National Socialism WAS Socialism | Rethinking WW2 History

Many people think that National Socialism is on the Far-Right of the political spectrum. But is this really the case? Adolf Hitler defined National Socialism as socialism; yes, he was actually a socialist. Therefore his regime was actually (technically) on the Far-Left. In this video, we will explore the ideology of one of the most evil regimes in human history and realise that we need to rethink our perception of the Eastern Front (Axis-Soviet Front) of WW2. Ultimately, what separates the Stalinist ideology from the National Socialist ideology is racism - which was central to the Nazi world view.

This video is discussing events or concepts that are academic, educational and historical in nature. This video is for informational purposes and was created so we may better understand the past and learn from the mistakes others have made.

Here’s some other videos you may be interested in -

My video entitled “Why I'm Passionate about HISTORY and What Got Me Into it”

History isn’t as boring as some people think, and my goal is to get people talking about it. I also want to dispel the myths and distortions that ruin our perception of the past by asking a simple question - “But is this really the case?”. I have a 2:1 Degree in History and a passion for early 20th Century conflicts (mainly WW2). I’m therefore approaching this like I would an academic essay. Lots of sources, quotes, references and so on. Only the truth will do.

[TheImperatorKnight]

*PLEASE READ*

I’ve replaced my *original pinned comments* in BOTH videos because people either ignored them completely (pinned comments is where I list my sources, not the description as many of you claimed) or because I wanted to address many of the criticisms that people had about these videos. Since comments can only be so long, I’ve had to split this into sections. So please make sure you check out the comments below this one. Sources will be listed in the following post, as are links to a couple of videos etc.

First of all, the National Socialist economy and society in Germany was absolutely not capitalist (no matter how much people scream at me that it is). After crushing imports and exports in 1933-1934 in order to promote Autarky and rearmament, party officials were basically in every shop and business, providing them with goods or foreign currency, and dictating policy etc. On top of this, Autarky crushed imports and exports, causing the end of trade, helping to isolate Germany from the globalized economy. All this caused a massive economic crisis in 1934, but to quote Tooze's Wages of Destruction -

"...in practice the Reichsbank and the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs had no intention of allowing the radical activists of the SA, the shopfloor militants of the Nazi party or Gauleiter commissioners to dictate the course of events. Under the slogan of the 'strong state', the ministerial bureaucracy fashioned a new national structure of economic regulation." - P112

"It would be absurd to deny the reality of this shift. The crisis of corporate capitalism in the course of the Great Depression did permanently alter the balance of power. Never again was big business to influence the course of government in German as directly as it did between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the onset of the Depression in 1929. The Reich's economic administration, for its part, accumulated unprecedented powers of national economic control." - P113

And this was 1934. So this was absolutely not capitalism. And if it's heavy state intervention, with a planned centralized economy, without being capitalism, what could it be?

A commenter critical of what I was saying (Adrian Mahon) said that my definition of socialism was wrong, and that - "It's about power relationships and shifting these to the workers"

Ok, I absolutely agree with what he’s saying there. From an ideological perspective of what was defined by Marx, that's a fair assessment. And I don't disagree - I never have done. But, there's an issue with this definition historically. And people have given other definitions (revolutionary vs non-revolutionary, “seizing the means of production” etc). In fact, socialism doesn’t have “one” definition because as Evans wrote -

“When an intellectual historian reads Hobbes’s Leviathan or Marx’s Das Kapital, it is not in order to use their writings to reconstruct something outside them, but in order to construct an interpretation of what they mean or meant. There are indeed many interpretations of these thinkers’ ideas, not least because the systems of thought Hobbes and Marx established were so wide-ranging that they never became completely closed.” - Evans, R. “In Defence of History.” Granta Books, Kindle.

So, let’s not pretend that socialism is a fixed definition. Now, some of you also have this concern -

"We are seeing a rise of fascism; to 'revise' the meaning of socialism plays to a particular audience that (I'm hoping) you don't want." - Adrian Mahon.

I agree, and I absolutely don't want to see a rise in fascism or National Socialism. I cannot stress this enough. I've already said a couple videos back that I'm doing a Holocaust documentary because I'm sick to death of people preaching Holocaust (and Holodomor) denial. It's sickening. So, do not think I'm at all promoting either ideology. Several people claimed I was ‘redefining socialism’ so I could deny the Holocaust. No idea where that came from. And actually, by saying that National Socialism wasn't socialism - this actually plays into the National Socialist and denialist hands. Now, at first you might think - why? Well, let me explain with a bit of history -

Hitler genuinely believed in his version of 'socialism', and thought it was a form of 'socialism'. It doesn't matter if you think that it's socialism or not at this point, just run with it. So, when Hitler comes to power in 1933, he 'socialized' the German economy by removing the Jewish influence from government etc and imposes his version of 'socialism'. And this actually caused an economic crisis by 1934 as a result. This was due to Autarky and armaments spending (see the previous quotes in my above comment which are linked to this).

With the 'socialization' of the people, he removed Jews from society, and heavily restricted trade, ending capitalism. And he geared up for war. Military spending was less than 1% of the budget in 1933, and was 10% in 1935. This was “- a bigger and quicker increase than ever seen before in peacetime in a capitalist state.” from Rees, L. “The Holocaust: A New History.” Penguin Books, 2017. Page 92.

Now, why would he do this? Is it just for military conquest? Or is there some sort of underlying motive?

And yes, there's an underlying motive. Going back to Mein Kampf, what he see is his version of Nationalism (which is entwined with his 'socialism'). As a brief explanation - he thought that the species shouldn't mix breeds. And that Aryan peoples built nations. However, the reason he thinks nations collapsed in the past had nothing to do with war etc; it was all because the Aryans interbred with the lesser races. In Hitler's mind, the dilution of Aryan blood would weaken the race, and bring down the nation. Yes, complete lunacy, but there's little doubt he thought this.

And he honestly thought that the Jews were the absolute worse race, and the fact they didn't have a nation of their own (at the time) proved his theory right. In Mein Kampf, Hitler says that the Jews were like parasites who would latch onto Aryan nations and dilute Aryan blood with their own blood by interbreeding. Therefore Hitler thought that the Jews had to be removed from society to prevent the Aryan German blood from being diluted, and thus causing the downfall of the German race.

However, there's the Marxist problem too. In Hitler's mind, the Jews were championing Marxism. The reason was stated as: if they made everything equal and classless, this would give the Jews the best chance to interbreed with everyone and thus bring about the fall of humanity. Yes, it's ridiculous, but that's where he went with it.

So, you can see why he hated Bolshevism so much. He thought that international communism would allow the Jews to destroy the Aryan races. He therefore decided to take action and beat the Jews before they beat the Aryans. This is why he wanted to go East. He viewed the Slavs as slaves owned by the Jews. But if they conquered the Soviet Union, rid the Jews from society, the Slavs would serve the master German Aryans for a 1, 000 years.

Now, Adrian Mahon said "Can we agree agree on what 'socialist' means (hint: it's not state intervention). It's about power relationships and shifting these to the workers" Ok, but let's look at what Hitler thought for a moment.

Hitler thought that 'socialism' was about power relationships too. The difference was that he thought the way to solve the issue wasn't by having the workers rise up. But actually by removing the Jews. (I know this isn't socialism as Marx defined it, but stick with me for a bit longer) If he removed the Jews, then the power relationships wouldn't happen. The Aryan race would all work together as a collective to better the German nation - the elites would help their fellow men, and the workers could rise to the top. Hitler does say that the ladder still exists because individuals should be able to climb up if they're better than others. That would actually help the race because supposedly the better elements of the race would rise upwards. (And you do have quite a bit of social movement in the National Socialist era of Germany, so it's not completely correct to say he was just saying this stuff.)

Now, this Hitler-version of 'socialism' is actually mixed with his Nationalism. Hitler redefined this to mean that the state was the absolute embodiment of the race (his 'Nationalism'). However, the two are intermixed. You can't have one without the other. The state/people need to remove the Jews, and the state/people need to work together. Now, if you keep this idea in mind - that the Nationalism and the Socialism element are equal and the same - look what happens when we consider the history of the time:

When you think of the trains taking people to the forced labour camps, the concentration camps, the death camps etc, what you have to remember is that, this absolutely wasn't free-market forces doing this. This was a systematic industrial mass-killing, controlled by the state (hence my "intervention in economy and society" bit), and I would absolutely argue that this could not have happened to this extent in a free-market capitalist economy. How would a business market "Murder of Racial Minorities on a Mass Scale" in any capitalist society? It just wouldn't happen to this extent. Yeah, you have persecutions and murder during wartime etc, but not mass-industrial-scale-murder.

[billdoor]

I have been posting Mien Kampf quotes in left wing groups as a sort of experiment, paraphrased to include "anti racism" and "LGBT" rhetoric instead of "anti semitic" and its proving rather popular, none of them have a clue.

[BoneIdolUK]

Simplifying complex political ideologies to either left or right is so reductive it isn't even worth doing I think

[dylanschnabel]

Do you ever have guests come over who take one look at your bookshelf and suddenly get a really concerned look on their face?

[warrioroflight]

I'm guessing that at least 90% of the people who disliked this video didn't even watch it.

[beefsupreme]

Saying nationalism is right wing is wrong. Plenty of left wing states are nationalist also. Nationalism is a political neutral idea because both sides can be nationalist

[matthewmckenna]

Get your popcorn out ladies and An all out war is about to began.

[matthewwilliams]

I had to laugh when you were explaining that you couldn’t display the Nazi symbol upon the red backdrop of the flag but put You Tube in its place in the correct colors

[sigma]

Yes, Hitler considered himself the true socialist. For him, socialism was, and I quote: "the science of the common good"; he wanted to take socialism away from the Marxists because they had taken away the true meaning of what Hitler considered: "An ancient Germanic and Aryan institution".

[SamIAmSXE]

I love your comments on Mein Kampf. I couldn't agree more. For all it's hyped up to be, the book is literally just a physical manifestation of what Hitler's Twitter account would look like.

[blank]

I think it's interesting that both Nazis and Soviets each had a class party separate from the rest of their citizens, fulfilling Orwell's Animal Farm reference that "Some are more equal than others". For all their talk of equality and solidarity, both sides were just as class conscious as the traditional ones they depised.

[mithrawnudo]

I have not read my copy of Mein Kamph. I got about 60 pages in and concluded, as you did, that it was one of the worst written things I've ever seen.

[BC-uiyt]

I once had a young woman (a theatre major) inform me that Hitler was right-wing, because "he was a dictator, and he killed a lot of people".

Okay I said; does that make Stalin and Mao right wingers? After all, they were dictators, and killed a lot of people.

"Now you're just getting caught up in labels" was her response.

I stopped trying to understand her thinking at that point.

[gobblox]

I like how you covered the swastika with the YouTube symbol. I don't understand why the symbol is being censored in historical videos. I wonder if future generations might think this practice is silly.

[rahbaralhaq]

Got that book when I was 12. Got bored and stoped reading at page 287. 13 years later, I still can't gather enough willingness inside me to resume it.
He was quite the whiner about his early life.

[leonmihalic]

If I asked modern day politician why government should intervene in to economy they would say something similar to Hitlers reason

[eadgbe]

Collectivism is always about an “in group” and an “out group”. For the Soviets it was the “Working Class” for Italians it was the Italian national identity. For Nazis it was the Aryan race/German identity.

It’s just a big tribe. If you are in the tribe you can’t be guilty. If you are not in the tribe you can’t be innocent.

[Jimmy_Reformed]

Also the kongo is a democratic republic

[MrBadApple]

I like what you did with the Nazi symbol and Youtube logo, clever

[Cam-slve]

haha you upset a lot of Nazis & Commies at the same time