Were Nazis lefties?

[innonimatu]

Doesn't seem to want to work on my iPad. But blaming the military is very simplistic. Sure, the military could have stopped the Nazis from seizing power, but only by launching a coup. The political and economic situation that led to the Nazi's rise wasn't the military's fault.

He blames Schleicher for dissuading Hindenburg from carrying out a "presidential coup" in support of von Papen regardless of the lack of support to his government in the Reichstag. That this was possible is proven by the fact that Hitler did just such a coup two years later. The nazis still did not control any portion of the state apparatus and could easily be suppressed if they rebelled. However Papen's government (or at least some elements within) was moving to empower the nazis before the July 30 1932 elections. In June 15 they lifted the ban on the SA, imposed by Groener back in April. In July 20 they took over the government of Prussian from the SPD. All this enabled the nazis to unleash the SA in the streets to pressure voters during the election, and prevented the police from being ordered to rein them in.

Schleicher, who had already betrayed Groener, then betrayed Papen and worked to move Hindenburg to allow the nazis into government and eventually grant the chancellorship to Hitler, something the old president had said he would never do. He was let to believe, by army officers under Schleicher's orders, that it would lead to civil war if Hitler were denied.

The thesis presented in those slides is that the nazis were chosen as the army's tool (or by the controlling faction of the army) to create a "wherstaat" regime in Germany, looking forward to a new war. Preparing to start a new war seems to have been an overriding priority for the entire conservative group of politicians since 1931, and the whole military, they only argued about how to do it.

I really would like other people's opinion on this.

 

[Dachs]

The thesis presented in those slides is that the nazis were chosen as the army's tool (or by the controlling faction of the army) to create a "wherstaat" regime in Germany, looking forward to a new war. Preparing to start a new war seems to have been an overriding priority for the entire conservative group of politicians since 1931, and the whole military, they only argued about how to do it.

I really would like other people's opinion on this.

Seems about right to me. None of what Tooze says here is particularly controversial. He's one of the best-known scholars of Nazi Germany and these undergrad course slides are journeyman work. There are a bunch of typos and minor editing mistakes, but these things happen.

The Reichswehr was always the most crucial single faction in the Republic's politics and its leaders could make or break regimes. Even when the Reichswehr failed, as in the Lüttwitz putsch, it escaped any real responsibility for its actions because of how important the Weimar parties believed it to be. The actions of the camarilla around Hindenburg, and of Schleicher's gang, are reasonably well known and their starring role in bringing Hitler to power is generally agreed upon. Hitler could not have come to power himself without the Nazis' electoral success, which in turn depended on a whole mess of things like the revalorization/revaluation crisis and the Depression, but the final leap from "one-third of the Reichstag" to Chancellor and the destruction of the Weimar Republic were made possible by the Reich President and the highest officers in the Reichswehr.

It was the German military that first allowed Weimar democracy to exist, with the Ebert-Groener pact, and it was the German military that played an outsize role in bringing it down in 1932-33. As Tooze also points out in the slides, the timing was very tight and the outcome not inevitable. There were military men like Groener who did not want to see the Nazis succeed and tried to deploy the resources of the state against them. They failed, partially because they were unable to articulate a real vision of a conservative militarist republic to compete with the Wehrstaat of the far right.

Unlike in 1920, the army's intervention did not consist of an actual putsch, or even a refusal to act. Instead, it took the place of lobbying efforts and backroom deals, all of which were made possible by the implied threat of military action and by the personal prestige of the highest military figures. Some of these men were out of uniformed service, but that didn't matter as much as one might think in the era of the Versailles restrictions and the "Black Reichswehr" paramilitaries. Hindenburg was only "out" in a very technical sense and was still treated as a military leader despite his allegedly civilian status. Schleicher was not even out of service at all. Contemporaries understood that they represented an element of the uniformed services aligned with the far right.

 

[HoloDoc]

Churchill was never a senior general. The "kamarilla" around Hindenburg was largely composed of military or ex-military officers. Generals such as Keital, Reichnau and Blomberg all had contact with the Nazis before they came to power. The army wasn't united in its political views but its members weren't apolitical.

That's still hardly the same thing as blaming the army. Their influence in politics was there, but it was rarely a bludgeon (although when it was, it was extremely noticeable). The military was probably the one group that could have stopped Hitler from taking power. Hindenburg and bin Papen were certainly responsible for handing it to him. But that's not as simplistic as; "it was the army's fault."

 

[Imaus]

The Nazis saw a lot of beef-steaks (Brown outside, Red inside) who switched over in the early 30s, saw Strasser and Rohm, and generally that provides ammo to those who declare the Nazis left, so that by association the Left are Nazis or can become Nazis and are thus 'bad'.

This ignores, however, the Night-of-the-Long-Knives, the goals of the Nazis vs the goals of the Communists/Socialists/SocDems, and the whole political environment. The Fascist State arose, yes, out of Socialists, who turned their back on the international, the prole, the destruction of capitalism, religion, private property, and inherent social hierarchy. They replaced it with nationalism, the soldier, the destruction of the worker, the bending of capitalism and religion towards their own end, strict militarist controls on private property, and a reaction against the internationalist/democratic left - which soon spread from targeting the Communists/Socialists/Anarchists/Soc Dems to the Liberals and even, in cases, the Conservatives and Monarchists as well.

The Nazis used leftists because they needed man-power. When the chips went down, they purged them, again and again. Strasser. Rohm. SA. The U.S.S.R. The Nazis could not, after 1934, be considered any sort of Left, only opportunist alliance-makers who might side with the Left if just to starve off violence for a while, as they focused their actions elsewhere.

 

[Lexicus]

and inherent social hierarchy.

If by this phrase you mean the authority of the traditional aristocracy, it is accurate. As stated it is basically the opposite of the truth - the Nazis were perhaps the biggest believers in "inherent social hierarchy" in history. They believed that some people were so inherently inferior to others the only way to deal with them was to murder them by the tens of thousands.

 

[Wastl]

That depends on whether you look at the inside or the outside of the society. They cast aside people who they deemed to be unworthy of being part of the society, but when it comes to those who were considered part of the society there was (in theory) a move against social hierarchy. E.g mandatory stuff like the Hitler Youth. Like with pretty much everything the Nazis did, this was rather flexible in the way it was implemented though

 

[Traitorfish]

That depends on whether you look at the inside or the outside of the society. They cast aside people who they deemed to be unworthy of being part of the society, but when it comes to those who were considered part of the society there was (in theory) a move against social hierarchy. E.g mandatory stuff like the Hitler Youth.

I'd be wary of interpreting mass-mobilisation as necessarily egalitarianism. Most of this stuff was still strictly hierarchical; the Hitler Youth, for example, was pretty explicitly a prep school for military service, in which the superiority of officers over enlisted men and of senior officers over junior officers is pretty iron-clad. Part of the function of the Hitler Youth was to talent-scout "officer material" kids and place them in leadership positions. It represented a break with traditional aristocratic hierarchies, but only insofar as it substituted them for the hierarchy built through competition.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I'd be wary of interpreting mass-mobilisation as necessarily egalitarianism. Most of this stuff was still strictly hierarchical; the Hitler Youth, for example, was pretty explicitly a prep school for military service, in which the superiority of officers over enlisted men and of senior officers over junior officers is pretty iron-clad. Part of the function of the Hitler Youth was to talent-scout "officer material" kids and place them in leadership positions. It represented a break with traditional aristocratic hierarchies, but only insofar as it substituted them for the hierarchy built through competition.

A hierarchy built on competition is about as opposed to a hierarchy based on ancestry as you can be unless you ditch hierarchy altogether.
Hitler used and worked with the traditional hierarchies, but he was contemptuous of them and his policies undermined them (eg massive expansion of German army undermined the aristocratic traditional officer corp)
The only hierarchy he really cared about was racial.

 

[Hygro]

If by this phrase you mean the authority of the traditional aristocracy, it is accurate. As stated it is basically the opposite of the truth - the Nazis were perhaps the biggest believers in "inherent social hierarchy" in history. They believed that some people were so inherently inferior to others the only way to deal with them was to murder them by the tens of thousands.

So. The other day I explained pareto distribution to a coworker, a diswasher who is signing up to die for your freedoms (army). The next day, at the spot we had the conversation, there was now a print off of the 28 of us and out sales of the overstock foods and our amounts. I was talking about J Bieber song outcomes, but here was a closer to home example. The numbers "happened" to match the pareto distribution (the total number of agents, square rooted, is one half, the other half is the rest, you get it?). NO SURPRISE. Until you all can justify why the outcome of payment should equal our unequal work, it's a dodgy proposition.

 

[Lexicus]

That depends on whether you look at the inside or the outside of the society. They cast aside people who they deemed to be unworthy of being part of the society, but when it comes to those who were considered part of the society there was (in theory) a move against social hierarchy. E.g mandatory stuff like the Hitler Youth. Like with pretty much everything the Nazis did, this was rather flexible in the way it was implemented though

Seriously - did we study the same historical period here? Even within Aryan society there was a strict hierarchy, culminating with the Fuhrer at the top. Inferiors were expected to obey their superiors.

A hierarchy built on competition is about as opposed to a hierarchy based on ancestry as you can be unless you ditch hierarchy altogether.

Well, this is precisely the point. Just basing your hierarchy on different principles isn't "ditching hierarchy altogether."

So. The other day I explained pareto distribution to a coworker, a diswasher who is signing up to die for your freedoms (army). The next day, at the spot we had the conversation, there was now a print off of the 28 of us and out sales of the overstock foods and our amounts. I was talking about J Bieber song outcomes, but here was a closer to home example. The numbers "happened" to match the pareto distribution (the total number of agents, square rooted, is one half, the other half is the rest, you get it?). NO SURPRISE. Until you all can justify why the outcome of payment should equal our unequal work, it's a dodgy proposition.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything I said.

 

[Hygro]

Im not sure either. What did u say

 

[Lexicus]

Im not sure either. What did u say

That the Nazis were, in fact, big believers in hierarchy, just not in the hierarchy defined by the traditional aristocracy of Europe. The basic proposition of fascism and all right-wing politics is that hierarchy is desirable because people are inherently unequal. To say that the Nazis did not believe in hierarchy is just completely false.

 

[Hygro]

I'll take your word for it on condition that it already makes enough sense that it needn't even be your word to begin with.

 

[Lexicus]

I'll take your word for it on condition that it already makes enough sense that it needn't even be your word to begin with.

I don't regard that as "my word" at all, it's not exactly a novel or unique insight.

 

[Hygro]

I agree but you overestimate how much we've either a) read or b) remember reading.

Like, for example, I'm faded dawg.

 

[AmazonQueen]

That the Nazis were, in fact, big believers in hierarchy, just not in the hierarchy defined by the traditional aristocracy of Europe. The basic proposition of fascism and all right-wing politics is that hierarchy is desirable because people are inherently unequal. To say that the Nazis did not believe in hierarchy is just completely false.

But its not an inherent social hierarchy.
Its one based on loyalty to the leader and effectiveness in carrying out the leaders wishes.
This is partly why it could appeal to working class people. It offered opportunities for self-advancement that traditional conservatism wouldn't.

 

[Hygro]

Liberals should never guess what appeals to "working class people", JUST sayin.

Or if we do, start with our responses and not assume less than that to start with.... seriously.

 

[Lexicus]

But its not an inherent social hierarchy.
Its one based on loyalty to the leader and effectiveness in carrying out the leaders wishes.
This is partly why it could appeal to working class people. It offered opportunities for self-advancement that traditional conservatism wouldn't.

Fair enough - it wasn't fixed, it was characterized by a degree of social mobility. But insofar as the authority of those who worked their way up was conceived of as springing from their innate superiority to others, it was an 'inherent' hierarchy. And you already know that the racial hierarchy was inherent.

Liberals should never guess what appeals to "working class people", JUST sayin.

I don't know about AmazonQueen but I'm not aware of any definition of "working class" that I do not fit.

 

[Hygro]

One where you aren't raised to go to college.

I too could lay claim.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Liberals should never guess what appeals to "working class people", JUST sayin.

Or if we do, start with our responses and not assume less than that to start with.... seriously.

Liberal and working-class aren't mutually exclusive, not that I'd consider myself a liberal