I have recently seen several people that I know, but who are most definitely on the Left, confidently declare that Hitler and the Nazis were not socialists. Some even declare that Hitler saying he was socialist was a lie to deceive the workers. Which leaves me befuddled. And I ended up deciding to write a bit about it.
I’m always struck by the confident declaration that it was “all just a lie to confuse people” whenever the subject of Hitler and the NSDAP comes up. The standard line is that they were “authoritarian,” “fascist,” or simply “Nazis”—but that they were absolutely not socialists.
Except they were.
If you understand the actual history of socialism, and American high schools do not teach it, you know that Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, progressives, democratic socialists, fascists, national socialists, and the various international labour parties all derived from the same 19th-century political source. There were schisms and fractures, but the different factions still recognized one another as part of the broader socialist family.
You should read the history of the First International and the Second International. Pay attention to how the “left” and “right” of socialism were defined by the socialists themselves. That history includes a range of groups and parties that appear unrelated only because we have been taught, incorrectly, that fascism, communism, and socialism are entirely separate movements and ideologies.
When Mussolini and Hitler said they were socialists, they meant it. Their own speeches and writings, and those of their contemporaries both inside and outside the socialist movement, make this clear. The claim that the socialist label was merely a cynical ploy to attract the working class is a late-20th-century invention—by socialists.
The usual basis for denying their socialism is that they maintained private property and corporations and allowed profits. Notice the key word: allowed. Mussolini and Hitler could have abolished private property and corporations if they had chosen to. Instead, they required those institutions to be subordinated to the state and to serve the state’s purposes. Those who complied were permitted to keep a profit. But that profit existed at the state’s discretion, not as a right of the private citizen. In any meaningful sense, there was no independent private citizen under Fascist Italy or National Socialist Germany.
When Hitler spoke of preserving private property and corporations, it was largely to reassure the German upper classes that they would not meet the fate of their counterparts in Bolshevik Russia.
Those who insist that the Nazis and Fascists were not socialists are usually operating within the Socialist International tradition. They need to disavow fascism in order to present themselves as the “good” socialists, untainted by the “bad” ones. Yet socialism in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Venezuela, and Cuba has produced outcomes at least as destructive, and often worse, than socialism in Germany and Italy.
Ask yourself why certain socialists are so determined to disavow other socialists. You may find a revealing answer.
I strongly recommend reading contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous histories of the Third Reich. Start with William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Then read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which argues that National Socialism is a predictable outcome of centralized economic planning.
There is much more, but that is a solid starting point.
Further Reading
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich A. Hayek
Great article. When I taught government in high school, I always taught my students that there isn’t a “dimes worth of difference”between the National Socialists and the Communists. Stalin was the person responsible for trying to equate Fascism as an ideology of the right to distance Soviet Russia from Fascist Germany.
Good to see you writing. I like the article, good information, lots to unpack when you compare the reality to what we were taught in school back in the 50s and 60s. Thanks.
When does Boughie restart?