Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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