Hitler was in fact even more clearly a Leftist than he was a nationalist or a racist. Although in his speeches he undoubtedly appealed to the nationalism of the German people, Locke (2001) makes a strong case that Hitler was not in fact a very good nationalist in that he always emphasized that his primary loyalty was to what he called the Aryan race -- and Germany was only one part of that race. Locke then goes on to point out that Hitler was not even a very consistent racist in that the Dutch, the Danes etc. were clearly Aryan even by Hitler's own eccentric definition yet he attacked them whilst at the same time allying himself with the very non-Aryan Japanese. And the Russians and the Poles (whom Hitler also attacked) are rather more frequently blonde and blue-eyed (Hitler's ideal) than the Germans themselves are! So what DID Hitler believe in?
If Ray knew anything, he would have known that Hitler had a bizarre reasoning that the Japanese were the "Aryans of the east."
Lets have a look at the Generalplan-Ost shall we? It laid down that persons belonging to those ethnic groups who lived in geographical areas that were identified for grman settlement (these included Ingermanland [the area around Leningrad], parts of Belorussia, parts of West Ukraine, Crimea, and the Dnepr bend) would be germanised if suitable, or else expelled from those areas. Approximately one-eighth of ethnic Poles were considered suitable for germanisation. The remainder were to be expelled, most likely to Siberia. It should be noted that the criteria by which suitability for germanisation was to be judged were not solely anthropological, ie physical features, but also cultural, social and economic, eg for a Polish family to be considered suitable for germanisation, it had to exhibit a superior level of initiative, cleanliness, economic efficiency and various other qualities.
Since the Baltic States were scheduled for German settlement, the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were also to be selected for germanisation. The German demographic experts estimated that about half of the Baltic peoples would be suitable for germanisation; those considered unsuitable would be resettled in European Russia where they would form a class of middle-level administrators assisting the German overlords, ie a role they had taken during the Tsarist period.
With regard to the South Slavic peoples, there were no plans for these, except for the Slovenes, who were to be germanised or deported to Serbia, since Slovenia was scheduled for German settlement. There were no plans for Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Bulgars et, since the areas they inhabited wre not designated as areas of German settlement (indeed, the ethnic Germans who already lived there were to be repatriated to the German settlement areas. The future of those countries was to be as German satellites, providing raw materials to German industry.
Now, it is true that The people that were in the Slavic regions that met the Nazi criteria were attempted to be recruited to the Nazi side. Even babies in the conquered regions that the Nazis felt were of Aryan heritage and had Aryan characteristics were taken and given to German families. "Folker Heinecke" is but one example of this. Of course, all the historical writers recognize the Nazi conception of 'race' as being somewhat inconsistent at times, almost all racists are. And the Nazis inconsistencies had much to do with their trying to make racism into a 'science' which it could never be, because it had no real scientific basis and they had to make it up as they went along. It should also be noted that even having Blonde hair and blue eyes, and even being an aryan did not save you from the concentration camps.
"Tall and thin, with penetrating blue eyes, Jan Kazimierz Bokus, at 90, is the [Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors] association's oldest surviving founding member." - ynetnews.com article
"Her fair skin and bright blue eyes marked her out instantly as an Aryan, a non-Jew. She had been transported from a holding camp east of Budapest to Auschwitz where she was murdered in the gas chambers within a matter of weeks. The missionary Jane Haining died for helping Jewish children in her care survive the Nazi regime." - Auschwitz.dk article on Jane Haining.
"But I was 20, I had blond hair, blue eyes and spoke perfect German." - Tale of a survivor from auschwitz
And the reason why he attacked the Dutch, the Danes, the French and the British and Norway (Ray missed those out) etc was purely militaristic, not for racial reasons.
And it is also true that Austria/Germany is only one part of Hitler's "Aryan Race", but can you guess which "Aryan nation-state" he considered ought to lead the other ones?
So the Nazis weren't good nationalists eh? what a laugh, and not surprisingly Ray ends up contridicting himself on this statement as we shall see.
In his book Der Fuehrer, prewar Leftist writer Konrad Heiden corrects the now almost universal assumption that Hitler's idea of race was biologically-based. The Nazi conception of race traces, as is well-known, to the work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. But what did Chamberlain say about race? It should not by now be surprising that he said something that sounds thoroughly Leftist. Anthropologist Robert Gayre summarizes Chamberlain's ideas as follows:
"On the contrary he taught (like many "progressives" today) that racial mixture was desirable, for, according to him, it was only out of racial mixture that the gifted could be created. He considered that the evidence of this was provided by the Prussian, whom he saw as the superman, resulting from a cross between the German (or Anglo-Saxon "German") and the Slav. From this Chamberlain went on to argue that the sum of all these talented people would then form a "race," not of blood but of "affinity."So the Nazi idea of race rejected biology just as thoroughly as modern Leftist ideas about race do! If that seems all too jarring to believe, Gayre goes on to discuss the matter at length.
Most anthropologists have come to the conclusion that "race" is not a useful term, not because of their Political leanings, But because of the Scientific method, which last time i checked, Science is not "leftist"
"Interpretation of the word 'race' as it applies to groups of persons is inconsistent, and the definition of this term depends on the motive of the person using it. The Oxford English Dictionary acknowledges the imprecision of delimiting race, and it lists five definitions that range from a group as small as a family to a group as large as a species.No, in actuality, the Nazi idea of race embraced pseudo-science, they didn't reject biology they perverted it like Ray perverts reality.
Most anthropologists have come to the conclusion that 'race' is not a useful term:
The term race, as applied to human types, is vague. It can have a biological significance only when a race represents a uniform, closely inbred group, in which all family lines are alike—as in pure breeds of domesticated animals. These conditions are never realized in human types and impossible in large populations. As a folk concept, race is employed to attribute not only physical characteristics but also psychological and moral ones to members of given categories, thus justifying or naturalizing a discriminatory system.
Race is therefore an unscientific social construct; that is, the concept of race is created from prevailing social perceptions and is without scientific foundation. The last definition given alludes to the destructive idea of race, which has fueled racist and eugenic movements with allegedly scientific claims of racial superiority and inferiority.
Anywhere from 30 to several hundred human races, defined using anthropologic criteria, have been proposed. Although this complex classification system is not commonly used in the media or in medicine, many persons have intuitively adopted the anthropologic definition of race; in the 1990 U.S. Census, nearly 300 'races' were volunteered. Indeed, this broader interpretation of race conforms more to the definition of an ethnic group, which is a group 'of people within a cultural system who desire or are given special status based on traits such as religion, culture, language, or appearance'." - Ritchie Witzig, "The Medicalization of Race: Scientific Legitimization of a Flawed Social Construct", Annals of Internal Medicine (Vol. 125, 1996).
And anyways it is just Wrong to mix Chamberlain and the Left, we know Chamberlain was something of a Rightist himself who married the even more Right-wing daughter of Richard Wagner (That nationalist composer) And among his admirers numbered Churchill and senator Albert J. Beveridge, a republican, neither being left wing.
So although Hitler made powerful USE of German nationalism, we see from both the considerations put forward by Locke and the intellectual history discussed by Gayre, that Hitler was not in fact much motivated by racial loyalty as we would normally conceive it. So what was he motivated by?
we as in the present tense?
Locke suggests that Hitler's actions are best explained by saying that he simply had a love of war but offers no explanation of WHY Hitler would love war. Hitler's extreme Leftism does explain this however.
No, being on one side of the political spectrum, explained elsewhere, does not in and of itself explain a love of War.
As the quotations already given show, Hitler shared with other Leftists a love of constant change and excitement --- and what could offer more of that than war (or, in the case of other Leftists, the civil war of "revolution")?
The following two quotes, properly put's his revolutionary credentials in context
"Fascist revolution sought to change the nature of relationships between the individual and the collectivity WITHOUT destroying the impetus of economic activity - The profit motive or its foundation - private property or its necessary framework - the market economy. this was one aspect of the novelty of fascism; the fascist revolution was supported by an economy determined by the laws of the market. ... If fascism wished to reap all the benefits of the modern age, to exploit all the achievements of capitalism, if it never questioned the idea of market forces and private property were the natural order of things, it had a horror of so called bourgeois, or as Nietzsche called them, modern values: universalism, individualism, progress, natural rights and equality. thus fascism adopted the economic aspect of liberalism but completely denied its philosophical principles and the intellectual and moral heritage of modernity ... In essence fascist thought was a rejection of the value known in the culture of the time as materialism... Thus anti-materialism [was] a direct assault on liberalism and Marxism.",- Zeev Sternhell, "The Birth of Fascist Ideology", p7-8.and
"on 21 may [1930], Hitler invited otto strasser to his hotel for lengthy discussions. .... the key points were leadership and socialism. ... strasser accused Hitler of trying to destroy the kampfverlag because he wanted to "strangle" the "social revolution" through a strategy of legality and the borgeois right. Hitler angrily denounced strasser's socialism as "nothing but marxism". The mass of the working class", he went on, wanted only bread and circuses, and would never understand the meaning of an ideal. "there was only one possible kind of revolution, and it is not economic or political or social, but racial," he avowed. Pushed on his attitude towards Big buisness, Hitler made plain that there could be NO QUESTION for him of socialization or worker control. The only priority was for a strong state to ensure that production was carried out in the national interest" - Ian kershaw, "Hitler (abridged)", p201.
The idea that Nazism was motivated primarily by a typically Leftist hunger for change and excitement and hatred of the status quo is reinforced by the now famous account of life in Nazi Germany given by a young "Aryan" who lived through it. Originally written before World War II, Haffner's (2002) account of why Hitler rose to power stresses the boring nature of ordinary German life and observes that the appeal of the Nazis lay in their offering of relief from that:
"The great danger of life in Germany has always been emptiness and boredom ... The menace of monotony hangs, as it has always hung, over the great plains of northern and eastern Germany, with their colorless towns and their all too industrious, efficient, and conscientious business and organizations. With it comes a horror vacui and the yearning for 'salvation': through alcohol, through superstition, or, best of all, through a vast, overpowering, cheap mass intoxication."So he too saw the primary appeal of Nazism as its offering of change, novelty and excitement.
Orly?
Because you see, i rather distinctly remember the Tories offering "Change, novelty and excitement" in the run up to the 2010 general election. Does this make them leftist/Nazis? Only in Ray's superficial world....
And what this proves is that these tactics are not exclusive to the left or right for that matter. It's just nothing more than propaganda!
And how about another direct quote from Hitler himself?
"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"
Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306.
I have no idea which edition of toland he quotes from, But mine can be found here and in my edition, the quote appears on p224, But the point is all the same.
Clearly, the idea that Hitler was a Rightist is probably the most successful BIG LIE of the 20th Century. He was to the Right of the Communists but that is all. Nazism was nothing more nor less than a racist form of Leftism (rather extreme Leftism at that) and to label it as "Rightist" or anything else is to deny reality.
And...
"Americans both before and after the second world war casualy and deliberately articulated distorted similarities between nazi and communist ideologies, german and soviet foreiign policies, authoritarian controls and trade practices , and Hitler and Stalin. This popular analogy was a potent and pervasive notion that significantly shaped American of world events in the cold war. Once russia was designated the "enemy" by american leaders, americans transferred their hatred of Hitler's germany to Stalin's russia with considerable ease and persuasion." - les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson. "Red Fascism: The merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the american image of totalitarianism." from The American Historical review, vol 75, no4 (apr., 1970).
Sorry, Nope. to deny Hitler's rightism is to fall for american (esp, Cold war) propaganda. Or I suppose every qualified scholar i have at my disposial is wrong then.
The word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation of the name of Hitler's political party -- the nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. In English this translates to "The National Socialist German Worker's Party". So Hitler was a socialist and a champion of the workers -- or at least he identified himself as such and campaigned as such.
There is a great deal of further reading available that extends the points made here about the nature of Nazism and Fascism. There is, for instance, an interesting review by Prof. Antony Flew here of The Lost Literature of Socialism by historian George Watson. Excerpt:
Many of his findings are astonishing. Perhaps for readers today the most astonishing of all is that "In the European century that began in the 1840s, from Engels' article of 1849 down to the death of Hitler, everyone who advocated genocide called himself a socialist and no conservative, liberal, anarchist or independent did anything of the kind." (The term "genocide" in Watson's usage is not confined to the extermination only of races or of ethnic groups, but embraces also the liquidation of such other complete human categories as "enemies of the people" and "the Kulaks as a class.")The book seems well worth reading but is not of course available online. An excellent earlier essay by Prof. Watson covering some of the same ground is however available here. He shows in it that even such revered figures in the history of socialism as G.B. Shaw and Beatrice Webb were vocally in favour of genocide.
Antony Flew? He is not a historian but in fact a deist philosopher, (as far as im aware.) and this Prof Watson should be discredited. Here's a handful of quotations to ponder.
"I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated, or, if this was not possible by tactical measures, have to be expelled from the country...This will be possible if the water-holes from Grootfontein to Gobabis are occupied. The constant movement of our troops will enable us to find the small groups of nation who have moved backwards and destroy them gradually."
"I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this letter to the Hereros. The Hereros are German subjects no longer. They have killed, stolen, cut off the ears and other parts of the body of wounded soldiers, and now are too cowardly to want to fight any longer. I announce to the people that whoever hands me one of the chiefs shall receive 1,000 marks, and 5,000 marks for Samuel Maherero. The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the 'long tube' (cannon). any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people."
"The waterless Omaheke was to complete the work of the German arms: the annihilation of the Herero people"
"I destroy the African tribes with streams of blood...Only following this cleansing can something new emerge, which will remain."
It's clear that the author is openly advocating a Genocide, but who is the author you may ask? He was Not a socialist but a conservative general by the name of Lothar von Trotha, and he didn't just merely advocate Genocide, But actualy carried one out (and isnt that more important?). More info on the Genocide of the Herero and Namaqua peoples here. He even gave Germany their first concentration Camps.
also see, "The Kaiser's Holocaust. Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism" by David Olusoga and Casper W Erichsen, for the links between This action and Hitler's own genocidal programmes. Oh and did you know that the Kaiser became quite the Genocidal Antisemite after his abdication? He even advocated use of 'Gas' as a way to get rid of the 'Jews and mosquitoes' as he put it.
"In the bitterness of exile Kaiser Wilhelm II made the final dreadful leap into the anti-semitism of extermination. 'The hebrew race', he wrote in english to an american friend 'are my most inveterate enemies at home and abroad; they remain what they are and always were: the forgers of lies and the masterminds governing unrest, revolution, upheaval by spreading infamy with the help of their poisoned, caustic, satyrical [sic] spirit. If the world wakes up it should mete out to them the punishment in store for them, which they deserve.' On 2 dec 1919, he wrote "Manu Proprio" to General August von Mackensen, referring to his own abdication; 'The deepest, most disguisting shame ever perpetrated by a people in history, the Germans have ever done onto themselves. Egged on and misled by the Tribe of Juda whom they hated, who were guests among them! That was their thanks! Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated [vertilgt und ausgerottet] from German soil! This poisonous mushroom on the German Oak tree'. He called for a 'regular international all-worlds pogrom à la Russe' as 'the best cure'. 'Jews and mosquitoes' were 'a nuisence that humanity must get rid of in some way or other,' he proclaimed, and added again in his own hand: 'i believe the best would be Gas!'" - John C. G. Röhl, "The Kaiser and his court: Wilhelm II and the government of Germany", p210-211.
Also, we have to remember that the "everyone who advocated genocide called themselves socialist" line is further complicated by the fact that those who called themselves "Christian socialist" in German politics anyway tended also to be Conservative, as was Adolf Stocker for example.
The modern-day Left always talk as if Italy's Mussolini and Hitler were two peas in a pod but that is far from the truth. Mussolini got pretty unprintable about Hitler at times and did NOT support Hitler's genocide against the Jews (Steinberg, 1990; Herzer, 1989). As it says here:
"Just as none of the victorious powers went to war with Germany to save the Jews neither did Mussolini go to war with them to exterminate the Jews. Indeed, once the Holocaust was under way he and his fascists refused to deport Jews to the Nazi death camps thus saving thousands of Jewish lives - far more than Oskar Schindler.""Far more than Oskar Schindler"!. And as late as 1938, Mussolini even asked the Pope to excommunicate Hitler!. Leftists are very good at "fraternal" rivalry.
let us put to Bed this "two peas in a pod" strawman with Marxists.org, and if they're not leftist, No-one is.
"Fascism has many different forms: the Italian fascism of Mussolini was often against Hitler’s Fascism, calling it “one hundred percent racism: Against everything and everyone: Yesterday against Christian civilization, today against Latin civilization, tomorrow, who knows, against the civilization of the whole world.” When Hitler began achieving impressive military conquests, which Mussolini had started in Ethiopia in 1935, the two formed an axis of power in June of 1940. The birth of fascism in Germany was aided by Western governments, who for two decades viewed it as the ideology that would successfully crush the Soviet Union. Not until Germany’s tanks were on the borders of England and France did those governments ‘switch’ sides: now it was their imperialist domination being threatened."
i would say the "two peas in a pod" is more a case of general ignorance than anything else, And general ignorance is not leftist or rightist, last time i checked.
Tom Wolfe's biting essay on American intellectuals also summarizes the origins of Fascism and Nazism rather well. Here is one excerpt from it:
"Fascism" was, in fact, a Marxist coinage. Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini's Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler's Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis, like Marxism's standard-bearers, the Soviet Communists, were revolutionary socialists. In fact, "Nazi" was (most annoyingly) shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers' Party. European Marxists successfully put over the idea that Nazism was the brutal, decadent last gasp of "capitalism."
From the essay "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists" originally appearing in the June 2000 Harper's Monthly and reprinted in Wolfe's book Hooking Up
Already debunked arguments, Does anyone notice a trend here? Ray is Repeating the same debunked arguments over and over again
Other sources on the basic facts about Hitler that history tells us are Roberts (1938), Heiden (1939), Shirer (1964), Bullock (1964), Taylor (1963), Hagan (1966), Feuchtwanger (1995).
The above are however secondary sources and, as every historian will tell you, there is nothing like going back to the original -- which is why much original text is quoted above. For further reading in the original sources, the first stop is of course Mein Kampf. It seems customary to portray Mein Kampf as the ravings of a madman but it is far from that. It is the attempt of an intelligent mind to comprehend the world about it and makes its points in such a personal and passionate way that it might well persuade many people today but for a knowledge of where it led. The best collection of original Nazi documents on the web is however probably here. Perhaps deserving of particular mention among the documents available there is a widely circulated pamphlet by Goebbels here. One excerpt from it:
"The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism. The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the political. It is not merely a matter of pay, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day-though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform-but it is much more a matter of incorporating a powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it the dominant force in the future politics of the Fatherland"Now, let's have a look at where he got this from shall we?
Background: This widely distributed Nazi pamphlet first appeared in 1929. I am working from a 1932 copy, and have not compared it with the first version, but it does not look as if significant changes were made as it was reissued. The title, loosely translated, is “Those Damned Nazis.” Literally, it translates as something like “those cursed swastika lads,” but that does not really work in English. At least several hundred thousand copies were printed. It is a good summary of the basic lines of Nazi propaganda just before Hitler’s takeover in 1933. The booklet included five cartoons by Mjölnir, Goebbels’ cartoonist, three of which I include here. Mjölnir also produced some of the most familiar Nazi posters.
The source: Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932).
Yes, Ray is so stupid, he failed to notice that he's repeating propaganda from a propagandist, Which of course, proves Nothing. And repeating propaganda is what the rest of this segment consists of. It seems pretty clear Ray has no idea how to analyze words. Hitler also said he had no further territorial ambitions after Munich, and has also allegedly stated:
"I don't want to force National Socialism on anybody" - Table Talk, p22Yes, Hitler said a lot of BS. Trying to use Hitler's words like how Ray does is meaningless as he is just a propagandist who said many different things to different people. It is only when his words match his deeds like his racist words that are backed by his corresponding deeds that we can put any weight on them whatsoever.", Which is why we can state for certain that Hitler was not in any way, shape or form a peacenik. WW2 certainly proves that he wasn't.
But here's a question: Why is it Ray is using a long debuned talking-point dreamt up by Hitler apologetics and Neo-Nazis? I mean for those simple-minded thugs it was the "Jews" or "Commies" or the "Polish" that started ww2, not peace-loving Hitler!
And furthermore i fnd it rather amusing that Ray believes Hitler to be the "original peacenik"
"Peaceniks" before the 20th century include the historic peace churches. Also there was "Bernard Bolzano" (1781–1848), who taught about the social waste of militarism and the needlessness of war. He urged a total reform of the educational, social, and economic systems that would direct the nation's interests toward peace rather than toward armed conflict between nations. and i guess we could mention "Leo Tolstoy" (1828-1910), whose work "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" is a defence of pacifism.
Hitler the original "peacenik"? What a laugh. I'll leave this segment with this,
"Is there any criticism of the regime?" My Quaker friend laughed. "Plenty! Many of the younger men want less Nationalism and more Socialism. But there is no criticism of Hitler, whose sincerity and will for the well-being of the German people are unquestioned by them." - Ordeal in England by Philip Gibbs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1937)
This implies that the nazis are more nationalist than socialist (contridicting Ray.), and also describing the effect of propaganda, in a single swoop!
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