The postwar reparations wasn’t something France and the United States invented to punish Germany. They used a formula developed by the Germans themselves - it was the one they imposed on France in 1870.
The United States wasn’t a strong supporter of reparations. It was the United States which often argued for reductions in reparations.
Spain didn’t fight in WWI - it had lost most of its empire years earlier in the Latin American Revolutions of the first half of the nineteenth century and lost the remnants in the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Belgium fought in the war but didn’t lose its Empire as a result. In fact, Belgium’s small Empire grew as a result of the war when it was awarded a former German colony as a mandate. Belgium hung on to its empire until the 1960’s.
Germany may have had trouble clothing and feeding itself in the immediate aftermath of the war. But Hitler and the Nazis weren’t able to take advantage of this. The German economy stabilized from its postwar collapse in the twenties. The Nazis didn’t have any significant power until the thirties.
Virtually every modern economist and historian agrees that Germany would have been able to pay the Versailles reparations without serious problem. Ten years after the war, Germany’s military budget was several times higher than its reparation budget for example - it could have chosen to repay reparations rather than build up its military. Germany just didn’t want to pay reparations and the Allies didn’t hold them to it.
The terms of the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 were actually harsher than the Versailles Treaty of 1919. Germany lost much more territory and sovereignty after WWII than it lost after WWI. And Germany was charged new reparations after World War II, which were larger than the ones they paid after WWI. Germany ended up paying more than it received from the Marshall Plan.
Nor did the Allies cancel WWI reparations after WWII. They were resumed in 1953 and continued until Germany made the final payments in 2010.
This is a distinction without a difference, under communism the people’s wants and needs are expressed through the party. The party takes over government which then takes over businesses and runs them for the benefit of the people. Under fascism the people’s wants and needs are expressed through the party and the leader, which takes over government and runs businesses for the benefit of the people.
The primary difference between communism and fascism is the foreign policy as I wrote in my post. Communism seeks to take over countrys and install communists governments, fascism sought to conquer other countrys and appropriate their lands and wealth. The Nazis called themselves socialists because that is what they were. Here are some of the 25 points from the founding documents of the party:
“Every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood.”
“All unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.”
“Total confiscation of all war profits.”
“Nationalization of all trusts.”
“Profit-sharing in large industries.”
“Increase in old-age pensions.”
“Communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople.”
“A law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose.”
“The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.”
“Usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.”
“The State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people.”
“Specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.”
“COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD.”
This is much too simplistic. German anti-semitism predates Hitler, he used it but he did not create it. Fascism first took root in Italy which was on the winning side of WW1 and italian fascism was not anti-semitic until they needed Germany to help them fight WW2.
Fascism in both germany and italy were outgrowths of WW1. Traditional socialism is internationalist and says the only enemies the workers had were capitalists. Yet during WW1 millions of workers were fighting each other based on nationalism. Fascists saw this and believed that internationalism would never work. So they wanted to mix nationalism and socialism. Their vision of society was that the entire country would become like an army. It would work together to pursue great goals. Many of the german soldiers felt that they were not defeated on the battlefield but betrayed by the politicians at home. They saw the contrast between the unity of purpose on the battlefield and the selfishness of the war profiteers at home. They felt that a unified country could do great things and not be defeated. Germany had lost the war because the effectiveness of the British blockade which had starved the German army of the ability to fight and the German people of the food they needed. To the fascists this showed the need for autoarky. If the nation did not need to rely on outside materials it could not be defeated. This is one of the reasons fascism was inherently militaristic. In order to get the land it needed to be self sustaining they would need to conquer their neighbors, take the land and use it to feed germany.
Well, you were wrong. They have completely different visions of how the economy should operate, for one very important thing. Indeed, Communism is first and foremost about creating a communistic economy, and everything else, including totalitarian government, is merely a means to that end. If Communists thought that there was a more effective way of achieving a communistic economy than first setting up a totalitarian state to engineer it, then they would try to achieve it that way (and many actual Communists, though perhaps not any of those who achieved real political power, do believe this, and have tried to act upon it).
Fascism, by contrast, is all about the Nation (or the race) and its strength, power, and solidarity. Everything else, including economic policies, are a means to this end. Totalitarianism is merely a means to this end too, although, in contrast to the situation amongst Communists, I think you will find a good deal of agreement amongst fascists that a strong central government is a practical necessity for the achievement of their nationalistic end. (Communism, by contrast, actively repudiates all forms of nationalism, except when it cynically uses nationalistic rhetoric as a temporary expedient, as part of its propaganda effort to get the masses on board with the project of building a communistic economy.) Economically, fascist will do whatever seems to them to best serve the needs of national power. If capitalist enterprises seem to be doing this effectively, they are quite happy for them to flourish (and, in practice, fascist and Nazi governments were supportive of, and sought to collaborate with, their nation’s capitalists). If, as may sometimes be the case (especially in wartime), it appears that national power will best be served if the government takes over certain industries, then they will take them over. However, fascists have no particular ideological interest in the state taking over control of industry (whereas Communists most certainly do).
Communism seeks to take over other countries by fomenting communist revolutions in those countries, not by one Communist country invading them and taking them over. It is true that the USSR under Stalin did end up invading and taking over several countries in Eastern Europe, but that was essentially an unintended consequence of the successful defensive war that the USSR fought against Nazi Germany. Stalin and his successors, having gained control of Eastern Europe in the process of driving back Hitler, found it hard to give up that power. However, taking over those countries in that sort of way, by invasion, was never part of the Communist plan, and was not in line with Communist ideology. (By contrast, the USSR did succeed in fomenting indigenous Communist revolutions in places such as China, Vietnam and Cuba, and that was entirely in line with Communist principles.)
Fascism is not fundamentally about invading other countries either, but doing so is very much more in line with fascistic ideology than it is with Communist ideology. Having a strong military and pushing other counties around, or even taking them over, is about the best way there could be, from a fascist perspective, of both demonstrating and increasing your nation’s strength, power and solidarity.
What the “founding documents” of the Nazi Party said is beside the point. As I and others have pointed out earlier in this thread, although there were indeed socialistic elements in the original conception of Naziism (before Hitler became a Nazi), by the time Hitler had gained control of the party, and certainly after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, those elements were repudiated or forgotten. There was nothing socialistic about the Nazis who fought World War II and engineered the holocaust. (Not that the early, more socialistic Nazis did not hate Jews and love the idea of German power too. Of course, they also hated Communists, and there was no inconsistency in that.)
Yes, certainly. Their anti-semitic and more broadly racist policies and principles were not put into effect with anything like the single-minded ruthlessness and efficiency that the Germans brought to theirs, but they were real enough, and had some quite nasty consequence for Italian Jews and others, even before the German Nazis came to dominate the Axis.
Yes, although it wasn’t as violent as its German counterpart. Mussolini’s regime put a lot of emphasis on being the heirs of the Romans and reviving the Roman Empire.
Come on, you should always take the founding documents of an organization at their word. For instance that bit about all men having been created equal. You know that America MEANT that and stuck by it because they OUTLAWED slavery. And don’t you think the Nazis were at least as trustworthy as the Founding Fathers?
Wow, we’re still arguing that fascism’s roots aren’t found in socalism?
Both communism and fascism were born in socalism. Insofar as socialism was a product of the Left, both are products of the Left. Period, full stop.
There was little “Right wing” about Nazism. Certainly nothing conservative, even using that word to represent its time-- meaning, Nazism was inherently destructive of the old social orders present in Germany. Sure, they appealed to an old order, a “golden age” perspective of German’s glorious past, but that wasn’t conservative, that was fantastical-- such a past never existed, and it certainly wasn’t represented in the actual social order present in Germany at the time.
Now, that’s not an indictment of socialism-- there are plenty of other criticisms to be made of socialism, just as there plenty to be made of capitalism. People get unnecessarily sensitive to these things, up to and including plenty of “shooting the messenger” exercises (including lots of unwarranted criticism of Jonah Goldberg’s book, which obviously in hindsight represented a great public service, seeing as he introduced into the debate plenty of sources heretofore forgotten or even outright ignored-- namely, charting all of the socialist influences on Mussolini and Hitler, not to mention their outright appropriation and espousment of socialist philosophy. They didn’t talk like socialists to appeal to socialists… they talked like socialists because they were socialists, albeit ones with their own peculiar and ultimately malevolent interpration of what socialism entailed-- ultimately represented in their particular branding of socialism, i.e. what we’ve come to call fascism).
But back to the OP: as stated above, “Socialism in One Country” represented Stalin’s surrender to the reality that the USSR was in no way capable of following the Trotskyite vision of exporting the revolution to Germany and other nations. It was a tactical choice made of neccessity, not desire (Stalin surely would have loved to export the revolution had the USSR been strong enough to do so-- since it wasn’t, he turned inward into turning the USSR into a stronger power).
Stalin was grabbing territory before entering war with the Nazis. The Polish partition, The Winter War v. Finland, the claims pressed on Bessarabia/Rumania.
Also, see the Polish/Russian War, 1919-1921 link, with 100,000 dead.
I don’t think Antisemitism was a central platform for Mussolini or his party, but I could be wrong.
I don’t think harking back to the “good old days” of ancient Rome equals racism. That’s Nationalism.
Only people who have no understanding of socialism is about, and react to the word with “Oh noes! Teh evil!” and then turn their brains off (which means, almost exclusively, American cold war and post-cold-war conservatives) think otherwise. Calling fascism a form of socialism is similar to (but several notches dafter than) calling Barack Obama a socialist.
Well yes, but as you admit it is a nitpick. People do not always live up to their principles, and when they are very powerful and ruthless people, like Stalin, the consequences can be large and nasty. However, the fact remains that invading other countries (as opposed to subverting them) is contrary to Communist principles (and even Stalin did not do a whole lot of it until Hitler forced his hand).
In any case, I think Stalin would probably have tried to justify the events you mention as just trying to reclaim historically Russian territory that had been lost during times of Russian weakness, under,and at the time of the collapse of, the Tsars. I am not saying that is right or reasonable, but he might genuinely have believed it. Even Stalin, however, would not have tried to justify taking over places like Hungary or East Germany, countries that are not even slavic, on that sort of basis.
There’s a difference between saying that fascism had socialist roots or that socialist thinking influenced the development of fascism on the one hand and calling fascism a form of socialism on the other.
This is all just hand waving. Both communism and fascism wanted to take over the government and run the economy for the benefit of the working man. The only difference is that communists want the workers to run the economy directly through the state, and fascists want the workers to run the economy through industrial syndicates.
Fascist ideology is naturally militaristic and war mongering because fascists loved action and unity. The military is the ultimate expression of people putting their individuality aside (everybody has the same haircut, the same uniform, and lives communally in a barracks) and working toward a common goal, national greatness. National greatness is most vividly shown by conquering other countries so invasions are a natual consequence of fascist ideology.
Before Hitler joined it was known as the German Socialist Worker’s party so I think it had more than socialistic elements. The night of the long knives had nothing to do with repudiating socialism but was done to gain the support of the German military who saw the SA as a threat to their power.
After the economic crisis of 1936 Hitler wrote the four year plan memo which articulated his plan to get Germany ready for war. This gave the German government even more control of the economy and sidelined whatever influence Germany’s industrialists may have had before. By 1940 the German government controlled pretty much all of the German economy either through state run companies or state issued financing.
I still disagree. The fascists had no particular ideology of doing things for the benefit of the working man or letting the workers run the economy. And they certainly did not do anything like this in practice.
Obviously, they weren’t out saying “fuck the working man” - they were a political movement after all and they needed some crowd appeal. But they put no higher emphasis on worker empowerment than the average political party did. If the fascists were socialist because of they made occasional promises of helping the working man if they got elected, then the Democrats and Republicans are equally socialist.
If you look at the history of fascist thought it is a combination of syndicalism and militarism. In Germany it was also heavily influenced by German romanticism. In Italy when the fascists tooks power they imposed wage and price controls and expropriated land for the benefit of the workers. In Germany wage and price controls were also implemented. Preparing for war took precedence over everything else but they did implement parts of their party platform. If you can link to something in either the Democrat or Republican platforms calling for the nationalization of industry, the banning of interest income, or the expropriation of large stores, then you are correct about our parties being equally socialist.
I usually don’t swear in GQ, but that’s the whole fuckin’ point. This argument is usually based on the purported chain of exact equivalences, Nazis = Communists = Socialists = Democrats. All of these links are tenuous at best, but one way to disprove this is to show that Nazis were hardly socialists. And the Nazis differed extremely from socialists in practise. Paradoxically, those who call them socialists by simply reading their platform are putting too much trust in the Nazis.
If you or anyone else can disprove that Nazis were not socialist feel free. What is being argued is that the Nazis called themselves socialists, had a socialist platform, and enacted socialist policies but were not socialist in the least. That is ridiculous. Obviously democrats are not communists and socialists are not nazis, but they are all related ideologically. Just as lemurs are related to gibbons which are related to orangutans which are related to gorillas. That does not mean gorillas are the same as lemurs.
They called themselves national socialist, had a socialist platform, but did not enact socialist policies. Furthermore, they changed their platform to remove this troubling eyewash as soon as they could.
The point is that the Nazis didn’t have a socialist program and they didn’t enact socialist policies. Unless you invent a definition of socialist policies so broad it includes virtually every political party. All the Nazis really had in common with socialists was they took the name from them. That doesn’t make them socialists any more than the people running the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are Democrats and Republicans.
The Nazis were not socialists, and the only people who say they were are American right-wingers who are attempting to discredit anyone to the left of themselves by equating them with Nazis.
Here’s the test; for anyone who claims the Nazis were socialists: are you, by any chance, an American of the right-wing persuasion? Yes or no, be honest and give a straight answer.