Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

benzdealeror2 -- very selective, and ignoring of the distinction between rhetoric and reality -- hard to believe as it might be, the Nazis weren't above bullshitting, and at key points in their rise to power even sorta catering to, the lower/working-class folks so as to gain their allegiance and support -- before, as further detailed in (items linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=55887185 and following, ultimately turning on them

from the summary statement at the opening of your source:

"Nazism presented itself as politically syncretic, incorporating policies, tactics and philosophies from right- and left-wing ideologies; in practice, Nazism was a far right form of politics.[11]"

and the complete text of that "Anti-capitalism" heading, plus the following "Working class and middle class appeal" heading:

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Anti-capitalism

The Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance, the economic dominance of big business, and Jewish influences within it.[91] Adolf Hitler, both in public and in private, held strong disdain for capitalism; he accused modern capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class.[93] He opposed free-market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy where community interests would be upheld.[94] He distrusted capitalism for being unreliable, due to it having an egotistic nature, and he preferred a state-directed economy.[95] Hitler told one party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day," referring to capitalism, "is the creation of the Jews."[96] In a discussion with Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Hitler said that "Capitalism had run its course".[95]

To Hitler, the economy must be subordinated to the interests of the Volk and its state.[96] In Mein Kampf, Hitler effectively supported mercantilism, in the belief that economic resources from their respective territories should be seized by force; he believed that the policy of lebensraum would provide Germany with such economically valuable territories.[97] He believed that the only means to maintain economic security was to have direct control over resources rather than being forced to rely on world trade.[98] He claimed that war to gain such resources was the only means to surpass the failing capitalist economic system.[97] He believed that private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and technical innovation, but insisted that it had to conform to national interests and be "productive" rather than "parasitical".[94]

A number of Nazis held strong revolutionary socialist and anti-capitalist beliefs, most prominently Ernst Röhm, the leader of the Nazis' main paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung (SA).[99] Röhm claimed that the Nazis' rise to power constituted a national revolution, but insisted that a socialist "second revolution" was required for Nazi ideology to be fulfilled.[100] Röhm's SA began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction.[101] Hitler saw Röhm's independent actions as violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardizing the regime by alienating the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and the conservative-oriented German army.[102] This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA.[102]

Joseph Goebbels adamantly stressed the socialist character of Nazism, and claimed in his diary that if he were to pick between Bolshevism and capitalism, he said "in final analysis", "it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism."[103]

In 1920, the Nazi Party published the National Socialist Program, an ideology that in 25 points demanded:

that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens . . . the abolition of all incomes unearned by work . . . the ruthless confiscation of all war profits ... the nationalization of all businesses that have been formed into corporations ... profit-sharing in large enterprises ... extensive development of insurance for old-age ... land reform suitable to our national requirements.[104]

During the 1920s, Nazi Party officials variously attempted either to change or to replace the National Socialist Program. In 1924, the Nazi Party economist theoretician Gottfried Feder proposed a new, 39-point program, retaining some old and introducing some new ideas.[105] Hitler did not directly mention the program in Mein Kampf; he only mentioned "the so-called programme of the movement".[106] Also during the 1920s, however, Hitler urged disparate Nazi factions to unite in opposition to "Jewish Marxism."[107] Hitler asserted that the "three vices" of "Jewish Marxism" were democracy, pacifism, and internationalism.[108]

In 1927, Hitler said: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the 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 determined to destroy this system under all conditions."[109] Yet two years later, in 1929, Hitler backtracked, saying that socialism was "an unfortunate word altogether" and that "if people have something to eat, and their pleasures, then they have their socialism." Historian Henry A. Turner reports Hitler’s regret at having including the word socialism in the Nazi Party name.[110]

The Nazi Party’s early self-description as "socialist" caused conservative opponents, such as the Industrial Employers Association, to describe it as "totalitarian, terrorist, conspiratorial, and socialist".[111]

In 1930, Hitler said: "Our adopted term ‘Socialist’ has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not."[112] In 1931, during a confidential interview with influential editor Richard Breiting of the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, a pro-business newspaper, Hitler said:

I want everyone to keep what he has earned, subject to the principle that the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State ... The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners.[113]

In 1932, Nazi Party spokesman Joseph Goebbels said that the Nazi Party was a "workers’ party", "on the side of labour, and against finance."[114]

Nazi propaganda posters in working-class districts emphasized anti-capitalism, such as one that said: "The maintenance of a rotten industrial system has nothing to do with nationalism. I can love Germany and hate capitalism."[115]

Philosopher Stephen Hicks writes: "The issue about how socialist the Nazis were is, in part, a judgment call about long-term principles and short-term pragmatism."[116] Hicks argues that the Nazis claimed to be more devoted to socialism than the Soviet Bolsheviks: the Russians were preoccupied with economics while the Nazis thought socialism should control not only economics but breeding, religion and other intimate details of life.

Working class and middle class appeal

In 1922, to ensure German public perception of the Nazi Party as politically unique, Adolf Hitler discredited other nationalist and racialist political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower- and working-class young people:

The racialists were not capable of drawing the practical conclusions from correct theoretical judgements, especially in the Jewish Question. In this way, the German racialist movement developed a similar pattern to that of the 1880s and 1890s. As in those days, its leadership gradually fell into the hands of highly honourable, but fantastically naïve men of learning, professors, district counsellors, schoolmasters, and lawyers — in short a bourgeois, idealistic, and refined class. It lacked the warm breath of the nation’s youthful vigour.[117]

Despite many working-class supporters and members, the appeal of the Nazi Party to the working class was neither true nor effective, because its politics mostly appealed to the middle-class, as a stabilizing, pro-business political party, not a revolutionary workers’ party.[118][118] Moreover, the financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism, thus the great percentage of declared middle-class support for the Nazis.[118] In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their socialist policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless — later recruited to the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (SA — Storm Detachment).[118]

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see also (items linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=56405097 , and my next post, a further reply to http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=55887185