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This is total nonsense.

The 25 points were developed before the Beer Hall Putsch, for crying out loud. They were designed to attract votes rather than intended to be implemented.

As proof, note that the high-ranking members of the Nazi Party who believed in these points (the Strasser Brothers and Roehm) were drummed out and/or shot by the Nazis after Hitler became Chancellor.

Hitler's support in the years 1931-3 immediately prior to his rise to power and in 1933-4 while he consolidated his power was from the Army and the Business Establishment -- i.e. the Right. They provided the money and the support. The Left was detroyed by the nazis in 1933-4 (unions were banned, for example) -- but the business establishment, the Army, and other institutions of the Right were not.

In the climactic vote in the Reichstag in 1934, which transferred their functions to the Chancellor & Cabinet, the Communists were banned from the chamber and the only votes against Hitler were from the Social Democrats. The Center and Right parties (Catholic Center, Nationalists, etc.) all voted Ja.

Claiming Hitler was a Leftist is as ridiculous as those that claimed in the Late 1980's and '90's that the Politburo were the "Conservatives" and Yeltsin, et al were "Liberals" -- and that, therefore, the Politburo were Rightists. Stalin was Left (i.e. pro-worker anti-capitalist) and Hitler was Right (anti-worker and pro-business). The 25 points mean squat -- actions, not words or papers, are the means to judge.

WHERE IS THE CAPITALISM HERE?

"Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism."

(Source: Time Magazine; Jaunuary 2, 1939.)

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A democratic Leftist!

But Hitler was not a revolutionary Leftist. He fought many elections and finally came to power via basically democratic means.

It is true that both Hitler and Mussolini received financial and other support from big businessmen and other "establishment" figures but this is simply a reflection of how radicalized Germany and Italy were at that time. Hitler and Mussolini were correctly perceived as a less hostile alternative (a sort of vaccine) to the Communists.

And what was that about election campaigns? Yes, Hitler did start out as a half-hearted revolutionary (the Munich Putsch) but after his resultant incarceration was able enough and flexible enough to turn to basically democratic methods of gaining power. He was thenceforth the major force in his party insisting on legality for its actions and did eventually gain power via the ballot box rather than by way of violent revolution. It is true that the last election (as distinct from referenda) he faced (on May 3rd, 1933) gave him a plurality (44% of the popular vote) rather than a majority but that is normal in any electoral contest where there are more than two candidates. Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher never gained a majority of the popular vote either. After the May 1933 elections, Hitler was joined in a coalition government by Hugenburg's Nationalist party (who had won 8% of the vote) to give a better majority (52%) than many modern democratic governments enjoy. On March 24th, 1933 the Reichstag passed an Enabling Act giving full power to Hitler for four years (later extended by referendum). The Centre Party voted with the Nazi-led coalition government. Thus Hitler's accession to absolute power was quite democratically achieved. Even Hitler's subsequent banning of the Communist party and his control of the media at election time have precedents in democratic politics.

Even the torturous backroom negotiations that led to Hitler's initial appointment as Kanzler (Chancellor, Prime Minister) by President Hindenburg on January 30th, 1933 hardly delegitimize that appointment or make it less democratic. Shirer (1964) and others describe this appointment as being the outcome of a "shabby political deal" but that would seem disingenuous. The fact is that Hitler was the leader of the largest party in the Reichstag and torturous backroom negotiations about alliances and deals generally are surely well-known to most practitioners of democratic politics. One might in fact say that success at such backroom negotiations is almost a prerequisite for power in a democratic system -- particularly, perhaps, under the normal European electoral system of proportional representation. It might in fact not be too cynical to venture the comment that "shabby political deals" have been rife in democracy at least since the time of Thucydides. Some practitioners of them might even claim that they are what allows democracy to work at all.

The fact that Hitler appealed to the German voter as basically a rather extreme social democrat is also shown by the fact that the German Social Democrats (orthodox democratic Leftists who controlled the unions as well as a large Reichstag deputation) at all times refused appeals from the German Communist party for co-operation against the Nazis. They evidently felt more affinity with Hitler than with the Communists. Hitler's eventual setting up of a one-party State and his adoption of a "four year plan", however, showed who had most affinity with the Communists. Hitler was more extreme than the Social Democrats foresaw.

The only heartfelt belief that Hitler himself ever had would appear to have been his antisemitism but his primary public appeal was nonetheless always directed to "the masses" and their interests and his methods were only less Bolshevik than those of the Bolsheviks themselves.