The Nazis were considered "left wing" by the people of that time

[civman110]

Education was already nationalized - transportation, do you mean the construction of highways

No, the Hitler Youth. Hitler made that mandatory and he also changed the entire education system. Yes Hitler built the autobahn.

Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G. in 1932. The Commerz– und Privatbank and Dresdner-Bank were also government controlled (virtually government owned in the case of Dresdner). And there are many, many others, both direct nationalization and nationalization in kind, such as that used by Nationalsozialistiche Volkswohlfahrt.

Most were eventually re-privatized to the advantage of friends loyal to the Nazis. That's what Socialists do.

 

[Princeps]

That is a total fabrication. The Nazis clearly did NOT support free enterprise. To even suggest such a thing is beyond delusion.

I suggest you read the immaculately researched tome by Adam Tooze called "wages of destruction". It's a very hefty read, but it will clear away your confusion pretty fast.

The nazis economy policy essentially amounted to armaments and conquest at the cost of all else. They sacrificed every sector of the economy in order to build up military capacity as fast as possible. Housing, healthcare and consumer good investment was cut to the bone in order to divert funds and resources into the build up. All of their supposedly humanitarian spending targets were almost entirely military investments or at least dual-natured (e.g. the volkswagen was a sham to build up productive military capacity and staff cars, while the autobahns were started by the Weimar republic and only embraced by the nazis once they realized their military utility).

The nazis were definitely right wing. They weren't bourgeois, but they certainly weren't leftists, as you can see from their spending priorities.

 

[Gucumatz]

@Civman

I think you mean oligarchs? Communists are often raiding oligarchs in disguise.

You mention 2 examples of government controlled businesses, that were largely government controlled prior to the Nazi rise and were privatized thanks to the Nazis. You also fail to mention that privatization was a huge thing in Nazi literature throughout the 1930s and 1940s. American companies who while not being necessarily favored, often loved working with the Nazis too - having slave labor like conditions for workers, having employees have near absolute control over firing/labor practices, and reducing certain transicationary regulatory options brought companies like Coke nice profits

 

[Tee Kay]

You people do realise that mass privatisation of transport, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc in most countries except for the United States only started in the 1980s or so? Prior to that, most essential industries were under state control, left-wing or right-wing.

The socialist governments of Australia in the 1980s and 1990s privatised all the things and the businesses didn't end up in the hands of their union mates, they ended up in the hands of big often-foreign-owned corporations.

 

[civman110]

The nazis were definitely right wing. They weren't bourgeois, but they certainly weren't leftists, as you can see from their spending priorities.

You have mentioned absolutely nothing that would indicate that they were.

 

[Princeps]

Actually, the nazis were privatizers and went against the mainstream of nationalization at the time.

http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf

You have mentioned absolutely nothing that would indicate that they were.

I just mentioned why they are right wingers. Their supporters definitely were right wingers. Their profile would probably fit with your typical /pol/ poster today. Suburban white dudebros -- except people were in general were more rural back then since cities hadn't grown to their modern scale yet.

They were not a bourgeois party, which is true. It wasn't fashionable to be a bourgeois at the time, especially among the youth. The 1930s were an age of trans-formative ideologies -- meek and mild liberalism was left in the dust.

 

[Tee Kay]

You have mentioned absolutely nothing that would indicate that they were.

You have been obstinate in refusing to believe or even acknowledge any evidence that contradicts your own agenda.

I have seen a lot of stubbornness in ignorance on CFC-OT over the years but this takes the cake. You're worse than Dommy. Assuming that you're even a real person, which I doubt you are.

 

[civman110]

You have been obstinate in refusing to believe or even acknowledge any evidence that contradicts your own agenda.

You have not provided any evidence. All you have done is make random strawman comparisons, while ignoring all context. If you want to see ignorance just look in the mirror.

 

[Princeps]

Hah. Fun fact. According to a Wikipedia article on privatization:

"The Economist magazine introduced the term in the 1930s in covering Nazi German economic policy"

I don't mean to demean any advocate of privatization here. But to call the Nazis nationalizers and leftists is just dumb. The Nazis organized the business into cartels, which became part of a broader war economy organization. This was done largely because the reichmark was funny money that couldn't really purchase strategic resources from abroad; so it was important for the government to regulate the utilization of strategic resources, like rubber and oil. There is no reason to assume that the cartels and the war organizations were meant to be perpetual arrangements.

 

[civman110]

There is no reason to assume that the cartels and the war organizations were meant to be perpetual arrangements.

Except that Hitler believed in constant perpetual war.

 

[Princeps]

Except that Hitler believed in constant perpetual war.

Not really. He was an advocate for Eurasian dominance. He didn't know it meant either perpetual war or utter defeat.

Hitler's vision was a Germany that spread over Eastern Europe. Back then, agriculture hadn't yet gone through the green revolution of the 1960s, so land was vital in a way that we tend to forget now. Hitler wanted to secure for the Germans an American lifestyle and British level of power. And to accomplish this, he believed he needed seize the Ukrainian grain output and the oil fields of the east. Hitler saw the world as a zero sum game: he believed that if the lands were held by the Slavs, Germans would starve, and if the land was held by the Germans, Slavs would starve. There was no third alternative to him.

 

[civman110]

Yes, he did believe in constant perpetual war and adopted it into his own version of Social Darwinism.

 

[aelf]

The name of the party is National Socialist. They ran on a campaign of public education, pensions and communalized stores and farms. This is all in the 25 points.

I think if civman presented his point in this tone and then never bothered to reply indignantly to the few who disagreed, most people wouldn't care and would accept his position as 'reasonable'.

At least where this forum is concerned, it's just you, civman.

 

[Borachio]

Yes, he did believe in constant perpetual war and adopted it into his own version of Social Darwinism.

Which is a typically socialist attitude, I take it.

 

[Wastl]

Using the 1920 manifesto as "proof" that the Nazis were left-wing is completely absurd. The Nazis under Hitler were not left-wing, nor where they ever considered left-wing by the people of that era. The Manifesto had nothing to do with what they did later on. You might as well use young JFKs opinion that "fascism is doing great things for Germany/Italy" as core beliefs of his later political career, it would be completely nonsensical.

The whole point of the name of the party was to appeal to everyone. The working-class wasn't dead-set on being communist at that point, but it was definately leaning towards that direction. As such, the Nazis tried to appeal to them and lure them away from the KPD, hence the word socialist. At no point did the Nazis ever try to actually be socialistic.

What the Nazis actually did, was cover all bases. They promised everyone exactly what they wanted to hear. To achieve that, you obviously couldn't have a certain set of ideals, on the contrary, you had to keep your plans as vague as possible. Which is exactly what the Nazis did.
They promised the farmers higher prices, the industry help against the unions, the workers job-security and higher wages, the old military class a bigger army and the nationalists a new German Empire. Which makes it blindingly obvious to anyone who does bother to think, that they were quite clearly not socialists. Instead they were a whole bunch of things, in many cases even holding contradicting views. They claimed to be exactly what each "class" wanted them to be. All of that was just an attempt to seize power. It was completely impossible to uphold all the things they promised, as they made promises to opposing sides.

It doesn't really help civman's point, that the only people you could in some way describe as the left-wing of the party (the Strasser brothers) ended up being "removed". Not that they were what civman claims either. Gregor Strasser himself was pretty close to the industry and dropped any stance that went against their wishes even before he lost power in the party.

And no, you cannot just take the name "national socialist" and then remove part of it, declaring them to be socialists. That's not how it works. As pointed out above, the Nazis always told the audience exactly what it wanted to hear. The workers got promises that increased their rights. Just like the industry got promises that they would get rid of the unions, make it easier to exploit workers, and even gave them tax-breaks.

As for picking a random Hitler-quote and using it as "absolute proof" for your argument, just take a look at his peace-speech from May 1935. You couldn't get more pacifist than that, yet he was happily planning his wars of the future at that time.

Just a few bits and pieces:

What dynastic egoism, political passions and patriotic delusions achieved by shedding oceans of blood has, after all, only scratched the surface of peoples. How much better results would have been achieved if the nations had applied a fraction of their sacrifices to more useful purposes? Every war means a drain of the best elements. Victory can only mean a numerical addition to the victor nation’s population; how much better if the increase of population could be brought about the natural means, a national will be produce children of its own!

The national socialist Germany wants peace out of its utmost ideological convictions. Furthermore it wants peace out of the primitive awareness that no war would be able to deal with the plight of the people of Europe, it could only enhance it.

What else could I wish for other than peace and calmness?
If someone says that this is merely the wish of the leadership, I have to give the following answer: if only the leaders and rulers wanted peace, the peoples themselves have never wanted it! Germany needs peace and it wants peace!

I guess that settles it, WW2 never happened! How could it, Hitler himself said that he wanted peace

But clearly the Nazis were left-wing. That's why they got rid of any leftish bits of their own party, banned the communists, hunted down social-democrats and wiped out the unions

 

[uppi]

However, at the time Germany was very polarized politically. There was no actual "right wing" party running at the time. I'd argue that just means "right wing" in comparison to who they were running against because the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Communist Party (KPD) in Germany at the time were further left than the Nazis.

The thread title specifically includes "called" and "by the people of that time". Now that it has been pointed out that the thread title is wrong you are moving the goal posts.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The thread title specifically includes "called" and "by the people of that time". Now that it has been pointed out that the thread title is wrong you are moving the goal posts.

Oh, I'm pretty sure you could find some people at the time who called the Nazis left wing. The traditional artistocracy comes to mind.
Other than that it's a ridiculous and shameful revisionism shared by some very right wing but still somewhat mainstream politicians in Germany today who support militaristic, xeophobic, homophobic and sexist "values" and would be very, very insulted if you called them fascist.

 

[Angst]

I'm going to try again, assuming you didn't answer because missed my post, and not because you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

@civman110.

Do you understand the very fundamental difference between nationalization and collectivization?

Do you understand how broad a palette of political ideals that fall under the monicker socialism?

Do you understand the difference between socialized services (not just socialized medicine) and socialism? Is USA a socialist country when its police services and fire dept. are socialized?

 

[Leoreth]

Yes Hitler built the autobahn.

He president over a construction program that was signed into law and funded by Social Democrat led coalition governments.

Except that Hitler believed in constant perpetual war.

Yes, he did believe in constant perpetual war and adopted it into his own version of Social Darwinism.

I didn't expect much of you, but that is really a fundamental thing to get wrong about Hitler. His goals were very clear. Ever heard of Lebensraum? He wrote a book about it, I've heard there were a couple of speeches too.

I'm also wary/curious to watch you characterize Social Darwinism as a left wing idea.

 

[hoplitejoe]

Let's be honest here, there is no point in arguing about this. This is not about if the Nazis were left wing (which they obviously were not), this is about doggedly insisting they were left wing to score some easy points against political enemies using some Reductio ad Hitlerum.