Many people, especially modern liberals, focus only on Hitler's fascism, conveniently ignoring his socialist agenda. Liberals tend to liken any conservative politician whose polcies they despise to Hitler. This is a baseless comparison and runs contrary to historical facts. Hitler was a leftist, socialist, environmentalist who was appeased/accomodated by liberals and opposed by conservatives during his rise to power.
Here are some exceprts from Dr. John J. Ray's fabulous and well documented exploration of the topic:
He had been something of a bohemian in his youth, and always regarded young people and their idealism as the key to progress and the overcoming of outmoded prejudices. And he was widely admired by the young people of his country, many of whom belonged to organizations devoted to practicing and propagating his teachings. He had a lifelong passion for music, art, and architecture, and was even something of a painter. He rejected what he regarded as petty bourgeois moral hang-ups, and he and his girlfriend "lived together" for years. He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators, and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business; some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual. He was ahead of his time where a number of contemporary progressive causes are concerned: he disliked smoking, regarding it as a serious danger to public health, and took steps to combat it; he was a vegetarian and animal lover; he enacted tough gun control laws; and he advocated euthanasia for the incurably ill.
He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market. In this regard, he and his associates greatly admired the strong steps taken by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to take large-scale economic decision-making out of private hands and put it into those of government planning agencies. His aim was to institute a brand of socialism that avoided the inefficiencies that plagued the Soviet variety, and many former communists found his program highly congenial. He deplored the selfish individualism he took to be endemic to modern Western society, and wanted to replace it with an ethic of self-sacrifice: "As Christ proclaimed 'love one another'," he said, "so our call -- 'people's community,' 'public need before private greed,' 'communally-minded social consciousness' -- rings out.! This call will echo throughout the world!"
The reference to Christ notwithstanding, he was not personally a Christian, regarding the Catholicism he was baptized into as an irrational superstition. In fact he admired Islam more than Christianity, and he and his policies were highly respected by many of the Muslims of his day. He and his associates had a special distaste for the Catholic Church and, given a choice, preferred modern liberalized Protestantism, taking the view that the best form of Christianity would be one that forsook the traditional other-worldly focus on personal salvation and accommodated itself to the requirements of a program for social justice to be implemented by the state. They also considered the possibility that Christianity might eventually have to be abandoned altogether in favor of a return to paganism, a worldview many of them saw as more humane and truer to the heritage of their people. For he and his associates believed strongly that a people's ethnic and racial heritage was what mattered most. Some endorsed a kind of cultural relativism according to which what is true or false and right or wrong in some sense depends on one's ethnic worldview, and especially on what best promotes the well-being of one's ethnic group
As Dr. Ray points out this sounds like any modern candidate for the Democratic party. Hitler, were he alive today, would be one of them... Here's part of a manifesto he produced for the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1925:
Therefore we demand:
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in life and property, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as a crime against the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits whether in assets or material.
13. We demand the nationalization of businesses which have been organized into cartels.
14. We demand that all the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.
15. We demand extensive development of provision for old age.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle-class, the immediate communalization of department stores which will be rented cheaply to small businessmen, and that preference shall be given to small businessmen for provision of supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
17. We demand a land reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to confiscate from the owners without compensation any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
Who can argue that this is not a page right out of any modern US Democrat's secret dream book? Abolish all investment income? Check. Confiscate war profits, i.e. Halliburton? Check. Demand nationalization of large businesses like "big oil", "big pharmaceutical" and "big banks"? Check. Free ride for old folks since you took away all their businesses and investments? Check. Push class warfare and pander to the middle class? Check. Attack department stores (the Wal Mart's of their day)? Check. No more private property rights? Check. I can truly imagine Barack Obama signing all of this into law.
The United States of America is currently rushing towards socialism. Can fascism be far behind? I believe they go hand in hand, especially during times of unrest and economic uncertainty. The rise of socialism in the US timed with our current economic difficulties is no accident. People in fear will reach out to anything for salvation, and leftists like Obama advisor Rahm Emmanuel have publicly vowed to use this crisis as an opportunity to get things done they normally could not. Nationalized banks, nationalized auto companies, nationalized health care... those are only the beginnings.
Check out the rest of Dr. Ray's work and you'll see many many more correlations between Hitler and modern liberals. It's a terrifying read, and puts to lie their use of his name as a slur against their political opponents when in fact it would more aptly apply to their own leadership.
Hat tip to Gonzo for the link to Dr. Ray.
UPDATE: Here's an Interesting and timely Michelle Malkin post on lefties and their Hitler complex.
UPDATE II: I'm getting a lot of Google searches for "Hitler nationalized banks", evidently from people worried about our President's current policy trajectory. Here's a direct quote on the matter from Adolf himself:
"We don't have to nationalize the banks and factories. Instead we nationalized the people".
He didn't need to officially nationalize the bank, he just had to place some Nazi's in emplyment there and have the SS drop by every once in awhile to make sure the bank did exactly as he ordered them to. If the banker steps out of line he's no longer the banker, and may no longer be a free (or even living) man. Liberals keep clinging to this as some kind of defense, saying "Hitler was a capitalist!", but all industry and private enterprise existed only to serve the Third Reich, which is clearly not a free market by any stretch of the imagination... unless you're a demented left winger I suppose.
UPDATE: Third World County points us towards a great piece at Spartacus Educational on the Nazi party's socialist characteristics.
You're forgetting two things 1: "liberalism" specifically refers to a free-market system, so a correlation between the modern Democratic Party and socialist politics is feeble at best. The modern Democratic party owes more to the "Populist" end of the spectrum (I'm thinking people like Margaret Sanger here) than the radical socialist end of the spectrum (ie Emma Goldman, Eugene Debbs). Socialism and Populism, at the height of their influence in the US, did not see eye to eye.
and 2: Hitler was NOT a Socialist in the way the term is commonly applied. He said so in his own words:
“Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not.”- Adolf Hitler, 1930
The notion that the man who ordered the "Final Solution" would follow the economic theories of a born Jew (which was a GENETIC and not religious designation under the third reich) is utterly ridiculous. Revise your rhetoric.
Posted by: C. Copeland | February 20, 2009 at 03:32 PM
"a correlation between the modern Democratic Party and socialist politics is feeble at best"
Okay... Your grip on reality is what's feeble, and to debate you would probably be a waste of time.
Ciao.
Posted by: Woody | February 20, 2009 at 07:34 PM
"Okay... Your grip on reality is what's feeble, and to debate you would probably be a waste of time."
A sure sign of an inferior intellect. If your ideas held water, you would allow them to be examined. You, sir, are a coward.
As a question: have you ever actually READ "Mein Kampf" or "The Communist Manifesto"? This may be a good place to examine the essential differences between basic Socialist and Nazi ideologies.
Never mind...you probably are also of the equally unassailable opinion that even cracking those volumes would be inviting demonic possession on yourself.
Hope I didn't use too many big words.
Posted by: C. Censored | February 26, 2009 at 07:03 PM
I created this site, I pay for this site, and I welcome comments from visitors but not harassment or counter-blogging in the comment section.
That being said, I do admit deleting your previous comment today was rather dickish of me, so accept my apologies and chalk it up to my having had a rough day at work. This new Obamanomics thing is not going so well for my company and I had to lay some people off. It tends to put you on edge if you genuinely care for the people you employ.
Your initial comment cited one single Hitler quotation and failed to address any of the seven points I quoted from the manifesto he himself penned. Nor did you attempt to refute any of Dr. Ray's conclusions. Thus I felt your comments did not merit a direct rebuttal, since you were going off on a tangent of your own. The fact that Hitler wrote one contradictory sentence in his lifetime does not prove he was not a socialist, nor does the fact that he did not enact 100% of the socialist agenda. Did he nationalize all industry? No, he nationalized the people, and bent industry to his will. A visit from the SS was all it took to get any banker or factory owner to cooperate. I never said he was a Marxist or a Communist.
The fact that you deny a connection between modern liberals and socialism is ludicrous in my opinion. I’m sure you can cite many examples where socialists of yore differ from Democrats of today, but I can cite as many if not more examples of today’s liberals pushing for excessive government regulation and controls, central planning, nationalization of industries, expansion of the welfare state and all the other hallmarks of the ideology. Not to mention the inordinately high number of Democratic voters spotted wearing Che t-shirts! Or do you also deny that Che was a socialist?
I have little doubt my post or comments will cause you to have an epiphany and change your beliefs, and having read Dr. Ray’s work I see little chance you can accumulate enough selected Hitler quotations to change mine. Perhaps its best we agree to disagree.
Posted by: Woody | February 26, 2009 at 08:55 PM
I wonder... do you think that Obama had the SS visit Rick Wagoner over the weekend? It sure sounds like it....
Posted by: Mike | March 30, 2009 at 01:24 PM
Well there IS a precedent for socialist leaders trying to run an automobile company. Hitler had many suggestions for the Volkswagen Beetle as I recall...
Posted by: Woody | March 30, 2009 at 04:11 PM
Hitler a socialist?! Not at all. In fact, I recently visited Struthof concentration camp in Alsace, where the grandfather of a friend of mine was imprisoned by the Nazis for the crime of being Socialist...
Quoting the 1925 manifesto is quite misleading; by the time the Nazis became a real political force to be reckoned with they had jettisoned most of the "socialist" rhetoric and purged those with socialist tendencies from the party. The truth is they were a corporatist, fascist, nationalist party supported by Germany's industrialists, financiers and landowners(Junkers) and allied with the conservative and nationalist parties. There was a degree of Keynesianism in their economic policies, but that was a matter of practicality, not ideology. Hitler was also a vegetarian and declared himself a Christian and a Catholic. He also had a moustache...none of those things, however, warrant the label "Nazi" being attached to them and neither do Keynesian economics.
If you're looking for modern American parallels a closer match would be the nativist, militaristic, "traditional values" anti-socialist activists on the right. And even that analogy is imperfect.
Posted by: A Hermit | November 19, 2009 at 02:59 PM
So because the Nazis imprisoned other socialists that is proof they were not socialist? Idiot.
Posted by: ox | December 14, 2009 at 12:49 AM
There were some liberal tenets sprinkled among Hitler's hardline, nihilistic principles, but he was not a man to be either admired, nor emulated. Hitler believed in a "Master Race". He was a proponent of perfecting German society by ridding their population of undesirables, particularly Jews. Though there is no proof of the so-called "Holocaust", and there IS proof that the Third Reich was working in conjunction with Zionists to force the emigration of European Jews to Palestine, Hitler still was a man obsessed with power, to the point that he employed his armies to destroy neighboring countries, and impose his agenda upon sovereign nations.
Posted by: David Baker | December 19, 2009 at 06:36 PM
The Bolsheviks imprisoned and killed rival socialists. So did the Maoists. The Vietnamese communists were allied with the Khmer Rouge before they betrayed and attacked them, and fought a fratricidal, genocidal war for two decades before assimilating the Khmer Rouge communists into their party. Nowadays they're again friends.
The National Socialists were imprisoning rivals from another socialist faction, mainly Bolshevik Russian loyalists. Many of these people survived the war, in part by taking over Buchenwald and running it as their own camp, helping fellow Bolsheviks survive and working to deliberately kill the rest. After the war they pretty much picked up where the Nazis left off, actually keeping quite a few of the death camps alive under the Bolshevik puppet regime to use for the disposal of their political enemies (not all of whom were Nazis). The Stasi simply took over for the Gestapo. Their soldiers even continued to goosestep under the Pro-Soviet German communists, and people were shot for trying to escape from the country.
The Bolsheviks and Nazis were pretty much birds of a feather. Very little by way of similarities between the liberal democracies and the Nazis though - that is, unless you're talking about some of the Roosevelt administration's "liberal" policies (the same sort that are lauded by libearls today), in which case you'd have a stronger argument. But again, the Nazis and Marxists are so close in ideology, to include the intrinsic racism (and anti-Semitism) of the Bolsheviks and virtually every other Marxist group that has ever existed, that there's practically nothing to distinguish between them outside of which particular hypocritical psychopathic despots happen to be in charge.
Posted by: DrCruel | December 22, 2009 at 05:56 AM
Hitler was not a socialist or a communist. He was a great man and a great leader. I am offended by the fact that you would even compare the two ideologies.
Hitler spent years trying to rid the Fatherland of communists and Jews. If he were truly a communist then he would've promoted a society run by Jews and Slavic workers as opposed to a pure Aryan nation.
Hitler did not attempt to seize control of the major German industries, which is what a communist dog would do. Rather, he worked in collusion with leading Aryan businessmen.
Many people in America were great friends of National Socialism such as Henry Ford and Walt Disney and I highly doubt that they are communists.
National Socialism and Fascism espouse a third way which avoids the chaotic strikes, labor disputes, and economic recessions of Capitalism while also straying from the evils of Communism.
Hitler was a conservative leader who fought for traditional Christian values. He loved Jesus and he sought revenge against those who played a part in Jesus' death.
From my personal experience, Jews are often the ones proliferating communist propaganda and are often the ones fighting to undermine the capitalist system. I would be more worried about that than about whether Hitler was a leftists (which he was not).
Posted by: Joseph | April 29, 2010 at 07:24 PM
"He was a great man and a great leader."
Dude, go sell crazy somewhere else.
Hitler was a demented degenerate who planned and perpetrated some of the most heinous atrocities mankind has ever known.
Oh, and he was a Socialist, which is just one more facet of his degeneracy I suppose.
Posted by: Woody | April 30, 2010 at 05:38 AM
because of all of these comments, and many more events that have gone on during the last 37 years, are why I pray every day for the meteors to come and hit the earth. Then let GOD sort it out. However, before that happens:
DrCruel when the o in the oral office has his SS, or NBP visit you at 0300 with out the party pizza, then you will know what it was like during the dark years of 1932--1945.
Posted by: job one | July 22, 2010 at 12:37 AM