Adolf Hitler: left or right?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Urgh, not this sh!t again. I can't be bothered to write anything new, so I'll just use a search function to find some old posts on the subject:

Given what happend to actual Socialists under the Nazi regime (here's a random example), I do find the interwebs-tendency to scream that Hitler-Was-A-Socialist to be in astonishingly bad taste.

Oh for God's sake. No.

This issue seems to be raised on the forum a couple of times every year and I'm now tired of bothering to refute it in any detail, so I'll just note a couple of points:

1. No credible historian of the twentieth century believes that the Nazi regime in general or Hitler in particular were 'left-wing' in any respect. This includes some rather right-wing economic historians who specialise in aspects of Nazi economic policy, so this is not an example of a notoriously lefty profession closing ranks.

2. Nazi economic policy was geared entirely towards rearmament (which was achieved via an extraordinarily complicated form of fraud) and not towards any remotely left-wing (however defined) objective. Contrary to what is frequently asserted, the standard of living for the working class in Germany actually declined during the pre-war Nazi period as wages were kept under tight control by means of... well... authoritarian rule.

3. German industrialists (most of them) did remarkably well out of the Nazi regime and this was intentional (more so, in some ways, than in contemporary economies). The examples of Krupp and IG Farben are well known, but they were merely extreme examples of a more general pattern. The close relationship between capital and the regime was good for both of them; as profits soared, so did corporate contributions to the Nazi Party (why, yes. This was a rather corrupt regime).

4. A Trade Union controlled by the government is not a Trade Union.

Fundamentally, you can only argue that 'Hitler was economically left wing' if you define 'economically left wing' as 'prepared to intervene in the economy in order to make it grow'. Which is absurd.

Nazi underlying ideology = virulent nationalism/militarism, an especially nasty take on popular racial theories, anti-semitism (part of the former but enough of an issue, obviously, to deserve a mention on its own) and anti-socialism, combined with weird fetishes regarding leaders, action, and so on. Everything else was window dressing or a cynical attempt to win support (both electorally and in terms of powerful individuals and interest groups). If you think Hitler or any other leading Nazi gave a sh!t about whatever drivel the party adopted as its platform in its early years, then you should probably avoid further comment on the issue. Because there is just a little bit of a consensus over this.

Arguing that state intervention in the economy = Socialism isn't very clever. It means that you have to (for example) count all mainstream political parties and institutions in Europe between about 1945 (1940 or so in the case of Britain) and about 1973 or so as Socialist. Even more absurdly, it means that you have to count all European states before the rise of laissez faire as Socialist. And I think that would be a step into lunacy too far even for you.

Now, the sad thing about the internets is that these arguments are so common that you can just...

And it's worth noting how pro-business the Nazi regime was in reality. Somewhere, deep within my pile of box files, I've a little chart comparing donations to the NSDAP from IG Farben (a company critical to the implementation of the Final Solution, as it happens) with IG Farben's profits. I will eventually find it and post it here - makes for interesting reading.

Because the Nazis = Socialist canard isn't worth wasting much time dismissing. No one (no one honest anyway) with a basic knowledge of early 20th century German history takes it seriously.

(for the record, IG Farben was a German chemical giant, the largest company in Europe (some of the time), a major financial donor to the Nazi regime (and as the companies profits went up, so did donations), a major user of slave labour and the manufacturer of Zyklon B. It was broken up (more or less) by the Allies at the end of the War. Krupp is another well-known example of a big company doing well out of the Nazis).

I mean, there's more but I can't be bothered to dig it up right now.

But I repeat my comment about bad taste.

Conclusion: fyck off and read a few books on the subject.

Why isn't the "brain-damaged chicken" post in this compilation?