# Were the Nazi's right wing?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 13, 2003, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893 "2003-08-13T13:09:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Gjorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gjorp)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/1 "2003-08-13T13:09:09Z")
This is what I’ve always been told. This has gotten me so confused.
First, the name. _Nazi_ stands for _national_ _ **socialist** _ party.
I then read the book, Sum of All Fears. In it, the author digresses to tell the reader about the Russian custom of placing the liberals on the right and the conservatives on the left. Is this what’s going on with the Nazis?
But, then again, the Nazis were no friends to the communists, but they did make friends with Mussolini.
Or is this just a case where the old “left wing-right wing” political spectrum shows it’s general uselessness?
---
### Author:  [@galen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/2 "2003-08-13T13:28:36Z")
The political spectrum makes perfect sense if you understand it in class terms. The Nazis were on the far right. They called themselves national socialists to confuse people who were attracted to socialism for certain economic reasons, but had a national chauvinist outlook which is in conflict with true socialism, i.e., internationalism.
Also, the Russians did not invent the political spectrum.
---
### Author:  [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/3 "2003-08-13T13:47:10Z")
The political spectrum orginates in France where the more liberl candidates sat to the left of the house and the more conservative to the right, just because the Russians did it differently seems a very poor arguemnt for conservtaives being left-wing.
The Nazis were neither conservative nor liberal, but they were most defintely right wing as their main poltics were facist and nationalist.
They did have a ‘socialist’ element to their policies, but this socialism only extended as far as one ethnic group.
---
### Author:  [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/4 "2003-08-13T13:48:57Z")
_First, the name. Nazi stands for national socialist party._
Forget that bit. As **galen** says, parties and regimes often call themselves by politically expedient but inaccurate names (for instance, various non-democratic regimes, such as N. Korea and East Germany as was, with “Democratic” in the name).
At least by the traditional European definition of the term - authoritarian world-view based on intense patriotism and appeal to conservative historical moral values, and no downer on individual wealth creation through private enterprise - Nazi Germany definitely counts as right-wing.
---
### Author:  [@UnwrittenNocturne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UnwrittenNocturne)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/5 "2003-08-13T13:54:24Z")
I will butt in to disagree with **galen**. Now, frankly I have no time for any sense of ‘class’ understanding outside of caste societies. I would suggest that it does do something to show the uselessness of the linear arrangement of the political spectrum.
However, if we are to say that the left restricts your economic freedom, and the right restricts your personal life, then surely the Nazis do both (as do communists and hardline socialists).
For my money, the left right spectrum really only works for conservative/liberal politics - and even then can be fairly misleading
---
### Author:  [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/6 "2003-08-13T13:56:46Z")
No, the name National Socialist wasn’t necessarily meant to be confusing, infact in many ways it’s an accurate description of many of their social policies which in the early days especially were a strange mixture of authoritarian nationalism and socialism.
---
### Author:  [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/7 "2003-08-13T14:51:25Z")
“And the party on the Left is now the party on the Right”.
Anybody remember that it was the Communists in the USSR at the end who were the “hard-line conservatives”?
“Right” vs. “Left” are arbitrary designations that have no basis in truth. In their policies, Nazis and Communists resemble each other a great deal.
Both are actively chiliastic–they think they are driven by some sort of inexorable and impersonal force to forever transform the world to its inevitable and desirable “final” stage.
Both are mythologically driven–they invent a theory of “history” that explains so much it explains nothing and then re-invent everything to fit that “history”. Their “histories” are around a single principle to which all other concerns must be subordinated.
Both are collectivist–the individual must be sacrificed for the Mythic Cause. Indeed, the concept of individual is antithetical to their doctrines.
Both rely on demonization.
The list could go on and on.
Ultimately, they both have the same “father”, the same intellectual and philosophical heritage and underpinnings, and both ultimately fail.
---
### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/8 "2003-08-13T15:16:16Z")
In the United States, “socialist” has become synomous with the left. In most other countries it’s a fairly meaningless political term like “democratic” or “popular” or “national”. Any party can throw “socialist” into its title regardless of what its political agenda is.
As the German National Socialist Workers Party, I’d define them as reactionary. Reactionarys are to conservatives what revolutionarys are to liberals. Conservatives and liberals feel that they can change things within the existing political system; reactionarys and revolutionarys feel that the political system itself needs to be overthrown.
---
### Author:  [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/9 "2003-08-13T15:19:56Z")
It’s been said that Hitler claimed:
> [@](#):
>
> Socially I am to the left, economically I am to the right and most of all nationally I am for Germany
What I find a bit scary with that quote is that it’s word for word what **LePen** said in the last French presidential campain (if you substitute France for Germany). But I believe that it reflects how the Nazis saw themselves.
---
### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/10 "2003-08-13T16:13:39Z")
So it sounds like the Left-Wing/Right-Wing spectrum is pretty much useless in this discussion.
Then again, it’s not very useful today either, except as a way to label your opponents.
---
### Author:  [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/11 "2003-08-13T16:16:27Z")
The [Political Compass](http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/analysis2.html) is a nice tool because in addition to left/right, it also incorporates a north-south authoritarian axis (see bottom of that page). According to their scale, Hitler might be described as “almost straight up the middle, and a thousand miles high on the authoritarian scale.”
---
### Author:  [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2003, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-right-wing/194893/12 "2003-08-13T16:51:56Z")
This topic is was discussed recently in a thread in the Great Debates forum (moved there from Comments on Cecil’s Columns), so I’ll close this one and direct further comment to [Anne Frank’s article - Definition of Naziism](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=203213).
bibliophage
moderator GQ