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Were the Nazis Right or Left Wing?

Were the Nazis...

  • Predominantly Right Wing

    Votes: 66 51.2%
  • Predominantly Left Wing

    Votes: 27 20.9%
  • Largely in the center

    Votes: 10 7.8%
  • Don't know/unsure/no opinion/none of the above

    Votes: 26 20.2%

  • Total voters
    129
Yes there is, even in out own nation, there are some communist communities, also in India, as I recall....Our own Amish have many communist traits...
But as true communism is voluntary, it will never grow, particularly in our conservative nation.

Well that's interesting.

I have a question.

Should we judge socialism by what socialism does?

If countless people have died under the efforts of applying socialism/communism, shouldn't we judge such theories by what happens when they're applied?
 
Well that's interesting.

I have a question.

Should we judge socialism by what socialism does?

If countless people have died under the efforts of applying socialism/communism, shouldn't we judge such theories by what happens when they're applied?

are you willing to apply that same standard to ALL political & economic philosophies, or just Communism & Socialism?
 
10% of the industrial output of Israel comes from Kibbutz/communes. They are entirely voluntary in a country not famed for it's leftwing persona.

Are you kidding? The state of Israel was founded and built by Jewish immigrants with very strong socialist tendencies. This is not controversial at all.
 
I don't believe in the left/right line of traditional politics. I think the 3D graph is closer, but still too simplistic.

The Nazi's were statists, of this there is no doubt. Statism is commonly associated with both the FAR left and the FAR right on the "traditional line".... another indicator of that left/right line's flaws.

They referred to themselves as "national socialists", and have also been called "fascist"... one term suggests the left, the other suggests the right.

Frankly, the Nazi's were statist thugs, expansionist imperialists, and mass-murderers, and that's good enough definition for me. I don't think trying to claim they were tied to modern liberalism or modern conservatism is productive or accurate.

I agree with this statement
 
They were both wings...had the hard-core killers and the fatties with limp wrists. Sharp uniforms though and the heel-clicking thing was effective.
 
so your argument is that Hitler had a conversion experience after getting into power that he never mentioned and which has eluded his biographers?

If you could please point me in the direction of Hitler's later advocation of a free market?

Germany was a free-market economy from the time Hitler took power until his death.

yes. for the Fascist, the State was the fundamental unit of society, and everyone's primary relationship was with it. As Mussolini put it, "All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State".

Your point?


that's true, and gave medals awards and all manner of benefits to those who had more than their share of genetically desirable children. What they didn't really care about was whether or not the woman was married to the father, as exampled by your next point:

Family Life in Nazi Germany


Family was also a major propaganda issue in Nazi Germany with the party propaganda machine pushing the importance of a large family. The party set up an office that had specific responsibility to deal with mothers and their children – the Mother and Child Welfare Office. While the figures for marriage and divorce do not bear out the Nazi claim that family developed under the Nazi regime, the figures for the number of children born do. There was a steady increase in births after 1933. However, the state did all it could to support and encourage large families. In June 1933 the marriage load was introduced to help out newly married couples. The loan was RM 600, which equalled the income over four months for the average person. A quarter of the loan was cancelled for every child a couple had – so four children resulted in no payments being made. Another condition of the loan was that the wife had to give up work if she was employed at the time of marriage
.

not really. the SS existed as a parrallel organization to the Abwehr and the Wermacht. It's common for ideological dictatorships to do this - witness the KGB in the USSR, and the GRB and IRGC in North Korea and Iran today. The SS was there specifically to swear allegiance to the Nazi Party and Hitler in particular due to Party distrust of the traditional military leadership (as they were largely made up of old-school Prussian nobility).

I say again, the SS represented the more radical elements of the party, and their beliefs and practices did not represent the German state or National Socialist party as a whole.

well, yeah, that was also generally the policy of the Party and the Policy of the State.

They wanted a stable family in addition to a high Aryan birth rate.

It was hardly restricted to just Himmler. Hess, for example, was a member of the Thule Society, and that is where Nazis' drew the Swastika from.

But Hess and others didn't want to supplant Christianity in Germany with paganism. That was Himmler's idea.

eh, dependent. Nazi's also accepted the argument (drawing from both Gibbons and Kant) that Christianity had weakened the Teutonic peoples, and was therefore a long-term threat to their taking their rightful place in history. Nazis' accepted what they called "Positive Christianity", by which they meant Christianity without the Old Testament, the Pauline Letters, the doctrine of Original Sin, the existence of Hell and the doctrine of Grace... Christianity was either to serve the state (all within the state), or it was an alternate power center, and was then to be destroyed.

This has little to do with left-wing vs right wing or family values.


you are very incorrect. In Germany between the wars, militant nationalism and expansionism was the belief system of the wide majority of the populace, who saw themselves as having been brutally cheated and humiliated to a place below their natural station. If anything, it was the Prussian nobility who thought that Hitler was pushing too far, and would destroy the nation through unsustainable expansionism. That, after all, is why they eventually repented of their deal with the devil, and turned on him. It was the Ivory Tower academic types like Haushofer who were urging that the German people naturally take control of the Euroafrican "pan region".

The Prussian military caste pretty much backed Hitler's expansionism, but some were a bit apprehensive about another world war. They wanted a strong German military, but they also wanted to use it.


I'm not out here to demonize anyone - certainly no one is suggesting that modern liberals are racists just because Nazi's were lefties. However, yes, indeed, in fact, racism and nationalism were very much a part of the left-wing movements of the day in the West. You may wish to do some reading on the history of Eugenics in this country (hint: some of our progressive "racial scientists" were working with their counterparts from a particular German political party).

I won't disagree with this. This certainly was true during the early 20th century, but to ignore the racism and nationalism of the Right would be disingenuous.
 
Until our current President I would have said neither, but many of his ideas while not as extreme to favor Nazi Germany when it comes to government intervention. We are living in a class, social, and race driven society under his leadership. Not since Jimmy Carter has innovation and business minded responsible people been penalized like they are today.
 
Were the Nazi Party of Germany a right wing or left wing establishment?

I figure this is a better place to discuss than on someone else's thread like we were :)

Opinions?
I would say they were more tail area, near the exhaust.
 
whether you have the nazis, socialist or communist, all three of those require more government, then the founding fathers had intended for our federal government, which is to be limited in powers and not involved in the personal life's of the people.
 
Nazis were very pro-business if you ask Mercedes-Benz, I.G. Farben, or Krupp. So pro-business they allowed them to use slave labor.

Nazis were so wedded to the idea of women in a very structured, domestic role (Kinder, Küche, Kirche, or children, kitchen, church) that they opposed women working factory jobs while they were off at war, even though that helped the US win.
 
Wow, blast from the past.

Germany was a free-market economy from the time Hitler took power until his death.

No. It was a corporatist economy. It became a freer economy after WWII, which is why it then took off. Under Hitler, however, the economy had featured everything from Price Controls to Centralized Allocation of resources.

But I notice you did not answer the question - can you point me towards Hitlers' celebration of a free market?

Your point?

That that is a left-wing idea, not a right-wing one.


:shrug: yeah - the Nazis wanted lots of good Aryan kids, and weren't terribly concerned how they got them. Much like the left-wing welfare states of today, the Nazis paid people to have kids.

I say again, the SS represented the more radical elements of the party, and their beliefs and practices did not represent the German state or National Socialist party as a whole.

They wanted a stable family in addition to a high Aryan birth rate.

But Hess and others didn't want to supplant Christianity in Germany with paganism. That was Himmler's idea.

This has little to do with left-wing vs right wing or family values.

The Prussian military caste pretty much backed Hitler's expansionism, but some were a bit apprehensive about another world war. They wanted a strong German military, but they also wanted to use it.

I won't disagree with this. This certainly was true during the early 20th century, but to ignore the racism and nationalism of the Right would be disingenuous.

Most of this seems to be rather minor disagreements - I think that at best the military was in favor of a series of limited objectives; retaking land lost after WWI, restoration of national pride, etc. But you were pretty much correct when you described the Nazis as "a moderate socialist state with a fiercely nationalist stance".

As for now? The problem with ascribing racism/nationalism to the Right becomes a matter of definition - and this is why I don't like the conservative/liberal debate, either. In the U.S., Conservatives are Liberals - Liberalism is what they are trying to preserve. Liberals here are Progressives who took on the L name because the P name became too much of a political dead-weight (similar to how many of them then went back to P when L got a bad name). In Europe, Conservatism has traditionally meant Crown and Church - Nationalism has been the emotional call of the Left-wing movement there, as well, since the French Revolution. Now it gets' confused, and people mistake shades for a totality - all desire to maintain national autonomy is not "Nationalism", except insomuch as you are willing to weaken the word to where it is meaningless. So Leftism (who may call themselves Liberals), having abandoned nationalism (except when it comes to trade policy, where they are very nationalistic indeed), has moved on instead to supra-nationalism, the immanetization of the eschaton through supra-national projects instead. It's the same ole same ole, but with a different Savior mechanism.
 
Nazis were very pro-business if you ask Mercedes-Benz, I.G. Farben, or Krupp. So pro-business they allowed them to use slave labor.

Precisely. Pro-Big-Business =/= Free Economy. It is not hands-off-the-market; it is hands-on-the-market-to-steer-its'-results-towards-favored-enterprises.
 
chicken wing

what else does a nazi remind me of?

soaps

what a shame

they still ask if it is right
 
Right and left wing politics is a product of liberal democracy (originating in post-revolutionary France), which fascism rejects in full.
 
Were the Nazi Party of Germany a right wing or left wing establishment?

I figure this is a better place to discuss than on someone else's thread like we were :)

Opinions?

To me it seems pretty obvious. They even labeled themselves the National Socialist Party.
 
To me it seems pretty obvious. They even labeled themselves the National Socialist Party.

Being "socialist" was the hip thing in the 1920s-30s.. so calling one self a socialist was far from always linked to actual socialist political ideas, but more to a marketing ploy. The conservative right wing parties often loyal to unpopular royalty and wealthy people, were not exactly popular and calling themselves the National Conservative Party would have backfired...
 
Saying that there were fascist and fascism is right wing.. Its pretty common knowledge, and accepted in academics that they were far right wing.
 
To me it seems pretty obvious. They even labeled themselves the National Socialist Party.
As if party names have any meaning beyond political advertising purposes...

For example...Peoples Republic of China.

Republic my ass.


But, OTOH, to my understanding, the Nazi party DID have some socialists in it at first, but they all got killed off by the rest of the party at one point or another...not sure.
 
The Nazis were fascists. Fascism is an odd mix of extreme right-wing and extreme left wing ideologies. There's no denying that the Nazi Party's roots are left-wing as it emerged from the German Worker's Party. What it morphed into, however, is something altogether different. For once the Wikipedia article on it is really quite good:

Fascism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No doubt..... well, why is it that the first targets for round-up were communists, socialists and liberals?

The History Place - Rise of Hitler: The Reichstag Burns
Political Prisoners

I have often wonder why, if the Nazis were left wing, the first people they rounded up were the left wingers?

Perhaps Hitler was just telling his troops to "....go out and get our friends and concentrate them in a camp so we call all celebrate?...."
 
Were the Nazi Party of Germany a right wing or left wing establishment?

I figure this is a better place to discuss than on someone else's thread like we were :)

Opinions?

The Nazi Party was ideologically schizophrenic from the very beginning and this played a crucial role in enabling electoral success (initially by coincidence and later as a matter of deliberate policy). While books like "Liberal Fascism" massively hyperbolize the connection between Nazism and leftism it would be a mistake to pretend that there wasn't a leftist stream within the NSDAP. The initial National Socialist party that Hitler first took charge of had an obvious socialist tint, so much so that Hitler had to take gradual steps to 'correct' the party orthodoxy as he took control of the organization and completed its centralization. To give an example it wasn't until 1928 that the party program actually clarified that it's commitments to the expropriation of farms and estates was limited to Jewish companies a position which had hitherto frightened the rural Weimar electorate who say a red shadow behind the NSDAP. For a while (especially after the putsch) people like Gregor Strasser controlled the party and pushed it onto an aggressive 'socialist' track advocating "...a German revolution through a German form of socialism". Indeed much of the early Nazi campaign efforts were aimed at the German proletariat and their initial electoral literature reflected it with Goebbels and Strasser running an elaborate urban electoral campaign in Franconia advocating for the seizure of Junker and ex-Royal land for distribution to the people as part of a national revolution which Hitler had to aggressively put down.

Even after Hitler took control of the party there was dissension, and the diffuse nature of the National Socialist form of government makes it difficult to characterize it properly. The reason is that Hitler more or less operated by bureaucratic feudalism. Education, Agriculture, the Arts, Industry, etc were all parceled out to various Nazi functionaries and party leaders to rule as their own personal fiefdom. To give an example Richard Darre was the Reich Minister for Agriculture and could be best described as a Pagan, Green, Nationalist. He implemented controls on the transference of farm plots, created state capitalist agricultural entities, created the Reich Food Estate to control prices and supply of essential food stuffs and feed, tried to create a unitary agricultural market chain (producers, retailers, consumers, etc), encourage plot subdivision to send more Germans back to the land, etc. How do you define that? There are obviously elements of economic control and state direction, but it also wasn't anything close to an attempt at state ownership of agriculture (quite the opposite). It was also an attempt to promote a societal view (of Germans on the farm and in communion with nature) it was a view shared by Himmler and viewed with skepticism by others because of it's lack of focus on the state.

This problem repeats itself across the spectrum of the Third Reich.

Were the Nazi's left wing or right wing? It depends on the time and the person in question. Goebbels was a socialist, Goering was a conservative, Darre was a naturalist. At times they operated as an autarky, at times as state capitalists, at times as feudal kleptocrats.

The reason they remain difficult to define into the present day is because they never quite got around to doing that for themselves and initial completely divergent steps were eventually subordinated to the re-armament process and later war effort. It is not at all clear what a German economic or social system would have looked like had the Germans won the war and continued with 'normal' governance.
 
The vast majority of people I have ever seen who try to deny that the Nazi's were predominately right wing are modern right wingers.
 
There's a push among American conservatives to try and rewrite history in order to further their political agenda and recast the Nazis as a left-wing regime. Their reasoning is based on the fact that the Nazi regime was a dictatorship. Then they try to equate dictatorship with big government. And since the Nazis were bad, this must mean that big government is bad. But their reasoning is based on a misunderstanding of history and political definitions. So let's set the record straight on the Nazis, the Communists, and on left and right politics once and for all:

The Nazis were not left-wing, they were very much right-wing. Why? Because left-wing political ideologies believe that power should be distributed equally to all people; and right-wing political ideologies believe that power should be held by an elite few.

These political definitions come down to us from the French Revolution. The left bank of the River Seine, which runs through Paris, was working class and poor; the right bank was where the rich, aristocratic types lived. This division found its way into the French Parliament: on the left side of the aisle were those who represented the working class and sought to redistribute power from the aristocrats to the working class; on the right side of the aisle were those who represented the aristocrats and sought to maintain or conserve their power.

Now, yes, the Nazis were the "Nationalist Socialist Party" - but the term NATIONALIST is the key word there. They believed in Socialism, but only for those who were members of the "Master Race." In other words, they wanted to ensure that the power was held by an elite few, which squarely puts them at the extreme right-wing of the political spectrum.

Furthermore, the Nazis (and Fascists as well) absolutely HATED Socialists, Communists, Marxist and Leftist political ideologies in general because 1) Marxism (and the left) believes in the political and economic equality of all people regardless of race (Nazis only believed in equality for the Master Race); 2) because the Left tended to attract intellectual types who the Nazis absolutely detested; 3) and because Karl Marx was Jewish.

The American right-wing trying to recast the Nazis as left-wing is based on their agenda of trying to villainize big government - and on their ignorance of history and politics. American conservatives want to frame the American political debate as the struggle between big government left-wingers and small-government right-wingers, but this is obviously too simple to be true. It's worse than that, it's a half-truth. The whole truth is: Right-wingers only want small government when the government in question is democratic in nature.

Why? First consider the definition of the word “democracy.” The word “democracy” is a Greek word that means "power to the people." So, by it's very definition, democracy is a left-wing ideology because it seeks to distribute power equally among all the people.

Therefore, if America is supposed to be a democracy, it would then follow that right-wingers want a small government. Why? Because, right-wing ideologies are interested in preserving the power of an elite few; and since democracy is about the equal distribution of power, it's dangerous to their ideals. So right-wingers would necessarily want to make sure that the American Government - which is the administrator of the collective power of the American people - is a weak and ineffectual government.

I want to add one more piece of critical information. Communist dictators like Stalin, Mao Zedong and Castro - these kinds of people were Communist in name only. As I stated before, Marxist ideologies like Communism and Socialism believe in the equal distribution of both political and economic power. The fact that Stalin, Mao and Castro restricted the power of those who were not members of the Communist Party makes them the exact opposite of a Communist and, by definition, right-wingers.
 
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