A second major fantasy
so often associated in the 20th Century with the Nazis is that their ideology,
Nazism, was anti-capitalist, anti-private property, anti-profits.
a view which in large part is attributable to the fact that the word “socialist”
is found in the name of the party--The National Socialist German Workers
Party. Few impressions could be further from the truth. Like
Bush, Bush’s allies, and Bush’s aforementioned predecessors, the Nazis
were exceptionally strong defenders of capitalism and Hitler said as much
on many occasions, although his comments were often masked in terminology
calculated to dupe the workers and entice the capitalists. Throughout
his reign he executed a political balancing act second to none and his
duplicity of performance according to the audience addressed reveals as
much. Assertions to the effect that Hitler and his supporters endorsed
capitalism are readily available:
I
absolutely insist on protecting private property.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 362
In a statement on the
Enabling Act to the Reichstag on 23 March 1933:
In
principle, the Government protects the economic interests of the German
Volk not by taking the roundabout way through an economic bureaucracy to
be organized by the State, but by the utmost promotion of private initiative
and a recognition of the rights of property.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 280
THE HITLER DECREES,
by James Pollock and Harlow Heneman, 1934, Page 67
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes,1942, VOLUME 1, Page 830
You
ask whether private economic interests will have to be eliminated.
Certainly not. I have never said anything of the kind, nor have I
deputed my subordinates to say so. That would be as mad as an attempt
to abolish sexual intercourse by decree. The instinct to earn and
the instinct to possess cannot be eliminated. Natural instincts remain.
We should be the last to deny that. But the problem is how to adjust
and satisfy these natural instincts. The proper limits to private
profit and private enterprise must be drawn through the state and general
public according to their vital needs. And on this point I can tell
you, regardless of all the professors' theories and trades-union wisdom,
that there is no principle on which you can draw any universally valid
limits.
THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION,
by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 188
On 13 April 1928:
Since
the NSDAP admits the principal of private property,...
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 105
In a speech inaugurating
the second year's battle against unemployment addressed to workers at Unterhaching
on 21 March 1934:
...and
in doing so we shall not make use of any means which could in any way prejudice
respect for property or for contractual rights.
MY NEW ORDER by Hitler,
Edited by Raoul de Roussy de Sales, 1941, Page 252
To the Reichstag on
21 May 1935:
We
National Socialists see in private property a higher grade of human economic
development which regulates the administration of rewards in proportion
to the differences in achievement, but which in general makes possible
and guarantees to all the advantages of a higher standard of living.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 670
Part of a speech which
was to have been directed to Americans by wireless but which was not transmitted
due to technical reasons, although its text was subsequently published,
stated::
The
National Socialist party recognized private property, private contracts,
and private debts, but it refused to recognize public debts, the tributes
imposed upon Germany [as a result of World War I] in order to keep it in
a state of perpetual bankruptcy.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 110
In a speech to the
Reichstag on 17 May 1933:
The
three factors which dominate our revolution do not contradict the interests
of the rest of the world in any way.
First: preventing the impending
Communist subversion and constructing a Volksstaat uniting the various
interests of the classes and ranks, and maintaining the concept of personal
property as the foundation of our culture....
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 327
And finally there is
a quote which projects an unmistakable affinity for capitalism:
There
is no ideal condition of permanent validity. Only fools believe in
a cut-and-dried method of changing the social and economic order.
There is no such thing as equality, the abolition of private property,
a just wage, or any of the other ideas they've been splitting hairs over.
And all the distinctions that are made between production for consumption
and production for profit are just pastimes for idlers and muddleheads.
THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION,
by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 188
Like Bush, Bush’s allies,
Bush’s predecessors, and other strong supporters of capitalism, Hitler
dwells on individual initiative.
In a 16 May 1934 speech
in Berlin:
One
cannot achieve a maximum escalation of production by implementing a principle
which is the death blow to any personal initiative.
ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS,
by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 45
And in what can only
be described as music to capitalists’ ears Hitler equates their labors
with those of workers by saying in a conversation with Hans Johst on 27
January 1934:
I
hope that this dialogue serves as an enlightenment to the broad circles
of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois man should stop feeling like some
sort of pensioner of tradition or capital and separated from the worker
by the Marxist concept of property; rather, he should strive, with an open
mind, to become integrated in the whole as a worker, for he is not a member
of society at all in the distorted sense in which he was persecuted as
a hostile brother within the ranks of the Volk. He should base his
classic bourgeois pride upon his citizenship and, in other respects, be
modestly conscious of his identity as a worker.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 416
Like the Bushites,
Hitler applauded capitalism’s elimination of the weak in economic competition
and considered that outcome as endemic to the world of nature.
In his speech at the Second
Workers' Congress of the Labor Front on 16 May 1934 he said:
This
freedom in economic life is as natural as is conflict in the world of Nature--a
conflict which also is waged ruthlessly and destroys many a living creature
so that only the healthy survives.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes,1942, VOLUME 1, Page 897
But Hitler’s enthusiasm
for capitalism went further than that of Bush when he was candid enough
to utter a concept Bush is yet to expound publicly, namely, domination
by capitalists is attributable to the fact that they are superior, reflecting
the natural fact that some men are superior to others in all fields.
When the more socialistically-minded Otto Strasser demanded the nationalization
of industry during his discussion of Socialism with Hitler on 22 May 1930,
the latter retorted with scorn:
With
what right do the workers demand a share in the possessions of the capitalist,
not to speak of a share in control?... The capitalists have worked
their way to the top through their capacity, and on the basis of this selection,
which again only proves their higher race, they have a right to lead.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 111
STALIN AND HITLER
by Alan Bullock (1992), page 171
And in a speech in
Nuremberg on September 3, 1933:
The
conception of private property is thus inseparably connected with the conviction
that the capacities of men are different alike in character and in value
and thus, further, that men themselves are different in character and value.
MY NEW ORDER
by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 202
Rarely do even the
most dedicated of capitalists, especially capitalist politicians such as
Bush, openly declare that some men are of greater value than others.
The degree to which
the economics of Bush and Hitler correspond comes to the fore when several
major topics are examined. For example, no topic is higher on the
Bushite agenda than lowering taxes and reducing the size of government.
Indeed, it is virtually their mantra, their theme song, accounting for
much of their support and being one of the few issues upon which they can
rely for mass receptivity.
In a statement to the Reichstag
early in his regime on 23 March 1933 Hitler showed that it lay high on
his priority list as well:
The
proposed reform of our tax system must result in a simplification in assessment
and thus to a decrease in costs and charges. In principle, the tax
mill should be built downstream and not at the source. As a consequence
of these measures, the simplification of the administration will certainly
result in a decrease in the tax burden.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 280
Hitler, like Bush,
supported the right of inheritance by saying:
It
is natural and salutary that the individual should be inspired by the wish
to devote a part of the income from his work to building up and expanding
a family estate. Suppose the estate consists of a factory.
I regard it as axiomatic, in the ordinary way, that this factory will be
better run by one of the members of the family than it would be by a State
functionary --providing, of course, that the family remains healthy.
In this sense, we must encourage private initiative.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 362
And on 15 February
1936 Hitler confirmed his dislike of luxury taxes on the rich by saying:
A
capital error, I might add, which served to show how badly our own bourgeois
economic views were already failing. For the theory of so-called
luxury tax articles is absurd wherever and whenever in all human probability
the luxury article promises to become an article of general use.
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 754
As with Bush and so
many of Bush’s ideologically kindred predecessors, Hitler viewed taxation
as little more than Marxism surreptitiously redistributing wealth and generating
social evils, and he implied as much in the Berlin Sportpalast on 10 February
1933:
Outrageously
exorbitant interest rates which should never have been allowed to go unpunished
in any state, are now part and parcel of the "social" Republic, and this
is where the destruction of production begins, the destruction wreaked
by these Marxist theories of economics as such, and moreover by the madness
of a taxation policy which sees to the rest; and now we witness how class
upon class are collapsing, how hundreds of thousands, gradually driven
to despair, are losing their livelihoods; and how, year after year, tens
of thousands of bankruptcies and hundreds of thousands of compulsory auctions
are taking place. Then the peasantry starts to become impoverished,
the most industrious class in the entire Volk is driven to ruin, can no
longer exist, and then this process spreads back to the cities, and the
army of unemployed begins to grow: one million, two, three, four million,
5 million, 6 million, 7 million; today the number might actually lie between
7 and 8 million.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 245
In conjunction with
this, Hitler promoted another theme near and dear to the hearts of Bush
and his confederates, namely, decentralizing government by giving power
back to local governments.
He stated:
In
this connection I want to lay particular emphasis on one point--namely,
that there is nothing more harmful to the organization of a State than
over-centralization and limitation of local power....
I can sum up my own views by
saying that one should give to local authority the widest possible powers
of self-government,...
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 534
This is in accord with
his belief that capitalists should be given maximum freedom with a minimum
of laws expounded in a speech inaugurating the second year's battle against
unemployment addressed to workers at Unterhaching on 21 March 1934:
We
therefore began on the one hand to free economic life from theories, and
on the other to liberate it from the chaos of oppressive regulations and
of restrictive measures on the merits or demerits of which it is idle to
dispute, since, whether they were right or wrong, they were in any event
only stifling economic life. We further sought to free production
step-by-step from those burdens which in the shape of unreasonable taxation
decrees were strangling economic life....
The intelligent, efficient, and methodical businessman will have a free
field for his activity, the lazy and unintelligent--to say nothing of the
disreputable and dishonest-- must go to ruin....
The initiative thus taken by
the State had always solely as its aim and purpose to awaken private economic
initiative, and thus slowly to set economic life once more on its own feet.
MY NEW ORDER by Hitler,
Edited by Raoul de Roussy de Sales, 1941, Page 249-250
The lengths to which
Hitler went to reconcile comments such as these with his highly centralized
Nazi dictatorship are being duplicated in varying degrees by the current
Bush administration which has been seeking centralized powers not granted
previously.
However, it should
be noted that, unlike the proclivities of most Bushites and their adherents,
Hitler was not an Adam Smith or Milton Freedman devotee, at least not publicly,
because he favored government interdiction into business and commerce when
conditions warranted. For reasons of expediency free enterprise per
se was not his forte. As he saw it the challenge was to channel human
greed, not attempt the impossible by abolishing it. The Bushites
have even less interest in regulating or curtailing private enterprise
than he did.
The following conversation
occurred between Hitler and Wegener.
HITLER: In
our program, we have even given expression to this hurdle by coining the
maxim, "public need before private greed." Individual striving--yes,
individual acquisitiveness--is the driving force that animates the world
and the economy and that has engendered all major inventions and discoveries.
If we eliminate it, the drive slackens and progress stagnates. But
to stand still is to regress.
That is why we must preserve
this driving force, we must nurture it, even reward it! We must take
this striving, which is in itself selfish, and place it in the service
of all, in the service of the whole nation--yes, perhaps in time in the
service of all mankind.
WEGENER: “Man's
aspirations are evil--we should say, selfish--from childhood; the Bible
tells of something of the sort. ... [Christ's] teachings, which can
still be found in pure and noble form in St. Paul and others, soon became
falsified, even turned upside down, and little of Christianity remains
in the churches that use its name today.”
HITLER: I
know that Wegener. I'm quite clear on that point.
HITLER--MEMOIRS OF
A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 115
After reading a dialogue
of this kind, the line “Greed is good” from the popular movie of the 1980’s
entitled Wall Street comes readily to mind.
Hitler believed profit-making
was divinely sanctioned and should be promoted but the welfare of the common
good should take precedence over individual profit and gain. The
Bushites don’t appear to be so magnanimous. In a speech at the Second
Workers' Congress of the Labor Front on 16 May 1934 Hitler said:
Marxism
had in theory rejected private property;... That was very comprehensible,
for communism is not the final and ideal form of human society, it represents
the most primitive form from which society starts.... The higher
we see men rise, the more intelligent races become, the mightier are the
inner differences between individuals, and individual achievement remains
always inseparably connected with its creator: only the creator can administer
that which he has achieved, and in this fact we have the basis for private
property. But there remains a qualification: the so-called 'free
play of forces' must be controlled by the principal of common profit which
must come before the individual egotistic profit.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes,1942, VOLUME 1, Page 896
And in that infamous,
duplicitous Berlin speech to workers in the Rheinmetall-Borsig Works on
10 December 1940 Hitler stated:
.
. . They [the few hundreds earning good dividends] may then retort: "Well,
look here, that is just what we mean. You jeopardize liberty."
Yes, certainly, we jeopardize
the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary,
we even abolish it. British capitalists, to mention only one instance,
can pocket dividends of 76, 80, 95, 140, an even 160 percent from their
armament industry.
MY NEW ORDER
by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 886
In that same speech
he stated:
They
are perfectly right. I should never tolerate such a state of affairs.
In my eyes, a 6% dividend is sufficient. Even from this 6% we deduct
the 1/2 and, as for the rest, we must have definite proof that it is invested
in the interest of the country as a whole. In other words, no individual
has the right to dispose arbitrarily of money which ought to be invested
for the good of the country. If he disposes of it sensibly, well
and good; if not, the National Socialist state will intervene.
MY NEW ORDER
by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 887
Yet, despite all of
this talk about bringing the capitalists to bay, in a private conversation
with Wegener, instead of a speech before workers, Hitler revealed that
he did not favor government intervention unless and until unbridled free
enterprise and unrestrained capitalism ceased to work in the interest of
the country as a whole and no viable option was available. As far
as the real Hitler, as opposed to the one speaking for mass consumption,
was concerned, the government should intervene minimally and only when
unavoidable. His diminutive differences with the Bushites in this
matter was more one of degree than kind and carefully tailored for the
audience addressed. The Fuhrer demonstrated as much on several occasions:
Here
I share your opinion completely. The state must try to figure out,
not everything it can organize and regulate through laws, but rather what
it absolutely must organize and regulate. The state should be as
invisible as possible. The economy is sure to find the right way
by itself.
HITLER--MEMOIRS OF
A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 189
In his Proclamation
read at the opening of the Parteitag in Nuremberg on 7 September 1937:
But
in our attempts to relieve the German economic crisis we have always acted
only upon a single dogma, namely that economics is one of the many functions
of the people's life; it can therefore be organized and conducted only
on considerations of expediency and can never be treated on a basis of
dogma. As dogma there is neither a socialized economy, nor a free
economy, but only a national economy which is subject to obligations, i.e.
an economy which as a whole acknowledges the duty of creating the highest
and best conditions for the life of the people. Insofar as it fulfills
this task without intervention from above by means of the free play of
economic forces that is well, and above all is very convenient for a Government.
So far as a free economy is unable to perform its proper task in any sphere,
the leadership of the community of the people has the duty to give to economics
such directions as are necessary for the maintenance of the whole society.
But if an economy in one or other sphere is completely unable with its
own resources to fulfill the great tasks which are set before it, then
in that case the leadership of the community of the people must seek other
means and methods in order to satisfy the needs of the whole population.
But one thing is certain: here, as everywhere else, if the will is present,
it must be possible to find a way.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes,1942, VOLUME 1, Page 943
In a speech at a meeting
of the Reich Chamber of Labor on 30 April 1937:
The
economic life may remain free only so long as it is able to solve the problems
of the nation. If it cannot do it, then it must cease to be free.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 939
I
consider that the right to exercise influence on private enterprise should
be conceded only to the State, directed by the superior class.
HITLER AND I by Otto
Strasser, 1940, page 114
Hitler felt that the
expropriations of private property associated with socialism should only
occur when required to foster the national interest or the property had
been taken illegally.
A 13 April 1928 addition
to the 24 February 1920 program of the National Socialist German Worker's
Party states:
Since
the National Socialist party stands firmly for the principal of private
property, it is self-evident that the passage [Point 17 of the Program]
"to expropriate without compensation" can only apply to the creation of
laws concerning land which has been illegally acquired or which has not
been administered according to the common good and which, therefore, should
be expropriated when necessary.
THE HITLER DECREES,
by James Pollock and Harlow Heneman, 1934, Page 2
In light of all the
above, Hitler felt justified in claiming that the bourgeoisie needed his
party and movement more than vice versa and said as much:
I do not need the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie [the capitalists] needs
me and my movement.
SECRET CONVERSATIONS
WITH HITLER, Edited by Edouard Calic, 1971. Page 22
Many influential capitalists
did support his cause which he acknowledged by saying:
When
Krupp, Schroder, and the other captains of industry realize that we stand
for order, they will be happy to be accepted into the Party. They
are supporting our Movement financially but they have not the courage to
allow the German State a national government and a national leader.
SECRET CONVERSATIONS
WITH HITLER, Edited by Edouard Calic, 1971. Page 24
Apart
from Mutschmann, it was Dr. Ley who collected the most money for the party.
By describing me as a genuine monster, he made the industrialists and their
ladies so curious to see me that they were willing to pay anything up to
200 marks for a seat at one of my meetings.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 464
And a close acquaintance
of Hitler provided personal testimony to the effect:
“Without his new friends
Hitler could count himself lost, and he received from the Federation of
Industrialists of Saxony an ultimatum couched in rather abrupt terms: ‘Unless
the strike order is condemned and opposed by the National Socialist Party
and newspapers, notably the Sachsischer Beobachter, the entire Reich Federation
of Industrialists will cease its payments to the Party.’
Such an insult to the Party could not remain secret. We
knew the contents of this shameful ultimatum; we knew that Hitler was sold
to the capitalists and we realized that there was nothing more to hope
from him; for he accepted the ultimatum.”
HITLER AND I by Otto
Strasser, 1940, page 99