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Certainly, he campaigned on many of the themes of the modern Left, including antisemitism. So, Hitler's own followers and the voters in general thought they were voting for socialism of some sort.

Naturally, Hitler had to dispose of his SA military because they expected him to fulfill his Leftist political platform. But he cut deals with the army and big business and liquidated the annoying and demanding SA. This was the point where he turned despotic.

I'd say that Hitler campaigned as a candidate of the Left to gain power but, once in office, saw the advantages of eliminating the socialist premise which helped bring him to power and instead implemented a totalitarian nationlist state with strong racial ideology. A true socialist regime would have been a totalitarian socialist regime like the old USSR and Hitler never desired to establish such a state.

>>Certainly, he campaigned on many of the themes of the modern Left, including antisemitism.

I'd say that Hitler campaigned as a candidate of the Left to gain power but, once in office, saw the advantages of eliminating the socialist premise which helped bring him to power and instead implemented a totalitarian nationlist state with strong racial ideology. A true socialist regime would have been a totalitarian socialist regime like the old USSR and Hitler never desired to establish such a state.<<

Balint Vazsonyi, who died recently, had similar comments:

Gleichschaltung

For a long time, notwithstanding the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, I accepted the conventional wisdom that Communism and Nazism were opposites — one on the extreme left, the other on the extreme right.

Perhaps enough time has passed to permit examination in realistic terms of these approaches to social organization, concentrating on essential characteristics and demonstrated aspirations as opposed to clichés. Decades of observation, as well as ceaseless consideration given to the core issues, compel me to look upon these seemingly opposite systems as mirror images, aspiring to a similar outcome, applying identical methods, achieving comparable subjugation of people under their control, spreading the same hopelessness in their paths. While such conclusions have certainly been reached by others, it may be less obvious that Fascism (Nazism) and Communism (Bolshevism) all share their philosophical foundations as well.

Gleichschaltung operated at once on structural and cultural levels. Structurally, the first victim was federalism: within days of Hitler's accession, the states had to cede authority to the central government. Next, the leadership and membership of every kind of organization had to become politically and racially correct. With the task of implementing structural changes assigned to a variety of agencies, as early as March 1933, a separate Cabinet Department was created for Josef Goebbels to oversee every aspect of the cultural scene, making certain that it was politically correct. Specific terms aside, the reality of all these regimes is the great flattening which is in full progress from day one. Since it is not possible to raise anyone's natural level by fiat, the alternative is to force everyone down.

It is astonishing and frightening how little time it took both in Russia and in Germany to accomplish this task. Indeed, it should be noted that demolishing what centuries had built does not require even a single generation.

The next ingredient had to do with groups. While it may appear contradictory to identify groups in a society having just experienced Gleichschaltung, contradictions do not represent obstacles in a totalitarian structure. The identity of groups was as necessary as the levelling had been in order to maintain positive and negative imaging. This constant dichotomy of egalitarianism and group hatred provided a manipulative tool as simple as it was ingenious. Hitler used race and nationality, Lenin and Stalin mostly class — the outcome was the same.

Hitler may have moved slightly to the right of his original program, after he disposed of his number two man, Ernst Rohm, the Homosexual street thug. But he remained a Socialist--never became even a middle of the roader.

When he and Stalin got together in 1939, they were both more comfortable with one another, than either ever was with any Western leaders.

For a detailed analysis of where Hitler and the Nazis were in the poltical spectrum, see The Lies Of Socialism. In every respect, Hitler lived and died on the Left.

William Flax