# I pit the idiots who say the Nazis were "Socialists". **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 15, 2014, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568 "2014-08-15T01:21:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2014, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/121 "2014-08-20T03:34:26Z")
Pinochet wasn’t a fascist, and the government of El Salvador wasn’t fascist. Pinochet was a pretty typical military dictator, and, in El Salvador, ARENA was radical far right wing and the Christian Democrats were…Christian Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2014, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/122 "2014-08-20T03:55:10Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Pinochet wasn’t a fascist, and the government of El Salvador wasn’t fascist. Pinochet was a pretty typical military dictator, and, in El Salvador, ARENA was radical far right wing and the Christian Democrats were…Christian Democrats. Historians are not quite in agreement on that, Pinochet is different from classical fascists, so some to describe him as a neo-fascist. Still, murder and repression was the order of the day also in El Salvador in those days. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2014, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/123 "2014-08-20T04:12:47Z")
A little bit of more from where I’m coming from. Just about the time I came to America fleeing the civil war in El Salvador I began to watch a lot of PBS. Did not know who Noam Chomsky was. But in the documentary \*Manufacturing Consent \*there was a clip of a debate that Chomsky and John Silver had then. [http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1986----.htm](http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1986----.htm) John Silber was the President of Boston University, he was a member of the Kissinger Commission that diagnosed a security threat in Central America. To me finding how the right wing was behaving, poo pooing the abuses that were going on in El Salvador and finding that this guy Chomsky was telling the truth on that interview was a rude awakening, I mean, that guy on the conservative side was supposed to be a big intellectual. But what I concluded was that John Silver was either an idiot, or a very smart but rotten intellectual that used ideology to guide his pondering. That is how I got to picture the extreme right in America… They are not getting better. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2014, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/124 "2014-08-20T13:35:10Z")
I have absolutely no iddea what anything you’re saying has anything to do with fascism, its historical roots, its ideology, or its plCe in the political spectrum. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/125 "2014-08-20T14:02:50Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Historians are not quite in agreement on that, Pinochet is different from classical fascists, so some to describe him as a neo-fascist. Still, murder and repression was the order of the day also in El Salvador in those days. Because a democratic government was at war with a Marxist insurgency funded by foreigners. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/126 "2014-08-20T15:45:48Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I have absolutely no iddea what anything you’re saying has anything to do with fascism, its historical roots, its ideology, or its plCe in the political spectrum. Sorry, this is happening because I’m replying mostly to the ones that do not see anything wrong in defending military coups against democratically elected people and calling it a democratic move. It is only related to the subject as it shows how easy is to convince some right wingers to ignore the past and how in the present that behavior can justify the neo-facists of today. Case in point: > [@adaher](#): > > Because a democratic government was at war with a Marxist insurgency funded by foreigners. The truth commission, this time the one from El Salvador, and my experience tell me that the reality was that only fool or an ignorant of what was going on would not had taken to arms. (More than 80% of the unjustified killings before and during the war were at the hands of the military or death squads) You are ignoring here that the civil war there had its roots on several fraudulent elections (Nice trick, you can avoid being branded a dictator by rigging the election and replacing the military strong man with a new one from the same group). and the systematic killing of union leaders, opposition leaders, teachers and even preachers. ---
**Author:** ![Eminent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Eminent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eminent)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/127 "2014-09-30T03:01:13Z")
Adaher thoroughly dominated this thread. The opposing arguments were mostly emotional, while his was fact based and cited specific people, platforms, words, etc. Yes, leftists, genuine socialists were present in the National Socialist movement, which you falsely claim is a misnomer. "I am very interested in social developments in America. I believe that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path. We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known. Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back, and this cannot be left to private initiative. It is the government that must tackle the problem. " - Joseph Goebbels ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/128 "2014-09-30T03:27:21Z")
> [@Eminent](#): > > Adaher thoroughly dominated this thread. The opposing arguments were mostly emotional, while his was fact based and cited specific people, platforms, words, etc. Not knowing what the West was, and his complete ignorance of the subject regarding what the Nazis did with the banks and the car companies tell us that you did not really read the thread. **adaher** is just a dupe of the American right wing that has very disturbing ideas, that luckily are not very likely to ever become reality. (He is doing a very obtuse act on not seeing gross ignorance also in the “Stupid Republican idea of the day” thread.) > [@Eminent](#): > > "I am very interested in social developments in America. I believe that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path. We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known. Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back, and this cannot be left to private initiative. It is the government that must tackle the problem. " - Joseph Goebbels Let me guess, another dupe of Jonah Goldberg? Historians were not impresed at all. > **[The Scholarly Flaws of "Liberal Fascism"](https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/the-scholarly-flaws-of-liberal-fascism)** > > Jonah Goldberg tells us he wrote this book to get even.  The liberals started it by “insist\[ing\] that conservatism has connections with fascism” (p.  22).  Conservatives “sit dumbfounded by the nastiness of the slander” (p. ... > [@](#): > > Goldberg simply omits those parts of fascist history that fit badly with his demonstration. His method is to examine fascist rhetoric, but to ignore how fascist movements functioned in practice. Since the Nazis recruited their first mass following among the economic and social losers of Weimar Germany, they could sound anti-capitalist at the beginning. Goldberg makes a big thing of the early programs of the Nazi and Italian Fascist Parties, and publishes the Nazi Twenty-five Points as an appendix. A closer look would show that the Nazis’ anti-capitalism was a selective affair, opposed to international capital and finance capital, department stores and Jewish businesses, but nowhere opposed to private property per se or favorable to a transfer of all the means of production to public ownership. > > A still closer look at how the fascist parties obtained power and then exercised power would show how little these early programs corresponded to fascist practice. Mussolini acquired powerful backing by hiring his black-shirted squadristi out to property owners for the destruction of socialist and Communist unions and parties. They destroyed the farm workers’ organizations in the Po Valley in 1921-1922 by violent nightly raids that made them the de facto government of northeastern Italy. Hitler’s brownshirts fought Communists for control of the streets of Berlin, and claimed to be Germany’s best bulwark against the revolutionary threat that still appeared to be growing in 1932. Goldberg prefers the abstractions of rhetoric to all this history, noting only that fascism and Communism were “rivals.” So his readers will not learn anything about how the Nazis and Italian Fascists got into power or exercised it. BTW, that link is only a part of many historians that replied to Goldberg and this silly idea, as pointed before virtually all Europeans that experienced the Nazis know that they were not the friends of liberals or leftists. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/129 "2014-09-30T03:40:50Z")
> [@Eminent](#): > > "I am very interested in social developments in America. I believe that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path. We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known. Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back, and this cannot be left to private initiative. It is the government that must tackle the problem. " - Joseph Goebbels [Wikiquote calls this](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Joseph_Goebbels) an “unsourced” quote: it is vaguely attributed to an unspecified “1934 interview”, but I have not seen any more definite attribution or reference to it. I think if you want this alleged quote to be accepted as evidence for “genuine socialists” in the Nazi movement, you’re going to have to provide a better cite for it. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/130 "2014-09-30T03:42:36Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Your mistake is assuming the Nazis \*had \*an economic philosophy. They didn’t. Hitler didn’t give a shit about economics as anything more than a tool for achieving his goals. > > But then, it’s a very American conceit to assume that economics are the sole basis of the left/right dichotomy. It’s a very American conceit that politics must be a dichotomy at all. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/131 "2014-09-30T03:55:11Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > In a lot of ways Nazi ideology was an unconstrained by sanity extension of all the blood and soil nonsense common in Imperial Germany leading up to WW1. > > There’s nothing either socialist or conservative about wanting to liquidate millions of human beings for insane ideological reasons. There is plenty of revisionism about the Nazi mea culpa. The Nazis were terrible and under them horrible atrocities were committed, it’s admitted, but it began and ended with them it is then often declared. The Germans dealt with the Belgian civilians in WW1 with all the methodical efficiency and lack of moral boundaries the Nazis proved capable of. No Adolf required. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/132 "2014-09-30T05:09:01Z")
Even if it were true that the Nazis had a socialized style economy – they also had freeways. Does that mean we’ve got to scrap all of ours? The Nazis also liked beer and potatoes; I guess no freedom-loving person may ever indulge in these. What the Nazis most had was unquestioned one-party rule, with no parliamentary or constitutional protections. That they may also have fought the Great Depression with government jobs and works programs is irrelevant to this major sin. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/133 "2014-09-30T17:39:18Z")
> [@Eminent](#): > > Yes, leftists, genuine socialists were present in the National Socialist movement, which you falsely claim is a misnomer. You will note that the OP isn’t about whether “genuine socialists were present in the National Socialist movement,” but about whether “the Nazis were ‘socialists’.” The former may well be true; the latter is not. ---
**Author:** ![Eminent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Eminent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eminent)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2018, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/134 "2018-03-20T17:11:13Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > [Wikiquote calls this](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Joseph_Goebbels) an “unsourced” quote: it is vaguely attributed to an unspecified “1934 interview”, but I have not seen any more definite attribution or reference to it. > > I think if you want this alleged quote to be accepted as evidence for “genuine socialists” in the Nazi movement, you’re going to have to provide a better cite for it. Then you should’ve looked harder. The video/audio footage of that particular Goebbels quote is all over the place. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/sb1LaIEQ240/hqdefault.jpg "Goebbels on Roosevelt and the New Deal") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb1LaIEQ240&t=1m17s) ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2018, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/135 "2018-03-20T17:12:46Z")
He’s saw the zombie though. ---
**Author:** ![Eminent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Eminent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eminent)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2018, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/136 "2018-03-20T17:31:53Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Not knowing what the West was, and his complete ignorance of the subject regarding what the Nazis did with the banks and the car companies tell us that you did not really read the thread. **adaher** is just a dupe of the American right wing that has very disturbing ideas, that luckily are not very likely to ever become reality. (He is doing a very obtuse act on not seeing gross ignorance also in the “Stupid Republican idea of the day” thread.) > > Let me guess, another dupe of Jonah Goldberg? Historians were not impresed at all. > > [The Scholarly Flaws of "Liberal Fascism" | History News Network](http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122231) > BTW, that link is only a part of many historians that replied to Goldberg and this silly idea, as pointed before virtually all Europeans that experienced the Nazis know that they were not the friends of liberals or leftists. Good try, but your quote refutes absolutely nothing. > [@](#): > > but nowhere opposed to private property per se or favorable to a transfer of all the means of production to public ownership. Socialism doesn’t require doing away with private property or nationalizing every aspect of industry. ‘Trade unions had looked after the rights of the working class. The German Labour Front now did this. However, Hitler was still fearful of large group of unemployed men existing in the fledgling Nazi state. In January 1933, he inherited an unemployment rate of 26.3%. This had the potential for long-term trouble. Therefore, job creation schemes were introduced. An individual had no choice about a job placement as anyone labelled ‘work shy’ was sent to prison.’ … ‘A significant element of the Nazi labour program was preparing young Germans for their future roles. German children received plenty of state direction or advice about their future education, careers and gender roles. The Nazis went as far as offering vocational blueprints to the German people. In the propaganda poster Der Weg des Gleichgeschalteten Burger, or ‘The Way of the Coordinated Citizen’ (click here) the regime mapped out its preferred path for both males and females – from birth to adulthood. The options offered were clear and simple: school and Nazi youth groups for children; motherhood and home duties for women; party membership, industrial work or military service for men. This model contained very little scope for individual choice. Instead, individuals were steered in directions that would benefit the German economy and the Nazi state. […] DAF membership was compulsory for employment in most occupations.’ … That is not capitalistic by any stretch of the imagination. > [@](#): > > Hitler’s brownshirts fought Communists for control of the streets of Berlin, and claimed to be Germany’s best bulwark against the revolutionary threat that still appeared to be growing in 1932. This part of the article has no significance. You understand that not all socialists or communists agree with each other, correct? You understand that different socialist and communist sects have feuded with each other throughout history? Hitler also targeted/assassinated conservatives and capitalists within the Kreisau Circle. That’s sort of what happens you have a dictator who’s trying to consolidate as much power as possible. Hitler shut down his competitors. That doesn’t mean he was opposed to the tenets of socialism. ---
**Author:** ![Eminent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Eminent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eminent)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2018, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/137 "2018-03-20T17:36:50Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > You will note that the OP isn’t about whether “genuine socialists were present in the National Socialist movement,” but about whether “the Nazis were ‘socialists’.” > > The former may well be true; the latter is not. There’s no ‘may’ about it. It’s a fact. Both are true. The movement had socialist members and the movement espoused socialist tenets from the top. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2018, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/138 "2018-03-20T17:40:29Z")
I’m a sucker for a zombie Nazi. I will love _Død snø_ until I die. The sequel(s) not so much. . ---
**Author:** ![Eminent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Eminent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eminent)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2018, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/139 "2018-03-20T17:51:34Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Even if it were true that the Nazis had a socialized style economy – they also had freeways. Does that mean we’ve got to scrap all of ours? The Nazis also liked beer and potatoes; I guess no freedom-loving person may ever indulge in these. > > What the Nazis most had was unquestioned one-party rule, with no parliamentary or constitutional protections. That they may also have fought the Great Depression with government jobs and works programs is irrelevant to this major sin. ‘Does that mean we’ve got to scrap all of ours?’ Yes. Immediately. That’s besides the point. The thread is about Nazi ideology and whether it’s accurate to describe the National Socialists as socialists. Whether socialism is a good or a bad thing is a separate discussion. It’s a bad thing, for the record. No ‘freedom-loving’ person should ever indulge in a system predicated on taking money from others and forcing you to subsidize other people. On a side-note: What narrative are leftists using to justify the complete collapse of Venezuela? Have you all played the ‘they’re not really socialists’ card yet? Or are you all blaming it on external factors? Give me the scoop. It’s not irrelevant, because it all ties in to their totalitarian mentality. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2018, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568/140 "2018-03-20T18:00:13Z")
> [@Eminent](#): > > ‘Does that mean we’ve got to scrap all of ours?’ Yes. Immediately. > > That’s besides the point. The thread is about Nazi ideology and whether it’s accurate to describe the National Socialists as socialists. Whether socialism is a good or a bad thing is a separate discussion. It’s a bad thing, for the record. No ‘freedom-loving’ person should ever indulge in a system predicated on taking money from others and forcing you to subsidize other people. On a side-note: What narrative are leftists using to justify the complete collapse of Venezuela? Have you all played the ‘they’re not really socialists’ card yet? Or are you all blaming it on external factors? Give me the scoop. > > It’s not irrelevant, because it all ties in to their totalitarian mentality. Just came out of a coma, I take it? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-idiots-who-say-the-nazis-were-socialists/695568.md?page=8)