Nazism

"[T]he enemy of totalitarian Nazism is not in the East. It is not Russian communism. The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxist socialism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, noneconomic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following… During the last few years Russia has therefore been forced to adopt one purely totalitarian and fascist principle after the other; not, it must be emphasized, because of a ‘Stalinist conspiracy,” but because there was no other possibility."

"Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion. And it has been proven as much of an illusion in Stalinist Russia as it proven an illusion in pre-Hitler Germany. Communism in anything but name was abandoned in Russia when the Five-Year Plan was substituted for the New Economic Policy (NEP) after Lenin’s death."

"The full name of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, the political movement that brought him to power and supplied the infrastructure of the fascist dictatorship over which he would preside, was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers' Party. According to historians, the complicated moniker reveals more about the image the party wanted to project and the constituency it aimed to build than it did about the Nazis' true political goals, which were building a state based on racial superiority and brute-force governance. Given that Nazism is traditionally held to be an extreme right-wing ideology, the party's conspicuous use of the term "socialist" — which refers to a political system normally plotted on the far-left end of the ideological spectrum — has long been a source of confusion, not to mention heated debate among partisans seeking to distance themselves from the genocidal taint of Nazi Germany."

"The debate has heated up to the point of critical mass in recent years, thanks to the rise of nationalist political movements reacting in part to stagnant economic conditions and the perceived threat of globalism, and also in part to a flood of immigrants and foreign refugees pouring into Europe and the United States because of war and economic crises abroad. A subset of these groups, identified as ethno-nationalists, hold racially-tinged views ranging from nativism (the belief that the interests of native-born people must be defended against encroachment by immigrants) to full-on, hate-mongering white supremacy. Some of the latter openly align themselves with historical Nazism, to the point of waving swastikas, spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric, and imitating the tactics of Adolf Hitler. Add to this mix the ascendancy of President Donald Trump, who won the 2016 election in part by courting a nativist, anti-immigrant constituency, and whose reticent condemnation of white nationalist protesters who held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that erupted in fatal violence in August 2017 drew howls of criticism from all but his most loyal supporters, and the urgency of sorting out these political associations begins to make sense."

"However, the assumption that because the word "socialist" appeared in the party's name and socialist words and ideas popped up in the writings and speeches of top Nazis then the Nazis must have been actual socialists is naive and ahistorical. What the evidence shows, on the contrary, is that Nazi Party leaders paid mere lip service to socialist ideals on the way to achieving their one true goal: raw, totalitarian power."

"Despite continuing certain Weimar-era social welfare programs, the Nazis proceeded to restrict their availability to "racially worthy" (non-Jewish) beneficiaries. In terms of labor, worker strikes were outlawed. Trade unions were replaced by the party-controlled German Labor Front, primarily tasked with increasing productivity, not protecting workers. In lieu of the socialist ideal of an egalitarian, worker-run state, the National Socialists erected a party-run police state whose governing structure was anti-democratic, rigidly hierarchical, and militaristic in nature. As to the redistribution of wealth, the socialist ideal "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was rejected in favor of a credo more on the order of "Take everything that belongs to non-Aryans and keep it for the master race." Above all, the Nazis were German white nationalists. What they stood for was the ascendancy of the "Aryan" race and the German nation, by any means necessary. Despite co-opting the name, some of the rhetoric, and even some of the precepts of socialism, Hitler and party did so with utter cynicism, and with vastly different goals. The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality."

"The presence of a proletarian aspect in Nazism is undeniable, as in the figure of Hitler himself, who had none of the traits of a 'gentleman,' of an aristocratic type di razza. This proletarian aspect and even vulgarity of National Socialism was often noticed, especially in Austria after its annexation to the Reich and after the phase of a rash 'national' infatuation of Austrians for 'Greater Germany.'"

"It is true, as Taylor contended, that Hitler improvised his way through the diplomatic crises of the mid-1930s with a combination of intuition and luck. He admitted that he was a gambler with a low aversion to risk ('All my life I have played va banque'). But what was he gambling to win? This is not a difficult question to answer, because he answered it repeatedly. He was not content, like Stresemann or Bruning, merely to dismantle the Versailles Treaty - a task that the Depression had half-done for him even before he became Chancellor. Nor was his ambition to restore Germany to her position in 1914. It is not even correct, as the German historian Fritz Fischer suggested, that Hitler's aims were similar to those of Germany's leaders during the First World War, namely to carve out an East European sphere of influence at the expense of Russia. Hitler's goal was different. Simply stated, it was to enlarge the German Reich so that it embraced as far as possible the entire German Volk and in the process to annihilate what he saw as the principal threats to its existence, namely the Jews and Soviet Communism (which to Hitler were one and the same). Like Japan's proponents of territorial expansion, he sought living space in the belief that Germany required more territory because of her over-endowment with people and her under-endowment with strategic raw materials. The German case was not quite the same, however, because there were already large numbers of Germans living in much of the space that Hitler coveted- When Hitler pressed for self-determination on behalf of ethnic Germans who were not living under German rule - first in the Saarland, then in the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland and Danzig - he was not making a succession of quite reasonable demands, as British statesmen were inclined to assume. He was making a single unreasonable demand which implied territorial claims extending far beyond the River Vistula in Poland. Hitler wanted not merely a Greater Germany; he wanted the Greatest Possible Germany. Given the very wide geographical distribution of Germans in East Central Europe, that implied a German empire stretching from the Rhine to the Volga. Nor was that the limit of Hitler's ambitions, for the creation of this maximal Germany was intended to be the basis for a German world empire that would be, at the very least, a match for the British Empire."

"There are some good reasons why National Socialism belongs to the left rather than the right politically. In any case, [Hitler] had more in common with Stalin's totalitarianism than with Mussolini's fascism. In Italy in the twenties and thirties there were still the traditional class differences, while Hitler, unlike the socialists of all shades, promoted social equality. After the so-called seizure of power, contrary to what some members of the upper classes hoped, he did not restore the privileges lost in 1918. Instead, he simply replaced Marx's term of classless society with the vocabulary of the ‘people's community’ and sold the still terrifyingly socialist-sounding term as a kind of permanent fraternity celebration."

"After the war, the army sent [Hitler] to investigate political movements in Munich. In the insignificant German Workers' Party he discovered the opportunity and latent talents that brought him success. He left the army, joined the party, and rapidly became its most skilled speaker and propagandist. Under the name National Socialist German Workers' Party, [NSDAP or Nazis], it held its first large public meeting in 1920, when Hitler denounced democracy, capitalism, and the Jews. The next year, facing a split within the party, he resigned and only returned when he was given complete control. He established the 'Fuhrer Principle' of unquestioning obedience that marked the rest of his career. As his following grew, he attempted to seize power in Bavaria in 1923. He failed and went to prison. There he wrote the autobiographical Mein Kampf [My Struggle] that blamed all the ills of society on the Jews and laid out plans for a future totalitarian state. After his release, he re-established his control of the NSDAP but made little progress until he redirected it away from the generally socialist workers to small towns and the lower middle class. His stress on traditional German values and denunciation of the Jews and Communists brought him increasing support, especially as the Depression struck Germany. The Nazis seemed the only party willing to take drastic action to save the economy. Hitler worked incessantly, giving vague but powerful speeches that played on the emotions of his audience. He also built practical support in the storm of Storm Troopers, thugs in brown shirts who spread party propaganda and disrupted meetings of its opponents. By 1933 the Nazis were the largest party in Germany."

"Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism have in common that they offered the atomized individual a new refuge and security. These systems are the culmination of alienation."

"The discource of Nazism was vital force, power was its only end, and violence it only means. By camouflaging its means by its end through the use of Leninist language, it betrayed its origins, like vice paying hidden homage to virtue, as it continued to declare that reconciliation of humanity was its goal. .... To a society justifiably terrified by the threat of Communism, the Nazis offered protection and renewal, at the price of the same means used by Communism but in an ideological version that radically suppressed any idea of morality. ... Nazism was a German form of turned against its initial form. ... It was in Nazi Germany that Bolshevism was perfected; there, political power truly absorbed all spheres of existence, from the economy to religion, from technology to the soul. The irony, the tragedy, of history was that both totalitarian regimes, identical in their aim for absolute power over dehumanized beings, presented themselves as protection from the danger presented by the other."

"[Nazi] Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness."

"cannot be summarized in a program of platform. It can be better understood as a maelstrom of prejudices, passions, hatreds, emotions, resentments, biases, hopes, and attitudes that, when combined, most often resembled a religious crusade wearing the mask of a political ideology."

"[P]erpetrators of the Holocaust were ordinary Germans. Many were not particularly Nazified... not being in the SS or even in the . ...Many of the perpetrators, at least in the police battalions, were older. They were not particularly martial. ...It is not just that perpetrators were ordinary Germans, but that there were also vast numbers of them... The number... who took part in the extermination of the Jew... was greater than 100,000... probably far greater. ...Over 10,000 German camps of various sizes and kinds existed for incarcerating and destroying Jews and non-Jews. ...The German justice center ...catalogued over 333,000 people ...who served ...institutions used to kill Jews and others. ...Nazi authorities ...assigned ...virtually anyone who was available. The perpetrators were not coerced to kill. ...[I]n many units officers announced... they did not have to kill, and... at least nine police battalions... had been informed that they did not have to kill. There is similar evidence for the some... s. There is... evidence... Himmler... issue[d] orders allowing those... not up to the killing... excused... [O]rdinary Germans killed... [T]he... initiative... zeal, and... cruelty... all were found among the ordinary Germans who were the perpetrators of the Holocaust."

"the Nazis believed that humankind is not something universal or eternal, but rather a mutable species that can evolve or degenerate. Man can evolve into superman, or can degenerate into subhuman."