebbels's Wikiquote page. I have not read or posted all the
quotes. Feel free to read some others and post the best!
----
Goebbels also wrote a pamphlet titled "Nazi-Sozi", which
explicitly emphasizes the role Socialism played in National
Socialism, as well as critiques the Marxist ideas of the
proletariat and bourgeois from a clearly leftist angle. (Which
would only make sense if he was writing for a left-wing audience
to convert them a better form of leftism.)
Of course, enemies eventually dropped the "Sozi" part of the
nickname...
[quote]The Class Struggle
[critics:]
"That means that you've become a party supporting the class
struggle! You called yourself the Workers' Party! That was the
first step. You called yourself Socialist. That was the second.
Now you're talking about a middle-class one-class State. That's
the third and last step."
"Is there even anything left now to set you apart from Marxism?"
[...]
[Goebbels:]
Really, there's nothing more hypocritical than a well-fed
citizen protesting against the working class idea of class
struggle.
You made it through the winter all snug and comfortable. Your
very person is provocative of class struggle. What gives you the
right to puff yourself up, all swelled with the pride of
national responsibility, against the struggle of the working
class?
[...]
Yes, we call ourselves the Workers' Party! That's the first
step. The first step away from the middle-class State! We call
ourselves the Workers' Party because we want to make work free,
because for us, productive work is the driving force of history,
because work means more to us than possessions, education,
niveau and a middle-class background do!
That's why we call ourselves the Workers' Party!
Social and Socialist
Yes, we call ourselves Socialist, That's the second step. The
second step away from the middle-class State. We call ourselves
Socialist in protest against the lie of social middle-class
pity. We don't want pity, and we don't want social-mindedness.
We don't care a hoot for that which you call 'social welfare
legislation.' That's barely enough to keep body and soul
together.
We want the rights to which nature and the law entitle us.
We want our full share of what Heaven gave us, and of the
returns from our physical and mental labors.
And that's Socialism!
[...]
Nationalist and Socialist
Then we will prove that nationalism is more than a comfortable
moral theology of middle-class wealth and Capitalist profit. The
cesspool of corruption and depravity will then yield to new
nationalism as a radical form of national self-defense, and to
new Socialism as the most conscious creation of its requisite
preconditions.
Despair of Marxism
"You speak of Socialism! But after a 60-year struggle for
Socialism which has resulted in the complete undoing of the
ideal of the State, is the German worker not justified in
despairing of Socialism and the future of his social class?"
Never! Consider:
1. He has not fought for 60 years for Socialism, but for
Marxism. And Marxism, with its theories destructive of peoples
and races, is the exact opposite of Socialism.
2. Marxism was never the German worker's ideal of the State. He
accepted this jumble of Jewish ideas only because there were no
other choices open to him in his struggle for the freedom of his
class.
3. Marxism is the graveyard not only for national peoples but
also particularly for the one class that fights whole-heartedly
for its realization: the working class.
It is therefore not the worker's right to give up on Socialism,
but rather his duty to give up on Marxism. The sooner he does
so, the better for him. The clock is about to strike midnight."
[...]
Anti-Semitism
"You make a big fuss about being opposed to the Jews. Today, in
the 20th century, isn't anti-Semitism passe? Aren't the Jews
human beings too? Aren't there also decent Jews?"
[note: the particular translation I've taken this from says
"white Jews", but a different translation suggests this is slang
and should be properly translated as "decent Jews":
HTML https://web.archive.org/web/20220105012759/https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/nazi-sozi.htm<br
/>]
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![/quote]
HTML 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.
#Post#: 10622--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 17, 2022, 12:49 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Lol, about 2/3s of the "quotes about Goebbels" section on
Wikiquotes are about people emphasizing his leftism.
HTML https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Quotes_about_Goebbels
[quote]It was Strasser’s radicalism, his belief in the
‘socialism’ of National Socialism, which attracted the young
Goebbels. Both wanted to build the party on the proletariat. The
diary of Goebbels is full of expressions of sympathy for
Communism at this time.
-William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A
History of Nazi Germany, New York: NY Simon & Schuster (2011),
first published 1960, pp. 126-127[/quote]
(Shirer is a leading mainstream scholar on NS Germany. Even if
we may not respect an anti-NS historian's narrative, even he
acknowledges Goebbels's leftism.)
[quote]Goebbels and some other northern leaders thought of
themselves as revolutionaries, with more in common with the
Communists than with the hated bourgeoisie.
-Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris, W.W. Norton & Company,
New York, (1999) p. 272[/quote]
(Kershaw is another leading mainstream scholar on NS Germany and
he agrees. You can find a lot of blogs and news articles
attempting to claim that the idea of the Strassers/"northern
wing" being leftist is just a 'myth'. But two of the leading
mainstream historians on NS Germany both agree they were
straight up Communist leaning. If that isn't "leftist", I don't
know what is.)
[quote]The National Socialist-Labor Party, of which Adolf Hitler
is patron and father, persists in believing Lenin and Hitler can
be compared or contrasted in a party meeting. Two weeks ago an
attempted discussion of this subject left to one death, sixty
injuries and $5,000 damages to beer glasses, tables, chairs,
windows and chandeliers in Chemnitz. Last night DR. Göebells
tried the experiment in Berlin and only police intervention
prevented a repetition of the Chemnitz affair. On the speaker's
assertion that Lenin was the greatest man, second only to
Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler
faith was very slight, a faction war opened with whizzing beer
glasses. When this sort of ammunition was exhausted a free fight
in which fists and knives played important roles was indulged
in. Later a gang marched to the offices of the Socialist paper
Vorärts and smashed plate-glass windows. Police made nineteen
arrest.
-Anonymous, Hitlerite Riot in Berlin: Beer Glasses Fly When
Speaker Compares Hitler to Lenin, New York Times (November 28,
1925)[/quote]
Wikiquote tries to add a disclaimer that "New York Times's
reporting on Communism was neither unbiased nor accurate" during
this time period. But here's Goebbels's account:
[quote]On to Chemnitz. Speech to two thousand communists.
Meeting quiet and factual. At the end devastating free-for-all
fight. A thousand beer glasses smashed. Hundred and fifty
wounded, thirty seriously, two dead.
-23 November 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut
Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New
York, (1963)[/quote]
If the Night of the Long Knives (1934) was intended as a purge
of the left-wing elements of the party (as False Leftists often
claim), it would make no sense to allow Joseph Goebbels to live,
let alone continue serving in his prominent position in the
party. In fact, Goebbels was one of the architects of the purge,
and I believe Hitler even criticized him for the setbacks the
party would face from it. (I was unable to find the quote
regarding this.)
In 1924, the same year he joined the National Socialist party,
Goebbels literally wrote in his diary that he was a Communist.
Why would he join a far-right party? Why would a former
Communist remain loyal to Hitler in the bunker in his final
days, while a far-rightist like Himmler engaged in an act of
treachery?
If the National Socialist party was far-right, why would Hitler
make a point of speaking jointly with the Communist Goebbels,
embracing him with tears in his eyes? (Again, note how Hitler
even further empowered Strasser as part of his reconciliation.
How would it make any sense for a far-rightist to do that? A
far-rightist would have disempowered him.)
[quote]The dissent evaporated after this. Strasser made a short
statement in which accepted the Führer's leadership and Hitler
put his arm around Strasser in a show of comradeship.[15]
Strasser agreed to have the recipients of the alternative
program return their copies to him.
[...]
Hitler continued his efforts to conciliate with both Strasser
and Goebbels. As to Strasser, Hitler approved the establishment
of the new publishing house under Strasser's control. He allowed
Strasser to merge two Gaue (Westphalia and Rhineland North) into
one new and more powerful Gau called the Ruhr Gau, with
Goebbels, Pfeffer and Kaufman as a ruling triumvirate. To
placate Strasser, he even removed Esser from the party's
leadership cadre in April 1926. When Strasser was injured in an
automobile accident—his car was hit by a freight train—Hitler
visited him in his Landshut home, bearing a large bouquet of
flowers and expressions of sympathy.
Hitler wooed Goebbels as well. He invited Goebbels to speak,
with Hitler on stage, at the Burgerbraukeller on 8 April 1926,
and had the event widely publicized. Hitler's chauffeur, driving
the supercharged Mercedes, picked up Goebbels (along with
Pfeffer and Kaufman) at the train station and gave them a tour
of Munich. Hitler greeted the trio at their hotel and Goebbels
confessed to his diary that "his kindness in spite of Bamberg
makes us feel ashamed." After Goebbels' speech at the beer hall,
the audience responds wildly and Hitler embraces Goebbels, with
"tears in his eyes."[citation needed]
The next day Hitler dressed down Goebbels, Pfeffer and Kaufman
for their rebelliousness but forgave them, and Goebbels wrote in
his journal that "unity follows. Hitler is great." Hitler
continued his conversations with Goebbels and invited him to
dine in Hitler's apartment, accompanied by Geli, who flirted
with the young Goebbels, much to his delight. Later, Hitler took
Goebbels on day-long sightseeing tours in Bavaria and when
Hitler spoke in Stuttgart, Goebbels was on stage with
him.[/quote]
HTML 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.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
#Post#: 10637--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 18, 2022, 12:23 am
---------------------------------------------------------
What is that one Hitler quote? Along the lines of 'In the early
days, wasn't our party made up of mostly left-wing elements'?
It was even a joke within the party that their ranks were made
up heavily of former Communists. (Konrad Heiden was Jewish and
anti-NS, not a party member, so this phenomenon was clearly
well-known.)
[quote]Beefsteak Nazi (Rindersteak Nazi) or "Roast-beef Nazi"
was a term used in Nazi Germany to describe communists and
socialists who joined the Nazi Party. The Munich-born American
historian Konrad Heiden was one of the first to document this
phenomenon in his 1936 book Hitler: A Biography, remarking that
in the Sturmabteilung (Brownshirts, SA) ranks there were "large
numbers of Communists and Social Democrats" and that "many of
the storm troops were called 'beefsteaks' – brown outside and
red within".[1]
[...]
The term was particularly used for working class members of the
SA who were aligned with Strasserism.[2] The term derived from
the idea that these individuals were like a "beefsteak"—brown on
the outside and red on the inside, with "brown" referring to the
colour of the uniforms and "red" to their communist and
socialist sympathies.[3]
[...]
After Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, beefsteak Nazis
continued during the suppression of both communists and
socialists (represented by the Communist Party of Germany and
the Social Democratic Party of Germany, respectively) in the
1930s and the term was popular as early as 1933.[4]
[...]
Ernst Röhm, a co-founder of the SA and later its commander, had
developed within the SA ranks an "expanding Röhm-cult",[5] where
many in the SA sought a revolutionary socialist regime,
radicalizing the SA.[6] Röhm and large segments of the Nazi
Party supported the 25 point National Socialist Program for its
socialist, revolutionary and anti-capitalist positions,
expecting Hitler to fulfill his promises when power was finally
achieved.[6] Since Röhm had "considerable sympathy with the more
socialist aspects of the Nazi programme",[7] "turncoat
Communists and Socialists joined the Nazi Party for a number of
years, where they were derisively known as 'Beefsteak
Nazis'."[8]
Röhm's radicalization came to the forefront in 1933–1934 when he
sought to have his plebeian SA troopers engage in permanent or
"second revolution" after Hitler had become Germany's
Chancellor. With 2.5 million Stormtroopers under his command by
late 1933,[7] Röhm envisaged a purging of the conservative
faction, the "Reaktion" in Germany that would entail more
nationalization of industry, "worker control of the means of
production" and the "confiscation and redistribution of property
and wealth of the upper classes."[9][10] Such ideological and
political infighting within the Nazi Party prompted Hitler to
have the political rival Röhm and other Nazi socialist radicals
executed on the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.
Some have argued that since most SA members came from
working-class families or were unemployed, they were amenable to
Marxist-leaning socialism.[6] However, historian Thomas
Friedrich reports that repeated efforts by the Communist Party
of Germany (KPD) to appeal to the working-class backgrounds of
the SA were "doomed to failure" because most SA men were focused
on the cult of Hitler and the destruction of the "Marxist
enemy".[11][/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefsteak_Nazi
Röhm was not purged for being a leftist Socialist, but because
he was a reactionary coup-plotter who threatened national unity.
If he was born in the USSR, they would have purged him too.
[quote]In some cities, the numeral strength of party-switching
beefsteak Nazis was estimated to be large. Rudolf Diels (the
head of the Gestapo from 1933 to 1934) reported that "70
percent" of new SA recruits had been communists in the city of
Berlin.[12][/quote]
That doesn't seem very right-wing.
----
Speaking of Heiden, let's see what else he has to say about the
Socialist aspects of National Socialism. I have not read his
whole book; I merely searched for some keywords like
"socialism", so there are probably plenty of additional
references.
[quote]The fourth to join them was Gottfried Feder, the
engineer, a man with a real, though questionable, political
idea: he wanted to do away with ‘big money’ or high finance. It
was a time of Socialist ferment; for the broad masses capital
was the root of all evil, and for the purposes of the new party,
Feder had a very fitting answer to the great Socialist question
of the day: yes, abolish that part of capital which is totally
superfluous, to wit banking capital, which creates no values,
but only lays its clutches on interest; but productive capital,
expressed in objective values, mines, factories, machines, must
be retained.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 90.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n103/mode/2up
[quote]Thus the National Socialist Movement was born, under the
sign of the sword. Its program, which Hitler put forward on that
February 24, 1920, consisted of twenty-five points. It was
written by Hitler, Anton Drexler, Gottfried Feder, and Dietrich
Eckart.
[...]
Points 11, 13, and 17 can be called the Socialist part of the
program. They embrace two central ideas: the destruction of
finance capital and the protection of the creative industrial
personality. They also embody a less pronounced tendency to
attack large property-holdings as such. The idea that the power
of finance capital could be broken by the abolition of capital
interest originated with Gottfried Feder. In the beginning, this
plan made a tremendous impression on Hitler; not because he
approved it from the economic point of view—about such things he
admittedly understood nothing—but because Hitler regarded all
finance Capital as Jewish capital. Point 13 is intended to
protect small business. ‘Taken over by the state’ sounds
strongly Socialist, but the main emphasis is not on this; the
real meaning of the clause is that the corporations should be
eliminated from private business and replaced by small
individual enterprises.
[...]
The word 'parliament' is striking. Apparently the founders of
the party were not yet clear or not yet agreed concerning one of
their chief aims: the replacement of democracy by dictatorship.
The original founders, the Drexlers and Harrers, actually did
not want a dictatorship. The example of Soviet Russia was too
terrifying. They occassionally referred to their party as a
'party of the Left.'
But in demanding a strong central power in the Reich, Hitler
impressed his absolute will on his comrades.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 92-95.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n107/mode/2up
(This speech does not seem to be dated, but given the
surrounding context, it is from the early days of ~1919-early
1920s.)
[quote]Hitler himself boasted; ‘In our movement the two extremes
come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and
the students from the Right. 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!’[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 147.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n159/mode/2up
[quote]The Strassers and Goebbels now founded a Strasser party
in the Hitler party. Its program was anti-capitalistic, even
nihilistic. Germany must be built up in a socialist ‘corporate
form’; everything opposed to this goal would be shattered in a
great cataclysm; and it was the aim of the National Socialists
to hasten this cataclysm. What Gregor Strasser meant by the
cataclysm was an alliance of Germany with Bolshevik Russia, with
Gandhi’s rebellious India, with the anti-British
Soviet-supported revolutionary movement of China, with the
Kuomintang under the leadership of Chiang Kaishek. In short,
with all the forces of destruction against democracy; with the
‘young,’ in part colored, peoples of the East against the
declining West; with Bolshevism against capitalism; with—as
Houston Stewart Chamberlain would have put it—the Tartarized
Slavs against Wall Street, with world doom against Versailles.
‘The class struggle, like all things, has its two sides,’ said
Goebbels publicly, and among friends be insisted that the
National Socialist Party must above all be socialist and
proletarian. He wrote an open letter to a Communist opponent,
assuring him that Communism was really the same thing as
National Socialism: ‘You and I are fighting one another, but we
are not really enemies. Our forces are split up and we never
reach our goal.’
Strasser and Goebbels believed in 1925 that the party belonged
to the Proletariat; Hitler intended that the party should
capture the Proletariat and bold it in check; especially that
fifty per cent of the Proletariat which ‘glorify theft, call
high treason a duty, regard courageous defense of the fatherland
as an idiocy, call religion opium for the people.’ They actually
are enemies within: ‘Fifty per cent have no other wish but to
smash the state; they consciously feel themselves to be advance
guards of a foreign state’—and rightly so; for ‘we must not
forget that our nation is racially composed of the most varied
elements; the slogan “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” is
a demonstration of the will of men who do possess a certain
kinship with analogous nations of a lower cultural
level.’[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 287.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n299/mode/2up
[quote]He coldly ordered his deputies to withdraw their bill for
expropriation of the bank and stock exchange princes. This they
did in a silent rage. Thereupon the Communists indulged in the
joke of reintroducing the bill in the exact National Socialist
wording. Hitler commanded his followers to vote against their
own bill, and they did so. Laughter in parliament and all over
the country. Hitler saw that every time his party grew he had to
conquer it afresh, break it and smooth the edges. These
deputies, often unknown to him personally, still took the
program seriously; many honestly regarded themselves as a kind
of socialist.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 407.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n419/mode/2up
[quote]In the course of 1932, Strasser’s face had become
imprinted on the consciousness of the German masses. He
publicized himself as the socialist in the party, and no other
party leaders equaled him in mass appeal. Within the party
machine he had built up a sort of labor movement, known as the
N.S.B.O. (National Socialist Organization of Shop Cells). It was
a part of the ‘state within the state,’ which Strasser had made
of the party apparatus. His idea was that when the National
Socialists seized power, they would march into the
Wilhelmstrasse, not as a single minister or chancellor, but with
a whole ready-made government; they would discard the old state
completely and set an entirely new one in its place. This type
of party had cost him a hard fight with Hitler. Hitler had
feared Strasser’s machine, which, to his mind, embodied too much
planning and preparation; too little fighting and propaganda.
The semi-socialist manifestoes and inflation plans of this
machine had attracted many voters, but had aroused the business
men among Hitler’s friends; Schacht had warned Hitler to stop
making economic promises. Hitler decided to dissolve the
economic planning apparatus headed by Gottfried Feder. Now it
was said that the Leader was against socialism, but that
Strasser wanted to save the socialism of the party.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 499.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n511/mode/2up
[quote]Under Goebbels’s direction, the parvenus now staged a
great victory celebration; the outward occasion was the
convening of the newly elected Reichstag. As the scene, Goebbels
had chosen the grave of Frederick the Great, that Prussian King
whom the National Socialists rather unaccountably proclaimed as
the first German socialist.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 574.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n587/mode/2up
(How could Communists practice entryism into a far-right group
to stealthily convert them into "revolutionary communist" cells?
It would only make sense if National Socialism was leftist.)
[quote]Göring was present at the meeting; he stepped forward and
added: ‘...not only has German National Socialism been
victorious, but German socialism as well.’ ... Even the
Communists, who had originally conceived things differently,
began to give out the watchword: Go into the National Socialist
organizations and bore from within; turn them into revolutionary
cells.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 590.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n603/mode/2up
[quote]While in Germany, fascism could claim to be fighting for
a socialism which the Marxists had betrayed, Austrian fascism
had to attack a socialism in which the tenets of Marxism had
been partially realized.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 608.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n621/mode/2up
[quote]Among younger men, it was almost a matter of course to
call this future economic order ‘socialism.’ The
twenty-six-year-old Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler
youth, who could boast of Standing close to Hitler, declared
bluntly in those revolutionary June [1933] weeks: ‘A socialist
and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic
of the Young National Socialist Germany.’
Despite the rhetoric, these words did express the sound
sentiment that socialism, like every great political idea,
demanded above all a mental attitude on the part of the people,
and that objective conditions were only secondary. But if this
socialism were to be described in economic terms, it was clear
that it could not mean an egalitarian elimination of private
property. On the contrary, private property was not to be
eliminated, but restored; for in this view, capitalism was the
real enemy of private property, while socialism meant that one
man’s property would be equal—in importance and dignity—to
another’s.
For private property—in Hitler’s view—belonged, along with
superior strength, superior intelligence, and higher discipline,
to the characteristics by which the higher race is
distinguished. The uneven distribution of wealth came from the
same causes as the organization of nations; from the interaction
between races of different ‘value’; from the superiority of the
stronger race over the weaker. As soon as these two racial types
came together, or, in Hitler’s words, ‘as soon as this process
of nation and state formation was initiated, the Communist age
of society was past. The primitive faculty of one race creates
different values from the more highly developed or divergent
faculty of another. And consequently, the fruits of labor will
be distributed with a view to achievement’
[...]
For ‘common good’ always dominates private interest; this is
‘socialism,’ and property could not continue to exist without
this socialism.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.
Translated by Ralph Manheim. Page 642.
HTML https://archive.org/details/derfuehrerhitlersrisetopower/page/n655/mode/2up
#Post#: 10638--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: guest55 Date: January 18, 2022, 12:26 am
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[img]
HTML https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-003737025509185ff7c84b815bd7a65a-pjlq[/img]
#Post#: 10639--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 18, 2022, 12:31 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Heiden published other books in 1932 and 1934. The following
text is from an English-language translation which combined the
two books and was published in 1934.
[quote]And it was no mere quixotry but a fine sensitiveness to
popular feeling that caused Drexler to reproach himself for
having sung that chorus with his comrades. He perceived that the
fate of Germany depended less upon lances than upon the national
character. ‘The German Socialist spirit will put the world to
rights.’ The salvation of Germany from international
capitalism—‘the parasite upon the German body’—was to be found
in Socialism. In reality there was little difference between the
theory of a German Socialism that should confer benefits upon
the world and the practice of an International in which German
Social Democracy formed the most powerful party. Drexler quotes
Scheidemann’s words with approval: The War is not being fought
to benefit solely the great industrialists and large farmers,
but also for the sake of the workers in factories and workshops,
mines, and fields. Majority Socialism—Left Wing Socialists
called its adherents the ‘Kaiser’s Socialists’—would have been
acceptable to many present-day Nazis.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London:
Methuen and Co. Page 2.
HTML 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:
HTML https://web.archive.org/web/20050403233104/https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1919/03/outlook.htm
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weimar_National_Assembly_seating_chart.svg
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_National_Assembly
[quote]The SPD was established in 1863, and is the oldest
political party represented in the Bundestag. It was one of the
earliest Marxist-influenced parties in the world. From the 1890s
through the early 20th century, the SPD was Europe's largest
Marxist party, and the most popular political party in
Germany.[6] During the First World War, the party split between
a pro-war mainstream and the anti-war Independent Social
Democratic Party, of which some members went on to form the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The SPD played a leading role
in the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and was responsible for
the foundation of the Weimar Republic. SPD politician Friedrich
Ebert served as the first President of Germany and the SPD
stayed in power until 1932.[/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany
[quote]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.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London:
Methuen and Co. Page 6-7.
HTML 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.)
[quote]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.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London:
Methuen and Co. Page 8.
HTML https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17342/page/7/mode/2up
[quote]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.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London:
Methuen and Co. Page 9-10.
HTML 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:
[quote]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.[/quote]
Konrad Heiden. (1934). A History of National Socialism. London:
Methuen and Co. Page 190.
HTML 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.
#Post#: 10645--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: 90sRetroFan Date: January 18, 2022, 12:51 am
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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:
[quote]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.
HTML http://aryanism.net/wp-content/uploads/no-usury.jpg[/quote]
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:
[quote]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.[/quote]
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:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism#Early_socialism
[quote]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][/quote]
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.)
#Post#: 10717--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 20, 2022, 8:59 pm
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[quote]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.[/quote]
They technically acknowledged that pre-state hunter-gatherer
societies theoretically resembled a communist society:
[quote]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.[/quote]
HTML 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:
[quote]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][/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism#Use_of_the_term_%22primitive%22
HTML 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.
[quote]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.[/quote]
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
[quote]... 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.[/quote]
----
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:
[quote]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][/quote]
HTML 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.)
[quote]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][/quote]
HTML 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.
[quote]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][/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._James_Gregor#Study_of_fascism
[quote]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.[/quote]
HTML https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A._James_Gregor
#Post#: 10718--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 20, 2022, 9:18 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
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.
[quote]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.”[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 185-188.
HTML 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:
[quote]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.”[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 188-192.
HTML 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.
[quote]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.”[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 131.
HTML 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.
[quote]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. ...”[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 134-136.
HTML 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.)
#Post#: 10719--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 20, 2022, 9:32 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
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.
[quote]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.[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 152-156.
HTML 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.
[quote]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.[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 162-164.
HTML 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!)
[quote]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.”[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 164-167.
HTML https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n163/mode/2up
Hitler himself makes clear he is not a reactionary:
[quote]“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!
...”[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 172.
HTML 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.
[quote]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.[/quote]
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 175-176.
HTML 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.
[quote]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][/quote]
HTML 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:
[quote]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.[/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Rauschning
#Post#: 10723--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Socialists were socialists
By: Zea_mays Date: January 20, 2022, 9:47 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Some quotes from Otto Wagener's memoirs.
[quote]Otto Wagener (29 April 1888 – 9 August 1971) was a
German major general and, for a period, Adolf Hitler's economic
advisor and confidant.[/quote]
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.
[quote]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.[/quote]
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.
HTML 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).
[quote]“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 ...”[/quote]
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.
HTML 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.
[quote]“... 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.”[/quote]
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.
HTML https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n187/mode/2up
Hitler acknowledges Socialism's ancient roots:
[quote]“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!”[/quote]
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.
HTML 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.
[quote]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.”[/quote]
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.
HTML 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.
[quote]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.[/quote]
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.
HTML 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.)
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