Socialism & Capitalism

[Modder_Mode]

Looks like I have to do 2 posts to cover everything as it's too big to fit in one (sorry admins )

Now unfortunately, I don't have my books with me on the Protestant Churches responses to Nazism, but given the paucity of figures we have going to prison or being killed by the Nazis for their opposition to Nazis ideology, that opposition clearly never really filtered down to rank and file Protestants.
(Plus, you have the whole "German Christian" movement which, among other things, basically ripped out the entire Old Testament on the grounds it was too Jewish.)

That's all good and all, but I wasn't making the claim that the Christian church approved of the Nazis, I was replying to your assertion that the Nazis liked Christianity or were Christian. For Muslims however, this was a different story in regards to religious affiliations with the Nazi's, not many people want to touch this topic though because it might ruin their romanticised world view of the Muslim world.

My larger point on Christianity and Nazism is this: No matter how much institutionally the various churches may have thought Nazism a scourge upon civilization, their private misgivings did absolutely nothing to help the untold millions murdered on account of nothing more than their ancestry, the civilians whose bodies were flayed by shrapnel, or those civilians starving in the shattered wrecks of burned out cities.

Its kind of funny though, when a Muslim terrorist blows up yet another Western landmark or infrastructure, its the "Imperialist West's" fault that it happened and an acknowledgement or some kind of apology is demanded on behalf of the people of Western nations by the government. Then when people ask that a Muslim community leader or politician speak out or condemn the actions of the terrorist and denounce what the terrorist stands for people are quick to state that its not the job of the Muslim leader to come out and denounce anything they shouldn't have to because its not the real "Islam".
Then all of a sudden, its of the utmost importance and the upmost responsibility that the Christian church must come out and apologise for the crimes of the Nazis because somehow they were complicit in these crimes.
I'm in no way stating that this is your stance on the topic, it was more of a analogy on what usually happens when various religious groups are asked to take "responsibly" on past misgivings.

Plus you know if you didn't mention it some idiot would bring it up to detract from the real point, which is that the church largely collab'ed with the Nazis.

You use the term "largely", so you must have some kind of PowerPoint presentation at your disposal demonstrating this vast collaboration you speak of. Care to create another thread? This ones gone somewhat off-topic, but is back on track looking at the last postings.

Winston Churchill

On the topic of Winston, all I will say on that is we can thank our lucky stars that he was in Government during that terrible period. Who knows if the others would have sued for peace?

 

[Hygro]

It seems to me what you are really talking about here are the conglomerates, cartels and monopolies of the business world, again I state that I would wholeheartedly agree with you on this premise. With your worldview though it seems to me you think that all capitalists of the world are this evil bunch of robber barons out to rip people off, rig the system and corrupt governments to receive financial freedoms and favours. It's almost like some kind of guilt by association claim you are making? Small business owners, franchisees, entrepreneurs and even the individuals that run a stall at the local market are all capitalists, most of them just want a return on their efforts and risk taking of investment. Now I am going to guess you think that the "free markets" are the biggest threat to the aforementioned businesses because the monopolies control the markets?
Again, I will state, so that I am clear, if you are talking about the conglomerates, cartels and monopolies of the business world the so called multinationals, you wont find much opposition from me on this argument, I think we would still clash on a few parts of how these operate and what freedoms they should have, but on the whole we would probably find common ground. I would like to discuss this further as I find it interesting on how they became the monopolies they are, often I trace it back so something so simple as to providing the best service or product, they literally did nothing more than providing a better service/product than their competitors, consumerism and free choice in the markets drove them to become a monopoly, I love Google as this example, although I have a lot too say about Google but I think it would be best dedicated to a different thread.

 

[Modder_Mode]

View attachment 501910

And whats driving this upward trend in your opinion?

 

[Cutlass]

Horseshoe theory perhaps?

If you want to call it that. Communist/socialist dictatorships adopted a fair amount of fascist government practices and social conservatism. This does not change the fact that fascists never did adopt any socialist economic policies.

 

[Traitorfish]

Does Modder_mode genuinely believe that if he keeps saying "war economy" over and over again it will eventually start to sound like "socialism"?

All of these "socialist" policies attributed to the Third Reich were present among the "capitalist" allies during the war; what distinguishes the Nazis is only they got six years head start, and that was pretty much the underlying thrust of all Nazi economic policy.

---

What I don't understand is that, according to these apologists for the Weimar elite, essentially nobody in Germany supported the Nazis. Not the aristocracy, not the military, not the business class, not the church, not the middle class, not the civil service. Yet somehow, despite the lack of any power base beyond their own ranks, they assumed dictatorial power and governed the country for twelve years, with the only large-scale organised opposition coming from the left, from the KPD, SPD, and their affiliated trade unions. That ol' Hitler must have been sort of political genius to pull of a trick like that.

 

[Dachs]

Horseshoe theory perhaps?

There's a reason that about half of r/badpolitics at any given time is basically just making fun of the concept of horseshoe theory.

I already touched on some of this earlier (you must of missed it?), but sure, so basically the Nazi's destroyed the four basic freedoms of private capitalism; eliminated were the freedoms of trade, contract association, and markets. Second, the Nazi government determined the general economic policies, instituted a system of economic planning and regulated all the markets of the economy. Third, government went into business; it performed many administrative and quasi-managerial functions of the economy. This produced a new economic administration of the government. Compulsory business organizations of private owners operated throughout the regime. Fourthly, the recognition of two economic administrations did not signify two independent holders of power. The Nazi party gradually occupied all strategic positions of the economy. It reserved for itself a series of economic prerogatives and thereby became the major holder of power in the economy. Big business was pushed to the back seat; it became the minor holder of power in the economy.

Other features:
- The central feature of Nazi policy was a program of government spending and public works investment and social welfare programs to benefit the " people" with annual tax increasements on profits, unless of course you were Jewish or any of the other minority groups within Nazi Germany that were persecuted, hence the "people" quotation marks.
- Collectivism was common when smaller firms were shut down and/or incorporated into larger firms.
- The Nazis control of businesses undistributed profits.
- Under Nazi rule private property should not exist for its own sake. Owners should hold their property in trust for the community. Three laws authorised the government to withdraw or restrict the right to management if owners acted unsocially, mismanaged their property or endangered the welfare of the community.
- Leading Nazi's became the central figures in directional boards of public enterprises.
- Government regulation of the exchange of goods between owners, giving managerial directives to private enterprises and adjust private activities to governmental plans through an extensive regulation of property disposals by owners.
- Artisan combines, producer cooperatives, combined plants etc.
- The Nazis use of a command economy.
- The Goring trust among others.
All of these polices happened before and were not part of a war economy, with the exception of a couple which were already in place but merely extended or expanded upon.

Describing pre-Speer Nazi economic policies as "not part of a war economy" is pretty disingenuous. Almost everything about Nazi economic policy from 1933 onward was fundamentally about facilitating rapid rearmament. State orders to big business mostly lay in service of that goal. For example, the creation of the seven "Reich groups" of business you mention was done by Schacht in 1935 specifically to preserve the existing structure of firms rather than follow Gottfried Feder's anticapitalist programs. It was basically his trade to Hitler: keep the fundamental operating method of the German economy intact with limited coordination and accelerate rearmament, in order to get rid of the guy who wanted to get rid of big companies and the concept of interest payments. Similarly, the Nazi network of trade controls was imposed in order to maintain raw material inputs for armaments production, not specifically for reasons of economic ideology. And the profit control was also part and parcel of the war economy, a policy holdover from the First World War that was employed by both the Kaiserreich and the Conservative-dominated national government of David Lloyd George: hardly a socialistic policy, then.

Other times, Nazi economic policies were the product of regime internal politics rather than ideology. Göring basically built the Four Year Plan as a way to grab power for himself. It was not really used as a central planning mechanism, not even remotely on the scale of something like Gosplan in the USSR. It produced limited-scope initiatives and set some targets for production, but was remarkably bad at coordinating the activity of German firms. It was only superficially, not meaningfully, similar to the Soviet command economy. The various Göring institutions largely defied easy categorization as fundamentally capitalistic or socialistic enterprises; they were mostly kleptocratic if anything.

Don't use "collectivism" when you mean "cartelization".

Anyway. I wouldn't go as far as most of the people in this thread in claiming that the Party was fundamentally in service of big business, because, as you say, even big business had to operate under severe constraints, and not all capitalists owned the big firms like IG Farben. But for the most part, those constraints had little to do with "socialism" in any meaningful way. If big business had to endure Nazi "rationalization", production targets, and the giant power grab of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, avowedly socialist institutions had to endure far worse. The unions were destroyed; the Reich Labor Front was a sick joke. The social welfare programs that the regime trumpeted were badly attenuated from the ones that existed before 1933, despite the regime's loud claims of creating a people's community. In fact, the most visible welfare program was the Winterhilfswerk, which was a charitable organization that primarily operated through donations from ordinary citizens.

Describing these things as meaningfully socialistic is a gross misuse of the term.

 

[Uberfrog]

The notion of “Horseshoe Theory” appears simply to give the claim of smug centrists that the left and right wings are morally equivalent a veneer of academic validity. It doesn’t seem to offer anything of value to the debate.

 

[Dachs]

The notion of “Horseshoe Theory” appears simply to give the claim of smug centrists that the left and right wings are morally equivalent a veneer of academic validity. It doesn’t seem to offer anything of value to the debate.

Yeah. Call anything a "theory" and suddenly it becomes respectable. Doesn't matter if there's any rigor behind it.

 

[AmazonQueen]

From what I've read big business did not generally back the Nazis before they came to power, although there were exceptions like Fritz Thyssen (although he fell out with the Nazis and fled to Switzerland in 1939). What they and the military backed was right-wing nationalists. Hitler came to power in alliance with right-wing nationalists like von Papen who thought they could control, use and later discard him. Hitler's rapid abandonment of any pretence at socialism, smashing the left and trade unions, and promising a return to great power status for Germany all won him support with conservatives. His government initially included conservatives like von Papen, von Neurath and Hjalmar Schacht, although the Nazis controlled the Interior and Justice Ministries and the government of Prussia, most important of the German states.

 

[Dachs]

From what I've read big business did not generally back the Nazis before they came to power, although there were exceptions like Fritz Thyssen (although he fell out with the Nazis and fled to Switzerland in 1939). What they and the military backed was right-wing nationalists. Hitler came to power in alliance with right-wing nationalists like von Papen who thought they could control, use and later discard him. Hitler's rapid abandonment of any pretence at socialism, smashing the left and trade unions, and promising a return to great power status for Germany all won him support with conservatives. His government initially included conservatives like von Papen, von Neurath and Hjalmar Schacht, although the Nazis controlled the Interior and Justice Ministries and the government of Prussia, most important of the German states.

Yes, that's correct.

One of the things that made the Nazis at least slightly palatable to the rest of the far right in 1932-33 was Hitler's attempt to tone down the anticapitalist rhetoric. The likes of Feder were marginalized, or bought off with meaningless sinecures. The conservatives met him more than halfway: Schacht masterminded the early management of the rearmament economy and Neurath facilitated Hitler's foreign policy preparations. For its part, the Reichswehr/Wehrmacht was happy to cooperate with anything that boosted rearmament and led toward a war of reconquest.

 

[Cutlass]

Does Modder_mode genuinely believe that if he keeps saying "war economy" over and over again it will eventually start to sound like "socialism"?

All of these "socialist" policies attributed to the Third Reich were present among the "capitalist" allies during the war; what distinguishes the Nazis is only they got six years head start, and that was pretty much the underlying thrust of all Nazi economic policy.

---

What I don't understand is that, according to these apologists for the Weimar elite, essentially nobody in Germany supported the Nazis. Not the aristocracy, not the military, not the business class, not the church, not the middle class, not the civil service. Yet somehow, despite the lack of any power base beyond their own ranks, they assumed dictatorial power and governed the country for twelve years, with the only large-scale organised opposition coming from the left, from the KPD, SPD, and their affiliated trade unions. That ol' Hitler must have been sort of political genius to pull of a trick like that.

The people who put Hitler and Nazis in power knew exactly what they were getting. And did it anyways.

 

[Hygro]

And whats driving this upward trend in your opinion?

Dunno, but the point is simply that the big businesses you gave exception to are more the rule.

 

[Traitorfish]

The people who put Hitler and Nazis in power knew exactly what they were getting. And did it anyways.

Eh, the one concession I think we can make to the Weimar business class is that they didn't realise exactly what they were getting into with Hitler. The idea that they thought they were getting a pliable stooge doesn't seem credible, but they thought they were getting a Mussolini: a guy who would make nice speeches, get rid of the Communists, and arrange a few splendid little wars. They signed up for order and stability and maybe a side-serving of national glory, rather than for Auschwitz. And, for the first eight or nine years, that's pretty much what they got, or that's what they convinced themselves they were getting. What damns them is that, when Auschwitz came, they did nothing to stand in its way.

 

[Cutlass]

Eh, the one concession I think we can make to the Weimar business class is that they didn't realise exactly what they were getting into with Hitler. The idea that they thought they were getting a pliable stooge doesn't seem credible, but they thought they were getting a Mussolini: a guy who would make nice speeches, get rid of the Communists, and arrange a few splendid little wars. They signed up for order and stability and maybe a side-serving of national glory, rather than for Auschwitz. And, for the first eight or nine years, that's pretty much what they got, or that's what they convinced themselves they were getting. What damns them is that, when Auschwitz came, they did nothing to stand in its way.

Hitler never hid his antisemitism. It was always right out in public for everyone to see.

Was Hitler's oratorical ability good by modern standards? by perspectiveiskey in AskHistorians

AbandoningAll 4643 points 7 days ago*

This is an amazing question, thanks for asking!

So, first off - I'd like to raise that Hitler's oratory skills have become something of an oft-repeated motif by historians. It is not uncommon for a historian to talk about Hitler's 'lack of intellectual gifts' or poor leadership and then suddenly add that, in the end, he was still a superb public speaker. Now, obviously to anyone who knows a fair bit about PR and politicians - this is oxymoronic. One can, almost by definition, not be both a superb orator capable of selling ideology to the masses and devoid of wit or strategy. Propaganda is strategic by it's nature. From the get-go, we need to unpack that historians have often struggled with characterising Hitler and Hitler's political abilities. By any measure he's an unusual person, and extremely distasteful politician. He was well known not just for explosive anti-semitism, but also for a history of paramilitary activity and involvement with violent methods, from the Beer Hall Putsch to declaring his open support for SA members on trial for the brutal murder, in front of witnesses, of a local leftist - and this is all before his rise to electoral prominence.

In other words, by all means Hitler should have been an exceptionally poor politician. To further complicate things, a great many historians have studied his administration and his early life. His poor academic past, haphazard leadership and egotistical nature are all well attested. In short, Hitler was loudly racist, shockingly proud of himself and had a history of violence and anger. This creates a problem when studying his successful rise to political prominence, and especially that the Nazi party became the most popular party in Germany - because none of Hitler's faults were secret, or without commentary. Nobody voted for Hitler without knowing he was an anti-semite. So Hitler's oration has become the go-to explanation of this success.

Now, this obviously rests on some conceits - it allows us to artificially give some leeway to those who voted for Hitler, by suggesting they were almost "tricked" or "misled" by Hitlerian propaganda. The reality is, no, Hitler was a crystal clear anti-semite, with a history of political violence, who rested on nationalistic rhetoric. People voted for him because of these things, not in spite of them. We should move past the conceit that these were somehow darker and unforeseen elements of Nazism the common voter did not recognise. His speeches rested upon nationalism and anti-semitic slogans, there were paramilitary groups of his supporters brawling with opponents and harassing Jewish locals.

So when we discuss Hitler's oration, we shouldn't be approaching it as though he misdirected or tricked an audience on his true feelings towards the Weimar system or the Jewish people. Instead, to answer the question of oration not as a magical way to explain his success in spite of his flaws, but as a judgement of his abilities, we should look at his techniques plainly.

Hitler's strength isn't entirely in his vocal charisma - although it is worth pointing out that he didn't use a microphone until the late 20s and thus obviously had some talent - it was typically his sense of register that is most noted. I don't mean this in the sense of rhetoric or politic, but in the literal sense of how he spoke, accent, pitch, slang, etc. Hitler's speech and presentation was often mirrored to his audience - he'd use old army slang and ham up his accent to Bavarian veterans, even though he was Austrian his accent was frequently mistook for Bavarian. To smaller middle class events at operas or balls he'd adopt a more moderate and quiet genteel way of speaking and allude to history, classics or artists. When meeting with figures or people he knew to be patriotic or rural, he'd often adopt a simpler, working class way of dress and speak plainly. A decent amount of historians, especially Volker Ullrich, have focused on the differences between Hitler's political appearances to large audiences (rallies for instance) and his appearances at smaller events (balls, operas, etc) way down to his individual meetings with industrialists and prominent supporters. In essence, virtually every public or political appearance of Hitler was tailored extensively. More than oratory talent - it was this political sense of register that makes Hitler stand out.

His larger speeches also tended to be constructed as performance. Quite famously, his body language and register would change from the beginning of his speech to the end. Starting less emotive, more restricted, and growing increasingly evocative and wild, - and ending the speech with visceral emotion. Critically, towards the end of his speeches he'd often involve the audience, yelling slogans or chants with them, reacting to what people shouted out or reacted to the most. A great many witnesses and accounts of his speeches describe Hitler as trying to either have, or appear to have, a genuine emotional connection to the audience in question.

In these respects, while I don't consider Hitler to be a genius public speaker - he was a very good one. I'd say, further, that he had a very good political instinct. Although he is by no means the first or only politician to use the techniques above - he was definitely one of the most practised. It is however - important not to exaggerate Hitler's oration or political acumen as some magical ability that allowed him to trick or manipulate the masses into swallowing Nazism, without them believing in its racism and violence.

Some good further reading

Ian Kershaw - Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris

Volker Ullrich - Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...rs_oratorical_ability_good_by_modern/e41qf3e/

 

[AmazonQueen]

Hitler never hid his antisemitism. It was always right out in public for everyone to see.

And it struck a chord with much of the German population, even some of those who participated in resistance to him, but that does not mean they would have supported the Holocaust, nor could they anticipate it.
The Holocaust wasn't planned from the beginning. Hitler was content to impoverish German Jews and force them to emigrate, but the war closed that avenue now whilst vastly increasing the number of Jews in territory the Germans controlled. Even during the war the Nazis looked at plans for resettling the Jews on Madagascar but British naval power made that impractical. Given that Hitler's plans always meant war at least with Russia perhaps the Holocaust was inevitable but nobody, even Hitler forsaw it.

 

[Commodore]

They signed up for order and stability and maybe a side-serving of national glory, rather than for Auschwitz.

They also signed up for some sweet, sweet military contracts so they could make boatloads of money. What they didn't realize is those sweet military contracts soon turned into extremely demanding and unrealistic production goals they didn't really have the ability to say no to.

I've been watching some videos lately on the various military design projects the Nazis assigned to various companies and the demands they placed on those companies were, most of the time, simply outrageous and turned out to be largely unprofitable as well. But hey, that's what those companies get for ignoring the long term consequences of getting into bed with a regime like the Nazis for short term gain.

 

[metalhead]

I feel like the worst things democracy produces - like Hitler - are historically framed, at least in popular consciousness, in such a way as to let as many people off the hook as possible for them.

Why can't we just admit that the loud, obnoxious racists sometimes win elections because there are enough people around who like loud, obnoxious racists? That is a thing that appeals to people.

 

[Lexicus]

I feel like the worst things democracy produces - like Hitler - are historically framed,

In what sense did democracy "produce" Hitler? Hitler never won an election in Germany. The Nazis couldn't even get a majority in elections they rigged.

 

[metalhead]

In both parliamentary elections in 1932, the Nazis got the 2 largest shares of seats in parliament of any parliamentary Weimar election since the first in 1919. No, they didn't win an outright majority, but they still did extremely well at the polls, twice, before they had any real "rigging" operation in place.

Without that relatively high level of popular support, Hitler would not have been able to pull off the machinations which eventually saw him appointed chancellor. The Nazis had also won many electoral victories at the provincial and local level prior to 1932.

 

[Lexicus]

In 1932 the SA was unleashed to fight the Nazis' opponents in the streets. Hardly a free election. By "rigging" I was referring to the fact that the Nazis themselves were counting the votes in many states in the 1933 elections.

The only really valid argument you have here is that Hitler had a large base of popular support. That's true, but I don't think it means he was 'produced by democracy' in any meaningful sense. He did not win power by democratic methods, he won power through violence and backroom deals with elites.