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Wrong AGAIN, Hitler was not a Socialist

Here are the major refutation points:

1.

The Nazis or National Socialists started in 1919 as a right wing, racist, militaristic working-class, lower-middle class organization. Hitler tells us in Mein Kampf that he picked the name in order to confuse members of the German Socialist, Marxist and Communist parties, or at least steal potential membership from them. At this time, the German Left was the most powerful left-wing force throughout Europe outside Russia. Throughout much of the Weimar Republic, the Left Wing was dominant and the Right wing was in retreat. The highly conservative, right wing and reactionary state, Bavaria, even became a Soviet Republic for a limited period of time in 1919.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

2.

The Nazis operated on the right-wing of the political spectrum. Hitler clearly admits this in numerous places in Mein Kampf. His earliest allies were members of the radical right wing German nationalist movement and also conservatives.

Men such as Ludendorff, Von Pappen, Hindenburg and the like were all conservative and/or right-wing nationalists and/or monarchists. They all hated eachother on a personal level, as all politicians often do, but they shared a common goal: the elimination of socialism, the preservation of Germany’s class system and the recreation of Germany’s militaristic culture and/or economy.

In no way did the Nazi Party operate within, or come from, the liberal or Leftist political tradition in either Germany, or any other country for that matter. Nobody at the time would have thought so, either. Hitler was a rightwing extremist trying to “cross-over” and win members of the radical middle, as well as convert a sufficient minority of folks on the Left. This does not make him a Leftist.

3.

Just because the Nazis have some characteristics in common with Socialists, does not make them Socialists. This is the fallacy of association or the “fallacy of the undistributed middle.” Just because two things share a trait, does not make them the same. Camels eat lettuce. Rabbits eat lettuce. This does not mean that all camels are rabbits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.theskepticsguide.o...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (discusses the scientist who discovered the psychological mechanism whereby animals make illogical, emotional associations)

Stalin was a Communist and liked law and order. Republicans in the US like law and order. Does this make Stalin a Republican? Clearly not, but this is the same logic conservatives are currently using.

4.

Industry and banking in Nazi Germany were privatized. They were not nationalized or placed into the collective ownership of workers’ groups. Lenin wrote that the first requirement of a Socialist economy is that the Commanding Heights of the economy must be taken out of private hands (he didn’t call for the abolition of private or consumer property, only that things like coal, forests, railroads, steel, food and strategic resources be controlled by either the people, the government or responsible third parties, rather than a self-interested Capitalist class that apportions said resources according to price/demand rather than need.

Hitler’s promise to Germany’s top families, that they would retain private control of the economy, was the leading factor that caused them to back him, over his conservative, pro-sectarian, monarchist opponents, such as Von Pappen, Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

5.

Conservatives often point to the fact that Hitler granted German workers the May Day holiday that they had spent 100 years agitating for, thus proving the power and potency of his regime. What they fail to mention is that he abolished all labor unions on the following day, further proving the power and potency of his regime, as well as proving, once and for all, whose interests his regime ultimately served. Unlike the Communists, which were a totalitarian regime run from the bottom-up (i.e., by peasants who overthrew the government), the Nazi and Fascist governments were totalitarian regimes run from the top-down (i.e., by marketable members of the Establishment and/or their fellow-travelers who support the ancient regime, albeit in a different guise). An additional fact showing this trait is the fact that under Hitler, German workers lost their right to collectively bargain with industry, a right that they had won in certain German states and cities during the Weimar Republic.

6.

Hitler discarded the concept of class conflict between the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie and sublimated/replaced it, within Germany, with the concept of internal ethnic warfare of Indo-European Aryans against Jews and Gypsies and biological “war” against the incurably ill. Within Germany itself, economically-based class-consciousness was banned and 100 years of Marxist, socialist and Social-Democrat philosophical/ideological influence was discarded and oppressed.

Rather than preach class, the Nazis preached the concept of Völksgemeinschaft, or “folk community,” where all the economic classes would be united in a single purpose and march to the beat of a single drummer, united in a single cause, namely, purity within and conquest without. This was basically an endorsement of a mass, sectarian, ritualistic, communitarian society, of the kind espoused by the Communists, but without the concomitant threat to the Wealthy and their class-interests.

As such, the rich in Germany gave the nation a bait-and-switch if you will. They stole the thunder from the Socialists and Communists, granted them the most superficial and meaningless of their demands, but retained the fundamental essence of their social and economic system. With the advent of World War Two, he imposed this same construct upon occupied/friendly nations, in varying degrees depending upon the nature of the relationship. Many nations with rigid class systems, socio-economic tension, and majority-minority ethnic tension found this peculiar mix useful in their local environment. Nations that adopted this approach were Chile, Argentina, Iraq, South Africa, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria.

7.

Hitler did have economic planning, as the Soviets did, but as we discussed above with the associative fallacy, this does not make him a socialist. Most nations from the 1920s up through the 1970s engaged in some form of economic planning, very few of which were or would have considered themselves, Socialist. President Eisenhower had massive economic planning and public works programs, such as the National Highway System. Yet Dwight D. Eisenhower, clearly, was not a Socialist.

8.

The writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky were banned. If Hitler was a socialist, then why ban and burn in bonfires, the leading proponents of such an economic/philosophical/political system?

9.

Racism and Antisemitism are the biggest taboos in Socialist theory. The idea, according to Marx and other socialists, was that the elite use racism and anti-Semitism to divide and distract the poor, such that they cannot effectively organize in the advancement of their own economic interests.

For example, in Czarist Russia, there would often be famines. The peasants would revolt, and, armed with pitchforks would storm into the large palace/estate of the local nobleman (called a Boyar). The Boyar would often have vast stores of grain and food, enough to help the peasants. But he would not share. Instead, he would tell the Peasants that the local Jews or Gypsies ruined the harvest and that they are the reason why Russian babies are forced to starve in winter. Oftentimes, they would produce the Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion, a famous forgery created by the Czarist secret police, precisely for this reason.

The peasants would then initiate and carry-out a violent, murderous pogrom in the local Jewish village, but to no avail. They would find no extra food. The crops of the Jewish farmers were similarly impacted by the bad harvest: they simply had a bad summer with insufficient rain.

Rather than unite with their Jewish brothers and protest the local nobleman and ask for food, the Russian peasants succumbed to their hatred of the “other.” In so doing, they were easily manipulated by the nobility. At the end of the day, both the Russian Jews and the Russian peasants lose. The Boyar nobleman wins. This is why Socialism hated ethnic and religious intolerance. They saw it as the #1 impediment to effective working-class consciousness and working-class unity.

10.

Wealth Redistribution--> Socialists believe in a progressive income tax. The higher the tax bracket, the higher the portion of one’s income that is taxed. Not just income, but all forms of property, whether land, capital gains, etc. A disproportionate distribution of wealth translates into a disproportionate distribution of political power that corrupts and degrades the concept of democratic political equality inherent in the maxim: “One man-one vote.” Political rights are largely useless and ineffectual if one is too hungry, diseased, ignorant and exhausted to exercise said rights in a meaningful way. As such, economic justice, according to socialists, is a necessary prerequisite for meaningful and effectual, participatory democratic government.

Hitler did not redistribute the wealth of the German aristocracy. This was part of the bargain from the outset of the Third Reich. Rather, he confiscated the wealth and property of a disliked minority within the Reich, namely, the Jews. It was with confiscated Jewish money and later, the looted money derived from conquest, that funded the Nazi social welfare apparatus.

Kaiser Wilhelm II once told Hitler that Germany can’t pursue a policy of total war and total social welfare at the same time--that you can’t buy both guns and butter. Hermann Göring replied for his master and said that the Reich would, indeed, provide both guns and butter, and in vast quantities at that. What he didn’t mention was that German guns would be used to steal Jewish butter and that without the guns, nobody would be able to get any butter, because the wealthy elite in Germany weren’t willing to share it.

Ergo, unlike in true socialism, where the wealth of the collective majority of the people is pooled into a general fund, through legal taxation and redistributed according to need (from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs), the Third Reich cheated, by stealing money from its Jewish citizens. Basically, the wealthy aristocracy of Germany sacraficed the lives and property of its wealthy Jewish brethren, in order to preserve its own inherited wealth and property. This was Leon Trotsky’s essential argument. http://marxists.org/archive/t...