Reply
Sun 28 Aug, 2005 08:11 am
I am currently reading a book called "The Coming of The Third Reich", which is a close and invaluable recent piece examining the birth and striving of Nazism.
But I am confuse with one point: At the beginning Hitler really adopted "socialism" views in his party line in an attempt to win the favour of protelariats. But the bizzare thing was Hitler soon became critical of Social Democracts and Communists, namely "Novemberists", notably after the notorious "beer-cellar putsch". And it was widely known that Hitler soon mounted the massacre of the communists after his party seizured the absolute power of Reich. Also Nazi Partly was regarded as "far-right".
What caused that? I failed to find the corresponding information in the book. But my intuition (well, I am not good at that) tells me it is associated with Jews.
Any idea? Thank you.
^JB^
I have the same intuition as you. Karl Marx was a Jew, as you probably know, but baptised as a Lutheran, which I didn't know.
Hi yitwail. But isn't that theory too individual? What I mean is that the reason was probably the nationalists at that time tended to blame jews to be the culprit of all the crimes and disasters. And at that time the "Red Terror" really menaced the nascent country(Sometimes caused real trouble, like some revolts).
i'm just speculating, you understand; i'm no expert on modern European history. but according to the Wikipedia article on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a Tsarist forgery that Hitler refered to in Mein Kampf, the idea that the Bolshevik revolution was a Jewish conspiracy was in wide circulation in the 20s, in part because portions of it seemed to describe Bolshevist Russia. so someone already anti-semitic like Hitler could see the upheaval of the times as confirmation of their pre-existing conspiracy theory, as opposed to a pretext for making scapegoats out of Jews.
Source
It had never been Hitler who really adopted socialist views - this were other men in the nazi-party like Gregor Strasser (check this name in wikipedia).
Hitler knew that he would never get the power without support of the german industrialists, and the rich would of course not support a socialist movement. And for this reason the members of the "socialist" wing of the nazi-party were arrested and executed.
Klingsor is right. Hitler needed the rich industrialists on his side. The brown shirts were mostly poor, declasse or criminals. The comander of the Brown Shirts was Ernst Rohm who held very strongly to the tenets of Socialism. In June, 1934 the Night of the Long Knives occurred. Some seventy leaders who opposed Hitler were called together under some ruse and were murdered.
Hitler was a nihilist. He didn't believe in anything, except whatever gave him power. He started off his political career denouncing both communism and capitalism If being a communist was what he needed to succeed, he would have become a communist. If one needed to be in the pocket of industrialists, well, that's what he became.
Remember that Nazism comes from Fascism, and Fascism was, in its outside ideology, at first, a sort of Socialism (Mussolini was editor of Avanti!, the Socialist Party newspaper, before he switched sides during WWI).
Outside ideology, I wrote. Never Socialist, really.
Since the contradictions in laissez faire Capitalism were so evident in those times, it was good propaganda to present oneself as anti-Capitalist.
Hitler may have been a nihilist, but he wouldn't have risen to power if he hadn't embraced from a young age the Nationalist-Fascist ideology, which was rampant at the time (the German Communists were too organized and intellectual to ever be led by him... and not half as bold).
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace