Okay FRiends, I’m getting pretty disgusted here. I’m trying to learn more about Nazi Germany. It just seems appropriate now.
What I’m disgusted about is so many authors and pretend historians keep calling the Nazis the far right. Which makes no sense whatsoever. I really don’t think Hitler was for tiny government. And some of the Liberals go through a lot of contortionist thinking trying to explain why national socialism really doesn’t mean socialism at all.
So I’m trying to find an author who isn’t some left-wing wacko. I could buy the rise and fall of the Third Reich by William sure sure but I have no idea where he stands, and I’m not going to waste my money. That one sold so I might be able to find it at my library. There’s a series by Richard Evans that is supposed to be very good. My library only has the audio version and it is pretty good so far. But I’m not an audio learner, I feel like I’m missing nine out of every ten words. But I’m thinking that one is left just as well, because all of the reviews I’ve read have gone that way.
So my next idea is to actually read what Hitler wrote or said. That doesn’t really give me the background of how he came to power, and what the average German did when he was taking away everyone’s rights. But at least I won’t throw the book across the room like I would when they tried to explain that socialist doesn’t really mean socialist.
I found this article, which I feel like I’m going to cut and pasted onto every website I’ve been to so far that says Nazis were far right.
“There’s a reason for the word “socialism” in National Socialism. That becomes clearer when the full name of the party is written out: The National Socialist German Workers Party.
To quote Adolph Hitler, “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
Planks in the Nazi party platform fell right in line with those of conventional socialism/communism. The Nazis demanded:
• the abolition of all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work;
• the nationalization of businesses involved in cartels;
• the communalization of department stores, to distribute to small business;
• land reform, confiscation from owners without compensation any land needed for the common purpose, the abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of land speculation.
So Nazism was much like conventional socialism, with its anti-business and anti-financial attitudes, and demonization the affluent. Nazism particularly demonized a subset of affluent people (many of whom weren’t even affluent), the Jews. Envious Germans prior to and during the Nazi period hurled accusations exactly in line with Karl Marx’s slanders, smearing them as swindlers and worshiping money. Never mind that their hard work, high levels of education, willingness to take risks, and willingness to be merchants early on (upon which other members of society looked down) tended to have a positive effect on income. Success breeds contempt.
Socialism/communism blames the world’s ills on economically better off people. But in some societies those people tend to be members of a certain religion or ethnic minority group – be they Jews in Nazi Germany, Armenians in early-twentieth-century Turkey, Chinese in Indonesia, or Tutsis in Rwanda. That makes them easy to identify and pick out. The minority group becomes synonymous with the wealthy class. By scapegoating the rich, they’re scapegoating the minority group.
So Marx in the nineteenth century helped sow the seeds for both Nazism and Communism in the twentieth.”
So Hitler said that they were socialists. Socialist is in the name of the party. And yet liberals will continue to say that they are far right. I think this has been said for so long without opposition that people don’t even stop to think about it to see if it is even true.
Recently, I have seen one movie. It was about Germany before the 1938 period. It was eye-opening, what we are seeing is around 1936 but the only thing that is missing is infrastructure projects. Once that will happen,wala we will be aping Germany.
The family was afraid of discussing anti-Hitler’s views inside their own homes because family members will report to authorities. Shaming was another thing. Exactly what is happening here.
“Far right” in Europe does not mean the same thing as it does in U.S.
You have mail.