Myths About Nazis: Nazis are Socialists Sources and Notes

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“Everything I do is directed at Russia.  If the West is too stupid and blind to understand it, I'll be forced to reach an understanding with the Russians and defeat the West, so that after it's defeat I can concentrate all possible forces on the Soviet Union.” Adolf Hitler to the High Commissioner at the League of Nations (Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945. Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus, pp. 313-314)

The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei owed its very lifeblood to the heavy financing of industrial capitalists and the once landed gentry, who were stripped of their property and real estate as a result of the Treat of Versailles, following the defeat and division of the German Empire in World War I.

Only three months after Hitler became the party’s Fuhrer in 1921, the NSDAP swiftly established the Sturmabteilung (SA), also known as the "Brownshirts.” The name "Brownshirts" was chosen to draw a parallel with Mussolini's Blackshirts. The SA adopted khaki Lettow shirts as their uniform, which was originally worn by Germany's colonial marauders in East Africa. These shirts had become obsolete in the region after Germany's surrender in the East Africa Campaign. The choice of these uniforms symbolized the imperial revanchist politics that the NSDAP embraced and propagated. Through the SA's actions, such as forcefully breaking strikes, dismantling trade unions, and terrorizing/murdering Communist, Jewish, and Romani individuals, the NSDAP spread its violent ideology.

At it outset, the party spewed a belligerent “völkisch” rhetoric. It followed the trend of many reactionary 'populist' political movements with highly generalized and empty “anti-banker” rhetoric, with no real plan of action to actually help the people. By the time the NSDAP was in power ,the party platform and brand was long consolidated into unwaveringly antisemitic and anti-Marxist lines.  The populist message long downplayed into nothingness to curry favor with the industry magnates who steadily financed it from the outset. A cursory glance at the “Hitler Cabinet” reveals a who's-who of Germany's capitalist class.  Many of whom belonged to “Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft,” or “Circle of Friends of the Economy,” more simply called the “Keppler Circle.”

This was a group of industrialists, landlords and bank executives who pushed Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor through the “Industrielleneingabe” (Industrial Petition), a demand endorsed by sixteen signatories who were repaid handsomely following Hindenburg's gifting of power to Hitler and the Nazi Party.  The effort organized by the eponymous factory-owner Wilhelm Keppler, a man who would go on to serve as chairman for I.G. Farben — the engine of fire and blood that allowed the Nazi machine to move at all.

Following the rise of Nazi Germany, the glaring absence of anything resembling “socialism” within its borders becomes immediately apparent in the historical record. The word “privatization” being first popularized in English in the mid-1930's through articles from The Economist detailing Nazi economic policy of selling off its state industries to private interests and shareholders, quite literally the polar opposite of socialism. (Bel, Germá. 2006. "Retrospectives: The Coining of "Privatization" and Germany's National Socialist Party ." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20 (3): 187-194)

Coupled with the Nazi paramilitary units making priority targets of union organization and Communist activity, in addition to their ethnic pogroms and the complete focus on the capture and elimination of the USSR and all traces of Marxism in the Nazi platform layered on top of the puppetry performed by the capitalists of Germany to keep the party's head upright, we could perhaps call case closed on the issue of the Nazi's antipodal and violent relation to socialism, yet at this point this is but an overview -  The tip of the iceberg.

Antisocialism: Hitler's Origins

The German Empire of the 20th Century, hungover from the days of feudalism, was led by a ruling class of aristocratic nobility. As capitalism grew, the aristocratic nobility began losing their influence and grips on the helm of power to rentiers and industrialists of the capitalist class.  However, as World War I began, Germany’s military also known as the Reichswehr, gained newfound influence and the nobility had a short-lived resurgence. This was a war fought between the Allied and Central Powers who used then unparalleled violence for the right to pick clean the still waking corpse of the Ottoman empire. Germany’s three million strong socialist force organized a series of strikes to bring the imperialist war to an end. The domestic upheaval coupled with numerous mutinies by active duty soldiers forced Germany to the negotiating table opposite the Allied Powers.  This produced the Treaty of Versailles, breaking up German territory and creating the aforementioned unfavorable conditions for the hegemonic aristocracy and the increasingly seething and malcontent bourgeoisie.

Having submitted themselves to their own kneecapping, the German Empire's noblemen, landlords and insatiable monopolists could only watch as newly invigorated socialist formations led to the founding of:

• Bavarian Soviet Republic

• Bremen Soviet Republic

• Saxon Soviet Republic

• Würzburg Soviet Republic

Unfortunately, these republics were woefully short-lived.  In the ill-conceived pursuit of maintaining their alliance with the SDP, many of these socialist militias disarmed in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles—a condition that, “miraculously,” was not imposed by the SDP upon the ruling classes nor the Reichswehr—and under the guise of avoiding a civil war the SDP had begun its first foray into establishing its historical brand as the Devil's Doormat and laid the basis for a second World War.

The still-armed, still-in-power aristocracy and Reichswehr leadership formed their own paramilitary in 1918, known as the Freikorps, who cruelly gunned down socialists on the streets, well aware of what had transpired in Russia between the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry that was the Red Army against the White Army representing the Russian Empire's nobility and its plantation owners.  Following the October Revolution, many of the dejected and defeated Whites would even by recruited by the Freikorps, given their essentially identical raison d'etre, they began performing the same tasks in Germany.

The creation of the Weimar Republic facilitated a Cambrian Explosion-style burst of political activity, with a total of 74 new political parties established across the political spectrum.  In fear of the potential to a socialist party to gain influence and power, and during the demobilization period, the senior brass of the Reichswehr organized examinations for the assessment of commitment to anticommunism to find soldiers of the correct timber to infiltrate and inform on potential socialist “threats.”  At this time, Hitler was on something of a lecture circuit ranting on the importance of opposing Bolshevism.  His lectures at Munich University caught the eye of the Reichswehr, resulting in the recruitment of Adolf Hitler as a mole to gather intelligence on the Anton Drexler-led “Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” (DAP).

The DAP consisted then of a few-dozen middle-aged men that were hardly taken seriously, their primary political activity consisting of little more than socializing at their local pubs (re: getting drunk).  In September 1919, Hitler attended his first meeting within the party as a Reichswehr mole, and soon his talent for public speaking began to draw large crowds, people coming to see him loudly debate with members of other political organizations through Munich's beer halls.

Within months, Hitler had garnered enough support within the DAP to be made it's Chief of Propaganda. His first act was rebranding the party from the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Worker's Party).  Regarding the use of the word “Socialism” and other branding choices, Hitler explains:

The fact that we had chosen red as the colour for our posters sufficed to attract them to our meetings. The ordinary bourgeoisie were very shocked to see that, we had also chosen the symbolic red of Bolshevism and they regarded this as something ambiguously significant. The suspicion was whispered in German Nationalist circles that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists. The actual difference between Socialism andMarxism still remains a mystery to these people up to this day.  The charge of Marxism was conclusively proved when it was discovered that at our meetings we deliberately substituted the words 'Fellow-countrymen and Women' for 'Ladies and Gentlemen' and addressed each other as 'Party Comrade'. We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims.

We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation, our intention being to irritate the Left, so as to arouse their attention and tempt them to come to our meetings--if only in order to break them up--so that in this way we got a chance of talking to the people.” (Mein Kampf, pp. 396)

Later on, Hitler would elucidate this as a dishonest rebranding exercise, but on February 24th 1920, Hitler, before some 2,000 people in the Hofbräuhaus Beerhall, would present the NSDAP party platform.  A 25-point list of demands composed of rabid antisemitism, hypernationalism, colonial revanchism and vaguely “socialistic” sounding items.  Interspersed with demands for the expulsion of immigrants, the exclusion of Jews (and all those of “non-German” blood) from citizenship, and the return of German colonies to “settle the surplus population” were calls for the “nationalization of all corporate trusts” (state industries were instead privatized), that the state guarantee a standard of living to citizens (as a pretext for the expulsion of non-Germans should the burden of feeding people be excessive), “profit sharing in large industrial enterprises” (concentration camps were built as slave labor centers for German heavy industry) among a whole host of other sloganeered pandering, none of which would come to fruition, as by Hitler's own admission above, they were lies told for the express purpose of mass deception.

In assuming the leadership role in the NSDAP in the summer of the next year, the unprecedented financial backing and media coverage he and the party would go on to receive would serve to underline and solidify the full commitment to capitalism in both himself and the party.