Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

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Absolutely, look into it. Mixed with their tyrannical racial nationalism, you will also find many socialist ideas; here are some examples from the 25 point plan, their early party platform:

> 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?

It's hard to argue against this, that really is the 25 point program of the Nazis. However, I think it is generally understood that Hitler's entrance into the National Socialists marked a deviation from Socialist ideas. My understanding was that there were literally two factions, one which took the socialist aspects seriously and one which had no interest in socialist principles. The socialist faction had people like Gregor Strasser as figureheads and they got routed out as part of the night of the long knives.

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..

> I think it is generally understood that Hitler's entrance into the National Socialists marked a deviation from Socialist ideas.

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_...

> No, the 25 point plan was announced by Hitler in 1920, including all of those socialist ideas.

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.

> 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.)

Yeah and the really really bad part that we all remember the nazis for took place after hitler rose to power and all the socialists in the party were murdered.

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.

I'm not trying to draw a line from the modern left to genocide. But I don't agree with refusing to acknowledge historical facts for fear someone might draw that line.

> Mixed with their tyrannical racial nationalism, you will also find many socialist ideas

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.

You are missing very important points here:

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.

I'm certainly not defending the Nazis here. I'm cherry picking because someone claimed there were no cherries (socialists) in that bowl of grapes (nationalists) and cherries. So I'm pointing out the socialists.

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.

I am not sure If you got my point. I never said that your are defending the Nazis. But you were and still are refering to Hitler as a part of the political left. Something he definetly wasn't.

I'm not referring to Hitler personally as part of the left, I'm talking about the support he received from so many socialists on the left.

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.

I can’t downvote. I’m also being downvoted and definitely don’t think people’s goals are to ‘rewrite history’ here. But also the list you mentioned is just that. A list. Behind every bullet point there’s a grimmer meaning, if a meaning at all outside of gaining more support from the socialist groups who had more political sway at the time. No sane person would place Nazi ‘state education’ in the same class as a modern day public school for example. I personally think it’s just a bit odd that you’re using a propagandist list by the Nazis on its own as proof that they were socialists. The Nazi playbook is so much deeper than that. The books I recommended earlier quite literally only scratch the surface around the tricks the Nazi's played to consolidate power by all means necessary.

I would argue that there was a grimmer meaning behind similar promises from every socialist leader, except those where there was no meaning at all other than cynical pursuit of power (like Stalin).

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 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.

Hitler wasn't the only Nazi. Some socialists, like Gregor Strasser, weren't merely supporters, they were full members and even leaders of the Nazi party.

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.

> Hitler wasn't the only Nazi.

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.

> 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.

Do you not see the irony in the fact that you had to grab a tiny snippet of a response several posts prior to 'prove' your counterpoint to a criticism made towards you in regards to practically every response you've had in this thread thus far?

I'm going to give this thread a break since it seems as though you're simply looking for arguments where none exist.

That was your first statement in this discussion, and I consider it the central claim I'm arguing against.

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.

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