I'm not going to bother going through the rest of this since it's almost as inane as what's quoted above.
Socialism is "just a word"? Really? They couldn't think of any other word, so they just happened to pick that one?
Do you not realize how idiotic that sounds? It's like saying the National Football League has nothing to do with football...they just picked that word because, I don't know...it sounded cool?
You wanted an example of revisionist history? Right there...in your article. Regardless of whether you were communist, socialist, whatever-ist...you'd get hauled off to jail if the secret police suspected you were capable of any kind of resistance at all. The role of the Gestapo was to hunt out and exterminate any "undesirables" even vaguely opposed to the rule of the Third Reich, not to uphold some kind of societal structure.
Communism, socialism, fascism...take your pick. Each one employs a philosophy of government control of the population. That's why dimocraps marvel at the strict Islamic societies around the world...they envy the control they have over the populace.
By the way, as with all dipshit posts by idiotic leftists like guesser, the timing is impeccable
[h=1]Communist Party USA Chairman Vows Cooperation With Democratic Party[/h]
The chairman of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA has penned a 2,023-word manifesto making the critical point that American Communists are eager to work with the Democratic Party to advance the modern communist agenda and achieve communist goals.
http://news.yahoo.com/communist-party-usa-chairman-vows-cooperation-democratic-party-141019868.html
Maybe for his next trick guesser will pretend communists didn't kill 40+ million in pursuit of the common good in the last century.
[h=1]Communist Party USA Chairman Vows Cooperation With Democratic Party[/h]
The chairman of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA has penned a 2,023-word manifesto making the critical point that American Communists are eager to work with the Democratic Party to advance the modern communist agenda and achieve communist goals.
http://news.yahoo.com/communist-party-usa-chairman-vows-cooperation-democratic-party-141019868.html
Maybe for his next trick guesser will pretend communists didn't kill 40+ million in pursuit of the common good in the last century.
You have to love this "Hitler was right wing!!!!" meme though. It is espoused by the same people who think the right wing wants to overthrow the government.
Of course people like guesser are so fucking stupid they don't see the contradiction (or understand) in the idiotic things they are pasting.
Of course people like guesser are so fucking stupid they don't see the contradiction (or understand) in the idiotic things they are pasting.
"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."
Guess who???
Maybe if you get of the secular humanist blog you can realize it is inarguable Hitler was a leftist in his day.
Guess who???
Maybe if you get of the secular humanist blog you can realize it is inarguable Hitler was a leftist in his day.
Did you have fun visiting dad today?
The racist Cult down here, of which you are moving up in rank, will luv that one. It's knee slapping funny. You are really sinking dude. Hitler was left Wing, Humans have been around for only 2,000 years, now you're going full on racist. Examine yourself, get it together. You've got to do better and be better. Next you'll be posting Birther shit.
It's mind boggling, isn't it?
National socialism had nothing to do with socialism? Oh, ok.
W..T...F? How stupid do you have to be to believe that?
Guesser, here are the fifteen primary non-negotiable beliefs of the Tea Party. Find me just one which matches up with Nazi ideals (I'm sure you'll try for No. 3, even though the motives between Tea Partiers and Nazis are polar opposites). If you like, I can find plenty of what dimocraps today believe that mirrors Nazi ideals...
1. Illegal aliens are here illegally.
2. Pro-domestic employment is indispensable.
3. A strong military is essential.
4. Special interests must be eliminated.
5. Gun ownership is sacred.
6. Government must be downsized.
7. The national budget must be balanced.
8. Deficit spending must end.
9. Bailout and stimulus plans are illegal.
10. Reducing personal income taxes is a must.
11. Reducing business income taxes is mandatory.
12. Political offices must be available to average citizens.
13. Intrusive government must be stopped.
14. English as our core language is required.
15. Traditional family values are encouraged.
Nazi Manifesto (what Heir Hitler campaigned on)
That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in life and property, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as a crime against the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits whether in assets or material.
. We demand the nationalization of businesses which have been organized into cartels.
We demand that all the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.
We demand extensive development of provision for old age.
We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle-class, the immediate communalization of department stores which will be rented cheaply to small businessmen, and that preference shall be given to small businessmen for provision of supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
We demand a land reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to confiscate from the owners without compensation any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in life and property, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as a crime against the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits whether in assets or material.
. We demand the nationalization of businesses which have been organized into cartels.
We demand that all the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.
We demand extensive development of provision for old age.
We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle-class, the immediate communalization of department stores which will be rented cheaply to small businessmen, and that preference shall be given to small businessmen for provision of supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
We demand a land reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to confiscate from the owners without compensation any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
The VERY sick people that are trying to Deny Hitler was a Right Wing Fascist who hated anything and everything about Moderates and those on the Left Wing, led by his hate of Unions(sound familiar) are akin to Holocaust Deniers. They are trying to re-write History to fit their perverted, warped views. Lucky there are chroniclers of History who know the truth, have written extensively about said truth, LIVED THROUGH that truth, and will always remember, and never forget, who and what Hiter was, and why his ilk can never be allowed to rise to power, in a world power, like the US again.
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od...r-a-Socialist-Debunking-a-Historical-Myth.htm
The Myth: Adolf Hitler, starter of World War 2 in Europe and driving force behind the Holocaust, was a socialist.
The Truth: Hitler hated socialism and communism and worked to destroy these ideologies. Nazism, confused as it was, was based on race, and fundamentally different from class focused socialism.
[h=3]Hitler as Conservative Weapon[/h] Twenty-first century commentators like to attack left leaning policies by calling them socialist, and occasionally follow this up by explaining how Hitler, the mass murdering dictator around whom the twentieth century pivoted, was a socialist himself. There’s no way anyone can, or ever should, defend Hitler, and so things like health-care reform are equated with something terrible, a Nazi regime which sought to conquer an empire and commit several genocides. The problem is, this is a distortion of history.
[h=3]Hitler as the Scourge of Socialism[/h] Richard Evans, in his magisterial three volume history of Nazi Germany, is quite clear on whether Hitler was a socialist: “…it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth of, socialism.” (The Coming of the Third Reich, Evans, p. 173). Not only was Hitler not a socialist himself, nor a communist, but he actually hated these ideologies and did his utmost to eradicate them. At first this involved organizing bands of thugs to attack socialists in the street, but grew into invading Russia, in part to enslave the population and earn ‘living ‘ room for Germans, and in part to wipe out communism and ‘Bolshevism’. More on the early Nazis.
The key element here is what Hitler did, believed and tried to create. Nazism, confused as it was, was fundamentally an ideology built around race, while socialism was entirely different: built around class. Hitler aimed to unite the right and left, including workers and their bosses, into a new German nation based on the racial identity of those in it. Socialism, in contrast, was a class struggle, aiming to build a workers state, whatever race the worker was from. Nazism drew on a range of pan-German theories, which wanted to blend Aryan workers and Aryan magnates into a super Aryan state, which would involve the eradication of class focused socialism, as well as Judaism and other ideas deemed non-German.
When Hitler came to power he attempted to dismantle trade unions and the shell that remained loyal to him; he supported the actions of leading industrialists, actions far removed from socialism which tends to want the opposite. Hitler used the fear of socialism and communism as a way of terrifying middle and upper class Germans into supporting him. Workers were targeted with slightly different propaganda, but these were promises simply to earn support, to get into power, and then to remake the workers along with everyone else into a racial state. There was to be no dictatorship of the proletariat as in socialism; there was just to be the dictatorship of the Fuhrer.
The belief that Hitler was a socialist seems to have emerged from two sources: the name of his political party, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, or Nazi Party, and the early presence of socialists in it.
[h=3]The National Socialist German Worker’s Party[/h] While it does look like a very socialist name, the problem is that ‘National Socialism’ is not socialism, but a different, fascist ideology. Hitler had originally joined when the party was called the German Worker’s Party, and he was there as a spy to keep an eye on it. It was not, as the name suggested, a devotedly left wing group, but one Hitler thought had potential, and as Hitler’s oratory became popular the party grew and Hitler became a leading figure.
At this point ‘National Socialism’ was a confused mishmash of ideas with multiple proponents, arguing for nationalism, anti-Semitism, and yes, some socialism. The party records don’t record the name change, but it’s generally believed a decision was taken to rename the party to attract people, and partly to forge links with other ‘national socialist’ parties. The meetings began to be advertised on red banners and posters, hoping for socialists to come in and then be confronted, sometimes violently: the party was aiming to attract as much attention and notoriety as possible. But the name was not Socialism, but National Socialism and as the 20s and 30s progressed, this became an ideology Hitler would expound upon at length.
[h=3]‘National Socialism’ and Nazism[/h] Hitler’s National Socialism, and quickly the only National Socialism which mattered, wished to promote those of ‘pure’ German blood, removing citizenship for Jews and aliens, and promoted eugenics, including the execution of the disabled and mentally ill. National Socialism did promote equality among Germans who passed their racist criteria, and submitted the individual to the will of the state, but did so as a right-wing racial movement which sought a nation of healthy Aryans living in a thousand year Reich, which would be achieved through war. In Nazi theory, a new, unified class was to be formed instead of religious, political and class divides, but this was to be done by rejecting ideologies such as liberalism, capitalism and socialism, and instead pursue a different idea, of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), built on war and race, ‘blood and soil’, and German heritage.
Before 1934 some in the party did promote anti-capitalist and socialist ideas, such as profit-sharing, nationalization and old-age benefits, but these were merely tolerated by Hitler as he gathered support, dropped once he secured power and often later executed, such as Gregor Strasser. There was no socialist redistribution of wealth or land under Hitler – although some property changed hands thanks to looting and invasion - and while both industrialists and workers were courted, it was the former who benefitted and the latter who found themselves the target of empty rhetoric. Indeed, Hitler became convinced that socialism was intimately connected to his even more long standing hatred - the Jews – and thus hated it even more. Socialists were the first to be locked up in concentration camps. More on the Nazi rise to power and creation of the dictatorship.
It’s worth pointing out that all aspects of Nazism had forerunners in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Hitler tended to cobble his ideology together from them; some historians think that ‘ideology’ gives Hitler too much credit for something which can be hard to pin down. He knew how to take things which made the socialists popular and apply them to give his party a boost. But historian Neil Gregor, in his introduction to a discussion of Nazism which includes many experts, says:
“As with other fascist ideologies and movements it subscribed to an ideology of national renewal, rebirth, and rejuvenation manifesting itself in extreme populist radical nationalism, militarism, and – in contradistinction to many other forms of fascism, extreme biological racism…the movement understood itself to be, and indeed was, a new form of political movement…the anti-Socialist, anti-liberal, and radical nationalist tenets of Nazi ideology applied particularly to the sentiments of a middle class disorientated by the domestic and international upheavals in the inter-war period.” (Neil Gregor, Nazism, Oxford, 2000 p 4-5.)
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od...r-a-Socialist-Debunking-a-Historical-Myth.htm
The Myth: Adolf Hitler, starter of World War 2 in Europe and driving force behind the Holocaust, was a socialist.
The Truth: Hitler hated socialism and communism and worked to destroy these ideologies. Nazism, confused as it was, was based on race, and fundamentally different from class focused socialism.
[h=3]Hitler as Conservative Weapon[/h] Twenty-first century commentators like to attack left leaning policies by calling them socialist, and occasionally follow this up by explaining how Hitler, the mass murdering dictator around whom the twentieth century pivoted, was a socialist himself. There’s no way anyone can, or ever should, defend Hitler, and so things like health-care reform are equated with something terrible, a Nazi regime which sought to conquer an empire and commit several genocides. The problem is, this is a distortion of history.
[h=3]Hitler as the Scourge of Socialism[/h] Richard Evans, in his magisterial three volume history of Nazi Germany, is quite clear on whether Hitler was a socialist: “…it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth of, socialism.” (The Coming of the Third Reich, Evans, p. 173). Not only was Hitler not a socialist himself, nor a communist, but he actually hated these ideologies and did his utmost to eradicate them. At first this involved organizing bands of thugs to attack socialists in the street, but grew into invading Russia, in part to enslave the population and earn ‘living ‘ room for Germans, and in part to wipe out communism and ‘Bolshevism’. More on the early Nazis.
The key element here is what Hitler did, believed and tried to create. Nazism, confused as it was, was fundamentally an ideology built around race, while socialism was entirely different: built around class. Hitler aimed to unite the right and left, including workers and their bosses, into a new German nation based on the racial identity of those in it. Socialism, in contrast, was a class struggle, aiming to build a workers state, whatever race the worker was from. Nazism drew on a range of pan-German theories, which wanted to blend Aryan workers and Aryan magnates into a super Aryan state, which would involve the eradication of class focused socialism, as well as Judaism and other ideas deemed non-German.
When Hitler came to power he attempted to dismantle trade unions and the shell that remained loyal to him; he supported the actions of leading industrialists, actions far removed from socialism which tends to want the opposite. Hitler used the fear of socialism and communism as a way of terrifying middle and upper class Germans into supporting him. Workers were targeted with slightly different propaganda, but these were promises simply to earn support, to get into power, and then to remake the workers along with everyone else into a racial state. There was to be no dictatorship of the proletariat as in socialism; there was just to be the dictatorship of the Fuhrer.
The belief that Hitler was a socialist seems to have emerged from two sources: the name of his political party, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, or Nazi Party, and the early presence of socialists in it.
[h=3]The National Socialist German Worker’s Party[/h] While it does look like a very socialist name, the problem is that ‘National Socialism’ is not socialism, but a different, fascist ideology. Hitler had originally joined when the party was called the German Worker’s Party, and he was there as a spy to keep an eye on it. It was not, as the name suggested, a devotedly left wing group, but one Hitler thought had potential, and as Hitler’s oratory became popular the party grew and Hitler became a leading figure.
At this point ‘National Socialism’ was a confused mishmash of ideas with multiple proponents, arguing for nationalism, anti-Semitism, and yes, some socialism. The party records don’t record the name change, but it’s generally believed a decision was taken to rename the party to attract people, and partly to forge links with other ‘national socialist’ parties. The meetings began to be advertised on red banners and posters, hoping for socialists to come in and then be confronted, sometimes violently: the party was aiming to attract as much attention and notoriety as possible. But the name was not Socialism, but National Socialism and as the 20s and 30s progressed, this became an ideology Hitler would expound upon at length.
[h=3]‘National Socialism’ and Nazism[/h] Hitler’s National Socialism, and quickly the only National Socialism which mattered, wished to promote those of ‘pure’ German blood, removing citizenship for Jews and aliens, and promoted eugenics, including the execution of the disabled and mentally ill. National Socialism did promote equality among Germans who passed their racist criteria, and submitted the individual to the will of the state, but did so as a right-wing racial movement which sought a nation of healthy Aryans living in a thousand year Reich, which would be achieved through war. In Nazi theory, a new, unified class was to be formed instead of religious, political and class divides, but this was to be done by rejecting ideologies such as liberalism, capitalism and socialism, and instead pursue a different idea, of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), built on war and race, ‘blood and soil’, and German heritage.
Before 1934 some in the party did promote anti-capitalist and socialist ideas, such as profit-sharing, nationalization and old-age benefits, but these were merely tolerated by Hitler as he gathered support, dropped once he secured power and often later executed, such as Gregor Strasser. There was no socialist redistribution of wealth or land under Hitler – although some property changed hands thanks to looting and invasion - and while both industrialists and workers were courted, it was the former who benefitted and the latter who found themselves the target of empty rhetoric. Indeed, Hitler became convinced that socialism was intimately connected to his even more long standing hatred - the Jews – and thus hated it even more. Socialists were the first to be locked up in concentration camps. More on the Nazi rise to power and creation of the dictatorship.
It’s worth pointing out that all aspects of Nazism had forerunners in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Hitler tended to cobble his ideology together from them; some historians think that ‘ideology’ gives Hitler too much credit for something which can be hard to pin down. He knew how to take things which made the socialists popular and apply them to give his party a boost. But historian Neil Gregor, in his introduction to a discussion of Nazism which includes many experts, says:
“As with other fascist ideologies and movements it subscribed to an ideology of national renewal, rebirth, and rejuvenation manifesting itself in extreme populist radical nationalism, militarism, and – in contradistinction to many other forms of fascism, extreme biological racism…the movement understood itself to be, and indeed was, a new form of political movement…the anti-Socialist, anti-liberal, and radical nationalist tenets of Nazi ideology applied particularly to the sentiments of a middle class disorientated by the domestic and international upheavals in the inter-war period.” (Neil Gregor, Nazism, Oxford, 2000 p 4-5.)
http://disinfo.com/2012/08/hitler-was-not-a-leftist/
Myth: Hitler was a leftist.
Fact: Nearly all of Hitler's beliefs placed him on the far right.
Summary
Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.
Argument
To most people, Hitler's beliefs belong to the extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and you arrive at Hitler's warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To deflect such criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack, claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the political left, not the right.
The primary basis for this claim is that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word "National" evokes the state, and the word "Socialist" openly identifies itself as such.
However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this term: it was a misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Liberal Democrat" party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether Hitler called his party "socialist," but whether or not it actually was.
In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people -- after all, wasn't the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and political parties have called themselves "socialist," but none have actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few basic political terms.
Perhaps the primary concern of any political ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This includes factories, farmlands, machinery, etc. Generally there have been three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are excluded. The third (and untried) approach is socialism, where everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at the other.
Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own companies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production.
The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a "socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-socialist.
And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke. It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism. Technically, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of production. The Nazi "Charter of Labor" gave employers complete power over their workers. It established the employer as the "leader of the enterprise," and read: "The leader of the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise." (1)
The employer, however, was subject to the frequent orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed, making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following Keynesian-like policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful without resorting to dictatorship or war.)
Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:
There was no part of Nazism, therefore, that even remotely resembled socialism. But what about the political nature of Nazism in general? Did it belong to the left, or to the right? Let's take a closer look:
The politics of Nazism
The political right is popularly associated with the following principles. Of course, it goes without saying that these are generalizations, and not every person on the far right believes in every principle, or disbelieves its opposite. Most people's political beliefs are complex, and cannot be neatly pigeonholed. This is as true of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a leftist, it's worth reviewing the tenets popularly associated with the right. These include:
Individualism over collectivism.
Many conservatives argue that Hitler was a leftist because he subjugated the individual to the state. However, this characterization is wrong, for several reasons.
The first error is in assuming that this is exclusively a liberal trait. Actually, U.S. conservatives take considerable pride in being patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed their lives for their country. The Marine Corps is a classic example: as every Marine knows, all sense of individuality is obliterated in the Marines Corps, and one is subject first, foremost and always to the group.
The second error is forgetting that all human beings subscribe to individualism and collectivism. If you believe that you are personally responsible for taking care of yourself, you are an individualist. If you freely belong and contribute to any group -- say, an employing business, church, club, family, nation, or cause -- then you are a collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a person inherently "liberal" or "conservative," and to claim that you are an "evil socialist" because you champion a particular group is not a serious argument.
Political scientists therefore do not label people "liberal" or "conservative" on the basis of their individualism or collectivism. Much more important is how they approach their individualism and collectivism. What groups does a person belong to? How is power distributed in the group? Does it practice one-person rule, minority rule, majority rule, or self-rule? Liberals believe in majority rule. Hitler practiced one-person rule. Thus, there is no comparison.
And on that score, conservatives might feel that they are off the hook, too, because they claim to prefer self-rule to one-person rule. But their actions say otherwise. Many of the institutions that conservatives favor are really quite dictatorial: the military, the church, the patriarchal family, the business firm.
Hitler himself downplayed all groups except for the state, which he raised to supreme significance in his writings. However, he did not identify the state as most people do, as a random collection of people in artificially drawn borders. Instead, he identified the German state as its racially pure stock of German or Aryan blood. In Mein Kampf, Hitler freely and interchangeably used the terms "Aryan race," "German culture" and "folkish state." To him they were synonyms, as the quotes below show. There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were not part of Hitler's state, while there were Germans outside Germany (for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that Hitler's political philosophy was not really based on "statism" as we know it today. It was actually based on racism -- again, a subject that hits uncomfortably closer to home for conservatives, not liberals.
As Hitler himself wrote:
Allan Bullock, probably the world's greatest Hitler historian, sums up Hitler's political method in one sentence:
Bullock writes of Hitler's views on Marxism:
Hitler was hardly an "idealist" in the sense that political scientists use the term. The standard definition of an idealist is someone who believes that cooperation and peaceful coexistence can occur among peoples. A realist, however, is someone who sees the world as an unstable and dangerous place, and prepares for war, if not to deter it, then to survive it. It goes without saying that Hitler was one of the greatest realists of all time. Nonetheless, Hitler had his own twisted utopia, which he described:
It may seem ridiculous to include this issue in a review of Hitler's politics, but, believe it or not, conservatives on the Internet frequently equate Hitler's vegetarianism with the vegetarianism practised by liberals concerned about the environment and the ethical treatment of animals.
Hitler's vegetarianism had nothing to do with his political beliefs. He became a vegetarian shortly after the death of his girlfriend and half-niece, Geli Raubal. Their relationship was a stormy one, and it ended in her apparent suicide. There were rumors that Hitler had arranged her murder, but Hitler would remain deeply distraught over her loss for the rest of his life. As one historian writes:
Gun ownership over gun control
Perhaps one of the pro-gun lobby's favorite arguments is that if German citizens had had the right to keep and bear arms, Hitler would have never been able to tyrannize the country. And to this effect, pro-gun advocates often quote the following:
The Firearms Policy Journal (January 1997) writes:
Common sense over theory or science.
Hitler was notorious for his anti-intellectualism:
Hitler's views on religion were complex. Although ostensibly an atheist, he considered himself a cultural Catholic, and frequently evoked God, the Creator and Providence in his writings. Throughout his life he would remain an envious admirer of the Christian Church and its power over the masses. Here is but one example:
In 1933, the Catholic Center Party cast its large and decisive vote in favor of Hitler's Enabling Bill. This bill essentially gave Chancellor Hitler the sweeping dictatorial powers he was seeking. Historian Guenter Lewy describes a meeting between Hitler and the German Catholic authorities shortly afterwards:
Once Hitler assumed power, he signed a Concordat, or agreement, with the Catholic Church. Eugenio Pacelli (the man who would eventually become Pope Pius XII) was the Vatican diplomat who drew up the Concordat, and he considered it a triumph. In return for promises which Hitler increasingly broke, the Church dissolved all Catholic organizations in Germany, including the Catholic Center Party. Bishops were to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clergy were to see to the pastoral care of Germany's armed forces (regardless of what those armed forces did). (63)
The Concordat eliminated all Catholic resistance to Hitler; after this, the German bishops gave Hitler their full and unqualified support. A bishops' conference at Fulda, 1933, resulted in agreement with Hitler's case for extending Lebensraum, or German territory. (64) Bishop Bornewasser told a congregation of Catholic young people at Trier: "With our heads high and with firm steps we have entered the new Reich and are ready to serve it body and soul." (65) Vicar-General Steinman greeted each Berlin mass with the shout, "Heil Hitler!" (66)
Hitler, on the other hand, kept up his attack on the Church. Nazi bands stormed into the few remaining Catholic institutions, beat up Catholic youths and arrested Catholic officials. The Vatican was dismayed, but it did not protest. (67) In some instances, it was hard to tell if the Church supported its own persecution. Hitler muzzled the independent Catholic press (about 400 daily papers in 1933) and subordinated it to Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. Yet soon the Catholic Press was doing more than what the Nazis required of it -- for example, coordinating their Nazi propaganda to prepare the people for the 1940 offensive against the West. (68) Throughout the war, the Catholic press would remain one of the Third Reich's best disseminators of propaganda.
Pacelli became the new Pope Pius XII in 1939, and he immediately improved relations with Hitler. He broke protocol by personally signing a letter in German to Hitler expressing warm hopes of friendly relations. Shortly afterwards, the Church celebrated Hitler's birthday by ringing bells, flying swastika flags from church towers and holding thanksgiving services for the Fuhrer. (69) Ringing church bells to celebrate and affirm the bishops' allegiance to the Reich would become quite common throughout the war; after the German army conquered France, the church bells rang for an entire week, and swastikas flew over the churches for ten days.
But perhaps the greatest failure of Pope Pius XII was his silence over the Holocaust, even though he knew it was in progress. Although there are many heroic stories of Catholics helping Jews survive the Holocaust, they do not include Pope Pius, the Holy See, or the German Catholic authorities. When a reporter asked Pius why he did not protest the liquidation of the Jews, the Pope answered, "Dear friend, do not forget that millions of Catholics are serving in the German armies. Am I to involve them in a conflict of conscience?" (70) As perhaps the world's greatest moral leader, he was charged with precisely that responsibility.
The history of Hitler and the Church reveals a relationship built on mutual distrust and philosophical rejection, but also shared goals, benefits, admiration, envy, friendliness, and ultimate alliance.
Myth: Hitler was a leftist.
Fact: Nearly all of Hitler's beliefs placed him on the far right.
Summary
Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.
Argument
To most people, Hitler's beliefs belong to the extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and you arrive at Hitler's warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To deflect such criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack, claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the political left, not the right.
The primary basis for this claim is that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word "National" evokes the state, and the word "Socialist" openly identifies itself as such.
However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this term: it was a misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Liberal Democrat" party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether Hitler called his party "socialist," but whether or not it actually was.
In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people -- after all, wasn't the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and political parties have called themselves "socialist," but none have actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few basic political terms.
Perhaps the primary concern of any political ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This includes factories, farmlands, machinery, etc. Generally there have been three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are excluded. The third (and untried) approach is socialism, where everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at the other.
Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own companies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production.
The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a "socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-socialist.
And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke. It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism. Technically, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of production. The Nazi "Charter of Labor" gave employers complete power over their workers. It established the employer as the "leader of the enterprise," and read: "The leader of the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise." (1)
The employer, however, was subject to the frequent orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed, making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following Keynesian-like policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful without resorting to dictatorship or war.)
Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:
- "The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly 'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it." (2)
There was no part of Nazism, therefore, that even remotely resembled socialism. But what about the political nature of Nazism in general? Did it belong to the left, or to the right? Let's take a closer look:
The politics of Nazism
The political right is popularly associated with the following principles. Of course, it goes without saying that these are generalizations, and not every person on the far right believes in every principle, or disbelieves its opposite. Most people's political beliefs are complex, and cannot be neatly pigeonholed. This is as true of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a leftist, it's worth reviewing the tenets popularly associated with the right. These include:
- Individualism over collectivism.
- Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.
- Eugenics over freedom of reproduction.
- Merit over equality.
- Competition over cooperation.
- Power politics and militarism over pacifism.
- One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.
- Capitalism over Marxism.
- Realism over idealism.
- Nationalism over internationalism.
- Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.
- Meat-eating over vegetarianism.
- Gun ownership over gun control
- Common sense over theory or science.
- Pragmatism over principle.
- Religion over secularism.
Individualism over collectivism.
Many conservatives argue that Hitler was a leftist because he subjugated the individual to the state. However, this characterization is wrong, for several reasons.
The first error is in assuming that this is exclusively a liberal trait. Actually, U.S. conservatives take considerable pride in being patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed their lives for their country. The Marine Corps is a classic example: as every Marine knows, all sense of individuality is obliterated in the Marines Corps, and one is subject first, foremost and always to the group.
The second error is forgetting that all human beings subscribe to individualism and collectivism. If you believe that you are personally responsible for taking care of yourself, you are an individualist. If you freely belong and contribute to any group -- say, an employing business, church, club, family, nation, or cause -- then you are a collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a person inherently "liberal" or "conservative," and to claim that you are an "evil socialist" because you champion a particular group is not a serious argument.
Political scientists therefore do not label people "liberal" or "conservative" on the basis of their individualism or collectivism. Much more important is how they approach their individualism and collectivism. What groups does a person belong to? How is power distributed in the group? Does it practice one-person rule, minority rule, majority rule, or self-rule? Liberals believe in majority rule. Hitler practiced one-person rule. Thus, there is no comparison.
And on that score, conservatives might feel that they are off the hook, too, because they claim to prefer self-rule to one-person rule. But their actions say otherwise. Many of the institutions that conservatives favor are really quite dictatorial: the military, the church, the patriarchal family, the business firm.
Hitler himself downplayed all groups except for the state, which he raised to supreme significance in his writings. However, he did not identify the state as most people do, as a random collection of people in artificially drawn borders. Instead, he identified the German state as its racially pure stock of German or Aryan blood. In Mein Kampf, Hitler freely and interchangeably used the terms "Aryan race," "German culture" and "folkish state." To him they were synonyms, as the quotes below show. There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were not part of Hitler's state, while there were Germans outside Germany (for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that Hitler's political philosophy was not really based on "statism" as we know it today. It was actually based on racism -- again, a subject that hits uncomfortably closer to home for conservatives, not liberals.
As Hitler himself wrote:
- "The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." (4)
"The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogenous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence as a race… Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the preservation of those original racial elements which bestow culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which… assures the preservation of this nationality…" (5)
"The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of raising them to a dominant position." (6)
- "In [the Aryan], the instinct for self-preservation has reached its noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands it, even sacrifices it." (7)
"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture." (8)
- "All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan." (9)
"Aryan races -- often absurdly small numerically -- subject foreign peoples, and then… develop the intellectual and organizational capacities dormant within them." (10)
"If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop… Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up… the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture." (11)
"Every racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline of the hybrid product…" (12)
"It is the function above all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a fundamental halt to any further bastardization." (13)
"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood…" (14)
- "The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself…" (15)
"The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of all life. It must take care to keep it pure… It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the nation. Here the state… must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and therefore pass it on…" (16)
- "The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence. But as in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from above, but must struggle through for themselves…" (17)
"It must not be lamented if so many men set out on the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will in this way be recognized, and will be the victor." (p. 512.)
- "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." (18)
"It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions." (19)
"The idea of struggle is old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle… In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself in the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle… If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won." (20)
Allan Bullock, probably the world's greatest Hitler historian, sums up Hitler's political method in one sentence:
- "Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitler's ideas can be reduced to a simple claim for power which recognizes only one relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that of force." (21)
- "If the German people in its historic development had possessed that herd unity [defined here by Hitler as racial solidarity] which other peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of the globe. World history would have taken a different course, and no one can distinguish whether in this way we would not have obtained what so many blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining and whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious sword of a master people, putting the world into the service of a higher culture." (22)
"We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost territories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms." (23)
"In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism." (24)
- "The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects… a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion." (25)
"The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!" (26)
"By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature…" (27)
"For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards." (28)
"There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word 'council' must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man." (29)
"When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes." (30)
"The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism…" (31)
"Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to comprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy." (32)
Bullock writes of Hitler's views on Marxism:
- "While Hitler's attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt, towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility… Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he detested -- mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism." (33)
- "The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism." (34)
"In the years 1913 and 1914, I… expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism." (35)
"In the economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the political sphere." (36)
"The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extinction." (37)
"Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews." (38)
"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight." (39)
Hitler was hardly an "idealist" in the sense that political scientists use the term. The standard definition of an idealist is someone who believes that cooperation and peaceful coexistence can occur among peoples. A realist, however, is someone who sees the world as an unstable and dangerous place, and prepares for war, if not to deter it, then to survive it. It goes without saying that Hitler was one of the greatest realists of all time. Nonetheless, Hitler had his own twisted utopia, which he described:
- "We are not simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever be possible to bring about a perfect era. But this relieves no one of the obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome weaknesses, and strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own accord will create only too many limitations. For that very reason, however, man must try to serve the ultimate goal, and failures must not deter him, any more than he can abandon a system of justice merely because mistakes creep into it…" (40)
"The same boy who feels like throwing up when he hears the tirades of a pacifist 'idealist' is ready to give up his life for the ideal of his nationality." (41)
- "The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when… their international poisoners are exterminated." (42)
"The severest obstacle to the present-day worker's approach to the national community lies not in the defense of his class interests, but in his international leadership and attitude which are hostile to the people and the fatherland." (43)
"Thus, the reservoir from which the young [Nazi] movement must gather its supporters will primarily be the masses of our workers. Its work will be to tear these away from the international delusion… and lead them to the national community…" (44)
- "Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on earth." (45)
"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others." (46)
It may seem ridiculous to include this issue in a review of Hitler's politics, but, believe it or not, conservatives on the Internet frequently equate Hitler's vegetarianism with the vegetarianism practised by liberals concerned about the environment and the ethical treatment of animals.
Hitler's vegetarianism had nothing to do with his political beliefs. He became a vegetarian shortly after the death of his girlfriend and half-niece, Geli Raubal. Their relationship was a stormy one, and it ended in her apparent suicide. There were rumors that Hitler had arranged her murder, but Hitler would remain deeply distraught over her loss for the rest of his life. As one historian writes:
- "Curiously, shortly after her death, Hitler looked with disdain on a piece of ham being served during breakfast and refused to eat it, saying it was like eating a corpse. From that moment on, he refused to eat meat." (47)
Gun ownership over gun control
Perhaps one of the pro-gun lobby's favorite arguments is that if German citizens had had the right to keep and bear arms, Hitler would have never been able to tyrannize the country. And to this effect, pro-gun advocates often quote the following:
- "1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." - Adolf Hitler
The Firearms Policy Journal (January 1997) writes:
- "The Nazi Party did not ride to power confiscating guns. They rode to power on the inability of the Weimar Republic to confiscate their guns. They did not consolidate their power confiscating guns either. There is no historical evidence that Nazis ever went door to door in Germany confiscating guns. The Germans had a fetish about paperwork and documented everything. These searches and confiscations would have been carefully recorded. If the documents are there, let them be presented as evidence."
Common sense over theory or science.
Hitler was notorious for his anti-intellectualism:
- "The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again… In many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and earning his living in a definite field." (48)
"Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life." (49)
"The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling." (50)
"A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth." (51)
- "The question of the movement's inner organization is one of expediency and not of principle." (52)
Hitler's views on religion were complex. Although ostensibly an atheist, he considered himself a cultural Catholic, and frequently evoked God, the Creator and Providence in his writings. Throughout his life he would remain an envious admirer of the Christian Church and its power over the masses. Here is but one example:
- "We can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice… comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that its power of resistance does not lie in its lesser or greater adaptation to the scientific findings of the moment, which in reality are always fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once established, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of faith. And so it stands today more firmly than ever." (53)
- "The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, [religious] faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude… For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute. As long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by fools or criminals." (54)
- "For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else he has no right to be in politics…" (55)
"Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties." (56)
"Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends." (57)
"Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other." (58)
- "'Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas-lamp I could see four people sitting around a table…' As Hitler frankly acknowledges, this very obscurity was an attraction. It was only in a party which, like himself, was beginning at the bottom that he had any prospect of playing a leading part and imposing his ideas. In the established parties there was no room for him, he would be a nobody." (59)
In 1933, the Catholic Center Party cast its large and decisive vote in favor of Hitler's Enabling Bill. This bill essentially gave Chancellor Hitler the sweeping dictatorial powers he was seeking. Historian Guenter Lewy describes a meeting between Hitler and the German Catholic authorities shortly afterwards:
- "On 26 April 1933 Hitler had a conversation with Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann [the Catholic leadership in Germany]. The subject was the common fight against liberalism, Socialism and Bolshevism, discussed in the friendliest terms. In the course of the conversation Hitler said that he was only doing to the Jews what the church had done to them over the past fifteen hundred years. The prelates did not contradict him." (60)
Once Hitler assumed power, he signed a Concordat, or agreement, with the Catholic Church. Eugenio Pacelli (the man who would eventually become Pope Pius XII) was the Vatican diplomat who drew up the Concordat, and he considered it a triumph. In return for promises which Hitler increasingly broke, the Church dissolved all Catholic organizations in Germany, including the Catholic Center Party. Bishops were to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clergy were to see to the pastoral care of Germany's armed forces (regardless of what those armed forces did). (63)
The Concordat eliminated all Catholic resistance to Hitler; after this, the German bishops gave Hitler their full and unqualified support. A bishops' conference at Fulda, 1933, resulted in agreement with Hitler's case for extending Lebensraum, or German territory. (64) Bishop Bornewasser told a congregation of Catholic young people at Trier: "With our heads high and with firm steps we have entered the new Reich and are ready to serve it body and soul." (65) Vicar-General Steinman greeted each Berlin mass with the shout, "Heil Hitler!" (66)
Hitler, on the other hand, kept up his attack on the Church. Nazi bands stormed into the few remaining Catholic institutions, beat up Catholic youths and arrested Catholic officials. The Vatican was dismayed, but it did not protest. (67) In some instances, it was hard to tell if the Church supported its own persecution. Hitler muzzled the independent Catholic press (about 400 daily papers in 1933) and subordinated it to Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. Yet soon the Catholic Press was doing more than what the Nazis required of it -- for example, coordinating their Nazi propaganda to prepare the people for the 1940 offensive against the West. (68) Throughout the war, the Catholic press would remain one of the Third Reich's best disseminators of propaganda.
Pacelli became the new Pope Pius XII in 1939, and he immediately improved relations with Hitler. He broke protocol by personally signing a letter in German to Hitler expressing warm hopes of friendly relations. Shortly afterwards, the Church celebrated Hitler's birthday by ringing bells, flying swastika flags from church towers and holding thanksgiving services for the Fuhrer. (69) Ringing church bells to celebrate and affirm the bishops' allegiance to the Reich would become quite common throughout the war; after the German army conquered France, the church bells rang for an entire week, and swastikas flew over the churches for ten days.
But perhaps the greatest failure of Pope Pius XII was his silence over the Holocaust, even though he knew it was in progress. Although there are many heroic stories of Catholics helping Jews survive the Holocaust, they do not include Pope Pius, the Holy See, or the German Catholic authorities. When a reporter asked Pius why he did not protest the liquidation of the Jews, the Pope answered, "Dear friend, do not forget that millions of Catholics are serving in the German armies. Am I to involve them in a conflict of conscience?" (70) As perhaps the world's greatest moral leader, he was charged with precisely that responsibility.
The history of Hitler and the Church reveals a relationship built on mutual distrust and philosophical rejection, but also shared goals, benefits, admiration, envy, friendliness, and ultimate alliance.
