In every USENET debate, even those concerning ruffled chips versus straight, someone gets accused of being a Hitlerite. When debating with conservatives, however, it's often appropriate.
I heard that Hilter was a "collectivist" or "leftist" - is this true?
Here's an in-depth essay that totally annihilates this myth.
From the jacket of Albert Speer's _Infiltration_ "Gone is the myth of the tightly knit [read: socialistic] German war machine. The third Reich emerges in chaos..." [read: capitalistic]
So anyway...This depends on what you consider to be reliable sources. Which would you trust, historians who have studied documents, interviewed witnesses, sorted through statistics etc, or Hitler's own propaganda?
Of course Hitler claimed to be a leftist (read my above explanation of politicians looking more leftist through their propaganda here) - the great depression had woken many people up to the realities of capitalism, and he wanted their votes, or at least their obedience. Hitler, a politician, claimed to be "everything to everyone". He even said that his party was being too ruthless, that he wanted peace - he lied about anything and everything. (Russians learned this the hard way when he broke the Russo-German pact.)
Conservatives tend to blame poverty on those who suffer it. "The standard of life in Poland...had been filmed and commented upon by the German propaganda machine to prove conclusively, to anyone who still questioned the master race dogma, that the Slavs were inferior and that they subsisted in backward conditions, simply because they were inferior" - [p15 _War on the Eastern Front_ James Lucas]
Hitler received massive financial support from big German industrialists (how else do you think he bought all of those uniforms and flags? Donations from unemployed people?).When he got into power, he crushed labour unions. He went berserk over family values - to the point of putting young German women in camps where their sole purpose was to get pregnant! (If he liked apple pie as much as he liked motherhood, he would have gotten as fat as Rush Limbaugh)
Right-wingers who claim Hitler was a liberal mention that the Nazi party was called the "National Socialist Party". I presume they considered the "German Democratic Republic" (communist east Germany) to be a truthful name as well.
Basically, these right-wingers are worse than holocaust deniers - they take the whole history and twist it to meet their reactionary (if not fascist) agenda. People who make these claims are like Hitler in many ways - their massive financial support from rich corporations, their desire to crush labour unions, and their (often thinly) desguised sexism and racism (Under the banner "politically incorrect").
"Prior to his speech, I had given Hitler a few slogans such as "free economy after the war" and "fundamental rejection of nationalization of industry" Hitler made clear his negative attitude toward a state economy, such as had to result from state socialism. He said "the sole prerequisite for true higher devolopment, nay, for the further devolpment of all mankind" is "in the furtherence of private initiative. When this war is decided...the private initiative of German industry will achieve its greatest era!"...it directly contrasted with...rejection of the capitalistic structure of our economy" [Albert Speer _Infiltration_ Appendix 9: state socialism versus capitalism]
Also note that Hitler was not elected into power.
Hitler's a leftist! It said so in a book!
If conservatives want to prove this, they'll have to also prove that his close allies Franco, Mussulini and Imperial Japan were leftists as well. They'll also have to prove that the miscellaneous monarchists and fascists that supported him were also leftists. And Chang Kai-Shek, who flirted with Nazism and fought the Mao's communists, who were actually putting up a fight against the Japanese. (The enemy of my enemy is who? I recommend reading Han Suyin's autobiography/history _Birdless Summer_ for a look at the corruption, links to Nazism, sexism, and virtual slavery in China under our ally Chiang Kai-Shek. It explains why the west didn't use China as a front against the Japanese - because Chiang simply didn't fight the Japanese; instead hunting down the communists, who actually were.) In short, Hitler had some pretty conservative pals. Sometimes you have to judge a man by the company he keeps...
If Hitler was a leftist, he was the first one not to be under attack by conservatives. Right after the horror of world war one, the pacifist west sent soldiers to fight against the leftist Bolsheviks. Those who fought in the Spanish Civil War were label PAFs (Premature Anti-Fascist) and were not trusted - kind of like draft dodgers during Vietnam, who we're not supposed to trust. Hitler had massacred his way across Russia - yet he was still perfectly acceptable. Only when he declared war was he evil. The Japanese could rape Nanking without doing anything bad - they had to attack US colonial possessions for them to become evil monsters.
The Resistence to Hitler was leftist
It's also curious that all of the other leftists weren't aware of his politics: most of the resistence was by communists - the most obvious being the Yugoslav resistence movement. For another example, read _Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto_ By Esther Mark.
Look at the organizations that were involved in the uprising:
Polish groups, who assisted, but were saving their strength for the big uprising that eventually came in 1944:
Jewish organizations, who couldn't wait, for obvious reasons:
The Pseudonym of one of the [female] leading fighters was Moishe "Bolshevik". The fighters observed May Day, listened to Radio Moscow, and sang the "Internationale". (Op cit. p65). They raised red flags (p37) Their ranks included republican (leftist) veterans from the Spanish Civil war (p7) women who "grew up in "revolutionary student circles" (p56) and individuals such as a "socialist underground activist...a polish socialist...Jewish communal activists...communist activist...(p86-87) and were reported on by a "leftist polish underground newspaper" (p36) and a "leftist underground periodical "Glos Warszawy"".
Strangely, there didn't seem to be any conservative organizations involved in the uprising. Perhaps you wouldn't expect the "Christian" coalition in a Jewish Ghetto, but then again, they base all of their arguments on the old testament...
In conclusion, let me just say that for a collectivist, Hitler didn't have many businessmen opposed to him.
How the US helped Hitler and the Nazis