I've drank just enough to say this but not enough to realize I shouldn't, and yet, enough to say to hell with it; the Nazi's were socialist. The concept of the Nazi party was that the warrior ethos of soldiers in the trenches under the absolute leadership of a Fuhrer could form the basis of a functional government. The idea was that devotion to a leader suffering the same hardships as you, socially or intellectually your superior but physically enduring the pain that made you equals, is not at all incompatible with the idea of a political elite with heartfelt empathy for the downtrodden. In fact its an even purer form. In the muck and metal of a factory your shift foreman might be a card-carrying union member and a fellow socialist for your labor rights, but together you face a foe no worse than you care to bring upon yourself, voluntarily alligned to the union that commands no more obligation than a social club. But in the pure hell of white-hot shell splinters and rat-infested trenches, picket lines and tear gas become child's play. I recall Guy Sajer's, an Alsatian in the Gross Deutchland, recording only one passage regarding national socialism in his memoirs describing in how the national socialist spirit was alive and well as they distributed meat and spirits siezed on the frozen Eastern front from German supply clerks hoarding them. Perfect fairness, cut by cut, regardless of rank or physical condition. That's a socialist notion, isn't it, when the Prussian-born nobleman captain, the chaplain, and the half-French landser all recieve an equal share? Or when Army Chief of Staff Zeitzler chose to starve himself of twenty six pounds in two weeks by adopting the diet of the encircled men at Stalingrad, was that not solidairity with the opressed?
In all of the reading I've done about the National Socialists, I've simply not found evidence they were in any way antithetical of socialism. Communists proper may have declared "workers of the world unite", but national socialists called for workers of Germany to unite for the national interest above and against that of the Comintern. Both held that the group was above the individual, a socialist notion, but the Bolsheviks thought class was the paramount divider of men, while Nazis held that race was supreme. This doomed them to conflict, although simply by having placed the group above the individual, some of, if not the worst, examples of racial or class fueled hatred occured under the aegis of a greater-good idealology.
As much as I fear fallout from saying this, I really feel it must be said; I've dissected the monster, but that does not make me Dr. Frankenstein. I trust the community will view this as open and earnest discourse and tolerate it as such, not shout me down or try to ban me for saying something I am certain is unpopular on a sensitive subject.
Lets all try and be adults in Voltaire's mindset of disagreeing with content but defending the right, shall we?
And with that, off to bed. I'll wake up and wonder why the hell I opened this can of worms, but maybe one person changes their mind about things. And please, don't pretend speaking in less than damning terms about things Germans did from 1928 to 1945 is some endorsement of Adolf Hitler's deranged antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Heh, repeating myself now. I guess it doesn't hurt to wear two pairs of gloves when shoveling shit.
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Topic: The rebirth of the socialist... (Read 3738 times)