> We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood.
> We demand... that all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
> We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
> We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
> We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
> We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class; the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople
> We demand...the abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
> We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
> The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health
https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points...
Edit: I'm not surprised that these inconvenient facts are being downvoted. Why acknowledge facts when you can attempt to suppress them instead? Why read history in the very words of the people of the time, when you can rewrite it instead?
Much of the Big Business that invested in the Nazi party were tentative at first because of socialist name and were convinced by Hitler et al that it was in name only..
No, the 25 point plan was announced by Hitler in 1920, including all of those socialist ideas.
And the night of the long knives was in 1934. For over 14 years, socialists like Strasser were an important part of the Nazi party, working side by side with Hitler.
Then Hitler consolidated power and eliminated all rivals - not only socialists like Strasser, but people with many ideologies. His primary target was not the socialists, but his most dangerous rival, Ernst Roehm, the leader of the brownshirts.
Even after that purge, the socialist programs continued, such as Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), Deutsche Arbeitsfront (the German Labor Front), and Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist People's Welfare).
> The NSV [National Socialist People's Welfare] was the second largest Nazi group organization by 1935, second only to the German Labour Front. It had 4.7 million members and 520,000 volunteer workers.
> The Nazi social welfare provisions included old age insurance, rent supplements, unemployment and disability benefits, old-age homes and interest-free loans for married couples, along with healthcare insurance, which was not decreed mandatory until 1941
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_People%27s_...
I'm not contesting that.
Here's what the book I'm reading has to say about the 25 points:
> A good many paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans. Point 11, for example, demanded abolition of incomes unearned by work; Point 12, the nationalization of trusts; Point 13, the sharing with the state of profits from large industry; Point 14, the abolishing of land rents and speculation in land. Point 18 demanded the death penalty for traitors, usurers and profiteers, and Point 16, calling for the maintenance of “a sound middle class,” insisted on the communalization of department stores and their lease at cheap rates to small traders. These demands had been put in at the insistence of Drexler and Feder, who apparently really believed in the “socialism” of National Socialism. They were the ideas which Hitler was to find embarrassing when the big industrialists and landlords began to pour money into the party coffers, and of course nothing was ever done about them.
I think that's fair, but I would characterize it this way:
The Nazis started out "socialist" in the traditional sense of collective ownership, and ended up "socialist" in the modern sense (popularized by Bernie Sanders) of a strong social safety net.
(That safety net being restricted, of course, to those the Nazis deemed worthy.)
When people say “the nazis were socialist” they are trying to draw a line from the modern left to genocide. But this is just not a functioning argument.
Yeah, that's true of their early platforms, but even on paper (and much more in practice) socialist elements were progressively deemphasized as Hitler consolidated power within the party.
> Why read history in the very words of the people of the time,
You should definitely read their words, but you should read all of them as they change over time, and track the objective external facts of who held more power as they changed, and also check words against actions. Because just because something was at one point the words tied to a faction doesn't mean:
(1) that it represented that factions immutable view for all time across changes in internal power dynamics, or even
(2) that it was ever anything more than cynical, opportunistic manipulating propaganda.
1. national-socialism seams to have equality as a target. But this equality accounts only for a small group of superior people. In case of Hitler that was the aryan, german race.
2. Those points and the reality are two completetly different things
In fact Nazi-Germany was not socialist but capitalist. Rich people and companies became richer. The only people that were expropriated were jews, political enemies and minoritys. The jews were working as slaves until death to provide wealth for a capitalist upper class. Siemens for example increased their turnover by a factor of 5. Single persons became incredible rich. At the same time, the normal citizens of germany had to live under the worst circumstances because of the war. (You would not believe what my grandma experienced...)
The core idea of national-socialism is inhumane. Who ever was not productive like disabled people, or people with mental illnesses(which includes homosexuals etc.) got killed. The Nazis propagated the rule of the strongest and racism. They propagated social darwinism.
That stands completly against everything the left parties in Germany , even socialism, stands for. The main target is equality and equal oppurtunities for everyone. The main target is a humane society. One of the main points of our left wing, is to fight any form of facism to prevent anything similiar to Hitler from happening ever again.
The right wing partys are the Heirs of the Nazis. They want to exclude minorities and restrict their rights. They propagate racism.
The role of the left in the rise of the worst governments of the twentieth century should be remembered, so that nothing like Hitler ever happens again.
Many horrible governments start with promises of equality and a humane society (not the Nazis, who promised revenge, but certainly the communists), because that much concentrated power is a catastrophe waiting to happen. A government big enough to give equality is also powerful enough to impose tyranny, as we saw far too many times in the 20th century.
Even the Nazis only rose to power because of the horrible mistreatment imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Germans saw themselves as the oppressed people.
Hitler himself was, I think, a megalomaniac who wanted nothing but his own power, and a delusional madman intent on killing almost everyone. He doesn't belong on the left-right spectrum, because he was motivated by nothing other than his own madness.
Despite that, the Nazis did gain support from many socialists, and ultimately, like so many other governments that rose to power with socialist promises, failed to live up to those promises.
But I don't think Hitler himself was a socialist, and I agree that Hitler was using the socialists just as he used everyone else who supported him. I just think people should acknowledge the role that socialists played in helping him rise to power.
I think practically everyone, including myself agrees with that. And I pointed that out in my original posts. Power doesn't occur in a vacuum and the Nazi's capitalized on peoples (mostly unfounded) fears and anger to grow their base. My original point was that the Nazi's themselves were not socialists. Referencing a name they came up with and their published propaganda was not a convincing argument to say otherwise.
Their brand of Nazism survives to this day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism
So I don't think it's accurate to say "the Nazi's themselves were not socialists", as if none of them were.
I never said that.
> I don't think it's accurate to say "the Nazi's themselves were not socialists", as if none of them were.
I never claimed that none of them were.
Making it sound as if I and others are talking in absolutes and manufacturing talking points around that is a waste of everyones time.
I joined this discussion because you said "The Nazis were socialist only in name."
Only.
That sounds fairly absolute to me.
I'm going to give this thread a break since it seems as though you're simply looking for arguments where none exist.
But if you don't consider it an important claim, then let's move on. I'm satisfied that I've shown a fair amount of evidence that it's untrue.