# Could there be a respectable Nazi party? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2002, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056 "2002-06-09T03:43:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MarkyDeSade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@MarkyDeSade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarkyDeSade)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/1 "2002-06-09T03:43:19Z")
…or is the whole idea of a National Socialist party doomed to kill Jews and attempt to take over the world? I’m guessing that Hitler gave the Nazi party a bad name, but isn’t France a Socialist country? Are they National Socialists, or just Socialists? What’s the difference? So many questions, but there’s only one point I’m trying to get at; Are all Nazi’s evil? ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/2 "2002-06-09T03:52:48Z")
Nazis, as far as I know, though they called themselves socialists, were really quite conservative. Just to clear that up. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/3 "2002-06-09T04:02:36Z")
Your terminology is incorrect. There are many parties around the world that are both Nationalist AND Socialist, and I don’t honestly know whether any of them are officially entitled as “National Socialist”. My WAG is any party using that precise phrase as part of their own identity do so \*in order to \*align themselves philosophically with Hitler and his ilk. In any case, the term “Nazi” as I understand it, was a pejorative term, like “Japs” in the Pacific. So asking if there are any good Nazi’s is like asking if there are any good “Spics” or “Kikes”. The term itself is imbued with negative connotations. I hope no one takes offense at my offensive terminology, which I used for exemplar puroses only. In similar parlance, I myself would be a “Mick”. ---
**Author:** ![MarkyDeSade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@MarkyDeSade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarkyDeSade)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/4 "2002-06-09T04:14:07Z")
I thought that even in the '30s, it was called the Nazi party, but with no ill meaning. If you watch a documentary on Germany, they certainly refer to the “Nazis”, however they don’t refer to all the Jews as “Kikes.” This thread addresses the term Nazi as a shortening of ‘National Socialists’: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=119396](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=119396) (sorry, my linking abilities leave much to be desired…) Maybe I’m wrong **yojimboguy** , but that’s why I’m asking. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/5 "2002-06-09T04:21:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MarkyDeSade \* > \*\*…or is the whole idea of a National Socialist party doomed to kill Jews and attempt to take over the world? I’m guessing that Hitler gave the Nazi party a bad name, but isn’t France a Socialist country? Are they National Socialists, or just Socialists? What’s the difference? So many questions, but there’s only one point I’m trying to get at; Are all Nazi’s evil? \*\* Ah, what’s in a name? A National Socialist German Workers’ Party could certainly be respectable. All of the master race and other such lunacy would have to be left out, though. What are the chances that a political party would be named that unless its organizers wanted to be identified with what the Nazi party stood for? I would guess, zero. ---
**Author:** ![galen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecc23a/32.png) [@galen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/6 "2002-06-09T04:39:33Z")
Tell you what. Go into a Socialist bookstore. Talk with the patrons and the people who work there. Now go into a skinhead/Nazi bookstore and do the same thing. Better yet, Google around the Web. You will soon figure out the difference between Nazis and Socalists ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/7 "2002-06-09T05:17:21Z")
“Socialist” in the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, the “Nazi” party, was a misnomer. Hitler got in on the ground floor of a facist socialist party and used it to create a totalitarian regime that was actually more capitalist in nature (as opposed to, say, Joe Stalin’s totaitarianist socialist state; don’t think I mean only capitalists have a monopoly on totalitarianism). The original “socialist” manifesto of the party was an embaressmant to the later regime. Hitler ordered it “set in stone” and immutable, but none of it was ever acted on or taken at all seriously by the Nazis once in power. Real Socialism is not necessarily facistic in nature. Arguably, true socialism must involve a democracy and emphasize principles of equality, social justice, cooperation, and individual freedom realizied through public ownership of what has been traditionally private enterprise. Socialism in this light is the natural progression of democratic principals from politics to industry. All of this is very, very different from what the Nazi Party was really about. Just like the Republican party in the Czech Republic right now, it was just hate and fascism cloaked in an innocuous name. So yes, there’s a huge, huge difference between socilalists and Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![stockton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@stockton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stockton)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/8 "2002-06-09T06:02:07Z")
All they really needed was a catchy, recognizable logo. ---
**Author:** ![Gunslinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gunslinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gunslinger)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/9 "2002-06-09T13:32:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by yojimboguy \* > \*\* > In any case, the term “Nazi” as I understand it, was a pejorative term, like “Japs” in the Pacific. \*\* Nope. It’s just a shortening of the German words for “National Socialist”; that was what they called themselves. ---
**Author:** ![nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f0a364/32.png) [@nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nicky)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/10 "2002-06-09T15:40:39Z")
The Nazis werent Nationalists, they werent Socialists, and they sure as hell didnt know how to party. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/11 "2002-06-09T17:36:46Z")
Abraham Lincoln once asked his cabinet members a riddle “How many legs does a donkey have if you call its tail a leg?” The answer given was that, if you called the tail a leg, a donkey would have five legs. Lincoln said “No, the answer is four. You can call a tail anything you want, but that doesn’t make it a leg.” So just because some political party decided to call themselves National Socialists that doesn’t automatically mean they have the same policies as the German Nazi party had. As several threads have pointed out, the Nazis weren’t really socialists anyway. Of course, on the other hand, any party that decided to call themselves National Socialists now would have to be aware of the connotations of the name and presumedly would accept them. To illustrate this point, another anecdote: Al Franken once pointed out that US immigration policy prohibited anyone who had been a member of the Nazi party before 1945 or anyone who had ever been a member of a Communist party. Franken said he could accept this policy “because, say what you will, anyone who joined the Nazi party after 1945 is no fair weather friend.” ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/12 "2002-06-09T17:59:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MarkyDeSade \* > \*\*Hitler gave the Nazi party a bad name \*\* Just a nitpick, but Hitler did neither found nor name it; the party had existed (as an unimportant tiny group - Hitler was their 55th member but was assigned membership number 555 because they had started counting at 501 to improve their image. Hitler’s claim to have been #7 is a legend.) several years before Hitler joined it. It was founded as Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP, and renamed itself NSDAP in 1920, when Hitler already was active within the party, but he did not coin the term “National Socialism”. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/13 "2002-06-09T19:49:14Z")
So we’ve established that it is possible for there to be a party with the Nazi’s economic platform without the other stuff. That said, does there remain a General Question on the table? ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/14 "2002-06-09T22:23:47Z")
Only the one that you raised, Manny. We established that a party could _call_ itself a “National Socialist” party and be respectable (though it would be unwise). We established that a party could _be_ socialist and be respectable. However, we also established that the Nazi party was _not_ in fact socialist. (I take issue with the claim that it wasn’t nationalist; it clearly was). We haven’t even addressed the issue you raise–could a party stand for “economic Nazism” (i.e., a system both capitalist and totalitarian) and be respectable? I don’t know enough about the Nazi’s economic system to answer this (I’m pretty sure _I_ wouldn’t vote for it!), but I’d like to hear some answers. ---
**Author:** ![nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f0a364/32.png) [@nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nicky)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/15 "2002-06-09T23:31:49Z")
Well, I’d argue that the Nazis werent “nationalists” - they were racialists. Of course there’s a big overlap between Hitlers Aryan Race and Germany, but to call Hitler a “nationalist” can obscure his extremism. Now, when we talk about Nazi Economic Policy we can mean two different things 1. Various economic tools the Nazis used to get Germany out of the Depression. 2. The general Nazi conception of econmics. Now, some of (1) - deficit financing, strict import/export controls arent necessarily totalitarian could be legitimate. But these tools arent uniquely “Nazi”. Now, as for (2) - really there wasnt one. According to Hitler, all Germany’s woes were due to lack of Living Space and the Jews - Economics was a mere detail. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/16 "2002-06-10T17:19:58Z")
IIRC, there was a socialist wing of the party, but that faction was purged in the infamous “Night Of Long Knives”, in 1934. I don’t think the word _Nazi_ was originally meant to be perjorative. It was merely the natural outcome of a German penchant for abbreviating words by by taking the first few syllables of long expressions, as in: [ul] [li] Stasi = Staatssicherheitsdienst (Old E. German secret police)[/li][li] Kripos = Kriminalpolizei[/li][li] Sozis = Sozialisten (now a Social Democrat).[/li] etc. [/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/17 "2002-06-10T18:27:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Hitler gave the Nazi party a bad name > [@](#): > > Just a nitpick, but Hitler did neither found nor name it Schnitte, I see you’re writing from Germany, so perhaps you’re unfamiliar with this idiom. Giving something a bad name can mean literally assigning an unpleasant name to something. But it can also metaphorically mean ruining something’s reputation or public image. I’m guessing, from the context in which he wrote it, that MDS intended the second meaning. ---
**Author:** ![Sparc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Sparc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparc)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/18 "2002-06-11T02:33:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Said Alan Smithee]/i] > We haven’t even addressed the issue you raise–could a party stand for “economic Nazism” (i.e., a system both capitalist and totalitarian) and be respectable? I think Nicky’s post answers this mostly by addressing that economics were secondary (at best) in Nazi politics. However I would add that Hitler’s economic reforms of 1933 and 1934 were in fact not capitalistic at all. They weren’t Socialistic either. The closest resembling system would be Leninism (although that’s an absurd comparison as well). Hitler more or less abolished competition and suspended the free market dynamics by strict price regulation and centralized production planning with quota assignment, hence the central pillars of capitalism were gone. He let the capitalist structure remain in as much as that he allowed continued private ownership of enterprise and collection of profits. This may have been the key success factor which led to the economic wonders in subsequent years, since he thereby rallied the major economic players in Germany to stand behind his reform package given that they made immediate gains from the protective measures he put in place. Further add the creation of a regulated Reich Mark and the increased profits that ensued from exports after breaking the Versailles Treaty. The party structures and the sudden injection of vitality in the economy also enabled the party to commission major public works, which stimulated the amount of available contractual work without demanding a functioning market economy. All in all he hot-wired the economy by short circuiting the mechanisms that had bound the German market to the rest of the world under the punitive terms enforced after WWI. He probably could have kept that up for a while (much longer than 1939 in all cases). Sooner or later it is however probable that the economy would have been saturated and gone into decline under the staggering bureaucracy that was building up. If that wouldn’t have killed growth the enormous brain drain that followed with the rampant oppression of intellectuals under Nazi rule would have. But all that is academic, again along the lines Nicky points out; the NSDAP under Hitler was rigged for two purposes only, the creation of the ‘volksgeimenschaft’ - ‘peoples state’ of the ‘Aryan race’ and ‘lebensraum’ - ‘living space’ for the same through eastward expansion of ‘Germany’. As a side note I would point out that Hitler’s concept of ‘race’ and nationality are so confused that saying whether the Nazis were more racialist or nationalist is almost impossible. Hence I would answer the OP with a flat out no, if we aren’t just talking of empty words that is. Nazism is evil in its very foundation and the economic policies Hitler put in place were so vastly different from Socialism and so tightly linked to the main part of Nazi ideology that there is no sense in assuming that Nazism without the evil could ever exist. Sparc ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/19 "2002-06-11T13:50:29Z")
Ah, OK, **Little Nemo** , I got it now. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056/20 "2002-06-11T15:01:23Z")
Fascism. That’s the generic name of the system, no? And wasn’t Mussolini’s Italy the place where fascism got its start? Was Mussolini’s Italy “respectable?” He was hailed for “making the trains run on time,” as I recall. (Was there a “racialist” element to his ideology?) I believe Italy was considered quite respectable in the 30’s. I know Rome, Georgia still has a statue of Romulus and Remus given to the city (IIRC) by Mussolini’s government. I also seem to recall Mussolini’s son being an international _bon vivant_ with a lot of ties to Hollywood. And for that matter, wasn’t Nazi Germany widely hailed as an economic success story in the 30’s, before its racialism was fully understood by those outside its borders? I seem to recall Charles Lindbergh being a great admirer of the system. And didn’t Reader’s Digest or some such national magazine publish a glowing report on Nazi Germany in the 30’s which later brought great embarrassment? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-a-respectable-nazi-party/113056.md?page=2)