There is a reason why a person can appear to be simultaneously a Communist and a Nazi. The two ideologies have a common ancestor in the French Revolution. They are different, but they are cousins. To show this I will first talk about their philosophical roots in the French Revolution, then show that Communism and Nazism are not all that different, and finally discuss some reasons some people may think Hitler was on the right. I take much of this from Jonah Goldberg’s book
Liberal Fascism (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
I. Roots in the French Revolution.
The French Revolution was the first totalitarian revolution, at least in modern times. It was also a nationalist-populist uprising. It was led by the elite with an agenda to replace Christianity with a political people-centered religion.
Robespierre wrote: The people is always worth more than individuals...The people is sublime, but individuals are weak.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The Idea of Compassion: The British vs. the French Enlightenment,â€
Public Interest, no. 145 (Fall 2001)
Many of Robespierre's ideas came from Rousseau, with his theory of the general will. In Rousseau's theory you could follow the general will and be “free†and “virtuous,†or you could defy the general will and be a criminal, fool, or heretic. Rousseau believed in “forcing men to be free.†And he believed that you could have blind faith and trust in this general will.
Rousseau wrote:[Voting in elections, representative bodies, and so forth are] hardly ever necessary where the government is well-intentioned. For the rulers well know that the general will is always on the side which is most favorable to the public interest, that is to say, the most equitable: so that it is needful only to act justly to be certain of following the general will.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G.D.H. Cole (New York: Dutton, 1950), p. 297
Robespierre realized that for the French Revolution to succeed he had to make the people believe that God spoke through him and the general will. In this way he hoped to realize the dream that later motivated the Nazis and Communists; the creation of “New Men.â€
Rousseau wrote: I am convinced of the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration, and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.
Himmelfarb, “Idea of Compassion.â€
Tocqueville wrote: [The action-priests of the Revolution]had a fanatical faith in their vocation—that of transforming the social system, root and branch, and regenerating the whole human race.
The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Anchor, 1955), p. 156.
In a totalitarian regime to make the “New Men†it is first necessary to take away agency, deliberately using terror. According to historian Marisa Linton, the French Revolution set the precedent.
Marisa Linton wrote: For the first time in history terror became an official government policy, with the stated aim to use violence in order to achieve a higher political goal.
Marisa Linton, “Robespierre and the Terror,â€
History Today, Aug. 1, 2006
Twentieth-century proselytizers took up the idea of the worship of the “general will†and promoted a secular religion in which “the people†in effect worshiped themselves. See George L. Mosse,
The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (New York: Fertig, 2001); George L. Mosse, “Fascism and the French Revolution,â€
Journal of Contemporary History 24, no. 1 (Jan. 1989), pp. 5-26.
Johann Gottfried von Herder built on Rousseau's ideas to claim that the general will was unique to each nation, or specific Volk. This lead to the idea of superiority of races, nations, and cultures. Ideas which lead to Nazism and fascism.
II. Nazism and Communism are not all that different
National Socialism (Nazism) came before Hitler. According to historian Robert O. Paxton the first example of “national socialism†was the Cercle Proudhon in France in 1911. This club of intellectuals tried to “unite nationalists and left-wing anti-democrats†against “Jewish capitalism.†See Georges Valois, the founder, wanted to convert the working class away from Marxist internationalism and toward a nation-based socialism. Robert O. Paxton,
The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Vintage, 2004), p.48
The Nazis came to power exploiting anti-capitalist rhetoric.
In general, the left is the party of change while the right is the party of status quo. But Hitler was a thorough revolutionary. This is considered heresy to the Marxist and German historians since for those on the left revolution is considered a good thing. So how can Hitler be bad and revolutions good if Hitler is allowed to be thought of as a revolutionary? Yet Hitler despised the bourgeoisie, traditionalists, aristocrats, monarchists, and all believers in the established order.
John Lukacs wrote: [Hitler] had become repelled by the traditionalist values of the German bourgeoisie
John Lukacs,
The Hitler of History (New York: Vintage, 1997), p. 84.
Hitler viewed the bourgeoisie just like Lenin did.
Hitler wrote:Let us not deceive ourselves, our bourgeoisie is already worthless for any noble human endeavor.
David Schoenbaum,
Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (New York: Norton, 1980), p. 19.
We learn much about Nazism when we examine Hitler’s early life experiences and his rise to power. I’ll skip over much of that. Suffice it to say that after recovering from his war (World War I) wounds Hitler found a job in Munich monitoring subversive organizations. One of these organizations was the German Worker's Party. At that time a “Worker’s Party†was understood as being socialist. When Hitler attended a party meeting in September 1919 the speaker was Gottfried Feder speaking about “How and by what means Is Capitalism to Be Eliminated?†Hitler joined the party and within a year was leading it.
In 1920 the Nazi Party issued its “unalterable†and “eternal†party platform, co-written by Hitler and Anton Drexler. The overarching principle was that the “common good must come before self-interest.†The platform appealed to socialistic and populist economics, abolition of income from interest, shared profits with labor, expanded old-age pensions, “communalization of department stores,†the execution of “usurers†regardless of race, outlawing of child labor, universal education, guaranteed employment, the expropriation of land without compensation, the nationalization of industry, the expansion of health services, and the abolition of market-based lending.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1708-ps.asp These are anything but “right-wing†principles. I incorporated many of these ideas in my quiz.
The divide between the National Socialists and the Communists wasn't about economics, but over nationalism. Hitler hated the Marxist idea that “workingmen have no country.â€
In Hitler's Mein Kampf a chapter is devoted to the Nazi's use of socialist and communist imagery, rhetoric, and ideas to draw in liberals and communists. As an example, the Nazis used the color red in posters and in their flag. The color red was firmly established in the minds of the people as associated with Bolshevism and socialism.
Hitler wrote: We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation...so as to arouse their attention and tempt them to come to our meetings...so that in this way we got a chance to talking to the people....In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of Aryan man.
Hitler,
Mein Kampf, pp. 484, 496-97.
Even after Hitler seized power he continued to emphasize his “working-class†background. At Nazi rallies they never allowed an aristocrat to speak unless he was balanced out with some working-class farmer. See Schoenbaum,
Hitler’s Social Revolution, p. 59; Burleigh, Third Reich, p. 105.
Rather than polar opposites communism and Nazism are kindred spirits. Communists champion class and Nazis race.
Richard Pipes wrote:Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism.
Richard Pipes,
Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924 (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 253.
Hitler had no problem with the economic doctrine of communism or the need to destroy capitalism and the bourgeoisie. He hated communism because of his paranoid conviction that the communists were a foreign, Jewish conspiracy, as he says repeatedly in Mein Kampf. It is ironic that actually the Soviet Union was also, in effect, officially anti-Semitic.
III “Hitler on the right†is communist propaganda.
The typical story given today is that Hitler and the Nazis rose to power over popular resentment of Germany being “stabbed in the back†by communists, Jews, and weak politicians. Supposedly the Nazis worked with capitalists and industrialists who were eager to defeat the Red menace. Supposedly they staged a “reactionary†coup by mobilizing “Conservative,†i.e. racist and religious elements in German society. Once in power “state capitalism†was installed as a reward to the industrialists.
There is some truth in that, but effective lies are often sprinkled with actual truth. It is a distortion of the truth, grossly exaggerating the role of the industrialists and conservatives, and minimizing the very large and important socialist aspects of Nazism. The point has been to cast Nazism as the polar opposite of communism.
It was thought that because the Communists and Nazis fought it out in the streets they must have had significant differences of opinion. As we have seen however, the truth is that they had much in common. Hitler’s strategy was to first eliminate the left,
by incorporating them into his own party, as much as possible. This was the logical point to begin, as both communism and Nazism appealed to the same kinds of people, and talked and thought in the same way. It was a case of two dogs fighting over the same bone.
For Stalin, and the left, it is terribly inconvenient to think that the voice of the “severely disenfranchised peopleâ€â€”the poor, the powerless, the exploited—could come from the Nazis. Since Marxist theory requires these people to be left-wingers then the fact that much of the support for the Nazis came from the working and lower classes has been largely erased from our history. But the fact is that Nazism was a popular movement with support from all segments of the society. The idea that others were pulling Hitler’s strings has been discredited. Germany industry did come around to support Hitler, but only after Hitler showed them that it would be wise to not get in his way. It was opportunism, not ideology which brought them around.
It is also claimed that Hitler’s racism, his alleged status as a capitalist, and his hatred of Bolshevism make Hitler a right-winger. It is, of course, a myth that only right-wingers are racists. We have seen plenty of left-wing racist governments in the last century. Hitler hated capitalists as well, and in his mind capitalists and communists were fronts for the Jewish menace. It was not a hatred of the left-wing.
The Nazis’ ultimate aim was to transcend both left and right, advancing the “Third Way.†In practice they first needed to divide and conquer, first replacing the left.
The Nazis campaigned as socialists. They were also nationalists, which in the 1920s and 1930s was considered a right-wing position. At the time the Soviet Union defined “internationalism†as the left, and all nationalists must then “logically†be right-wing.
Whenever Stalin wanted to get rid of someone in the party for deviating from the Soviet line he accused them of being rightist—or, right-wing socialists. Any opposition to Stalin was considered rightist. Anyone the international left wished to delegitimize they called a Nazi. Now Nazism has come to mean “ultimate evil†without looking at the facts or reason. We in the west have been following the propaganda-defined terms ever since Stalin.
