EvilCat Breath
Diamond Member
- Sep 23, 2016
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The Nazis defined themselves as socialists. You say they really didn't mean it. Ummm no.Hmmm....innerestin'. Let me unpack that. You're saying Adolf Hitler was a Fascist, which everyone knows--but that the Third Reich was a Socialist state?
There were no collectives in Nazi Germany. No labor unions. Businesses were ran the sane old Capitalist way..except they were subject to the state priorities. Socialist? If you squint. I suppose. But not really.
I think you are saying that Germany had a planned economy..and it did. But the motives of Marxist Socialism and the motives of Hitler's Germany were diametrically opposed.
One at least purported to have the common man in mind...and the other told the common man that he/she had a duty to their country and must fulfill it. Very Teutonic.
Hitler did think of himself as a Socialist though..it's just that the idea he had was a bit different:
Nazism - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Hitler at times redefined socialism. When George Sylvester Viereck interviewed Hitler in October 1923 and asked him why he referred to his party as 'socialists' he replied:
In 1929, Hitler gave a speech to a group of Nazi leaders and simplified 'socialism' to mean, "Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism."[36]
When asked in an interview on 27 January 1934 whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", Hitler claimed that Nazism was not exclusively for any class and he indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps" by stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism."[37]
Were the Nazis Really Socialists? It Depends on How You Define Socialism
The Nazi Party’s chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, once remarked that he’d sooner live under Bolshevism than capitalism. Yet while the Nazis were disdainful of capitalism, this disdain did not extend to capitalists themselves.
fee.org