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vlyons

(10,252 posts)
1. Yes they were a form of socialism
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 11:53 AM
Jun 2023

The Nazis of the 3rd Reich were officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party. There are many forms of socialism. The classic definition is social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. I doubt that our home grown red neck nazis have every read Karl marx or give a hoot about worker rights. Rather, they're more about white supremacy.

Fiendish Thingy

(15,368 posts)
3. They were no more Socialist than the GDR was a democracy
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 12:06 PM
Jun 2023

Socialism is a Marxist, left wing ideology, and Nazis were adamantly anti-Marxist.

Nazis were right wing fascists, regardless of having “socialist” in their party’s name.

This nonsense is used to try to connect Nazis with liberals, and create distance between Nazis and the extremists on the right.

Wibly

(613 posts)
10. They were not socialists
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 01:01 PM
Jun 2023

They were Fascists who developed a corporate oligarchy. There was nothing socialist about them except their original name. They did absolutely nothing to indicate any allegiance to socialist policy at all. The handed development over to corporate developers and allowed those interests to reap the profits. The only thing that even remotely resembled socialism was what they did with the Hitler Youth, creating a universal education system that every child had to participate in, but it really was more about brainwashing than socialism.

ret5hd

(20,433 posts)
14. I guess you could say...
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 01:46 PM
Jun 2023

they were REALLY into Jewish/Roma/homosexual/etc healthcare too. Very socialist.

I hope you expound on all the other socialistic policies the Nazis had.

Voltaire2

(12,626 posts)
18. and east germany was a democracy.
Mon Jun 5, 2023, 11:30 AM
Jun 2023

After all they were the German Democratic Republic.

The right wing canard that the nazis and other fascist authoritarians were 'socialists' is utter nonsense. Fascism is not a form of socialism.

ancianita

(35,812 posts)
4. No. Hitler banned the use of the word 'socialist' after he gained control of government by 1930.
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 12:23 PM
Jun 2023

In fact, he only used socialist in 1927 only to attract unions, who he then had arrested after he came to power, and shipped out to work camps.

After he banned the use of socialist, he said that all his government must instead use only the word Nazi.


Otto Strasser and his brother Gregor paid the price for challenging Hitler and advocating for socialism within the Nazi party. Gregor was murdered during the Night of Long Knives in 1934, a mass purge of the left wing of the Nazi Party in which between 85 and 200 people were killed as part of an effort, in Hitler’s words, to prevent a “socialist revolution.” Otto Strasser fled Germany, ultimately seeking refuge in Canada.

Nazism wasn’t a socialist project. Nazism was a rejection of the basic tenets of socialism entirely, in favor of a state built on race and racial classifications.

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/27/18283879/nazism-socialism-hitler-gop-brooks-gohmert

Socialists, along with other left-wing political activists opposed the Nazi regime and were persecuted under it. The Communist Party and Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany were banned in 1933, along with the limitation of the power of all those who opposed Nazi rule. Many SPD members were arrested, sent to concentration camps, or exiled to Prague, Paris and London.

The first concentration camp in Dachau, built-in 1933, was intended to inter the Nazi’s left-wing opponents. Hitler was also vocally critical of the “November criminals”—those who led Germany after the First World War and signed the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. These leaders were social democrats. The first concentration camp in Dachau, built-in 1933, was intended to inter the Nazi’s left-wing opponents. Hitler was also vocally critical of the “November criminals”—those who led Germany after the First World War and signed the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. These leaders were social democrats.

https://fullfact.org/online/nazis-socialists/



vlyons

(10,252 posts)
7. The 3rd Reich nazis did have some socialist programs
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 12:54 PM
Jun 2023

Education was mostly socialized, the autobahn road, police, but private enterprize like Krups, Ford, Daimler, had big gov contracts, etc.

I think when the party started in the 1920s, the name Democratic Socialist Workers Party was meant to confuse and compete with the various other socialist parties at the time.

rsdsharp

(9,038 posts)
9. Thank you. I typically ask idiots who spout the "Nazism was socialist" bullshit
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 01:01 PM
Jun 2023

to tell me about the impact on the Night of the Ling Knives on the socialist wing of the party. They usually look at me blankly.

SouthernDem4ever

(6,468 posts)
6. To me it wasn't a question, but obviously for some, it is
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 12:41 PM
Jun 2023

The point of the video is to debunk the propaganda that's been fed to the public.

brush

(53,473 posts)
8. To me it's odd as most DUers are some of the most knowledgeable...
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 12:58 PM
Jun 2023

political junkies around, know this subject well and are definitely not the typical, unknowledgeable public.

Youtube is certainly the best place for it.

Uncle Joe

(58,112 posts)
13. There are always lurkers, trolls, new members and the general public tuning in.
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 01:11 PM
Jun 2023

Not everyone has the same life experience (s.)

plimsoll

(1,664 posts)
11. I think there's a deliberate conflation of Political organization and Economic Organization here.
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 01:08 PM
Jun 2023

The Nazi's were not capitalists exactly, though they did approve of private ownership of the means of production. They were authoritarian and decidedly not democratic. However since the 1950's the right has been conflating authoritarian and communist, largely because the nations calling themselves communist were authoritarian. We also tend to view the Nazi's as somehow distinct from other fascist movements of the 1920's and 1930's, probably because anti-Semitism was always a core element for the Nazi's.

There are tons of descriptions and "rules" for deciding if some group is fascist, they tend to be tighter or looser depending on whether you want to make some group into fascists or not. I choose to look at Umberto Eco's Ur Fascism for guidance, organizations that pass muster on the Ur Fascist guidelines may not be fascist yet, but they have all the social building blocks in place and are ready to proceed.

David__77

(23,219 posts)
12. "Socialism" of big German capital.
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 01:09 PM
Jun 2023

A mass movement formed for the express purpose of wiping out Marxism and communism. “Socialism” lots of radical anti-communists could get behind.

tornado34jh

(866 posts)
15. I think there are some things that people are forgetting
Sun Jun 4, 2023, 02:19 PM
Jun 2023

Just because it has that name does not mean they subscribe to that ideology. For example, North Korea is officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, even though we know it is a communist dictatorship. Also, it has changed throughout the years. When people say it was Democrats who condoned slavery, keep in mind that really, what the Democrats were back then in the Civil War were what we would call conservative/right wing. They wanted to keep slavery. It was only within the last 60-70 years that it changed to what the current makeup is.

Nazism hated socialists and communists. That is why they attacked the Soviet Union. To say that Socialism and Nazism were the same would be like saying water can mix well with electricity, it doesn't. They spent a lot of time trying to get towards Moscow and Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). Were it not for help from the land-lease project, the Soviets, no matter how brutal they were, would probably have fallen. Now the thing is, Nazism is specifically a German ideology. While Italy did have many of the characteristics of Nazism, they actually didn't believe in the Nordicist views common in the United States and Germany at the time.

Back to the US, Republican and Democratic are the names of political parties, but as I said, they changed over the years, and what is defined now isn't what it was back then. From the beginning of the Civil War until the 1960s, the Democrats, particularly in the South, were actually what would be considered conservative. They hated the idea that ethnic minorities were given rights in the Civil Rights era and that slavery was abolished, and they still do to this day, particularly with the former.

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