In What Ways Were The Nazis Socialists?

Nazi = The National Socialists Worker's Party. My question is how did this Socialism differ from the Soviet style? Also, how much did the teachings of Marx influence the formation of the Nazi party and the culture in Germany prior to or during WWII?

 

I don't think it was a play on words. What leads me to say so is the word "Worker" which is closely associated with Marxism and so I don't think the Socialist part was just for fun. I just researched a bit and found that Socialism was growing in Germany during the First World War. That I did not know. The impact of the Marxist concept of Socialism was widespread then and still is today.

The DDR was Socialist also, I see now that I look into it a bit that they held elections that were corrupt but looked Democratic in that everyone got to vote and it was rule by the majority. The consequences of not voting with the collective were apparently quite severe. A cautionary tale for those encouraging Socialism today, I think. It's somewhat hilarious how many variations there are of Socialism but they all boil down to subjugation of the individual to the collective.

 

Does anyone see a connection between Marxist Socialism and the Nazis? I know people view Socialism as Left Wing and Nazi-ism as Right Wing but is there no connection between the state ownership of the individual that is a shared principle of Socialism and Nazi-ism?

 

I believe that the Nazi party was originally a labor party inspired by socialist ideals but was used by Hitler as a vehicle to power and thus being corrupted from its original purpose like the Republican Party.

 

It is true that Hitler joined an already existing party. Through clever manoeuvrings, he managed to displace the leaders of that party, and change their policy. So, it is likely that the Nazi Party was originally more socialist and labor-oriented than it later became.

I don't think there was much friendship or amity between the Nazis and the Communists. Indeed, Hitler used the fear of Communism to bolster his own popularity. On the other hand, there was a commonality of goals and methods between the two parties. In this way, they were kind of like rival crime families. They may have fought and hurled invective at each other, but at the end of the day, they were both in the same racket.

 

I agree. Most politicians have historically used whatever was popular to achieve power, and at the time it was the ideals of communism and socialism that drew the poor majority. But when Hitler had his chance he made a deal with the rich to fuel his rise to power. Not so socialist after all.

 

The Nazis were a right wing party with left wing policies, they were a real mess. Their intolerent racial policies and restrictions on human rights and cultural activities are their best known polices (you could be arrested just for listening to jazz) . They had a huge public works program and free services such as free education. They had progammes for workers such as "strength through joy" and the project to provide workers with volkswagens (the workers paid for them but the army got them instead). They allowed private property and the operation of the market but state control grew and competition decreased under their regime. They allowed religion to be practiced but only if it was the sort they liked. The spending on public works was the right thing to do during the Depression but Hitler had no interest in economics and the German state would have been bankrupt if he had not gone to war because of all the handouts and expenditure on the armed forces. The standard of living in Germany continued to rise until 1943 because Hitler was reluctant to upset people by putting Germany on a "total war" footing. Even then, nazi policy was that women should be at home (raising more little nazis) so they had a much lower percentage of German women in the factories and armed forces than the Allies.

 

The socialism aspect arose from the fact that Germany was pretty much a democracy in name only and private enterprise operated only with tacit approval and state support. The differences between the USSR and Germany seem very small in hindsight and the state hand in every aspects of their citizens lives from cradle to grave was the driving force for both. If you could bring such a thing as the fight between Russia and Germany down to micro-level it could be that Stalin and Hitler were two mentally pygmies kids who wanted a fight for all the sweeties.

 

Even the name Nazism stands for Nationalsozialismus, but it was more of a propaganda. Hitler himself didn't want the term socialist in the title, but upon taking over the leadership, Hitler kept the term but defined socialism as being based upon a commitment of an individual to a community. He didn't want the party to be mistaken for Marxism socialism.

 

Correct me if I am wrong. Maybe it had to do with Nazi Germany had state sponsored projects for majority of their weapons/technological development? As well as most of their industrial during war time was pretty much government run.

After all, socialism mean the government is running a lot of things. Isn't it?

Of course, socialism is still different because the government run industry/companies aren't the only thing to define socialism.

 

Hitler's socialism was not state owned state produced factories, rather private owned weapons factories and development with the govt. being the only customer. Hitler pretty much convinced the rich weapons manufacturers that he could get them the resources, land, to put it in crude terms Hitler was one of the craziest con men in the twentieth century that convinced a lot of Germans that they were the baddest boys on the block, and the weapons moguls and everybody else realized it too late.

 

They do seem very similar to me, looking back from a modern perspective. They always say the Soviets were not nationalists but the art they produced looks very nationalistic to me. And they say the Nazi's weren't socialist, but they seem that way to me.

I guess when I look at the two movements, I can't tell which one was rightwing and which one is left. But, then again, I don't understand the Europe of today's political right and left spectrum, either.

Thanks for all the comments and especially: FMAlan..., georgew and jrj1701 for your interesting comments. They were helpful.

I guess when it comes down to it: tyranny is tyranny, whether it's the state or the collective masses inflicting it.

 

You all appear to have a linear view of politics e.g. Left - Middle - Right. What if its circular and the two ends meet in Stalinism and Nazism ?

 

Well history is circular, I will grant you that, yet from the relative position of the events it is linear. From the political aspect of this event it wasn't about political ideology, it was about the shortest route to power. If you categorize political parties from their stated views, then you would have a line, left to right. Show me the circle dude.

 

Simple the extremes meet in a circular political compass - in fact a better way of describing it might be a Pie Graph with the moderate slice at the bottom and the two extremes meeting at the top. Hitler and Stalin in many ways admired and copied each others methods. The window dressing may have appeared different but the effect on society and culture was much the same.

 

Am I the only one here who has opened a dictionary? To do so will reveal that sometimes word have more than one meaning. And there is the curious phenomena that identically spelled words can have subtitle differences in meaning between languages.

Also understand there were differences in Weimar Germany between National Socialist, Social Democratic, and Commuunist Parties; differences which lead to street battles. When the NSDAP came to power in 1933 it was their policy to eliminate the SD and C parties, to embrace them as like-minded or fellow-travelers.

Please do not ask me as to how and why they were antagonistic, pleas consult a book. Frankly I never was interested in splitting hairs. But my old professor who taught me WWII back in the 1970s had been a top OSS expert on internal German POLITICS, (as well as the top interrogator for the Americans at Nurenburg). On his word, there were vast difference and dynamic tensions between factions.

 

Very good point and thanks for expressing your view. It helps.

 

Let's start at the beginning. Initially, the NSDAP was called the DAP; the German Workers Party. Hitler was assigned by the army to spy on the DAP in 1919, he liked what he heard and joined. As he grew to lead the party he renamed it the National Socialist German Workers Party.

As someone already mentioned, Socialism was kept in the title, I believe as a sop to Julius Streicher (sp?), and to ensure the party's various factions were all kept happy.

National Socialism came to be simply an encapsulation of Hitler's dictatorial system. It cannot be, in any satisfactory way, defined by traditional political terms and what we understand them to mean.

Remember the state Germany was in when the NSDAP came into being. Communists and Nationalists were clashing. At the time it probably seemed a good idea to combine the two beliefs just to get votes...speculation there.

Oh, and I completely agree that Nazism and Stalinism were so far to the right and left respectively that they practically met in the middle. They had a lot of similar hallmarks: cult of personality, political and personal supression, supreme authority in the state, secret policing, etc...

 

The Strasser brothers were Left-wing Nazis who eventually broke with Hitler, who of course later eliminated them. Rohm's SA was more radical than Hitler's SS, but their leadership perished in the night of the Long Knives. The cult of Hitler's personality destroyed the diversity in theNazi Movement in favour of his own particular set of obsessions.