"We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency coverage of gold of which we had none, but for "We every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work wo rk done or goods produced. . . .we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of o f a state bank." -Adolf Hitler, 1937 (CC Veith, Veith, Citadels of Chaos, Meador, 1949.)
"And it proved sound. It worked. In less than ten years Germany became easily the most powerful state in Europe. It worked so magically and magnificently that it sounded the death knell k nell of the entire (Zionist) Jewish money system. World World Jewry knew that they had to destroy Hitler's system, by whatever means might prove necessary, or their own [system of usury] would necessarily die. And if it died, with it must die their dream and their hope of making themselves masters of the world. The primary issue over which World War War II was fought was to determine which money system was to survive. At bottom it was not a war between Germany and the so-called allies. Primarily it was war to the death between be tween Germany and the International Money Power." --William --William Gayley Simpson, 'Which Way Western Man' (p.642)
“The people were not put here on earth for the sake of the economy, and the economy doesn’t exist for the sake of capital. On the contrary; capital is meant to serve the economy, and the economy in turn, to serve the people.” Adolph Hitler "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the "We economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler (Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, Toland, 1976, p. 306) http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id10.html [Below is the 25 of the NSDAP Program - This is basically the National Socialist German Workers Workers Party Platform. It included measures that in effect would redistribute income and war profits, profitsharing with large industries, nationalization of trusts, extensive development of old-age pension (just like FDRs Social Security Program), and free education. Clearly this demonstrates Hitler was indeed a left winger and here is startling proof.] The 25 points p oints of the NSDAP Program were composed by Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler. Drexler. They were publically presented on 24 February 1920 "to a crowd of almost two thousand and every single point was accepted amid a mid jubilant approval." (Mein Kampf, Volume Volume II, Chapter I) Hitler H itler explained their purpose in the fifth chapter of the second volume of Mein Kampf: [T]he program of the new movement was summed up in a few guiding principles, twenty-five in all. They were devised to give, primarily to the man of the people, a rough picture of the movement's aims. They are in a sense a political creed, which on the one hand recruits for the movement and on the other is suited to unite and weld together by a commonly recognized obligation those who have been recruited. Hitler was intent on having a community of mutual interest that desired mutual success instead of one
that was divided over the control of money or differing values. THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST THAT THAT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE PROGRAM. BREAKING OF THE THRALDOM OF INTEREST THAT IS THE KERNEL OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM. In these straightforward statements of intent, Hitler translated his ideology into a plan of action which would prove its popularity with the German peop le throughout the coming years. For many, the abruptness of its departure from the tradition of politics as practiced in the western world was as much of a shock as its liberal nature and foresight of the emerging problems of western democracy. The Programme of the German Workers' Workers' Party is designed to be of limited duration. The leaders hav e no intention, once the aims announced in it have been achieved, of establishing fresh ones, merely in order to increase, artificially, artificially, the discontent of the masses and so ensure the continued existence of o f the Party. 1. We We demand the union of all Germany in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national selfdetermination. 2. We We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and the revocation of the peace treaties of Versailles Versailles and Saint-Germain. 3. We demand land and territory (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our surplus population. 4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever be their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation. 5. Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens. 6. The right to vote on the State's government and legislation shall be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens. We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of filling posts merely in accordan ce with party considerations, and without reference to character or abilities. 7. We We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire e ntire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich. 8. All non-German immigration must be preven ted. We We demand that all non-Germans who entered en tered Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Re ich forthwith. 9. All citizens shall have equal rights and duties. 10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the general interest, but must proceed within the framework of the community and be for the general good.
We demand therefore:
11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work. The breaking of the slavery of interest
12. In view of the enormous sacrifices of life and property demanded of a nation by any war, personal enrichment from war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore the ruthless confiscation of all war profits. 13. We We demand the nationalization of all a ll businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts). 14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises. 15. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age. 16. We We demand the creation and an d maintenance of a healthy h ealthy middle class, the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that the utmost consideration shall be shown to all small traders in the placing of State and municiple orders. 17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compen sation; the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land. * 18. We We demand the ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race. 19. We We demand that Roman Law, which serves a materialistic world order, be replaced by a German common law. 20. The State must consider a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education (with the aim of opening up to every able and hard-working German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement). The curricula of all e ducational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the schoo l must be to give the pupil, beginning with the first sign of intelligence, a grasp of the nation of the State (through the study of civic affairs). We We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State. 21. The State must ensure that the nation's health standards are raised by protecting mothers and infants, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and by the extensive support o f clubs engaged in the physical ph ysical training of youth. 22. We We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the foundation of a people's army. army. 23. We We demand legal lega l warfare on deliberate political mendacity and its dissemination in the press. To facilitate the creation of a German national press we demand:
(a) that all editors of, and contributors to newspapers ap pearing in the German language must be members of the nation; (b) that no non-German newspapers may appea r without the express permission of the State. They must not be printed in the German language; (c) that non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and that the penalty p enalty for contravening such a law shall be the suppression of any such newspaper, and the immediate deportation of the non-Germans involved. The publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare must be forbidden. We demand the legal prosecution of o f all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand. 24. We We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the State, provided they do not threaten its existence not offend the moral feelings of the Ge rman race. The Party, Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, Christianity, but does not commit itself to any particular denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health only from within on the basis of the principle: The common interest before self-interest. 25. To To put the whole of this programme into effect, we demand the creation of a strong central state power for the Reich; the unconditional un conditional authority of the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and its organizations; and the formation of Corporations based on estate and occupation occup ation for the purpose of carrying out the general legislation passed by the Reich in the various German states. The leaders of the Party promise to work ruthlessly -- if need be to sacrifice their very lives -- to translate this programme into action. Source: Programme of the NSDAP Description: The author focuses on the main Nazi work creation programs like motorization, motorization, Autobahn, emergency relief, and rearmament. He stresses on the fact that most work creation from the period 1933-1936 was not a result of rearmament rather a fierce attack on emp loyment through some of the methods mentioned above. In addition, the growing control of the Nazi party over all aspects of the economy is clearly identified in every chapter as this con trol grows. The book is loaded with information. Professor Silverman argues, as a result of impressive research in Nazi archives, that it was work creation programs that account for this "miracle" and it was the 4-year Plan announced in 1936 that represented an emphasis on autarky and arms and a seller's market. Plans called for motorization and the famous autobahns. It is natural to compare co mpare Hitler's achievements with FDR's New Deal. Strangely Silverman hardly mention the USSR as a source of ideas in the Hitler years, though the 4-year Plan itself was inspired by the Soviet FYP, FYP, the second of which was being completed by the time Goebbels began administering the German equivalent. Earlier (February,1935) Soviet-type "work books" necessary for employment were introduced. Hitler was named "Man of the Year" Year" in 1938 by Time Magazine. They noted Hitler's anti-capitalistic economic policies:
"Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated co nfiscated outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has ha s taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism." (Source: Time Magazine; Jaunuary 2, 1939.) Hitler setup the Labour Front. Both employers and emp loyees joined it. According to the National Labour Law of January 20, 1934, the state would exert direct influence and control over all business employing more than twenty persons. In other words, bo th employers and employees were put under the control of the government.
Summary: Below is a short economic analysis of German Economy under the Nazis. It is apparent they ran a centralized collectivist economy just like the Soviet Union. It was a political party that acted much in the same way the American Left does in regard to unemployment and trying to use the government to decrease it. It notes that the Nazis used public works to a large extent, which is exceedingly leftist, and put people to work for the State. The Nazis started enacting other leftist ploys like price freezes an d starting expanding the role of the government and destroying any freedom left in the Market. Private Property owners were dictated to by the State. Clearly Nazis were opponents of capitalism through a nd through.
Notes on: "On the Theory of the Centrally Administered Administered Economy: An Analysis Analysis of the German Ge rman Experiment," by Walter Eucken Walter Eucken was a professor of economics a t the University of Freiburg, Germany and an architect of the economic reforms that led to the Economic Miracle. In this article Eucken wanted to explain the problems and weaknesses of centrally administered economies such a s that of National Socialist (Nazi) Germany and the Soviet Union. The Nazi economic system developed unintentionally. The initial objective in 1932-33 of its economic policy was just to reduce the high unemployment associated with the Great Depression. This involved public works, expansion of credit, easy monetary policy and manipulation of exchange rates. Generally Centrally Administered Administered Economies (CAE's) have little trouble eliminating unemployment because becau se they can create large public works projects and people are put to work regardless of whether or not their productivity exceeds their wage cost. Nazi Germany was successful in solving the unemployment problem, but after a few years the expansion exp ansion of the money supply was threatening to create inflation. The Nazi Government reacted to the threat of inflation by declaring a general price freeze in 1936. From that action the Nazi Government was driven to expand the role of the government in directing the
economy and reducing the role played by market forces. Although private property was not nationalized, its use was more and more determined by the government rather than the owners. Eucken uses the case of the leather industry. industry. An individual leather factory produces at the direction of the Leather Control Office. This Control Office arranged for the factory to get the hides and other supplies it needed to produce leather. leather. The output of leather was disposed of according to the dictates of the Leather Control Office. The Control Offices set their directives through a process involving four stages: * 1. The collection of statistical information by a Statistical Section. The Statistical Section tried to assemble all the important data on past production, p roduction, equipment, storage facilities and raw material requirements. * 2. The planning of production taking into account the requirements of leather lea ther by other industries in their plans; e.g. the needs of o f the Shoe Control Office for supplies of leather. The available supply of hides limited the production of leather. There had to be a balancing of supply and demand. The result of the planning of all the control con trol offices was a Balance Sheet. There was some effort at creating some system for solving the planning, such as production being limited by the narrowest bottleneck, but in practice the planning ended up being simply scaling up past production and planning figures. * 3. The issuing of production orders to the individual factories. * 4. Checking up on compliance with the planning orders. In practice the authorities of the control offices often intervened and there was continual negotiation and political battles as the users of products tried to use political influence to improve their allocations. The prices of 1936 made little economic sense, particularly after Germany was at war. So there economic calculations using the official prices were meaningless. In particular, the profitability of a product was of no significance in determining d etermining whether it should be produced or not. Losses did not result in a factory ceasing production; the control offices made sure that it got the raw materials and that the workers got rations of necessities. At the beginning of the war wa r the Government established a priorities list for allocating scarse resources. Activities associated with the war got top priority and consumer goo ds production was near the bottom of the list. If two users wanted gasoline any a vailable stocks went to the user with the highest priority. priority. This seems reasonable but, in fact, it led to major problems. Suppose one use of gasoline ga soline is for trucks to haul raw materials to factories. If the Government always gives the available gasoline to the Army then the truckers cannot deliver supplies to the factories and they shut down and eventually ev entually other factories dependent upon them also a lso shut down. At first the Government tried to handle the problem by revising the priorities list and moving up uses such as gasoline for trucks. But whatever uses got put at the bottom eventually created bottlenecks. In the m iddle of the war the Government abolished a bolished the priority list. It was an unworkable system. The problem with making production decisions without reference to relevant prices is that the control offices may dictate the production of goods which are of less value to the economy than the opportunity costs of the resources that go into their production. Because of the mistakes and failures of Centrally Administered Economies there are often black markets operating. Although the authorities typically persecute people for dealing in these markets the reality is that such markets are essential for preventing a collapse of the Centrally Administered Economy.
Production decisions may be made on political criteria that are economically foolish, such as locating a factory in a region to benefit the supporters sup porters of some political figure. Even aside from such corruption of the decision process the centrally administered economy suffers from major weaknesses. The centrally administered economy can mobilize resourts quickly for big investment projects but there is no guarantee that there will be a balance of investments. For example, there may be big programs to build railroads but not enough trains to make use of those railroads. Although Centrally Administered Economies may appear to be efficient and effective initially their errors and inefficiencies accumulate and eventually result in stagnation if not collapse. Often the apparent successes of such economies are just illusions. Outsiders who do not know how such economies really work are often fooled by these illusions. Source: San José State University - Department of Economics
It seems that Hitler was a smoker in his youth but at some stage he became aware of its health hazards and, when in power (perhaps with the zeal of a convert), appeared to detest tobacco, which he called "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor." liquor." But the antismoking campaign reflected "a national political climate stressing the virtues of racial hygiene and bodily purity" as well as the Fuhrer's personal prejudices. The same could be said of Nazi efforts to discourage drinking and encourage a better diet. The state performer in antismoking propaganda was Adolf Hitler. As one magazine put it: "brother national socialist, do you know that our Führer is against smoking and think that every German is responsible to the whole people for all his deeds and emissions, and does not have the right to damage his body with drugs?"
"Robert Proctor presents a great deal of eviden ce that the nazis' exerted massive control c ontrol over most facets of ordinary citizen's lives. Yet somehow, somehow, he never reaches the obvious conclusion that such compulsive regulations, even if arguably well intentioned, ultimately lead to a large scale sacrifice of basic freedoms. He explains how the nazis greatly restricted tobacco advertising, banned smoking in most public buildings, increasingly restricted and regulated tobacco farmers growing abilities, and enga ged in a sophisticated anti-smoking public relations campaign. (Suing tobacco companies for announced consequences was a stunt that mysteriously eluded Hitler's thugs.) Despite the frightening parallels to the current war on tobacco, Mr. Mr. Proctor never even hints at the analogy. analogy. Curiously, Curiously, he seems to take an approach that such alleged concern for public health shows nazism to be a more complex dogma than commonly presumed. While nothing present in the book betokens even a trace of o f sympathy for the Third Reich, this viewpoint seems incredibly naive. It's easy to wonder if Hitler and company were truly concerned with promoting public health. The un quenchable lust for absolute control is a far more believable motive. Incongruously some of the book's desultory details lend further certitude to its unpromulgated thesis. Hitler not only abstained from tobacco; he also never drank and was,for the most part--a vegetarian. Frighteningly he also was an animal rights activist. The book reruns a nazi-era cartoon depicting many liberated lab animals giving the nazi salute to Hermann Goring after he outlawed an imal experimentation and promised to send violators to a concentration camp. Also included is a fitting
quote -now too widely suppressed from Joseph Goebb les, `the fuhrer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian; he views Christianity as a symptom of decay." Controversial as it may be in some circles, such a quote proves that nazism viewed Christianity as hatefully as it did Judaism. Passing coverage is given to the Third Reich's forays into eu thanasia and eugenics. Another striking morsel is the reporting of a widespread nazi-era wh ispered joke `What is the ideal German? Blond like Hitler. Hitler. Slim like Goring. Masculine like Goebbles...' implying that Gautlier Goebble's homosexuality ho mosexuality was common knowledge. Nazi linguistic restrictions seem to be the counterpart of modern day `hate speech.' Words such as `catastrophe,' sabotage,' and `assassination' were to be avoided, and in a portentous move, `cripple' was replaced by `handicapped. Proctor also suggests `the word `enlightenment' (was) probably used more in the nazi period than at any other time.' Perhaps the ultimate overlooked point of this work is the suggestion that Adolph Hitler with his antitobacco, anti-religion, pro-animal rights, pro-government intrusion would find success as a modern day liberal." --Steve Fantina
Factoid: Did you know the three leading facist leaders (Benito Mussolini, Franco, & Adolf Hitler) all abstained from tobacco and smoking?
nazi1a.gif nazi1b.gif Motherhood, apple cider cide r and Volkswagen: Volkswagen: Virtures Virtures of abstinence include healthy infants and savings, enough for Germans to buy two million VWs. In Nazi Germany, for instance, abstinence from tobacco was a "national socialist duty" (Hitler gave a gold watch to associates who quit the habit, though this didn't stop them lighting up in the Berlin bunker once they heard the Fuhrer had committed suicide). Armed with such senior sanction -- loyally, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler banned SS men from smoking, though not shooting, on duty, and Propaganda Minister Joseph Gobbels was obliged to h ide his ciggie whenever he was filmed -- antitobacco activists succeeded in banning smoking from government offices, civic transport, university campuses, rest homes, post offices, many restaurants and bars, hospital grounds and workplaces. Tobacco taxes were raised, unsupervised cigarette c igarette vending machines were banned, and there were calls for a ban on smoking while driving. Thanks to the Ministry of Science and Education, Educa tion, and the Reich Health Office, posters were produced depicting smoking as the typically despicable habit of Jews, jazz musicians, Gypsies, Indians, homosexuals, blacks, communists, capitalists, cripples, intellectuals and harlots. Zealous lobbyists descended into the schools, terrifying children with tales of impotence and racial impurity. One particularly vile individual, Karl Astel -- upstanding president of Jena University U niversity,, poisonous antiSemite, euthanasia fanatic, SS officer, war criminal and tobacco-free Germany enthusiast -- liked to walk up to smokers and tear cigarettes from their unsuspecting mouths. (He committed suicide when the war ended, more through disappointment than fear of hanging.) It comes co mes as little surprise to discover that the phrase "passive smoking" (Passivrauchen) was coined not by contemporary American
admen, but by Fritz Lickint, the author of the magisterial 1100-page Tabak und Organismus ("Tobacco and the Organism"), which was produced in collaboration with the German AntiTobacco AntiTobacco League. If some of these measures appear familiar today, then consider the rules laid down in 19 41 regarding tobacco advertising. "Images that create the impression that smoking is a sign of masculinity are barred, as are images depicting men engaged in activities attractive to youthful males (athletes or pilots, for example)," and "may not be b e directed at sportsmen or automobile drivers," while "advoca tes of tobacco abstinence or temperance must not be mocked." Advertisements were banned from films, billboards, posters and "the text sections of journals and newspapers." Nevertheless, even the Nazis couldn't equal the recent ban on smoking on death row, meaning prisoners about to undergo massive electric shocks are forbidden from indulging in "one last drag" -- talk about cruel and unusual punishment. This great crusade, propagated through a remarkable network of lectures, re-education programs and congresses, was backed up by the medical and health establishment for the sake of "science." Or at least a certain type of junk science, one in which objective research and the scientific method was subordinated to, and bastardized for the sake of, a greater political program. Thus, it was co mmonly touted by scientists and racial hygienists that smoking caused "spontaneous abortions": a clearly demonstrable fallacy, fallacy, but one on e requiring official promotion in order to ensure a high birth rate for Aryan women. (Source: Anti-tobacco Gestapo: past and present)
nazi2a.gif The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public pu blic health in Germany, 1933-45 (BMJ No 7070 Volume 313) Robert N Proctor Historians and epidemiologists have only recently begun to exp lore the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s,encompassing 1940s,enco mpassing bans on smoking in public spaces, bans on advertising,restrictions on tobacco rations for women, and the world's most refined tobacco epidemiology, linking tobacco use with the already evident epidemic of lung cancer. The anti-tobacco campaign must be understood ag ainst the backdrop of the Nazi quest for racial and bodily purity, which also motivated many other public health efforts of the era. Medical historians in recent years have done a great deal to enlarge our understanding und erstanding of medicine and public health in Nazi Germany. We We know that about half of all doctors joined the Nazi party and that doctors played a major part in designing and administering the Nazi programmes of forcible sterilisation, "euthanasia," and the industrial scale murder of Jews and gypsies.(1) (2) Much of our present day concern for the abuse of humans used in experiments stems from the extreme b rutality many German doctors showed towards concentration camp prisoners exploited to advance the cause of German military medicine.(3) Tobacco in the Reich One topic that has only recently begun begu n to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement.(4-6) Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s,supported by by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race.(1) (4)Many
Nazi leaders were vocal opponents oppo nents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond o f tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of EuropeHitler, Mussolini, and Franco-were all non-smokers.(7) Hitler was the most adamant,characterising tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having hav ing been given hard liquor." liquor." At one point the Fuhrer even suggested that Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.(8) German smoking rates rose dramatically in the first six years of Nazi rule, suggesting that the propaganda campaign launched during those early years was largely ineffective.(4) (5) German smoking rates rose faster even than those of France, which had a much weaker anti-tobacco campaign. German per capita tobacco use between 1932 and 1939 rose from 570 to 900 cigarettes a year, whereas French tobacco consumption grew from 570 to only 630 cigarettes over the same period.(9) p eriod.(9) Smith et al suggested that smoking may have functioned as a kind of cultural resistance,(4) though it is also important to realise that German tobacco companies exercised a great deal of economic and political power, as they do today. German anti-tobacco ac tivists frequently complained that their efforts were no match for the "American style" advertising campaigns waged by the tobacco industry.(10) industry.(10) German cigarette manufacturers neutralised early criticism-for example, from the SA(Sturm-Abteilung; stormtroops), which manufactured its own"Sturmzigaretten"-by portraying themselves as early and eager supporters of the regime.(11) The tobacco industry also launched several new journals aimed at countering anti-tobacco propaganda. In a pattern that would become familiar in the United States and elsewhere after the second world war, several of these journals tried to dismiss the anti-tobacco movement as "fanatic"and "unscientific." One such journal featured the German word for science twice in its title (Der Tabak: Wissenschaftliche Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der International en Tabakwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, founded in 1940). We should also realise rea lise that tobacco provided an important source of revenue for the national treasury. In 1937-8 German national income from tobacco taxes and tariffs exceeded 1 billion Reichsmarks.(12) By 1941, as a result of new taxes and the annexation of Austria Austria and Bohemia, Germans were paying nearly twice that. According to Germany's national accounting office, by 1941 tobacco taxes constituted about one twelfth of the government's go vernment's entire income.(13) Two Two hundred thousand Germans were said to owe their livelihood to tobacco-an argument that was reversed by those who pointed to Germany's need for additional men in its labour force, men who could presumably be supplied from the tobacco industry.(14) industry.(14) Culmination of the campaign: 1939-41 German anti-tobacco policies accelerated towards the end of the 1930s,and by the early war years tobacco use had begun to decline. The Luftwaffe banned smoking in 1938 and the post office did likewise.Smoking was barred in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals,and rest homes. The NSDAP (National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) Arbeiterpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich He inrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty.(15) The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Hermann Goering's decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches, and on brief off duty periods.(16) Sixty of Germany's largest cities banned smoking on street cars in 1941.(17) Smoking was banned in air raid shelters-though some shelters reserved separate rooms for smokers.(18) During the war years tobacco rationing coupons were denied to pregnant women (and to all women below the age of 25) while restaurants and cafes caf es were barred from selling cigarettes to female customers.(19) From July 1943 it was illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public.(20) Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944, the initiative coming from Hitler himself,who was
worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke.(21) Nazi policies were heralded as marking"the beginning of the end" of tobacco use in Germany.(14) Germany.(14) German tobacco epidemiology by this time was the most advanced in the world. Franz H Muller in 1939 and Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schoniger in 1943 were the first to use case-control epidemiological methods to document the lung cancer hazard from cigarettes.(22) (23) Muller concluded that the "extraordinary rise in tobacco use" was "the single most important cause of the rising incidence of lung cancer."(22) Heart disease was another focus and was not infrequently said to be the most serious illness brought on by smoking.(24) Late in the war nicotine was suspected as a cause of the coronary heart failure suffered by a surprising number o f soldiers on the eastern front. A 1944 report by an army field pathologist found that all 32 young soldiers whom he had examined after death from heart attack on the front had been "enthusiastic smokers." The author cited the Freiburg pathologist Franz Buchner's view that cigarettes should be considered "a coronary poison of the first order."(25) On 20 June 1940 Hitler ordered tobacco rations to be distributed to the military "in a manner that would dissuade" soldiers from smoking.(24) Cigarette rations were limited to six per man per day, with alternative rations available for non-smokers(for example, chocolate or extra food). Extra cigarettes were sometimes available for purchase, but these were generally limited to 50 per man per p er month and were often unavailable-as during times of rapid advance or retreat. Tobacco rations were denied to women accompanying the Wehrmacht. An ordinance on 3 November 1941 raised tobacco taxes to a higher level than they had ever been (80-95% of the retail price).Tobacco price).Tobacco taxes would not rise that high again for more than a quarter of a century after Hitler's defeat.(26) Impact of the war and postwar po stwar poverty The net effect of these and other measures (for instance, medical lectures to discourage soldiers from smoking) was to lower tobacco consumption by the military during the war years. A 1944 survey of 1000 servicemen found that, whereas the proportion of soldiers smoking had increased (only 12.7 % were non-smokers), the total consumption of tobacco had decreased-by just over 14%. More men were smoking (101 of those surveyed had taken up the habit during d uring the war, whereas only seven had given it up) but the average soldier was smoking about a quarter (23.4%) less tobacco than in the immediate prewar period. The number of very heavy smokers (30 or more cigarettes daily) was down dramatically-from 4.4% to only 0.3%-and similar declines were recorded for moderately heavy smokers.(24) Postwar poverty further cut consumption. According to official statistics statistics German tobacco use did not reach prewar levels again until the mid-1950s. m id-1950s. The collapse was dramatic: German per capita consumption dropped by more than half from 1940 to 1950, whereas American American consumption nearly doubled during that period.(6) (9) French consumption also rose, though during the four years of German occupation cigarette consumption declined by even more than in Germany(9)-suggesting that military conquest had a larger effect than Nazi propaganda. After the war Germany lost its position as home to the world's most aggressive anti-tobacco science. Hitler was dead but also many of his anti-tobacco an ti-tobacco underlings either had lost their jobs or were otherwise silenced. Karl Aster, Aster, head of Jena's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research (and rector of the University of Jena and an officer in the SS), committed suicide in his o ffice on the night of 3-4 April 1945.Reich Health Fuhrer Leonardo Conti, another anti-tobacco activist,committed suicide on 6 October 1945 in an allied a llied prison while awaiting prosecution for his role in the e uthanasia programme. Hans Reiter, the Reich Health Office president who once characterised nicotine as "the greatest enemy
of the people's health" and "the number one drag on the German economy"(27) was interned in an American prison camp for two years, after which he worked as a physician in a clinic in Kassel, never again returning to public service. Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, the guiding light behind Thuringia's antismoking campaign and the man who drafted the grant application for Astel's Astel's anti-tobacco institute, was executed on 1 October 1946 for crimes against humanity. It is hardly surprising that much of the wind was taken out of the sails of Germany's anti-tobacco movement. The flip side of Fascism Smith et al were correct to emphasise the strength of the Nazi anti smoking effort and the sophistication of Nazi era tobacco scienc e.(4) The anti smoking science and policies of the era have not attracted much attention, possibly because the impulse behind the movement was closely attached to the larger Nazi movement.That does not mean, however, that anti smoking movements are inherently fascist(28); it means simply that scientific memories are often clouded by the celebrations of victors and that the political history of science is occasionally less pleasant than we would wish. Funding: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,Washington, Museum,Washington, DC; Hamburger Institut fur Sozialforschung in Hamburg. Conflict of interest: None. Department of History, Pennsylvania State University, University, University Park, PA 16802, United States Robert N Proctor, professor of the history of science 1 Proctor R N. Racial hygiene: medicine under the Nazis.Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988. 2 Kater M H. Doctors under Hitler.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. 3 Annas G, Grodin M. The Nazi doctors and the Nuremberg code.New York: York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 4 Smith G D, Strobele S A, Egger M. Smoking and death.BMJ1995;310:396. 5 Borgers D. Smoking and death. BMJ 1995;310:1536. 6 Proctor R N. Nazi cancer research and policy. J Epidemiol Community Health (in press). 7 Bauer D. So lebt der Duce. Duce . Auf der Wacht Wacht 1937:19-20. 8 Picker H. Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier.Bonn: Fuhrerhauptquartier.Bonn: Athenaum Verlag, Verlag, 1951. 9 Lee PN, ed. Tobacco consumption in various countries. 4th ed. London: Tobacco Research Council, 1975.
10 Reid G. Weltanschauung, Haltung, Genussgifte.Genussgifte1939;35:64. 11 Kosmos. Bild-Dokumente unserer Zeit.Dresden: Kosmos,1933. 12 Reckert Reck ert FK. Tabakwarenkunde: Der Tabak, sein Anbau undseine Verarbeitung.Berlin-Schoneberg: Verarbeitung.Berlin-Schoneberg: Max Schwabe, 1942. 13 Erkennung und Bekampfung der Tabakgefahren. DtschArztebl 1941;71:183-5. 14 Klarner W. W. Vom Vom Rauchen: Eine Sucht und ihre Bekampfung.Nuremberg: Rudolf Kern, 1940. 1940 . 15 Rauchverbot fur die Polizei auf Strassen und in Dienstraumen. Die Genussgifte1940;36:59. 16 Berlin: alcohol, tobacco and coffee. JAMA 1939;113:1144-5. 1939;113:1144-5. 17 Kleine Mitteilungen. Vertrauensarzt Vertrauensarzt 1941;9:196. 18 Mitteilungen. Off Gesundheitsdienst 1941;7:488. 19 Charman T. The German home front 1939-1945. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1989. 20 Fromme W. W. Offentlicher Gesundheitsdienst. In: Rodenwaldt E,ed. Hygiene. Part I. General hygiene. Wiesbaden: Dietrich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1948:36. 21Informationsdienst des Hauptamtes fur Volksgesundheitder NSDAP. NSDAP. 1944;April-June:60-1. 1 944;April-June:60-1. 22 Muller F H. Tabakmissbrauch und Lungencarcinom. Z Krebsforsch1939;49:57-85. 23 Schairer E, Schoniger E. Lungenkrebs Lungenkr ebs und Tabakverbrauch.Z Krebsforsch1943;54:261-9. 24 Kittel W. Hygiene des Rauchens. In: Handloser S, Hoffmann W, W, eds. Wehrhygiene. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1944. 25 Goedel A. Kriegspathologische Beitrage. In: Zimmer A, ed.Kriegschirurgie. Vol Vol 1. Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1944. 26 Pritzkoleit K. Auf einer Woge von Gold: Der Triumph der Wirtschaft.Vi Wirtschaft.Vienna: enna: Verlag Verlag Kurt Desch, 1961. 27 Werberat der deutschen Wirtschaft. Wirtschaft. Volksgesundheit Volksgesundheit und Werbung. Berlin: arl Heymanns, 1939. 28 Peto R. Smoking and death. BMJ 1995;310:396. (Accepted 6 November 1996)
By: John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
Mussolini's own summary of the Fascist philosophy: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State)
A Leftist prophet The ideas of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the founder of Fascism, are remarkably similar to the ideas of modern-day Western Western Leftists. If Mussolini was not the direct teacher of modern-day Leftists, he was certainly a major predecessor. What Leftists Leftists advocate today is not, of course, totally identical with what Mussolini was advocating and doing 60 6 0 to 80 years ago in Italy but there are nonetheless extensive and surprising parallels. Early in the 20th century, he prophesied that the 20th century would be the century of Fascism and he got that right in that most of his ideas are still preached by b y the modern-day Left.
The popular view Popular encyclopedias such as Funk & Wagnalls (1983) lump together Hitler's German regime, Mussolini's Italian regime, General Tojo's Japanese regime and Generalissimo Franco's Spanish regime under the single rubric of "fascist" so it seems clear tha t it is the accepted wisdom that all four regimes were basically similar and differed only in matters of detail. Anyone who knows even a little of the history of the period concerned, however, must realize how far from the truth this is. The feudal warlords of Japan, the antisemitic socialist of Germany, the Catholic monarchist of Spain and the pragmatic socialist of Italy were in fact really united over only one thing: Their dislike of Lenin and Stalin's Communism and "Bolshevism" generally. There clearly is some need, therefore, for us to look at what Mussolini and the Fascists really were and did.
The reality In what follows, facts that should be easily checkable in popular encyclopaedias and textbooks will not be referenced. Less well-known facts, however, will be referenced. History is of course written by the victors and most summaries of historical Fascism are therefore written from a very anti-Fascist perspective so care is normally needed to tease out the facts behind the interpretations and value judgments. That will attempted here. Unlike many other accounts, considerable emphasis will be given here to Mussolini's early years. What politicians say in order to get into power and what they do once they gain power are notoriously two different things -- with Lenin and Stalin being not the least examples of that. A major aim therefore will be to see where Mussolini came from and what he did and said in order to get into power. To do so, however, is a considerable trip back in time and one effect of that is that the political terminology of nearly 100 years ago was somewhat different from today. In reading quotations from the early days one must keep in mind that those Mussolini refers to as "Socialists" were in fact Marxists
rather than social democrats and those whom wh om Mussolini refers to as "liberals" were advocates of laissez faire and would hence be described as conservatives today. Mussolini started out as a Marxist but eventually devised Fascism as a "third way" (sound familiar?). He saw it as offering a middle way between Marxism and capitalism -- Leftist but not Marxist.
In Mussolini's own words Let us listen initially to some reflections on the early days of Fascism by Mussolini himself -- first published in 1935 (See the third chapter in Greene, 1968). "If the bourgeoisie think they will find lightning conductors in us they are the more deceived; we must start work at once .... We want to accustom the working class to real and effectual leadership". And that was Mussolini quoting his own words from the early Fascist days. So while Mussolini had by that time (in his 30s) come to reject the Marxist idea of a class-war, he still saw himself as anti bourgeois and as a saviour and leader of the workers. What modern-day Leftist could not identify with that? "Therefore I desire that this assembly shall accept the revindication of national trades unionism" So he was a good union man like most Leftists today. "When the present regime breaks down, we must be ready at once to take its place" Again a great Leftist hope and aspiration. "Fascism has taken up an attitude of complete opposition to the doctrines of Liberalism, both in the political field and in the field of economics". The "Liberalism" he refers to here would of course be called "Neo-liberalism" today -- the politics of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Mussolini opposed such politics and so do Leftists today. "The present method of political representation cannot suffice". Modern-day Leftists too seem to seek influence outside the normal democratic channels -- from strikes and demonstrations to often successful attempts to get the courts to make law. "Fascism now and always believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say in actions influenced by no economic motive" He here also rejects the Communist emphasis on materialism. Leftism to this day is often seen as a religion and its agitators clearly often long to be seen as heroic and unmaterialistic. "Fascism repudiates the conception of "economic" happiness" Leftists today also tend to regard consumerism as gross (or say they do a s they drive off in their Volvos).
"After the war, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: It existed only as a hatred". Socialism has never been a buzzword in North American Leftist circles but it certainly was for a very long time in the rest of the world. And to modern day British Leftists too socialism has a meaning that is more nostalgic and emotional than concrete and many would be prepared to admit that it is functionally "dead". Mussolini, however was 70 years earlier in ann ouncing the death. It should be noted, however, that Mussolini was principally referring here to the policies and doctrines of h is own former Socialist Party -- which was explicitly Marxist -- and which were far more extreme than the socialism of (say) Clement Attlee and the postwar British Labour party. "Fascism ..... was born of the need for action and it was itself from the beginning practical rather than theoretical". Modern-day Leftist demonstrators too seem to be more interested in dramatic actions than in any coherent theory. theory. " one would there find no ordered expression of doctrine but a series of aphorisms, anticipations and aspirations". This is how Mussolini described early Fascist meetings. Modern-day Leftist agitators too seem more interested in slogans than in any form of rational debate. "If the 19th century has been the century of the individual (for liberalism means individualism), it may be conjectured that this is the century of the State. This is Mussolini's famous prophecy about the 20th century in the Enciclopedia Italiana. It came true with the aid of the modern-day Left and their love of big government. governmen t. To To underline that, note that in 1900 the ratio of government spending to GDP in Italy was 10%, in the 1950s 30%, and it is now roughly 60% (Martino, 1998). In this prophecy, Mussolini rejected Marxian socialism because he disliked the Marxist notions of class war and historical inevitability but modern-day Leftists differentiate themselves from Marxists too. But Mussolini was more like Lenin and Stalin in h is overt rejection of democracy: "Fascism denies that the majority, majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society". Most modern-day Leftists in the Western Western world would undoubtedly like to get rid of democracy too but they are less open about it than Mussolini was. "Laissez faire is out of date" To this day the basic free market doctrine of "laissez faire" is virtually a swear-word to most Leftists. Quoted from Smith (1967, p. 87). "The paid slaves of kings in their gaudy uniforms, their chests covered with crosses, decorations and similar foreign and domestic hardware ..... blinding the public with dust and flaunting in its face their impudent display". Here Hibbert (1962, p. 11) reports Mussolini's youthful contempt for the armed forces. Such antimilitarism would surely resound well with most student antiwar demonstrators of today. today.
"The Socialist party reaffirms its eternal faith in the future of the Workers' Workers' International, destined to bloom again, greater and stronger, from the blood and conflagration of peoples. It is in the name of the International and of Socialism that we invite you, proletarians of Italy, to uphold your unshakeable opposition to war". This from Carsten (1967, p. 46). It is from an article that was published by Mussolini in the Socialist Party organ "Avanti!" "Avanti!" of 22 September, 1914 during Mussolini's Marxist period. So Mussolini's antimilitarism persisted until he was aged 31. When compared with Mussolini's subsequent career this shows exactly where anti-militaristic and antiwar sentiments can ultimately lead. "Our programme is simple. We want to rule Italy". As I have argued at length elsewhere, that is the real program of any Leftist. But Mussolini had the honesty to be upfront about it. Quoted from Carsten (1967, p. 62). Mussolini ha sempre ragione ("Mussolini is always right"). This is probably the most famous of the many slogans that were plastered up everywhere in Fascist Italy. Italy. It too has a resounding echo among Leftists today. I can think of examples where modern conservative politicians have apologized and retracted their views but I can think of no example where a Leftist has. In the old Soviet empire there was virtually no such thing as "negative" news reported in the media. Even plane crashes were ignored. And as Amis (2002) notes, even though the reality of the vast, destructive and brutal tyranny of the now collapsed Soviet regime is undeniable, Leftists to this day are almost universally unapologetic about their past support for it and may even still claim that Lenin was a great man. And Mussolini's "Fascist Manifesto" of 1919 (full translation by Vox Vox Day here) includes in Fascist policy such socialist gems as (I quote): * The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories. * A strong strong progressive tax on o n capital that will truly expropriate a portion of o f all wealth. * The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congreg ations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor. * The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industy, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made from the collective professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers. * A minimum wage. * The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions
Mussolini as described by historians h istorians "For the proletariat must consider itself anti-patriotic by definition and necessity and made to realize that nationalism was a mask for rapacious militarism that should be left to the masters and that the national flag was, as Gustave Herve had said, a rag to be planted on a dunghill"
This is a summary of Mussolini's attitudes when he was aged 25 by Hibbert (1962, p. 14). 14 ). So although in his 30s Mussolini become an ardent nationalist, in his youth he was as anti-nationalist as any America-hater among the American "liberal" youth of today. "He was coming to the belief which was soon to dominate his life -- that the existing order must be overthrown by an elite of revolutionaries acting in the name of the people". This summary of Mussolini's developing beliefs in his 20s by Hibbert (1962, p. 17) could hardly be a more quintessentially Leftist outlook. "It contained several demands that were decidedly radical: A progressive tax on capital and a tax of eighty-five percent on war profits, universal franchise for men and women, a national militia, a minimum wage, nationalization of the munition industries, worker's participation in the management of industrial enterprises, the confiscation of all eccelesiastical property". This is Carsten's (1967, p. 50) summary of Mussolini's June, 1919, political program, already mentioned. There would be very little in that which would not strike a chord with modern-day Leftists. Note that Mussolini was even a feminist by the standards of his day -- agitating for equal rights for women. "He had a profound contempt for those whose overriding ambition was to be rich. It was a mania, he thought, a kind of disease, d isease, and he comforted himself with the reflection that the rich were rarely happy" Here Hibbert (1962, p. 47) is describing a lifelong attitude of Mussolini that continued right into his time as Italy's Prime Minister -- when he refused to take his official salary. salary. Given the contempt for the rich so often expressed by Leftists almost everywhere, Mussolini was clearly a Leftist paragon in that regard. "There was much truth in the comment of a Rome newspaper that the new fasci did not aim at the defence of the ruling class or the existing State but wanted to lead the revolutionary forces into the Nationalist camp so as to prevent a victory of Bolshevism.. Here Carsten (1967, p. 50) also a lso reports on not mistaking the rivalry between the Fascists and the Communists as being pro-establishment. "Mussolini, however, declared that he was fighting the Socialists, not because or their socialism but because they were anti-national and reactionary". rea ctionary". This is again from Carsten (1967, p. 50). 5 0). So Mussolini retained his socialist loyalties even though he had also become a nationalist. "In the summer of 1919 crowds, indignant about recent price increases, invaded the shops, looted goods and insisted on price reductions. Mussolini and his fasci proclaimed their solidarity with the rioters. The "Popolo d'Italia" suggested that it would set a goo d example if some profiteers were strung up on lamp-posts and some hoarders smothered under the potatoes and the sides of bacon they were hiding". So Mussolini was far from being an instinctive supporter of law and order (Carsten, 1967, p. 52). The "Popolo d'Italia" was Mussolini's own newspaper.
"There Mussolini was still following a distinctly radical line. he asserted that his programme was similar to that of the Socialists, that Fascism was helping their cause, that it wo uld carry through the agrarian revolution, the only one that was possible in Italy. Italy. He even welcomed the occupation of the factories" This is again from Carsten (1967, p. 56) 5 6) -- summarizing Mussolini's speeches of 1920. Pledging revolution and welcoming worker occupation of the factories is still of course a wet dream o f the more "revolutionary" Left today. today. "On 16 November the new government presented itself to Parliament.... received an overwhelming vote of confidence ... Only Mussolini's old enemy Turati, the spokesman of the Socialists rejected the government ... but not even all the Socialist deputies voted against." So when he finally came to power, Mussolini and the "Reds" of his own former party were still bitter rivals but he was still Leftist enough for some "Reds" to vote for him! (From Carsten, 1967, p. 65 ). Much later, Hitler too received some parliamentary support from Germany's Socialist party. "Mussolini in March 1936 told the council of corporations that he did not wish to bureaucratize the entire economy of the nation but bu t in practice the extension of government go vernment activities everywhere brought with it a top-heavy organization, slow and unresponsive, an d quite out of touch with ordinary people". This is from Smith (1967, p. 80) and describes a picture that is all too familiar to us today as the outcome of ever increasing cries for government go vernment regulation and intervention from Leftists. And Mussolini's disclaimer about bureaucratization is distinctly reminiscent of US President Bill Clinton's declaration that the era of big government is over. No doubt both Clinton and Mussolini crossed their fingers as they said it! "Mussolini set the example in his revival of paga n rites, and in October 1928 instituted a ceremony in which patriotic citizens presented their national savings certificates as a burnt offering on an ancient altar of Minerva specially brought out of its museum for the purpose" So do modern day Leftists find a superior spirituality in pagan pre-Christian religions such as the religions of the American Indians? Mussolini was there before them (Smith, 1967, p. 100). And perhaps the ultimate comment by others on Mussolini is what Muravchik (2002) reminds us of at some length: Leftists of the prewar era worldwide very often praised and admired Mussolini as a great socialist innovator. innovator. It was once as fashionable among Leftists to praise his regime as it later became to praise Soviet Communism. Horowitz (1998) also quotes historical summaries showing that many modern Leftist intellectual stratagems have precedents in prewar European Fascist thought generally.
Mussolini's Marxist Roots So, how many people today are a re aware that Mussolini, that great Fascist ogre, was in his youth an incandescent revolutionary socialist, a labor-union agitator who was jailed for his pains (Hibbert,
1962)? He was as radical as any student radical of today. Even in his childhood, he was exp elled from two schools for his rebellious behaviour. After that he became one of Italy's most prominent Marxist theoreticians and an intimate of Lenin. He in fact first became well-known as "Il Duce" (the Leader) when he was a member of Italy's (Marxist) Socialist Party and between 1912 1 912 and 1914 191 4 he was the editor of their the ir newspaper, "L'Avanti". "L'Avanti". After his split with the Socialist Party he started his own Leftist newspaper "Il Popolo d'Italia" ("The people of Italy"). When he broke with the Socialist party in 1914, it was over whether or no t Italy should enter World World War I. Following Marx's internationalist doctrines, the "Socialist" (Marxist) party was neutralist and anti-patriotic but Mussolini soon became uncomfortable with that for two reasons: 1). It had already become fairly clear even before the war that the workers were nationalistic and patriotic rather than class-conscious -- so the Marxist vision of the workers of the world uniting regardless of nationality was just not going to happen. And all that was thoroughly confirmed when the mainstream Leftist parties of the various European countries lined up behind their respective national governments governmen ts in World War War I. So it was nationalism and patriotism p atriotism rather than class-struggle that would most move the workers. And, as the aspiring leader of the workers, Mussolini had to follow that! 2). Mussolini correctly foresaw that the Austro/German forces would not win the war and therefore wanted Italy to join the Allied side and thus get a slice of Austrian territory territory at the end of the war. Italians had suffered many humiliations at the hands of the Austrians and there must have been very few Italians who did not share Mussolini's desire to seize historically Italian territory from them. Like many Leftists then and since Mussolini did not have any principles that h e allowed to stand in the way of a grab for power. It should be noted that Mussolini's views in this matter did not at all disqualify him from continuing as a Marxist. Like many other Marxists of his time (See Gregor, 1979), Mussolini tempered his view of the importance of class-solidarity with the recognition that both Marx and Engels had in their lifetimes lent their support to a number of wars between nations (Engels in particular was a p retty virulent German nationalist!). He looked, in other words, not only at broad Marxist theory but also at how Marx and Engels applied their theories. Such "pragmatism" was, of course, a hallmark of Mussolini's thinking. And, like the Communists, Mussolini had no aversion to war. As further commentary on Mussolini's Marxist credentials, it may be worth noting that, long before the Bolshevik revolution, Mussolini had supported the orthodox Marxist (cf. the Mensheviks) view that backward States like Italy and Russia had to go through a capitalist or bourgeois democratic stage before evolving into socialism. It was this, as much as anything, that led Mussolini to collaborate with the Italian establishment when he eventually gained power. Mussolini's disagreement with Lenin in this matter therefore meant that Mussolini and his Fascist friends greeted with considerable glee the terrible econo mic disaster (with national income at one third of the 1913 level) that emerged in Russia after the Bolshevik takeover. They saw both the Bolshevik disaster and their own eventual successes as proving the correctness of Marx's theory of historical evolution. When, in 1919, Lenin began to speak (in language that could have been Mussolini's) of the need to hold his country coun try together with "a single iron will" (Gregor, 1979, p. 124) it put him b elatedly but rather clearly in Mussolini's camp. It should also be noted that Mussolini was the son of an impoverished and very Leftist father who worked mainly as a blacksmith. Mussolini was very proud of these working-class roots and it was a great recreation of his, even after coming com ing to power, to take drives in the country with his wife and stop
at various farmhouses on the way for a chat with the family there. He would enjoy discussing the crops, the weather and all the usual rural topics and obviously just liked the feeling of being one of the people. His claim to represent the people was not just theory but heartfelt. And he never gave up his "anti bourgeois" rhetoric. Another formative influence on Mussolini's thinking was Italian "Futurism". The Futurists were wellknown around the time of World World War War I, when Mussolini was in the trenches with the Italian army. Mussolini adopted much of their thinking wholesale. No te how quite a lot in the following quote from their manifesto foreshadows Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot. And if Mao and Pol Pot were not Leftists, who would be? 'We shall sing the love of danger, energy and boldness!" the Futurist Manifesto shouted from the 'We rooftops in 1909. "We declare that the world's splendour has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. There is no more beauty beau ty except in strife, no masterpiece without aggressiveness, a violent onslaught upon the unknown forces, to force them to bow to the will of man ... "We wish to glorify war -- the only hygiene of the world "We w orld -- militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the anarchist, the beautiful ideas that kill!" The futurists also set out "to destroy the museums, the libraries", adding: "It is in Italy that we launch this manifesto of violence, destructive and incendiary, by which we this day found futurism, because we would deliver Italy from its canker of professors, archeologists, cicerones and antiquaries ... free her from the numberless museums which cover her like so many cemeteries." Source And Mao's "Cultural Revolution" and Pol Pot's attempts to k ill off Cambodia's educated classes show that Marxists carry out such ideas too. And, perhaps surprisingly to some, such ideas were far from alien among Marxists of Mussolini's day. day. Marx and Engels expressed quite similar ideas from time to time. The following is from Marx, for instance: “Even with Europe in decay, still a war should have roused the hea lthy elements; a war should have awakened a lot of hidden powers, and surely so much energy would have been present among 250 million people that at least a respectable battle would have occurred, in which both parties could have reaped some honor, as much honor as courage and bravery can gain on the battlefield.” Source (In the original German ). And if Marx was not a Leftist, who would be? Mussolini's "Fascist" ideas were in fact Marxist, and hence Leftist.
Mussolini gaining power After 1918, Italy was in chaos, with Communist upheav als everywhere. Mussolini initially expressed his sympathies for these upheavals but soon saw that they were reducing Italy to a form of anarchy anarch y that was helping no-one. He therefore formed his "Fasci di combattimento" -- mainly comprised in the beginning of fellow ex-servicemen -- to help restore order. order. This they did by force, breaking up the
Socialist and Communist rallies, strikes and organizations. Internecine feuds between Leftists have always been common, however. Nonetheless, Fascism was subversive in that it fought against the traditional Italian ruling elite -- who were essentially still 19th century liberals (what would nowadays be called "neo-liberals" or just "conservatives"). It was also subversive because of its desire to innov ate in many ways and to replace the existing ruling class with a new Fascist ruling class. So, while in Italy, as elsewhere in interwar Europe, individual Communists, Fascists, anarchists and others fought fierce street battles with one-another in a way that is reminiscent of nothing so much as the turf wars between rival black gangs in Los Angeles today, today, many of the Leftist brawlers eventually went over to the Fascists --- showing how slight the real differences were between them. When he did gain power, he implemented economic policies that would endear him to many of the Left today. today. His policies were basically protectionist. He controlled the exchang e-rate of the Italian currency and promoted that old favourite of the economically illiterate -- autarky -- meaning that he tried to g et Italy to become wholly self-sufficient rather than rely on foreign trade. He wanted to p rotect Italian products from competing foreign products. The Leftist anti-globalizers of today would approve. And he even had some success. By 1939 he had doubled Italy's grain production from its traditional level, enabling Italy to cut wheat imports by 75% (Smith, 1967, p. 92). As with all autarkist nonsense however, the price was high. The extra grain could be produced only at high cost so Italians now had to pay twice as much for their grain. But what anti-globalizer would worry about that? But socialism was of course not the only string to Mussolini's bow. He was also a strident Italian nationalist with an avowed aim to restore the Roman empire. He certainly offered Italians a new pride in themselves that was clearly welcomed by many Italians.
Nationalism as an exciting novelty Something that seems generally to be overlooked is that the three countries with the most notable Fascist movements in the early 20th century (Germany, Italy and Spain) were all in countries with fragile national unity. unity. Germany and Italy had become b ecome unified countries only in the late 19th 19 th century and Spain, of course, is only nominally unified to this day -- with semi-autonomous governments in Catalonia and the Basque country. country. Right up until the end of the Prussian hegemony in 1918, 1918 , Germans saw themselves primarily as Saxons, Bavarians, Prussians etc rather than as Germans and the contempt for Southern Italians among Northern Italians is of course legendary. legendary. So the fierce nationalism of the Fascists (though Franco held himself above the Spanish Falange to some extent) appears to have been at least in part the zeal z eal of the convert. Nationalism was something new and exciting and was a gratification to be explored vigorously. vigorously. And the Fascists/Nazis undoubtedly exploited it to the hilt. The romance of o f the new nation was an important asset for them. So if we regard the creation of large nation states as a good thing (a fairly dubious proposition) the small silver lining that we can see in the dark cloud of Fascism is that they do seem to have had some success in creating a sense of nationhood. n ationhood. A German German identity, in particular, particular, would seem to be the creation of Hitler. There was certainly not much of the sort before him.
There are of course differences between the three countries but in all three an acceptance of their nation-state now seems to be well-entrenched. This acceptance seems to be strongest in Germany - probably in part because modern Germany is a Federal Republic with substantial power devolved to the old regions (Laender) so that local loyalties are also ac knowledged. Spain has moved only partly in the direction of federalism and there is of course a strong political movement in Northern Italy for reform in that direction also. It is perhaps worth noting that it took a ferocious war (the civil war) to create an American sense of nationhood too.
Was Fascism middle-class? The commonest Marxist analysis of Fascism seems to be that it was "bou rgeois" -- the last gasp of a failing middle class in its desperate struggle to hold onto its position against the rising tide of the working class. Since the leading Marxists themselves -- from Marx and Engels, through Lenin to Pol Pot have themselves always been middle class, this ana lysis has its amusing side. The perennial Leftist tactic of accusing others of what is in fact true of themselves would alone account acco unt for that characterization of Fascism. But is the characterization nonetheless true? There is much to say that it is not. The breadth of Mussolini's appeal is in fact one of the most remarkable things about him. The Fascists certainly included many middle class people but they included workers and aristocrats as well. Even Jews were prominent among them! I cover the class composition of both Italian Fascism and German Nazism in some detail here.
Mussolini the environmentalist As well as being an "anti-globalizer", there were several other ways in which Mussolini would have appealed to modern-day greenies. He made Capri a bird sanctuary (Smith, 1967, p. 84) and in 1926 he issued a decree reducing the size of newspapers to save wood pulp. pu lp. And, believe it or not, he even mandated gasohol -- i.e. mixing industrial alcohol with petroleum products to make fuel for cars (Smith, 1967, p. 87). Mussolini also disliked the popu lation drift from rural areas into the big cities and in 1930 passed a law to put a stop to it unless un less official permission permission was granted (Smith, 1967, p. 90). What Green/Left advocate could ask for more?
Mussolini the pragmatist Although Mussolini never ceased preaching socialism in some form, his actions when in power were like those of most politicians: Many unrealistic promises were broken and policies were adopted that in fact hurt the workers (such as wage cuts). The important point, however, is that the policies he in fact adopted once in power were not adopted for mere ideological reasons but because they were the policies that he thought would work best for Italy and, thus, ultimately for all Italians. As "Conservative" political parties tend to think in this way a lso (Gilmour, (Gilmour, 1978), it is presumably in part
this that causes Mussolini to be referred to as a Rightist. His appeal to Italians, however was as a socialist and a nationalist. For all his pragmatism, however, it should also be recognized (contrary to what many of his critics say) that Mussolini did have a well-publicized and coherent economic strategy mapped out before he came to power and that policies po licies that are sometimes seen as merely "pragmatic" were also theoretically grounded in his old Marxist ideas. He was well aware of both Italy's poverty and the inefficiency of its bureaucrats and blamed much of the former on the latter. Following the Marxist theory of developmental stages, he argued that the only alternative to the bureaucrats that would mob ilize Italy's limited resources was the fostering of private enterprise and capitalism. He e ven advocated privatization of telecommunications and the post office! This coincides, of course, with the way modern-day Leftists (particularly in Britain) have abandoned the idea of State-run enterprises and acknowledged the benefits of privatization. Mussolini was, however, far from being any sort of free-marketeer. Just like most modern-day Leftist politicians, he advocated private enterprise within a strict set of State controls designed, among other things, to prevent abuse of monopoly monop oly power (Gregor, 1979, Ch. 5). So we see that Mussolini again had remarkable prescience. Deng Xiaoping of China and Gorbachev of Russia seem now to be generally gen erally seen as the first Marxists to have discovered pragmatism and private enterprise. Mussolini, however, did it all 60 or more years before them.
Mussolini's socialist deeds One major "socialist" reform of the economy that is still a misty ideal to modern-day Leftists Mussolini actually carried out. He attempted to centralize control of industry by declaring a "Corporate State" which divided all Italian industry up into 22 "corporations". In these corporations both workers and managers were supposed to co-operate to run industry together -- but under Fascist guidance, of course. The Corporate State was supposed to ensure social justice and give the workers substantial control of industry. And in 1933 Mussolini even promised that the National Council of Corporations would ev entually replace the Parliament! Surely the ultimate unionist's dream! And the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations created in 1939 largely fulfilled that promise. Since Mussolini had dictatorial powers by then it was largely tokenism but it nonetheless showed how Leftist his propaganda was. In reality the Fascist appointees to the corporations tended to take the side of the management manage ment and what resulted was really capitalism within a tight set of government controls. Since most of Europe and much of the rest of the world wo rld moved in that direction in the post-war era, Mussolini was in this also ahead of his times. And if the waning of the "Red" influence on Western Western economies in the post-Soviet era has led to some deregulation of business, the rise of the "Greens" has added a vast new area of government regulation. The precedent set by Mussolini is still being followed! Some other clearly Leftist initiatives that Mussolini took were a big expansion o f public works and a great improvement in social insurance measures. He also set up the "Dopolavoro" (after work) organization to give workers cheap recreations of various kinds (cf. the Nazi Kraft durch Freude movement). His public health measures (such as the attack on tuberculosis and the setting up of a huge
maternal and child welfare organization) were particularly notable for their rationality and efficiency and, as such, were rewarded with great success. For instance, the incidence of tuberculosis dropped dramatically and infant mortality declined by more than 20% (Gregor, p. 259). Together with big improvements in education and public pub lic infrastructure, such measures gave Fascist Italy what was arguably the most advanced welfare State in the wo rld at the time. And if influential American "liberal" economists such as Galbraith (1969) can bemoan the low level of spending on public works as "private affluence and public squalor", Mussolini was well ahead on that. As Hibbert (1962, p. 56) says, Mussolini "instituted a programme of public works hitherto unrivalled in modern Europe. Bridges, canals and roads were built, hospitals and schools, railway stations and orphanages, swamps were drained and land reclaimed, forest were planted and universities were endowed." Given the modern-day Leftist's love of government provision o f services, it would seem that Mussolini should be their hero in that respect. He actually did what they advocate and did it around 70 years ago.
Mussolini and religion For most of the 20th century, most Leftists were deeply antipathetic to religion. In recent decades, however, that has changed so much that the old mainstream churches are now very often major founts of Leftist thinking and propaganda. Leftists have now largely got the major churches onside. Mussolini did the same over 70 years ago. In 1929 Mussolini and Pope Pius 12th signed the Lateran treaty -which is the legal basis for the existence ex istence of the Vatican Vatican State to this day -- and Pius in fact at one stage called Mussolini "the man sent by Providence". The treaty recognized Roman Catholicism as the Italian State religion as well as recognizing the Vatican Vatican as a sovereign state. What Mussolini got in exchange was acceptance by the church -- something that was enormously important in the Italy of that time. It should also be noted that Mussolini's economic system (his "corporate State") was a version of syndicalism -- having workers, bosses and the party allegedly united in several big happy families -and syndicalism is precisely what had been recommended in the then recent (1891) "radical" encyclical De rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII. So that helped enormously to reconcile Mussolini to the church. Economically, Fascism was more Papal than capitalist (though in the Papal version of syndicalism the church naturally had a bigger role). Syndicalism was of course a far-Leftist idea (with Sorel as a major prophet) long before it was a Papal one but the Holy Father presented a much more humanized and practical version of it and thus seems in the end to have been more influential than his Leftist rivals. Mussolini was of course acutely aware of both streams of syndicalist thinking and it was a great convenience to him to be b e able to present himself as both a modern Leftist and as a supporter of the church.
Mussolini a racist? Despite recent upsurges of antisemitism an tisemitism among extreme Leftists in the Western world in connection with the Arab-Israeli conflict, most Leftists today probably continue to deplore antisemitism. The early
Mussolini would have had no argument with them over that. He was a most emphatic Italian nationalist but it is perhaps important here to distinguish patriotism, nationalism and racism. These do to some extent tend to slide into one-another but there are differences too. Most notable in the present case is the contrast between Hitler's persecution of the Jews and Mussolini's reluctance to have any part in that. Under Hitler's prodding, Mussolini did eventually put antisemitism on his agenda and did in 1938 pass generally unpopular antisemitic laws but it was no part of his own original program. He had never expressed any antisemitism prior to his alliance with Hitler. In fact, Italian Jews had been prominent as leaders in some of the early Fasci di combattimento co mbattimento (Fascist bands) and the antisemitic laws were largely ignored by Italians -- so much so that one of the safest places in Europe for Jews to be during the second world war was undoubtedly un doubtedly Fascist Italy. Italy. Jews were in fact routinely protected by both Fascist and non-Fascist Italians (including the clergy) and many Jews to this day have grateful memories of wartime Italy. At a time when Jews had very few friends anywhere in the world, they had friends in Fascist Italy (Steinberg, 1990; Herzer, 1989). Co ntrast this with the way in which Eastern Europeans and even the French actively co-operated with Hitler's round-up of Jews. It should also be noted that, unlike Hitler, Mussolini did not set up any concentration camps for the Jews. It must of course be conceded, however, that the Ethiopians suffered considerably at the hands of their Italian invaders but most human societies make a distinction between war and murder and Mussolini certainly did. Nazis and revolutionary Leftists, on the other hand, do not seem to.
Attitude to Hitler Ideologically, Ideologically, Mussolini and Hitler were broadly similar. And when I point out how far to the Left most of Hitler's policies were, a strong reaction I get from many who know something of history is to say that Hitler cannot have been a Leftist because of the great hatred that existed in prewar Germany between the Nazis and the "Reds". And the early Fascists battled the "Reds" too, of course. The reply I always give to such doubts dou bts is to say that there is no hatred like fraternal hatred and that hatreds between different Leftist groupings have existed from the French revolution onwards. Such hatreds do not make any of the rival groups less Leftist however. And the ice-pick in the head hea d that Trotsky got courtesy of Stalin shows vividly that even among the Bolsheviks themselves there were great rivalries and hatreds. Did that make any of them less Bolshevik, less Marxist, less Communist? No doubt the protagonists concerned would argue that it did but from anyone else's point of view they were all Leftists at least. Nonetheless there still seems to persist in some minds the view that two groups as antagonistic as the Nazis and the Communists or the Fascists and the Communists just cannot have been ideological blood-brothers. Let me therefore try this little quiz: Who was it who at one stage dismissed Hitler as a "barbarian, a criminal and a pederast"? Was it Stalin? Was Was it some other Communist? Was it Winston Winston Churchill? Was Was it some other conservative? Was Was it one of the Social Democrats? No. It was none other than Mussolini, who later became Hitler's ally in World War War II. And if any two leaders were ideological blood-brothers those two were. So I think it is clear that antagonism between Hitler and others and between Mussolini and others proves nothing. If anything, the antagonism between Hitler and other socialists and between Mussolini and the "Reds" is p roof of what typical socialists both Mussolini and Hitler were.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler expressed great admiration for Mussolini and did in the early days regard Mussolini as his teacher so at least part of Hitler's National Socialism is traceable to Mussolini's innovations. As noted, however, Mussolini did NOT reciprocate Hitler's regard and correctly divined and loathed Hitler's murderous personality from the beginning (Andriola, 1997). Hitler's mania about the Jews was also one reason why Mussolini derided Nazism as a doctrine of barbarians. Few modernday Leftists would argue with that judgement. Mussolini remained neutral in 1939 and 1940 19 40 and only joined in Hitler's war when France had collapsed, Hitler already bestrode Europe and h is overtures to Britain had been rejected. In such circumstances it seemed wise to be on the winning side. That was Mussolini's one big mistake and it was, of course, ultimately a fatal one. True to his pragmatism, in both wars Mussolini simply tried to side with the winner winne r. Another major difference between Hitler and Mussolini would seem to flow simply from the fact that Mussolini was Italian: Mussolini was much less brutal. I grew up in Innisfail -- a place that was 50% an Australian country town and 50% an Italian village. Since then I have always had an affection for Italians. Italian was even one of my matriculation languages (Ho studiato Italiano a scuola ma ho quasi tutto dimenticato). So I have always thought it in keeping that Mussolini's Italian Fascism appears to have been the mildest of all the many Leftist dictatorships of the 20th century. The Italian Fascist response to political rivals was not to torture them to death but simply to give them a large dose of Castor oil! Almost funny! Here is a link about another instance of Italian humaneness in the Fascist era: It was OK to criticize Il Duce if you were drunk! This also rings true to me: "Mussolini's widow, widow, who died in 1979... 1979 ... described grand state dinners, including a banquet given by King Victor Emmanuel III for Hitler on the Nazi dictator's visit to Rome in May 1938. "Donna Rachele said Hitler, who was a vegetarian, found all the dishes unacc eptable, while Mussolini, who was clearly bored to tears, complained that the menu was in French and kept kep t muttering that Italian regional cooking was more appetising than 'all this pretentious and ind igestible French stuff'." Ms Scicolone said Mussolini was not much of a bon viveur. Domestic rituals were important to him, and despite his government duties and assignations with mistresses, he always had lunch and dinner with his wife and children, "like any Italian man". He never drank alcohol, and instead drank "litres of herbal teas and tisanes".
Other Leftist nationalists Those who know of the Leftist themes in the election campaigns of both Hitler and Mussolini often say that neither was a real Leftist because they were also vehement nationalists. The thought seems to be that nationalism can only be Rightist. But that shows no knowledge of Leftist history generally. From the days of Marx onward, there were innumerable "splits" in the extreme Leftist movement but two of the most significant occurred around the time of the Bolshevik revolution --- when in Russia the Bolsheviks themselves split into Leninists and Trotskyites Trotskyites and when in Italy Mussolini left Italy's major
Marxist party to found the "Fascists". So from its earliest days Leftism had a big split over the issue of nationalism. It split between the Internationalists (e.g. Trotskyists) Trotskyists) and the nationalists (e.g. Fascists) with Lenin having a foot in both camps. So any idea that a nationalist cannot be a Leftist is pure fiction. And, in fact, the very title of Lenin's famous essay, essay, "Left-wing Communism, an infantile disorder" shows that Lenin himself shared the judgement tha t he was a Right-wing sort of Marxist. Mussolini was somewhat further Right again, of course, but both were to the Right only WITHIN the overall farLeft camp of the day. It should further be noted in this connection con nection that, as Horowitz (1998) reminds us, the various European Socialist parties in World World War War I did not n ot generally oppose the war in the name of international worker wo rker brotherhood but rather threw their support behind the various national governments of the countries c ountries in which they lived. Just as Mussolini did, they too nearly all became nationalists. Nationalist socialism is a very old phenomenon. And it still exists today. Although Although many modern-day US Democrats often seem to be anti-American, the situation is rather different in Australia Australia and Britain. Both Bo th the major Leftist parties there (the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party) are perfectly patriotic parties which express pride in their national traditions and achievements. Nobody seems to have convinced them that you cannot be both Leftist and nationalist. That is of course not remotely to claim that e ither of the parties concerned is a Nazi or an explicitly expl icitly Fascist party. party. What Hitler and Mussolini advocated and practiced was clearly more extremely nationalist than any major Anglo-Saxon political party would now advocate. And socialist parties such as the British Labour Party were patriotic parties in World War War II as well. And in World War War II even Stalin moved in that direction. If Hitler learnt from Mussolini the persuasive power of nationalism, Stalin was not long in learning the same lesson from Hitler. When When the Wehrmacht invaded Russia, the Soviet defences did, as Hitler expected, collapse like a house of cards. The size of Russia did, however, give Stalin time to think and what he came up with was basically to emulate Hitler and Mussolini. Stalin reopened the churches, revived the old ranks and orders of the Russian Imperial army to make the Red Army simply the Russian Army and stressed patriotic appeals in his internal propaganda. He portrayed his war against Hitler not as a second "Red" war but as 'Vtoraya Otechestvennaya Vojna' Vojna' -- The Second Patriotic War -- the first such war being the Tsarist Tsarist defence against Napoleon. He deliberately put himself in the shoes of Russia's Tsars. Tsars. Russian patriotism proved as strong as its German equivalent and the war was turned around. And to this day, Russians still refer to the Second World War as simply "The Great Patriotic War". Stalin may have started out as an international socialist but he soon became a national socialist when he saw how effective that was in getting popular support. Again, however, it was Mussolini who realized it first. And it is perhaps to Mussolini's credit as a human being that his nationalism was clearly heartfelt where Stalin's was undoubtedly a mere convenience. And last but not least we have the original Leftist nationalist: Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte was the child and heir of the very first Leftist revolution, the French revolution and he is to this day laud ed as the man who took the "ideals" of the French revolution to the rest of Europe. Like all Leftist dictators, he preached the central cen tral Leftist myth of equality -- but did not practice it -- and built up around himself a cult of the leader that was very much the same as that built up around themselves by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung etc. And, again like other Fascists, he took French nationalism and love of gloire to new heights. During his rule -- police state though it was -- h e made the French feel that they were the greatest nation on earth. And the French died in their droves in furtherance of that
myth -- just as Germans later died in their droves for Hitler. Mussolini may have invented the term but it was really Napoleon who was the first Fascist. Arthur Silber has put up some excerpts from the recent biography of Napoleon by Paul Johnson that show how very Fascist Napoleon indeed was. Since Napoleon is still a French national hero, it is no wonder that the Germans found it relatively easy to get the French to "collaborate" in World War II.
Leftist or Rightist? We should now by this stage be able to evaluate better whether Mussolini's Fascism was Right-wing, Left-wing or neither. As already outlined, its rhetoric certainly had strong Left-wing elements. The 1919 election manifesto, for instance, contained policies of worker control of industry, industry, confiscation of war profits, abolition of the Stock exchange, land for the peasants and abolition of the Monarchy and nobility. nobility. Further, Mussolini never ceased to inveigh against "plutocrats". As has been mentioned, however, Mussolini's nationalism nationalism is undoubtedly the major feature of Fascist ideology that gets it labelled as Rightist. Nationalism is most easily associated with the Right becau se it is antithetical to the "equality" gospel that characterizes most Leftism. If all men are equal, then all nations should be equal too. And Mussolini's nationalism did endear him to the Right and gain their cooperation and support on many important occasions. His nationalism also made him eventually reject the divisive "class-war" notions of Communism and the revolutionary activities of the "Reds". He wanted a harmonious and united Italy for all Italians of all classes and was sure that achieving just treatment for the workers needed neither revolution nor any kind of artificially enforced equality. And his nationalism is the one thing that tha t clearly separates Mussolini from the Leftists of today. today. It seems routine today, for instance, for American Leftists to hate America. Or at the least they rarely have a good word to say for their country. But one swallow does not make a summer and there have always been many varieties of Leftism (Muravchik, 2002). Mussolini's was a nationalist variety. And as any Trotskyite Trotskyite will tell you, both Lenin and Stalin were nationalists in their own way too. Nonetheless, Mussolini was undoubtedly to the Right of Lenin and the Communists -- but so too are most modernday Leftists. Another feature of Mussolini's message that today looks inconsistent with his Leftism is the way he glorified war, strength and obedience and was explicitly anti-democratic. These ideas might seem very much at variance with modern-day Leftism but are in fact quite similar to what Lenin advocated adv ocated in his famous essay on "Left-wing Communism -- an infantile disorder": "I repeat, the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are unable to think, or who have not had occasion to ponder over this question, that absolute centralization and the strictest discipline of the proletariat constitute one of the fundamental conditions for victory over the bourgeoisie" (Lenin, 1952). So both Lenin and Mussolini simply made explicit certain ideas that modern-day Leftists usually feel the need to deny but b ut often still practice when they get into power (e.g. Pol Pot). Unlike the Communists, however, Mussolini did not make any truly revolutionary changes or carry out any great "purges" so again was undoubtedly to the Right of Stalin -- but that is not saying much, of course. Mass "purges" (murders of whole classes of people) and revolution are not generally advocated by modernday Leftists either e ither..
Despite his being much more upfront up front about his authoritarian ideas than any modern-day Leftist would be, Mussolini's Leftism was, like modern-day Western Western Leftism, in fact comparatively co mparatively mild compared with Stalin's. This made Italian Fascism a much more popular creed than Stalin's Communism. This is perhaps most clearly seen by the always persuasive "voting with your feet" criterion. Mussolini made no effort to prevent Italians from emigrating and although some anti-Fascists did, net emigration actually FELL under Mussolini. Compare this with Stalin and the Berlin wall. One notes that modernday Leftists in the Western Western world today also never seem to feel the need to emigrate -- for all their swingeing criticisms of contemporary Western society. It should also be noted that, like many modern-day Leftists Mussolini gained power through political rather than revolutionary means. His famous march on Rome was only superficially revolutionary. revolutionary. The King of Italy and the army approved of him because of his pragmatic policies po licies so did not oppose the march. So this collusion ensured that Mussolini's "revolution" was essentially bloodless. One rather amusing consequence of the way Mussolini made use of the existing ex isting power structures was that when Hitler (who in Germany was by that time both head of State and head of the government) first arrived in Italy on a State visit, he was greeted, not by Mussolini but by the King. As protocol requires, the head of government (Mussolini) was on the sidelines. This both confused and annoyed Hitler. Hitler. It is a good illustration, however, of how Mussolini put pragmatism before ideology, as his 1919 manifesto was explicitly anti-Monarchist. Some people claim that Mussolini was not really Leftist because he in fact did not do much for the workers of Italy. But how many Leftist politicians would qualify as Leftist by the criterion of whether they were of net benefit to the workers when in office? The common economic failures of Leftist regimes tend to affect all the population, with no exemption for the workers. To judge politicians as they are normally judged (by their ideology), therefore, Mussolini was very much an extreme Leftist. Was Stalin of net benefit to the workers? Given the very poor standard of living in the Soviet Union that the Gorbachev reforms revealed, it seems unlikely. Do we for that reason say Stalin was not really a Leftist? Although everything that I have said so far is readily available in the history books, practically none of it ever reaches public consciousness. Given that Hollywood, the media and the educational system are overwhelmingly Left-leaning, that is hardly a surprise. The Left cannot AFFORD to have the public at large realize that the great tyrannies of the 20th century were all socialist. On those rare occasions when Leftists are confronted with the facts, however, a common and very amusing "excuse" that is offered is to say that "they were all doing it". In other words socialism was somehow in the air of interwar Europe. It was just something that everyone had to advocate who wanted to get elected -- whether they believed in it or not. Obviously, however, someone failed to tell the British Liberal and Conservative parties that. Both of those parties were rather more in favour of free trade and laissez faire economic ec onomic policies than modern-day conservative parties usually are so I suppose that their election victories in 1918, 1922, 1924, 1931 and 1935 just did not happen! To return to the historical Mussolini: Without Without his necessarily being insincere about either, both Mussolini's Leftism and his nationalism seem to have been, however, in the end mainly tools for getting people on-side. His No. 1 priority was simply to rule -- a good Leftist goal. His considerable popularity for many years among a wide range of Italians shows how effective his recipe for achieving that was. Unlike Hitler, he was even popular with Britain's arch-conservative Winston Churchill (Hagan, 1966, p. 474).
And much less surprisingly, surprisingly, F.D. Roosevelt, found in Mussolini's policies part o f his inspiration for the semi-socialist "New Deal" and referred to Mussolini in 1933 as "that admirable Italian gentleman". Mussolini was plausible to an amazingly wide range of people -- not the least to the people of Italy. Italy. And Roosevelt and his political allies practiced wh at they preached. As UPI financial journalist Martin Hutchinson has pointed out, the USA in in the 1940s was a place "with price controls, government licensing of transportation, state intervention in the steel and auto industries, interest rates that were set by Treasury fiat fiat and a capital market in which banks were not allowed to operate. Also a "democracy" in which electoral districts were wildly unequal and 15 percent of the population was denied the vote." By modern-day standards the USA of that time had considerable Fascist elements too. American Leftism was Fascist even then. As Stromberg also notes: "In 1954, Hofstadter chided those who had worried about "several close parallels" between FDR's N.R.A. and fascist corporatism. There are more than "several" parallels. In 1944, John T. Flynn Flynn made the case in As We We Go Marching, where he enumerated the stigmata of generic fascism, surveyed the interwar policies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Germany, and pointed to uncomfortably similar American policies. For Flynn, the hallmarks of fascism were: 1) unrestrained government; 2) an absolute leader responsible to a single party; 3) a planned economy with nominal private ownership of the means of production; 4) bureaucracy and administrative "law"; 5) state control of the financial sector; 6) permanent economic manipulation via deficit spending; 7) militarism, and 8) imperialism (pp. 161-62). He proceeded to show that all these were alive and well under the wartime New Deal administration (pp. 166-258). Pragmatic American liberalism had produced "a genteel fascism" without the ethnic persecutions and full-scale executive dictatorship seen overseas. Flynn found this insufficiently cheering. Some may call Flynn's catalogue of fascist traits arbitrary. arbitrary. Perhaps, but Flynn listed things he found; he did not make them up."
See Trifkovic for more detail on the affinities between FDR and Mussolini. But if the American Left of the "new Deal" era learnt from Mussolini, it is also true that Mussolini learnt from America. Those ideas of Mussolini which were not clearly Marxist were in fact generally American. Where did Mussolini learn his glorification of war, his imperialism, his stiff-armed "Fascist" salute, his emphasis on military-style obedience and his worship of action? They were all ideas from his predecessors among the "Progressives" (Leftists) of America America in the late 19th and early 20th century. And a remarkably similar predecessor to Mussolini in both word and deed was in fact a President of the United States -- Theodore Roosevelt. So ALL of Mussolini's ideas can be traced to the Leftists of his day. day. I have set out details of the American contribution to Fascism elsewhere. A knowledge of the American roots of Mussolini's Fascism helps to explain a puzzle: That, aside from its basic nationalism and Leftism, Fascism was something of a hodge podge of ideas. This feature of Fascism (noted, for instance, in an article by Beichman) is commonly used by Leftists to dismiss the idea that there is anything worth studying or describing in Fascism at all. As it says here: "Fascism has traditionally been characterized as irrational and anti-intellectual, finding expression exclusively as a cluster of myths, emotions, instincts, and hatreds". But if it was so loose, unsystematic and illogical, how come it was so popular? How come it had major branches in most of Europe (including England), much of South America and even in China (Sun Yat Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek)? For an incoherent set of ideas it certainly inspired a lot of copycats and generally did a remarkable job of tipping the world on its ear!
The initial level of explanation is simple: The ideas that Mussolini and his colleagues put together as constituting Fascism were very little more than the set of ideas that w ere already popular among European and American Leftists in the early 20th century. century. The ideas concerned may seem strange now but they were not strange then. So as the limitations of Marxist ideas became apparent to Europeans, American Leftist ideas rushed in to fill the gap. And to a considerable extent they rushed in via Mussolini. Fascism could thus be seen as Mussolini's amalgam of European and American Leftist ideas, with the American ideas ending up superseding most of the original Marxist thinking. So Fascism was coherent to the extent that Leftism of the time was coherent. And that also explains, of course, the very large similarities between Italian Fascism and Soviet Communism during the 1920s and 1930s -- a convergence in both rhetoric and practice. And no-one has ever denied the influence or importance of Leftist thinking. Why Leftist thinking is as it is, however, is a very large topic in its own right that I have covered at great length elsewhere.
Is Fascism warlike and aggressive? It may seem strange to ask if Fascism is warlike in view of Mussolini's rhetoric glorifying war and empire and in view of the invasions he mounted in Ethiopia, Albania etc. And Hitler too was the same on a much grander scale. But even two swallows do not make a summer and we have also to ask about the other Fascists of history. Ancient Sparta and Napoleon were also a lso exceedingly warlike but what about Mosley in Britain, Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain, Peron in Argentina, and Pilsudski in Poland? And what about nationalistic Fascist fellow-travellers such as Horthy in Hungary, Antonescu in Romania and Pavelic in Croatia? And what about clearly non-socialist nationalists such as the 19 th century British Empire and the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan? I think the obvious co mment has to be that the matter is rather moot. Salazar, Franco, Pilsudski, Horthy, Antonescu, Pavelic, Peron and Mosley had primarily domestic concerns and did not go in for foreign adventures at all except ex cept in some cases to regain lost territory. territory. So, on balance, I think we have to characterize charac terize Fascism (broadly defined) as NOT in general expansionist and warlike. The case is also not entirely clear for non-socialist non -socialist nationalists. The British Empire of the 19th century was primarily acquired "in a fit of absence of mind" rather than by a deliberate policy of expansion, though the South African ("Boer") war was w as a disgraceful episode. And the Tokugawas were terminally nationalist and great control freaks yet have the distinction of giving Japan one of the longest periods of peace any country has ever had -- with NO foreign adventures at all. a ll. So nationalism would not on the whole seem to be nearly as warlike wa rlike or aggressive as might be supposed. It is perfectly compatible with a pacific foreign policy.
Peron: The Argentinian Fascist Argentine dictator Juan Peron, is less well-known and understood than Mussolini but he was a disciple of Mussolini so his example is worth a special mention for the way it helps confirm what Fascism is. Most people would not be aware that historians and political commentators often describe Peron as what Latin Americans sometimes call a "Fenomeno" (paradox). The paradox or puzzle is that he first came to power in Argentina as part of a military coup, so should have been "Right-wing" -- yet he
became the champion and hero of working class Argentines, and to this day the major Leftist political grouping in Argentina (the "Peronistas") is named after him. How come? Anybody who has read what I have so far written about the strongly Leftist nature of both German Nazism and Italian Fascism will not have far to seek for the answer. Both Nazism and Fascism won power largely through claiming to be the champions and glorifiers of the ordinary worker and both Nazism and Fascism are routinely described as "Right-wing" too. Peron w as just another one of that fraternity. fraternity. Peron in fact soon got kicked out by his fellow participants in the military coup and finally gained power -- as did Hitler and Mussolini -- through primarily political means. And that is only the beginning of the resemblance: The doctrines Peron preached (e.g. giving the workers and managers equal say in running industry) were almost exactly what Peron had learned from Mussolini when he lived in Italy for some years in the 1930s. Peronism is Fascism. Also Also like Hitler and Mussolini, Peron was a great patriot and nationalist who go t the foreign business interests out of Argentina and tried to make Argentina independent of foreigners generally. With With the able help of his wife Evita, Peron made the Argentine people feel special and persuaded them that he was on their side and would lead them to greatness. And they loved him for it! The only major difference is that Peron was clever enoug h to stay neutral instead of joining Hitler's war. As already mentioned, Mussolini stayed neutral for a couple of years too but finally made the fatal mistake of joining in. So what Hitler, Mussolini and Peron all show is what most modern-day mod ern-day Leftist intellectuals passionately deny: That you can be an extreme Leftist and an extreme nationalist too. And it shows something very troubling too: That the combination of Leftism and nationalism is POPULAR! The popularity of that combination is also shown in the way Germans fought to the end for Hitler. Hitler. Perhaps we should be thankful that modern-day modern-d ay Leftists (who are often anything but patriotic) have not learned all that their Fascist brethren might have taught them. So the only puzzle or paradox of Peronism is one that modern-day Leftist intellectuals have artificially created for themselves. They refuse to accept that you can be BOTH a Leftist and a nationalist so are basically just lost for words (or sensible words anyway) when confronted with great historical figures such as Peron who prove by their living example that you CAN be both. And Peron was of course almost as bad for Argentina Argentina as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini were for the countries that they led down the extreme ex treme Leftist path. Before Peron came to power, Argentina was one of the world's richest countries but Peron sent it broke and it has never recovered -- largely because, although Peron is dead, de ad, Peronism (Fascism) is still the strongest single force in Argentine politics. Like other Leftists, Fascists may or may not be antisemitic. Hitler's Fascist regime was of course enormously antisemitic but one swallow does not make a summer. And one of the other swallows was Peron. As I have already mentioned, Mussolini was not initially antisemitic until he was virtually forced into adopting some antisemitic measures by his alliance with Hitler -- and Italy was even then one of the safer places for Jews to be in World World War War II Europe. And Peron followed Mussolini. Although Jews were subjected to some attacks under his rule Peron was only marginally interested in them. He certainly had no interest in a "final solution". That this made him a typical Fascist rather than an atypical one can be seen if we add in the British
example. Most people have probably forgotten that prewar Britain had a large Fascist movement too -under Sir Oswald Mosley. And And Sir Oswald initially used to EXPEL from the British Union of Fascists anybody who made antisemitic utterances! When his meetings came unde r constant attack from Jewish Leftists, however, he had something of a rethink. And Peron's Fascism does of course explain why so many former German Nazis found a safe haven in Argentina after World World War War II. Peron was simply helping out his old o ld friends.
Sweden: Fascism in slow motion Although it is a commonplace that Hitler got good co-operation from Sweden both before and during the war, the idea that Sweden was itself in any sense Fascist must seem like o ne of the most absurd suggestions ever made. Has not Sweden been the great icon of the Democratic Left in the postwar period? It has indeed, though these days conservatives have better reasons for mentioning the Swedish experience than Leftists do. Nonetheless, little-recognized though it might be, there are substantial reasons for seeing interwar Sweden as Fascist. Whether or not Sweden was Fascist is however something of a sidetrack with no important implications either way so I have looked at the matter in a separate article.
Other 20th century Fascists? To modern-day Leftists anybody they disagree with is a "fascist" so in their discourse the term is essentially devoid of meaning, but, aside from such childishness, it remains of interest to ask what other prominent Fascists there were in the 20th century? Were Were there other influential Leftists in the 20th century who were also nationalists and who might hence broadly be described as Fascists? Such were the differences between the regimes usually called fascist that a really adequate answer would be a book-length enterprise so let me just list my conclusions followed by a few exp lanatory notes: In addition to Hitler, Mussolini and Peron, the true Fascists of the pre-war period were Dollfuss in Austria, Austria, Pilsudski in Poland, Mosley in Britain and Chiang Kai Shek in China. They were all clearly both socialists and nationalists and to varying degrees had many other trappings of Mussolini's Fascism too -- such as militarism and a liking for uniforms. Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal were only semi-Fascist. Tojo Tojo in Japan, Horthy in Hungary, Antonescu in Romania, Pavelic in Croatia were simply nationalists rather than Fascists. In more recent times Papadopoulos in Greece, Pinochet in Chile and Suharto in Indonesia were just common or garden variety military dictators. Military government is of course the rule rather than the exception throughout history. history. It was even the rule rather than the exception in ancient Greece. Pinochet, Suharto and Papadopoulos are sometimes mentioned as Fascists purely because they had significant far-Left opponents. It may be noted that their cultural backgrounds are quite different: Catholic, Muslim and Orthodox. Some explanatory notes: Mosley in Britain and Pilsudski in Poland were certainly both Leftist nationalists. Pilsudski was an unabashed socialist and Mosley's starting point in politics was to agitate for better government treatment of World World War War I veterans. He broke with the British Labour party in 1930 and subsequently
formed the "British Union of Fascists" (BUF) because he found Labour to be not socialist enough! Mosley is also interesting in that he lived into relatively recent times so cou ld comment on the prewar period from a modern perspective. So note no te what he wrote in a letter to The Times of London on 26th. April 1968: "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". I reproduce one of his typically Leftist "Peace" posters (from the 1930s) below:
Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal were Catholic syndicalists first of all, and Franco did keep himself above the Falange (the Spanish Fascists) but both were nationalist to the point of autarky and both ran an overpowering State apparatus so I think they can broadly be categorized as Fascists too. The major objection is probably that neither were as welfarist as Mussolini and Hitler, though syndicalism is of course allegedly welfarist. Both regimes must however be regarded as outliers rather than as embodying what is central to Fascism. They were Leftist (certainly not conservative) in their implementation of pervasive State power but not Leftist in rhetoric of representing the worker or in implementing extensive welfare systems. The most accurate description of Franco would probably be "a military dictator with Fascist and Catholic allies". It may be noted that the Spanish Falangists ("Falange" means "Phalanx") were initially anti-Catholic and that they were in any case eased out of power in the latter part of Franco's rule in favour of the intensely Catholic Opus Dei movement. Tojo and his clique in Japan, Admiral Horthy in Hungary, Antonescu in Romania, and Pavelic in Croatia co-operated with Hitler and Mussolini out of self-interest but were basically just patriots and nationalists rather than also being socialists. A lesser-known lesser-known case and therefore one on e of some interest is that of Chiang Kai Shek. He was much more like Hitler and Mussolini than Franco and Salazar were in that he very clearly came from the Left. Throughout the prewar period, Chiang had close ties with the Soviets and first gained substantial power with an explicitly communist message (see here). After he had consolidated his power, however, he attacked communism in China but retained re tained some links with the Soviets. That he was a great nationalist is undoubted but was he also a Leftist? As with Mussolini, his later opposition to communism normally gets him labelled as a rightist but, as we have already seen, this is facile. From the French revolution on, Leftists have been very prone to murderous sibling rivalry -- arguably hating one-another more than they hate conservatives. So Chiang's falling out with Mao does not prove much. Given Chiang's thoroughly authoritarian management of Taiwan after his expulsion from the mainland, given the large State industries he created in Taiwan Taiwan and given his significant welfarist policies -- his relatively peaceful land-to-the peasants reforms in particular -- I think it is clear that Chiang was just as much a national socialist as Hitler and Mussolini -- and his unabashed militarism rather completes the similarity. similarity. So Peron and and Chiang were two Fascists who survived the war with substantial power intact -- as of course also did the semi-Fascist Franco and Salazar. Salazar. And of the three most significant Communist regimes to survive into the 21st century, century, two had degenerated into Fascism -- China and North Korea. Both these were heavily nationalist as well as allegedly socialist. Only Castro's Cuba did not seem to be strongly reliant on nationalist themes, though there is a site here that begs to differ. differ. The Ho Chi Minh regime in Vietnam was Fascist (both nationalist and Leftist) from the beginning and the post-Ho arrangements there are remarkably like those of Mussolini. And after an initial flirtation with democracy, Russia under Vladimir Putin seems to have moved
towards Fascism too. And there is no doubt that, like Hitler, Hitler, Mussolini and Peron, Putin is personally popular with his people. So the personality cult that tends to characterize all authoritarian regimes (whether Fascist or Communist) would already seem to be developing again in Russia. As a much more modern regime than Mussolini's however, we cannot expect Putin's Russia to have all the features of Fascist Italy. Mussolini's regime was a product of the ideas that were popular in his time and Putin's regime will undoubtedly gain approval in a similar way. way. As was pointed out at the beginning of this article, all Fascist regimes have features peculiar to themselves so in the end the only really common components of Fascism are nationalism combined with the paternalistic and authoritarian "we will look after you" undertaking that is basic to Leftism. Russia already has the national pride so just a bit more paternalism will make Russia clearly Fascist too. Fascist regimes do however allow considerable economic liberties and the example of o f China has shown that even a little liberty in the economic sphere can have remarkably transformative effects. So a Fascist Russia should be capable of considerable economic advancement for its people and thus will almost certainly be a much more relaxed regime than Soviet Russia. If economic progress in Russia is stifled under Putin, howeve r, we could see the more dismal future outlined here.
Summary There is practically no feature of modern-day Leftism that was not prefigured by Mussolini. It is clear from the many quotations and reports that are available (only a fraction of which are reproduced here) that Mussolini was very much a kindred spirit of modern-day Leftists. It is therefore hilarious that Leftists now use the name of his movement move ment as their routine term of abuse! Ignorance o f history does indeed lead to some strange follies. He started out as such a radical unionist firebrand and Marxist agitator that he was often jailed for his pains. But as he matured he moved towards somewhat more moderate politics which saw him win power by political rather than by revolutionary means. Modern day Leftists seem to be the same. The young go out demonstrating against globalization an d the like while older Leftists exert their efforts within the framework of conventional democratic po litics -- via the major Leftist political parties. And no-one was a more ardent advocate of government provision of basic services than Mussolini was -- and he actually put those ideas into practice on a large scale as well. And he also instituted a "welfare state" that was very advanced for the times. In his "corporate state", Mussolini was the first to create that very modern phenomenon constantly now being advocated by Leftists everywhere -- a system of capitalism under tight government control. And his corporate state was one where the workers had (at least in theory) equal rights with management. He actually put into full-blown practice what is still a great but rather misty ideal for most Leftists. And he was the first socialist ruler to turn to pragmatism in dec iding economic policy, thus anticipating China's Deng, Russia's Gorbachev and Britain's Prime Minister Blair by 60 years or more. Europe has still not entirely moved away from direct government participation in industry so Mussolini's influence has stretched far forward right into our time. As one expert (Nicholas Farrell) on the history of Italian Fascism puts it: "Every now and again, as I wander about town, my mind drifts from Mussolini and Fascism, the subject in hand, to another matter: Tony Tony Blair and New Labour. Odd, but I canno t help noticing that
Blair and Mussolini have rather a lot in common. I am not saying that Blair has consciously copied Mussolini. But Blair, probably without even realising it, does seem to have imbibed q uite a few things from the Duce. ... For a start, Blair extols the virtues of the Third Way Way,, which was the phrase coined by the Fascists, no less, to describe their alternative to capitalism and communism..... Indeed, despite all the uncanny similarities between the two leaders, there are, of course many differences, not the least of which is that Blair is in many ways more right-wing. Mussolini, for example, found ed Italy's welfare state. Presumably, Presumably, most people would agree that such a move was fairly left-wing. Blair, Blair, on the other hand, is doing his best not just to hack away at the welfare state but also at workplace rights"
So to have listened to Mussolini in the 1920's or even earlier would be to have heard most of the Leftist ideas that are still being preached today. today. Intellectually, Intellectually, the 20th century was largely Mussolini's, strange though that may at first seem. He substantially foreshadowed not only Lenin, Stalin and Hitler but even Gorbachev, Deng and Tony Blair. Blair. If any one man therefore has a claim to embody the Leftist politics of the 20th century cen tury,, it is surely Mussolini. The Fascist origins of modern-day Leftist ideas should then help to alert us to the authoritarianism and potential for tyranny that lurks beneath their supposedly "compassionate" surface. What has been said here about the nature and history of Fascism is of course only a quick summary. For those who wish to explore the subject in greater depth, a useful recent resource would be a book by an expert on Italian Fascism: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, Century, by A. James Gregor, whose earlier book has been referred to several times above. There are two good short reviews of it here and here. Gregor shows that Fascism and Nazism modelled their methods on Lenin and Stalin and that the Fascist idea of adding nationalism to socialism was later taken up by Stalin and Mao -- so that in the end Fascism and Communism were two very similar Leftist sects. So during the era of their big confrontation, Soviet Russia and Maoist China were therefore perfectly correct in accusing one-another of being Fascists! So the idea that Nazism and Fascism were Rightist is an old Soviet lie that Left-leaning intellectuals in the West have perpetuated in flagrant denial of historical reality.
REFERENCES Amis, M. (2002) Koba the Dread : laughter and the twenty million. N.Y.: N.Y.: Talk Talk Miramax Andriola, F. F. (1997) Mussolini segreto nemico di Hitler. (Mussolini: Hitler's secret enemy) Casale Monferrato: Piemme Carsten, F.L. F.L. (1967) The rise of Fascism. London: Methuen. De Felice, R. (1977) Interpretations of Fascism Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P. U.P. Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia (1983) Funk & Wagnall's Wagnall's Galbraith, J.K. (1969) The affluent society. society. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gilmour, I.H.J.L. (1978) Inside right. London: Quartet. Greene, N. (1968) Fascism: An anthology. N.Y.: N.Y.: Crowell. Gregor, A.J. (1979) Italian Fascism and developmental dictatorship Princeton, N.J.: Univ. Univ. Press. Hagan, J. (1966) Modern History and its themes. Croydon, Victoria, Victoria, Australia: Longmans. Herzer, I. (1989) The Italian refuge: Rescue of Jews during the holocaust. Washington, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press Hibbert, C. (1962) Benito Mussolini Geneva: Heron Book s. Horowitz, D. (1998) Up from multiculturalism. Heterodoxy, Heterodoxy, January. See: here
Lenin, V.I. (1952) "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder. In: Selected Works, Vol. II, Part 2. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Martino, A. (1998) The modern mask of socialism. 15th John Bonython lecture, Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney. Sydney. See http://www.cis.org.au/Events/JBL/JBL http://www.cis.org.au/Events/JBL/JBL98.htm 98.htm Muravchik, J. (2002) Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism San Francisco: Encounter Books. Smith, D.M. (1967) The theory and practice of Fascism. In: Greene, N. Fascism: An anthology N.Y.: N.Y.: Crowell. Steinberg, J. (1990) All or nothing: The Axis and the holocaust London: Routledge. ************* Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20060526/jonjayray.tripod.com/
Hitler was a Leftist Hitler was a Leftist ^ | John Ray Posted on Wednesday, Wednesday, October 29, 2003 11:46:53 AM by finnman69 "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the "We economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler (Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, Toland, 1976, p. 306) 306 ) [Below is the 25 of the NSDAP Program - This is basically the National Socialist German Workers Workers Party Platform. It included measures that in effect would redistribute income and war profits, profitsharing with large industries, nationalization of trusts, extensive development of old-age pension (just like FDRs Social Security Program), and free education. Clearly this demonstrates Hitler was indeed a left winger and here is startling proof.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------The 25 points p oints of the NSDAP Program were composed by Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler. Drexler. They were publically presented on 24 February 1920 "to a crowd of almost two thousand and every single point was accepted amid a mid jubilant approval." (Mein Kampf, Volume Volume II, Chapter I) Hitler H itler explained their purpose in the fifth chapter of the second volume of Mein Kampf: [T]he program of the new movement was summed up in a few guiding principles, twenty-five in all. They were devised to give, primarily to the man of the people, a rough picture of the movement's aims. They are in a sense a political creed, which on the one hand recruits for the movement and on the other is suited to unite and weld together by a commonly recognized obligation those who have been recruited. Hitler was intent on having a community of mutual interest that desired mutual success instead of one that was divided over the control of money or differing values.
THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST - THAT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE PROGRAM. BREAKING OF THE THRALDOM OF INTEREST - THAT IS THE KERNEL OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM. In these straightforward statements of intent, Hitler translated his ideology into a plan of action which would prove its popularity with the German peop le throughout the coming years. For many, the abruptness of its departure from the tradition of politics as practiced in the western world was as much of a shock as its liberal nature and foresight of the emerging problems of western democracy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Programme of the German Workers' Party is designed to be of limited duration. The leaders have no intention, once the aims announced in it have been achieved, of establishing fresh ones, merely in order to increase, artificially, artificially, the discontent of the masses and so ensure the continued existence of o f the Party. 1. We We demand the union of all Germany in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national selfdetermination. 2. We We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and the revocation of the peace treaties of Versailles Versailles and Saint-Germain. 3. We demand land and territory (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our surplus population. 4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever be their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation. 5. Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens. 6. The right to vote on the State's government and legislation shall be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens. We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of filling posts merely in accordan ce with party considerations, and without reference to character or abilities. 7. We We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire e ntire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich. 8. All non-German immigration must be preven ted. We We demand that all non-Germans who entered en tered Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Re ich forthwith. 9. All citizens shall have equal rights and duties. 10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the general interest, but must proceed within the framework of the community and be for the general good.
We demand therefore: 11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work. The breaking of the slavery of interest 12. In view of the enormous sacrifices of life and property demanded of a nation by any war, personal enrichment from war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore the ruthless confiscation of all war profits. 13. We We demand the nationalization of all a ll businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts). 14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises. 15. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age. 16. We We demand the creation and an d maintenance of a healthy h ealthy middle class, the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that the utmost consideration shall be shown to all small traders in the placing of State and municiple orders. 17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compen sation; the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land. * 18. We We demand the ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race. 19. We We demand that Roman Law, which serves a materialistic world order, be replaced by a German common law. 20. The State must consider a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education (with the aim of opening up to every able and hard-working German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement). The curricula of all e ducational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the schoo l must be to give the pupil, beginning with the first sign of intelligence, a grasp of the nation of the State (through the study of civic affairs). We We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State. 21. The State must ensure that the nation's health standards are raised by protecting mothers and infants, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and by the extensive support o f clubs engaged in the physical ph ysical training of youth. 22. We We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the foundation of a people's army. army. 23. We We demand legal lega l warfare on deliberate political mendacity and its dissemination in the press. To facilitate the creation of a German national press we demand:
(a) that all editors of, and contributors to newspapers ap pearing in the German language must be members of the nation; (b) that no non-German newspapers may appear without the express permission of the State. They must not be printed in the German language; (c) that non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and that the penalty for contravening such a law shall be the suppression of any such newspaper, newspap er, and the immediate deportation of the non-Germans involved. The publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare must be forbidden. We demand the legal prosecution of o f all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand. 24. We We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the State, provided they do not threaten its existence not offend the moral feelings of the Ge rman race. The Party, Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, Christianity, but does not commit itself to any particular denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health only from within on the basis of the principle: The common interest before self-interest. 25. To To put the whole of this programme into effect, we demand the creation of a strong central state power for the Reich; the unconditional un conditional authority of the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and its organizations; and the formation of Corporations based on estate and occupation occup ation for the purpose of carrying out the general legislation passed by the Reich in the various German states. The leaders of the Party promise to work ruthlessly -- if need be to sacrifice their very lives -- to translate this programme into action. Source: Programme of the NSDAP http://www.hitler http://www.hitler.org/writings/programme/ .org/writings/programme/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1010512/posts
[First published August 22, 2005] What is socialism? It is a politico-economic philosophy that believes government must direct all major economic dec isions by command, and thus all the means of production for the greater good, however defined. There are three major divisions of socialism, all antagonistic to each other. One is democratic socialism, that places the emphasis on democratic means, but then government governmen t is a tool for improving welfare and equality. equality. A second division is MarxistLeninism, which based on a “scientific theory” of dialectical materialism, sees the necessity of a dictatorship (“of the proletariat”) to create a classless society and universal equality. equality. Then, there is the third division, or state socialism. This is a non-Marxist or anti-Marxist dictatorship that aims at near absolute economic control for the purpose of economic development and national power, all construed to benefit the people. Mussolini’s Mussolini’s fascism was a state socialism that was explicitly anti-Marx and aggressively nationalistic. Hitler’s National Socialism was state socialism at its worse. It not only shared the socialism of fascism, but was explicitly racist. In this it differs from the state socialism of Burma today, and that of some African and Arab dictatorships. Two prevailing historical myths that the left has propagated successfully is that Hitler was a far right
wing conservative and was democratically elected in 1933 (a blow at bou rgeois democracy and conservatives). Actually, he was defeated twice in the national elections (he became chancellor in a smoke-filled-room appointment by those German politicians who thought they could control him — see “What? Hitler Was Was Not Elected?”) Elected? ”) and as head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Party, he considered himself a socialist, and was one by the evidence of his writings and the his economic policies. To be clear, c lear, National Socialism differs from Marxism in its nationalism, emphasis on folk history and culture, idolization of the leader, and its racism. But the Nazi and Marxist-Leninists shared a faith in government, an absolute ruler, totalitarian control over all significant economic and social matters for the good of the working man, concentration camps, and genocide/democide as an effective government policy (only in his last years did Stalin plan for his own Holocaust of the Jews). I’ve read Hitler’s Mein Kampf (all online here) and can quote the following from Volume Volume 2: Chapter VII: In 1919-20 and also in 1921 I attended some of the bourgeois [capitalist] meetings. Invariably I had the same feeling towards these as towards the compulsory dose of castor oil in my boyhood days. . . . And so it is not surprising that the sane and unspoiled masses shun these ‘bourgeois mass meetings’ as the devil shuns holy water. Chapter 4: The folkish philosophy is fundamentally distinguished from the Marxist by reason of the fact that the former recognizes the significance of race and therefore also personal worth and has made these the pillars of its structure. These are the most important factors of its view of life. ? If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand the funda mental importance of this essential principle, if it should merely varnish the external appearance of the present State and adopt the majority principle, it would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground. For that reason it would not have the right to call itself a philosophy of life. If the social programme of the movement consisted in eliminating personality and putting the multitude in its place, then National Socialism would be corrupted with the poison of Marxism, just as our national-bourgeois parties are. Chapter XII: The National Socialist Movement, which aims at establishing the National Socialist People’s State, must always bear steadfastly in mind the principle that every future institution under that State must be rooted in the movement itself. Some other quotes: Hitler, spoken to Otto Strasser, Berlin, May 21, 1930: I am a Socialist, and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow. . . . What you understand by Socialism is nothing more than Marxism. On this, see Alan Bullock, Hitler: a Study in Tyranny Tyranny,, pp.156-7; and Graham L. Strachan
“MANUFACTURED REALITY: THE ‘THIRD WAY’” Gregor Strasser, National Socialist theologian, said: We National Socialists are enemies, deadly enemies, of the present capitalist system with its exploitation of the economically weak … and we are resolved under all circumstances to destroy this system. F.A. Hayek in his Road to Serfdom (p. 168) said: The connection between socialism and nationalism in Germany was close from the beginning. It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism—Fichte, Rodbertus, and Lassalle— are at the same time acknowledged ackno wledged fathers of socialism. …. From 1914 onward there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hard-working laborer and idealist youth into the National Socialist fold. It was only thereafter that the tide of nationalist socialism attained major importance and rapidly grew into the Hitlerian doctrine. See also his chapter 12: “The Socialist Roots of Naziism.” Von Mises in his Human Action (p. 171) said: There are two patterns for the realization of socialism. The first pattern (we may call it the Lenin or Russian pattern) . . . . the second pattern (we may call it the Hindenburg or German Pattern) nominally and seemingly preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers … bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by government. This is precisely how Hitler governed when he achieved dictatorial power. In a previous blog, i referred to John J. Ray’s piece (“Hitler Was Was A Socialist”, and I was asked who he he is. He has a Ph.D. in p sychology, sychology, but taught sociology for many years. His fulsome bio is here. His article on Hitler is excellent and well researched. He has a blog on “dissecting leftism.”
Link of Note “Myth: Hitler was a leftist By Steve Kanga (note: A liberal activist, Kanga apparently shot himself to death outside of the office of anti-Clinton billionaire philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaif, February 8, 1999. It was ruled a suicide.) Kanga says: Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named “National Socialist.” But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means o f production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship — it can only be democratic. Hitler’s other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over
equality, equality, competition over cooperation, power politics p olitics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist. Here you have a taste for how the left maintains its myth, as in conflating democracy an d socialism. That is, true socialism “can only be democratic.” Right, like the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea, or the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/hitler-was-a-socialist/ Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named “National Socialist.” But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship — it can only be democratic. Hitler’s other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, equality, competition over cooperation, power politics p olitics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist. Argument To most people, Hitler’s beliefs belong to the extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and you arrive at Hitler’s warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To To deflect such criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack, claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the political left, not the right. The primary basis for this claim is that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word “National” evokes the state, and the word “Socialist” openly identifies itself as such. However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this term: it was a misnomer. misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky’ Zhirinovsky’ss “Liberal Democrat” party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether Hitler called his party “socialist,” but whether or not it actually was. In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people — after all, wasn’t the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and political parties have called themselves “socialist,” but none have actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few basic political terms. Perhaps the primary concern of any political ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This includes factories, farmlands, machinery, machinery, etc. Generally there have been be en three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are ex cluded. The third (and untried) approach is
socialism, where everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at the other. Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own compan ies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production. The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers — that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn’t matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a “socialist” or a “democrat.” If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, nondemocratic and non-socialist. And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke. It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism. Technically Technically,, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of production. The Nazi “Charter of Labor” gave employers complete power over their workers. It established the employer as the “leader of the enterprise,” and read: “The leader of o f the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees an d laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise.” (1) The employer, however, was subject to the frequent orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed, making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following Keynesianlike policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful without resorting to dictatorship or war.) Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to po wer, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that h e would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William William Shirer describes the Nazi’s dual strategy: “The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly ‘socialists’ and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it.” (2) Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the “Labor Front” replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the Naz i party and did not represent workers. According to the law that created it, “Its task is to see that every individual should be able… to perform the maximum of work.” Workers would indeed greatly boost their productivity under Nazi rule. But they also became exploited. Between 1932 and 1936, workers wages fell, from
20.4 to 19.5 cents cen ts an hour for skilled labor, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for unskilled labor. (3) Yet workers did not protest. This was partly because the Nazis had restored order o rder to the economy econ omy,, but an even bigger reason was that the Nazis would have cracked down on any protest. There was no part of Nazism, therefore, that even remotely resembled socialism. But what about the political nature of Nazism in general? Did it belong to the left, or to the right? Let’s take a closer look: The politics of Nazism The political right is popularly associated with the following principles. Of course, it goes without saying that these are generalizations, and not n ot every person on the far right believes in every principle, or disbelieves its opposite. Most people’s political beliefs are complex, and cannot be ne atly pigeonholed. This is as true of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a leftist, it’s it’s worth reviewing the tenets popularly associated with the right. These include: * Individualism over collectivism. * Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance. * Eugenics over freedom of reproduction. * Merit over ov er equality. * Competition over cooperation. * Power politics and militarism over pacifism. * One-person rule or self-rule over democracy. * Capitalism over Marxism. * Realism over idealism. * Nationalism over internationalism. * Exclusiveness over inclusiveness. * Meat-eating over vegetarianism. * Gun ownership over gun control * Common sense over theory or science. * Pragmatism over principle. * Religion over secularism. Let’s Let’s review these spectrums one by one, and see where Hitler stood in his own words. Ultimately, Ultimately, Hitler’s views are not monolithically conservative — on a few issues, his views are complex and difficult to label. But as you will see, the vast majority of them belong on the far right: Individualism over collectivism. Many conservatives argue that Hitler was a leftist because he subjugated the individual to the state. However, this characterization is wrong, for several reasons. The first error is in assuming that this is exclusively exc lusively a liberal trait. Actually, Actually, U.S. conservatives take considerable pride in being patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed their lives for their country. country. The Marine Corps is a classic example: as every Marine knows, all sense of individuality is obliterated in the Marines Corps, and one is subject first, foremost and always to the group. The second error is forgetting that all human beings subscribe to individualism and collectivism. If you believe that you are personally responsible for taking care of yourself, you are an individualist. If you
freely belong and contribute to any group g roup — say, say, an employing business, church, club, family, family, nation, or cause — then you are a collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a p erson inherently “liberal” or “conservative,” and to claim that you are an “evil socialist” because you champion a particular group is not a serious argument. Political scientists therefore do not label people “liberal” or “conservative” on the basis of their individualism or collectivism. Much more important is how they approach their individualism and collectivism. What groups does a person belong to? How is power distributed in the group? Does D oes it practice one-person rule, minority rule, majority rule, or self-rule? Liberals believe in majority rule. Hitler practiced one-person rule. Thus, there is no comparison. And on that score, conservatives might feel that they are off the hook, too, because they claim to prefer self-rule to one-person rule. But their actions say otherwise. Many of the institutions that conservatives favor are really quite dictatorial: the military, military, the church, chu rch, the patriarchal family, the business firm. Hitler himself downplayed all groups except for the state, which he raised to supreme significance in his writings. However, he did not identify the state as most people do, as a random collection of people peop le in artificially drawn borders. Instead, he identified the German state as its racially pure stock of German or Aryan blood. In Mein Kampf, Hitler freely and interchangeably used the terms “Aryan race,” “German culture” and “folkish state.” To him they were synonyms, as the quotes below show. show. There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were n ot part of Hitler’s state, while there were Germans outside Germany (for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that Hitler ’s political philosophy was not really based on “statism” as we know it today. today. It was actually based on racism — again, a subject that hits uncomfortably closer to home for conservatives, not liberals. As Hitler himself wrote: “The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.” (4) “The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and an d advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogenous creatures. cre atures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence as a race… Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the preservation of those original racial elements which bestow culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which… assures the preservation of this nationality…” (5) “The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of raising them to a dominant position.” (6) And it was in the service of this racial state that Hitler encourage individuals to sacrifice themselves: “In [the Aryan], the instinct for self-preservation has reached its noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour hou r demands it, even sacrifices it.” (7) “This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, community,
is really the first premise for every truly human culture.” (8) Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance. “All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan.” (9) “Aryan races — often absurdly small numerically — subject foreign peoples, and then… develop the intellectual and organizational capacities dormant within them.” (10) “If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop… Japan’s present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up… the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture.” (11) “Every racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline of the hybrid product…” (12) “It is the function above all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a fundamental halt to any further bastardization.” (13) “What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood…” (14) Eugenics over freedom of reproduction “The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself…” (15) “The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has neglected in this th is field. It must set race in the center of all life. It must take care to keep it pure… It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one’s own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and one on e highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the n ation. Here the state… must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propag ation all who are in any way visibly sick or who wh o have inherited a disease and therefore pass it on…” (16) Merit over equality. equality. “The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community co mmunity to leading position and leading influence. But as in economic life, the able men cannot canno t be appointed from above, but must struggle through for themselves…” (17) “It must not be lamented if so many men set out on the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will in this way be recognized, an d will be the victor.” (p. 512.) Competition over cooperation. “Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.” (18)
“It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions.” (19) “The idea of struggle is old as life itself, for life is only preserved b ecause other living things perish through struggle… In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself in the animal world, but solely by means o f the most brutal struggle… If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won.” (20) Power politics and militarism over pacifism. p acifism. Allan Bullock, probably the world’s world’s greatest Hitler historian, sums up u p Hitler’s political method in one sentence: “Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitler’s ideas can be reduced to a simple claim for p ower which recognizes only one relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that o f force.” (21) The following quotes by Hitler portray his rather stunning contempt for pacifism: “If the German people in its historic development h ad possessed that herd unity [defined here by Hitler as racial solidarity] which other peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of the globe. World history would have taken a different course, and no one can distinguish whether in this way we would not have obtained what so many blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining and whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious sword of a master people, putting the wo rld into the service of a higher culture.” (22) “We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost territories is not won through solemn “We appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms.” (23) “In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism.” (24) One-person rule or self-rule over democracy. “The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects… a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people’s wills and opinion.” (25) “The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!” (26) “By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob,
the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature…” (27) “For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards.” (28) “There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word ‘council’ must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have adv isers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man.” (29) “When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes.” (30) “The Western Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism…” (31) “Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to comprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy.” Democracy.” (32) Capitalism over Marxism. Bullock writes of Hitler’ Hitler ’s views on Marxism: “While Hitler’s attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt, towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility… Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he detested — mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism.” (33) As Hitler himself would write: “The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism.” (34) “In the years 1913 and 1914, 19 14, I… expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.” (35) “In the economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the political sphere.” (36) “The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extinction.” (37) “Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews.” (38) “The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight.” (39) Realism over idealism.
Hitler was hardly an “idealist” in the sense that political scientists use the term. The standard definition of an idealist is someone who believes that cooperation and peaceful coexistence can occur among peoples. A realist, however, is someone who sees the world as an unstable and dangerous place, and prepares for war, if not to deter it, then to survive it. It goes without saying that Hitler was one of the greatest realists of all time. Nonetheless, Hitler had his own twisted utopia, which he described: “We are not simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever be possible to b ring about a perfect era. “We But this relieves no one of the obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome weaknesses, and strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own accord will create only too many limitations. For that very reason, however, man must try to serve the ultimate goal, and failures must not deter him, any more than he can abandon ab andon a system of justice merely because mistakes creep into it…” (40) “The same boy who feels like throwing up when he hears the tirades of a pacifist ‘idealist’ is ready to give up his life for the ideal of his nationality.” nationality.” (41) Nationalism over internationalism. “The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when… their international poisoners are exterminated.” (42) “The severest obstacle to the present-day worker’s approach to the national community lies not in the defense of his class interests, but in his international leadership and attitude which are hostile to the people and the fatherland.” (43) “Thus, the reservoir from which the young [Nazi] movement must gather its supporters will primarily be the masses of our workers. Its work will be to tear these away from the international delusion… and lead them to the national community…” co mmunity…” (44) Exclusiveness over inclusiveness. “Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on earth.” (45) “The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others.” (46) Meat-eating over vegetarianism. It may seem ridiculous to include this issue in a review of Hitler’s politics, but, believe it or not, conservatives on the Internet frequently equate Hitler ’s vegetarianism with the vegetarianism practised by liberals concerned about the environment and the ethical treatment of animals. Hitler’s vegetarianism had nothing to do with his political beliefs. He became a vegetarian shortly after the death of his girlfriend and half-niece, Geli Raubal. Their relationship was a stormy one, and it ended in her apparent suicide. There were rumors that Hitler had arranged her murder, but Hitler would remain deeply distraught over her loss for the rest of h is life. As one historian writes:
“Curiously, “Curiously, shortly after her death, Hitler looked with disdain on a piece of ham being b eing served during breakfast and refused to eat it, saying it was like eating a corpse. From that moment on, he refused to eat meat.” (47) Hitler’s vegetarianism, then, was no more than a phobia, triggered by an association with his niece’s death. Gun ownership over gun control Perhaps one of the pro-gun lobby’s favorite arguments is that if German citizens had had the right to keep and bear arms, Hitler would have never been able to tyrannize the country. And to this effect, progun advocates often quote the following: “1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.” – Adolf Hitler However, this quote is almost certainly a fraud. There is no reputable record of h im ever making it: neither at the Nuremberg rallies, nor in any of his w eekly radio addresses. Furthermore, there was no reason for him to even make such a statement; for Germany already had strict gun con trol as a term of surrender in the Treaty of Versailles. Versailles. The Allies Allies had wanted to make Germany as impotent as possible, and one of the ways they did that was to disarm its citizenry. Only a handful of local authorities were allowed arms at all, and the few German citizens who did possess weapons were already subject to full gun registration. Seen in this light, the above quote makes no sense whatsoever. The Firearms Policy Journal (January 1997) 1997 ) writes: “The Nazi Party did not ride to power confiscating c onfiscating guns. They rode to power on the inability of the Weimar Republic to confiscate their guns. They did not consolidate their power confiscating guns either. either. There is no historical evidence that Nazis Naz is ever went door to door in Germany confiscating guns. The Germans had a fetish about paperwork and documented everything. These searches and confiscations would have been carefully recorded. If the documents are there, let them be presented as evidence.” On April 12, 1928, five years before Hitler seized power, Germany passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition. This law substantially tightened restrictions on gun ownership in an effort to curb street violence between Nazis and Communists. The law was ineffectual and poorly enforced. It was not until March 18, 1938 — five years after Hitler came to power — that the N azis passed the German Weapons Weapons Law, their first known change in the firearm code. And this law actually relaxed restrictions on citizen firearms. Common sense over theory or science. Hitler was notorious for his anti-intellectualism: “The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of wh ich it cannot use and hence henc e forgets again… In many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, p upil, and only a fraction of
this abundance can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and earning his living in a definite field.” (48) “Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life.” (49) “The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work p rimarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling.” (50) “A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth.” (51) Pragmatism over principle. “The question of the movement’s inner organization is one of expediency and not of principle.” (52) Religion over secularism. Hitler’s views on religion were complex. Although ostensibly an atheist, he considered himself a cultural Catholic, and frequently evoked God, the Creator and Providence in his writings. Throughout his life he would remain an envious admirer of the Christian Church and its power over the masses. Here is but one example: “We can learn by the example “We ex ample of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice… comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that its power of resistance does not lie in its lesser or greater adaptation to the scientific findings of the moment, which in reality are always fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once established, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole bod y the character of faith. And so it stands today more firmly than ever.” (53) Hitler also saw a useful purpose for the Church: “The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, [religious] faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude… For the political man, the value o f a religion must be estimated less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute. As long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by fools or criminals.” (54) Hitler thus advocated freedom of religious belief. Although he would later press churches into the service of Nazism, often at the point of a gun, Hitler did not attempt to impose a state religion or mandate the basic philosophical content of German religions. As long as they did not interfere with his program, he allowed them to continue co ntinue fuctioning. And this policy was foreshadowed in his writings: “For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else he has no right to be in politics…” (55)
“Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties.” (56) “Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the “Worst th e misuse of religious conviction conv iction for political ends.” (57) “Therefore, let every man be active, each ea ch in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word wo rd or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other.” (58) Hitler was raised a Catholic, even going to school for two years at the monastery at Lambauch, Austria. As late as 24 he still called himself a Catholic, but somewhere along the way he became an atheist. It is highly doubtful that this was an intellectual decision, as a reading of his disordered thoughts in Mein Kampf will attest. The decision was most likely a pragmatic one, b ased on power and personal ambition. Bullock reveals an interesting anecdote showing how these considerations worked on the young Hitler. After five years of eking out a miserable existence ex istence in Vienna and four years of war, Hitler walked into his first German Worker’s Worker’s Party meeting: “‘Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas-lamp I could see four people sitting around a table…’ As Hitler frankly acknowledges, this very obscurity was an attraction. It was only in a party which, like himself, was beginning at the bottom that he had any prospect of playing a leading part and imposing his ideas. In the established parties there was no room for him, he would be a nobody.” (59) Hitler probably realized that a frustrated artist and pipe-dreamer like himself would have no chance of achieving power in the world-wide, 2000-year old Christian Church. It was most likely for this reason that he rejected Christianity and pursued a political life instead. Yet, Yet, curiously enough, he never renounced his membership in the Catholic Church, and the Church never excommunicated him. Nor did the Church place his Mein Kampf on the Index of Prohibited Books, in spite of its knowledge of his atrocities. Later the Church would come under intense criticism for its friendly and cooperative relationship with Hitler. A brief review of this history is instructive. In 1933, the Catholic Center Party cast its large and decisive vote in favor of Hitler ’s Enabling Bill. This bill essentially gave Chancellor Hitler the sweeping dictatorial powers he was seeking. Historian Guenter Lewy describes a meeting between Hitler and the German Catholic authorities shortly afterwards: “On 26 April 1933 Hitler had a conversation with Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann [the Catholic leadership in Germany]. The subject was the common fight against liberalism, Socialism and Bolshevism, discussed in the friendliest terms. In the course of the co nversation Hitler said that he was only doing to the Jews what the church had done to them over the past fifteen hundred years. The prelates did not contradict him.” (60) As anyone familiar with Christian history knows, the Church has always been a primary source of antiSemitism. Hitler’s anti-Semitism anti-Semitism therefore found a receptive audience among a mong Catholic authorities. The Church also had an intense fear and hatred of Russian communism, and Hitler’s attack on Russia was the best that could have happened. The Jesuit Michael Serafin wrote: “It cannot be denied that [Pope] Pius XII’s XII’s closest advisors for some time regarded Hitler’ Hitler ’s armoured divisions as the right hand of God.” (61) As Pope Pius himself would say after Germany conquered Poland: “Let us end this war
between brothers and unite our forces against the common enemy of atheism” — Russia. (62) Once Hitler assumed power, he signed a Concordat, or agreement, with the Catholic Church. Eugenio Pacelli (the man who would eventually become Pope Pius XII) was the Vatican diplomat who drew up the Concordat, and he considered it a triumph. In return for promises which Hitler increasingly broke, the Church dissolved all Catholic organizations in Germany, including the Catholic Center Party. Party. Bishops were to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clergy were to see to the pastoral care of Germany’s Germany’s armed forces (regardless of what those armed forces did). (63) The Concordat eliminated all Catholic resistance to Hitler; after this, the German bishops gave Hitler their full and unqualified unq ualified support. A bishops’ bishops’ conference at Fulda, 1933, resulted in agreement with Hitler’s case for extending Lebensraum, or German territory. (64) Bishop Bornewasser told a congregation of Catholic young people at Trier: Trier: “With our heads high and with firm steps we have entered the new Reich and are ready to serve it body and soul.” (65) Vicar-General Steinman greeted each Berlin mass with the shout, “Heil Hitler!” (66) Hitler, on the other hand, kept up his attack on the Church. Nazi bands stormed into the few remaining Catholic institutions, beat up Catholic youths and arrested Catholic officials. The Vatican Vatican was dismayed, but it did not protest. (67) In some instances, it was hard to tell if the Church supported its own persecution. Hitler muzzled the independent Catholic press (about 400 daily papers in 1933) and subordinated it to Goebbels’ Go ebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. Yet Yet soon the Catholic Press was doing more than what the Nazis required of it — for example, coordinating their Nazi propaganda to prepare the people for the 1940 offensive against the West. West. (68) Throughout the war, the Catholic press would remain one of the Third Reich’s best disseminators of propaganda. Pacelli became the new Pope Pius XII in 1939, and he immediately improved relations with Hitler. Hitler. He broke protocol by personally signing a letter in German to Hitler expressing warm hopes of friendly relations. Shortly afterwards, the Church celebrated ce lebrated Hitler’s birthday by ringing bells, flying swastika flags from church towers and holding thanksgiving services for the Fuhrer. (69) Ringing church bells to celebrate and affirm the bishops’ allegiance to the Reich would become quite common throughout the war; after the German army conquered France, the church bells rang for an entire week, and swastikas flew over the churches for ten days. But perhaps the greatest failure of Pope Pius XII was his silence over the Holocaust, even though he knew it was in progress. Although there are many heroic stories of Catholics helping Jews survive the Holocaust, they do not include Pope Pius, the Holy See, or the German Catholic authorities. When a reporter asked Pius why he did not protest the liquidation of the Jews, the Pope answered, “Dear friend, do not forget that millions of Catholics are serving in the German armies. Am I to involve them in a conflict of conscience?” (70) As perhaps the world’s greatest moral leader, he was charged with precisely that responsibility. responsibility. The history of Hitler and the Church reveals revea ls a relationship built on mutual distrust and philosophical rejection, but also shared goals, benefits, admiration, envy, friendliness, and ultimate alliance.
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THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX: HOW A BANKRUPT GERMANY SOLVED ITS INFRASTRUCTURE PROBLEMS Ellen Brown, August 9th, 2007 http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany.php .php Post your comments here "We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency [backed by] gold of which we had none, but for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work w ork done or goods produced. . . .we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of a state bank." - Adolf Hitler, Hitler, quoted in "Hitler's Monetary System," www.rense.com, www.rense.com, citing C. C. Veith, Veith, Citadels of Chaos (Meador, 1949) Guernsey wasn't the only government to solve its infrastructure problems by issuing its own money. money. (See E. Brown, "W "Waking aking Up on a Minnesota Bridge," www.webofdebt.com/articles/infrastructurewww.webofdebt.com/articles/infrastructurecrisis.php, August 4, 2007.) A more notorious model is found in post-World post-World War War I Germany G ermany.. When Hitler came to power, the country was completely, completely, hopelessly broke. b roke. The Treaty of Versailles Versailles had imposed crushing reparations payments on the German pe ople, who were expected to reimburse the costs of the war for all participants — costs totaling three times the value of all the property in the country. country. Speculation in the German mark had caused it to plummet, precipitating one of the worst runaway inflations in modern times. At its peak, a wheelbarrow full of 100 billion-mark banknotes could not buy a loaf of bread. The national treasury was empty, and huge numbers of homes and farms had been lost to the banks and speculators. People were living in hovels and starving. Nothing quite like it had ever happen happened ed before - the total destruction of the national currency, currency, wiping out people's savings, their businesses, and the economy genera lly. lly. Making matters worse, at the end e nd of the decade global depression hit. Germany had no choice but to succumb to debt slavery to international lenders. Or so it seemed. Hitler and the National Socialists, who came to power in 1933, thwarted the international banking cartel by issuing their own money mone y. In this they took their cue from Abraham Lincoln, who funded the American Civil War War with government-issued paper money called "Greenbacks." Hitler began his national credit program by devising a plan of public p ublic works. Projects earmarked for funding included flood control, con trol, repair of public buildings and private residences, and construction of new buildings, roads, bridges, cana ls, and port facilities. The projected cost of the various programs was fixed at one billion units of the national currency. One billion non-inflationary bills of exchange, called Labor Treasury Certificates, were then issued against this cost. Millions of people were put to work on these projects, and the workers were paid with the Treasury Certificates. This government-issued money wasn't backed by go ld, but it was backed by something of real value. It was essentially a receipt for labor and materials delivered to the government. Hitler said, "for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work done or goods produced." The workers then spent the Certificates on other goods and services, creating more jobs for more people.
Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved and the country was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western Western countries were still out of work and living o n welfare. Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, although it was denied foreign credit and was faced with an economic boycott abroad. It did this by using a barter system: equipment and commodities were exchanged directly with other countries, circumventing the international banks. This system of direct exchange occurred without debt and without trade deficits. Germany's economic experiment, like Lincoln's, was short-lived; but it left some lasting monuments to its success, including the famous Autobahn, the world's first extensive superhighway.1 superhighway.1 Hjalmar Schacht, who was then head of the German central bank, is quoted qu oted in a bit of wit that sums up up the German version of the "Greenback" miracle. An American banker had commented, "Dr. "Dr. Schacht, you should come to America. We've We've lots of money mone y and that's real banking." Schacht replied, "You "You should come to Berlin. We We don't have money. money. That's real banking."2 Although Hitler has rightfully gone down in infamy in the history books, he was quite popular with the German people, at least for a time. Stephen Zarlenga suggests in The Lost Science of Mon ey that this was because he temporarily rescued Germany from English eco nomic theory — the theory that money must be borrowed against the gold reserves of a private banking cartel rather than issued outright by the government.3 According to Canadian researcher Dr. Henry Makow, Makow, this may have been a chief reason Hitler had to be stopped: he had sidestepped the international bankers and created his own money. Makow quotes from the 1938 interrogation of C. G. Rakovsky, one of the founders of Soviet Bolsevism and a Trotsky intimate, who was tried in show trials in the USSR under Stalin. According to Rakovsky, Hitler had actually been funded by the international bankers, through their agent Hjalmar Schacht, in order to control Stalin, who had usurped power from their agent Trotsky. Trotsky. But Hitler had become an even bigger threat than Stalin when he had taken the bold step of printing his own money. Rakovsky said: [Hitler] took over for himself the privilege of manufacturing money and not only physical moneys, but also financial ones; he took over the untouched machinery of falsification and put it to work for the benefit of the state . . . . Are you capable of imagining what would have come . . . if it had ha d infected a number of other states . . . . If you can, then imagine its counterrevolutionary functions.4 Economist Henry C K Liu writes of Germany's remarkable transformation: The Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, at a time when its economy was in total collapse, with ruinous war-reparation obligations and zero prospects for foreign investment or credit. Yet Yet through an independent monetary policy of sovereign credit and a full-employment public-works program, the Third Reich was able to turn a bankrupt Germany, stripped stripped of overseas colonies it could exploit, into the strongest economy in Europe within four years, even before armament spending began.5 In Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People (1984), Sheldon Emry commented: Germany issued debt-free and interest-free money from 1935 and on, accounting for its startling rise from the depression to a world power in 5 years. Germany financed its entire government and war operation from 1935 to 1945 without gold and without debt, and it took the whole Capitalist and Communist world to destroy the German power over Europe and bring Europe back under the heel of the Bankers. Such history of money does not even appear in the textbooks of public (government) schools today.
Another Look at the Weimar Hyperinflation What does appear in modern textbooks is the disastrous runaway inflation suffered in 1923 by the Weimar Republic (the common name for the republic that governed Germany from 1919 to 1933). The radical devaluation of the German mark is cited as the textbook example of what can go wrong when governments are given the unfettered un fettered power to print money. That is what it is cited for; but in the complex world of economics, things are not always as they seem. The Weimar Weimar financial crisis began with the impossible reparations payments imposed at the Treaty of Versailles. Versailles. Schacht, who was currency commissioner for the Republic, complained: The Treaty of Versailles Versailles is a model of ingenious measures for the economic destruction of Germany. Germany. . . . [T]he Reich could not find any way wa y of holding its head above the water other than by the inflationary expedient of printing bank notes. That is what he said at first. But Zarlenga writes that Schacht proceeded in his 1967 book The Magic of Money "to let the cat out of the bag, writing in German, with w ith some truly remarkable admissions that shatter the 'accepted wisdom' the financial co mmunity has promulgated on the German hyperinflation."6 Schacht revealed that it was the privately-owned Reichsbank, not the German government, that was pumping new currency into the economy. Like the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Reichsbank was overseen by appointed government officials but was operated for private gain. What drove the wartime inflation into hyperinflation was speculation by foreign investors, who would sell the mark short, betting on its decreasing value. v alue. In the manipulative device known as the short sale, speculators borrow something they don't own, sell it, then "cover" by buying it back at the lower price. Speculation in the German mark was made possible because the Reichsbank made massive amounts of currency available for borrowing, marks that were created with accounting entries on the bank's ban k's books and lent at a profitable interest. When the Reichsbank could not keep up with the voracious demand for marks, other private banks were allowed to create them out of nothing and lend them at interest as well.7 According to Schacht, then, not only did the government not cause the Weimar hyperinflation, but it was the government that got it under control. The Reichsbank was put under un der strict government regulation, and prompt corrective measures were taken to eliminate foreign speculation, by eliminating easy access to loans of bank-created money. money. Hitler then got the country coun try back on its feet with his Treasury Certificates issued Greenback-style by the government. Schacht actually disapproved of this government fiat money, and wound up ge tting fired as head of the Reichsbank when he refused to issue it (something that may have saved him at the Nuremberg trials). But he acknowledged in his later memoirs that allowing the government to issue the money it needed had not produced the price inflation predicted by classical economic theory. He surmised that this was because factories were sitting idle and people were unemployed. In this he agreed with John Maynard Keynes: when the resources were available to increase productivity, productivity, adding new money to the economy did not increase prices; it increased goods and services. Supply and demand increased together, leaving prices unaffected. ___________________ 1 Matt Koehl, "The Good Society?", www.rense.com www.rense.com (January 13, 2005); Stephen Zarlenga, The Lost Science of Money (Valatie, (Valatie, New York: York: American Monetary Institute, 2002), pages 590-600.
2
John Weitz, Hitler's Banker (Great Britain: Warner Books, 1999).
3
S. Zarlenga, op. cit.
4
Henry Makow, Makow, "Hitler Did Not Want War," www.savethemales.com www.savethemales.com (March 21, 2004).
5
Henry C. K. Liu, "Nazism and the German Economic Miracle," Asia Times (May 24, 2005).
6 Stephen Zarlenga, "Germany's 1923 Hyperinflation: A 'Private' Affair," Affair," Barnes Review (JulyAugust 1999); David Kidd, "How Money Mo ney Is Created in Australia," http://dkd.net/davekidd/politics/money.html http://dkd.net/davekidd/politics/money .html (2001). 7
S. Zarlenga, "Germany's 1923 Hyperinflation," op. cit.
Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown's eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Dr. Lynne Walker, Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies. Home | Also by Ellen Brown | Links | Contact Us | Order Now Bookmark and Share Powered by Translate
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