"We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency coverage of gold of which we had none, but for

every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work 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, 1937 (CC 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 of the entire
(Zionist) Jewish money system. 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 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 Germany and the International Money Power." --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 doesnt 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
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, 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
Party Platform. It included measures that in effect would redistribute income and war profits, profit-
sharing 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 of the NSDAP Program were composed by Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler. They were
publically presented on 24 February 1920 "to a crowd of almost two thousand and every single point
was accepted amid jubilant approval." (Mein Kampf, Volume II, Chapter I) Hitler 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 people 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, the discontent of the masses and so ensure the continued existence of the
Party.

1. We demand the union of all Germany in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national self-
determination.

2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and the
revocation of the peace treaties of 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, 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 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 accordance with party
considerations, and without reference to character or abilities.

7. 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 population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported
from the Reich.

8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered
Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Reich 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 demand the nationalization of all 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 demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy 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 compensation; the abolition of ground rent, and
the prohibition of all speculation in land. *

18. 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 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 educational establishments must be brought into line
with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the school 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
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 of clubs engaged in the physical
training of youth.

22. We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the foundation of a people's army.

23. We demand legal 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 appearing 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, 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 all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life,
and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand.

24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the State, provided they do not threaten its
existence not offend the moral feelings of the German race.

The Party, as such, stands for positive 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 put the whole of this programme into effect, we demand the creation of a strong central state
power for the Reich; the unconditional authority of the political central Parliament over the entire
Reich and its organizations; and the formation of Corporations based on estate and occupation 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,
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 employment 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 control 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 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, 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" 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 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 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 employees 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, both 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 and 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 and through.

Notes on: "On the Theory of the Centrally Administered Economy: An Analysis of the German
Experiment," by Walter Eucken

Walter Eucken was a professor of economics at 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 as 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 Economies (CAE's) have little trouble eliminating unemployment because 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 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. 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. 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, equipment, storage facilities and raw material
requirements.
* 2. The planning of production taking into account the requirements of leather by other industries in
their plans; e.g. the needs of 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 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 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 the Government established a priorities list for allocating scarse resources.
Activities associated with the war got top priority and consumer goods production was near the bottom
of the list. If two users wanted gasoline any available stocks went to the user with the highest priority.
This seems reasonable but, in fact, it led to major problems. Suppose one use of gasoline 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 other factories
dependent upon them also 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 middle of the war the Government abolished 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 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 Jos 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." 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 Fhrer 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 evidence that the nazis' exerted massive control over most
facets of ordinary citizen's lives. Yet 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 engaged 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. Proctor never even hints at the analogy. 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 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 unquenchable 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 animal
experimentation and promised to send violators to a concentration camp. Also included is a fitting
quote -now too widely suppressed from Joseph Goebbles, `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 euthanasia and eugenics. Another striking
morsel is the reporting of a widespread nazi-era whispered joke `What is the ideal German? Blond like
Hitler. Slim like Goring. Masculine like Goebbles...' implying that Gautlier Goebble's homosexuality
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 anti-
tobacco, 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 and Volkswagen: 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 hide his ciggie whenever he was filmed -- anti-
tobacco 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 vending machines were banned, and there were calls
for a ban on smoking while driving.

Thanks to the Ministry of Science and Education, 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, poisonous anti-
Semite, 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 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 League.

If some of these measures appear familiar today, then consider the rules laid down in 1941 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 directed at sportsmen or automobile drivers," while "advocates 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 commonly
touted by scientists and racial hygienists that smoking caused "spontaneous abortions": a clearly
demonstrable fallacy, but one 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 health in Germany, 1933-45

(BMJ No 7070 Volume 313)

Robert N Proctor

Historians and epidemiologists have only recently begun to explore the Nazi anti-tobacco movement.
Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s,encompassing
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 against 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 of medicine and
public health in Nazi Germany. 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 brutality
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 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
Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race.(1) (4)Many
Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas
Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe-
Hitler, 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 been given hard 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)

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 activists frequently complained that their efforts
were no match for the "American style" advertising campaigns waged by the tobacco 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 Zeitschrift der International en Tabakwissenschaftlichen
Gesellschaft, founded in 1940).

We should also realise 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 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 entire income.(13) 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)

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) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in
1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich 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 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)

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 of 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 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 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 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 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 German tobacco use did not
reach prewar levels again until the mid-1950s. The collapse was dramatic: German per capita
consumption dropped by more than half from 1940 to 1950, whereas 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 underlings either had lost their jobs or were
otherwise silenced. Karl 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 office 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 prison while awaiting prosecution for his role in the euthanasia 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 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 science.(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, DC; Hamburger Institut fur
Sozialforschung in Hamburg.

Conflict of interest: None.

Department of History,
Pennsylvania State 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: 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. Auf der Wacht 1937:19-20.

8 Picker H. Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier.Bonn: Athenaum 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 FK. Tabakwarenkunde: Der Tabak, sein Anbau undseine Verarbeitung.Berlin-Schoneberg:

Max Schwabe, 1942.

13 Erkennung und Bekampfung der Tabakgefahren. DtschArztebl 1941;71:183-5.

14 Klarner W. Vom Rauchen: Eine Sucht und ihre Bekampfung.Nuremberg: Rudolf Kern, 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.

17 Kleine Mitteilungen. 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. Offentlicher Gesundheitsdienst. In: Rodenwaldt E,ed. Hygiene. Part I. General hygiene.
Wiesbaden: Dietrich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1948:36.

21Informationsdienst des Hauptamtes fur Volksgesundheitder NSDAP. 1944;April-June:60-1.

22 Muller F H. Tabakmissbrauch und Lungencarcinom. Z Krebsforsch1939;49:57-85.

23 Schairer E, Schoniger E. Lungenkrebs und Tabakverbrauch.Z Krebsforsch1943;54:261-9.

24 Kittel W. Hygiene des Rauchens. In: Handloser S, Hoffmann W, eds. Wehrhygiene. Berlin:
Springer-Verlag, 1944.

25 Goedel A. Kriegspathologische Beitrage. In: Zimmer A, ed.Kriegschirurgie. Vol 1. Vienna: Franz

Deuticke, 1944.

26 Pritzkoleit K. Auf einer Woge von Gold: Der Triumph der Wirtschaft.Vienna: Verlag Kurt Desch,
1961.

27 Werberat der deutschen Wirtschaft. 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 Leftists. If Mussolini was not the direct teacher of modern-day Leftists, he was
certainly a major predecessor. What Leftists advocate today is not, of course, totally identical with what
Mussolini was advocating and doing 60 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 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 that 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 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 as 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 announcing the death. It should be
noted, however, that Mussolini was principally referring here to the policies and doctrines of his 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.

" 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. 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 his overt rejection of democracy: "Fascism denies that
the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society". Most modern-day
Leftists in the 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 anti-
militarism would surely resound well with most student antiwar demonstrators of today.
"The Socialist party reaffirms its eternal faith in the future of the 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!" of 22 September, 1914 during Mussolini's Marxist period. So Mussolini's anti-
militarism 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. 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 Day here) includes in Fascist
policy such socialist gems as (I quote):

* The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories.

* A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.
* The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations 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

"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). 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, 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. 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 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".

This is again from Carsten (1967, p. 50). 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 good 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 would carry through the
agrarian revolution, the only one that was possible in Italy. He even welcomed the occupation of the
factories"

This is again from Carsten (1967, p. 56) -- summarizing Mussolini's speeches of 1920. Pledging
revolution and welcoming worker occupation of the factories is still of course a wet dream of the more
"revolutionary" Left 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 in practice the extension of government activities everywhere brought
with it a top-heavy organization, slow and unresponsive, and 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 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 pagan 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. 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 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 expelled 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 and 1914 he was the editor of their newspaper, "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 not Italy should enter 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 in
World War I. So it was nationalism and patriotism 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 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 he 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 pretty 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 economic 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 together with "a single iron will" (Gregor, 1979, p. 124) it put him belatedly
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 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 well-
known around the time of World War I, when Mussolini was in the trenches with the Italian army.
Mussolini adopted much of their thinking wholesale. Note 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
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 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 -- 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 kill 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. 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 healthy 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 upheavals everywhere. Mussolini initially expressed
his sympathies for these upheavals but soon saw that they were reducing Italy to a form of anarchy 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. 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 innovate 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, 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. His policies were basically protectionist. He controlled the exchange-rate of the Italian currency
and promoted that old favourite of the economically illiterate -- autarky -- meaning that he tried to get
Italy to become wholly self-sufficient rather than rely on foreign trade. He wanted to protect 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. Germany and Italy had become unified countries only in the late 19th century
and Spain, of course, is only nominally unified to this day -- with semi-autonomous governments in
Catalonia and the Basque country. Right up until the end of the Prussian hegemony in 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.

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 of the convert. Nationalism was something
new and exciting and was a gratification to be explored vigorously. And the Fascists/Nazis undoubtedly
exploited it to the hilt. The romance of 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. A German identity, in 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 acknowledged. 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 "bourgeois" -- 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 analysis has its amusing side. The perennial Leftist
tactic of accusing others of what is in fact true of themselves would alone account 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. 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 population drift from rural areas into the big cities and
in 1930 passed a law to put a stop to it unless official 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 also (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 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 mobilize Italy's
limited resources was the fostering of private enterprise and capitalism. He even 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 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 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 eventually
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 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 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 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 of 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 infrastructure, such measures gave Fascist Italy what was
arguably the most advanced welfare State in the world 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 of 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 of the 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 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 able to present himself
as both a modern Leftist and as a supporter of the church.

Mussolini a racist?

Despite recent upsurges of antisemitism 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 (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 Fascist 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). Contrast 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, 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 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 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 it some other Communist? Was it Winston
Churchill? Was it some other conservative? Was it one of the Social Democrats? No. It was none other
than Mussolini, who later became Hitler's ally in World 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 proof 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 modern-
day Leftists would argue with that judgement.

Mussolini remained neutral in 1939 and 1940 and only joined in Hitler's war when France had
collapsed, Hitler already bestrode Europe and his 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.

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, who died in 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 unacceptable, while Mussolini, who was clearly
bored to tears, complained that the menu was in French and kept muttering that Italian regional cooking
was more appetising than 'all this pretentious and indigestible 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 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) 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, "Left-wing Communism, an infantile disorder"
shows that Lenin himself shared the judgement that 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 far-
Left camp of the day.

It should further be noted in this connection that, as Horowitz (1998) reminds us, the various European
Socialist parties in World War I did not generally oppose the war in the name of international worker
brotherhood but rather threw their support behind the various national governments of the countries 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 many modern-day US Democrats often seem to be anti-American,
the situation is rather different in Australia and Britain. Both 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 either of the parties concerned
is a Nazi or an explicitly Fascist 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 II as well.
And in World 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 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' -- The Second Patriotic War -- the first such war being the Tsarist
defence against Napoleon. He deliberately put himself in the shoes of Russia's 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 lauded as
the man who took the "ideals" of the French revolution to the rest of Europe. Like all Leftist dictators,
he preached the central 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, 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 -- he 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, confiscation of
war profits, abolition of the Stock exchange, land for the peasants and abolition of the Monarchy and
nobility. Further, Mussolini never ceased to inveigh against "plutocrats".

As has been mentioned, however, Mussolini's nationalism is undoubtedly the major feature of Fascist
ideology that gets it labelled as Rightist. Nationalism is most easily associated with the Right because 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 co-
operation 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 clearly separates Mussolini from the Leftists of 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 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 modern-
day 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 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 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 modern-
day Leftists either.
Despite his being much more upfront about his authoritarian ideas than any modern-day Leftist would
be, Mussolini's Leftism was, like modern-day Western Leftism, in fact comparatively 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 modern-
day Leftists in the 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. The
King of Italy and the army approved of him because of his pragmatic policies 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 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. 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
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 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, F.D. Roosevelt, found in Mussolini's policies part of 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.

And Roosevelt and his political allies practiced what they preached. As UPI financial journalist Martin
Hutchinson has pointed out, the USA 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 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 made
the case in As We Go Marching, where he enumerated the stigmata of generic fascism, surveyed the
interwar policies of Fascist Italy and Nazi 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. 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 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. 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 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 were already popular among
European and American Leftists in the early 20th 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 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 19th
century British Empire and the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan? I think the obvious comment 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 in some
cases to regain lost territory. So, on balance, I think we have to characterize Fascism (broadly defined)
as NOT in general expansionist and warlike.

The case is also not entirely clear for 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 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. So nationalism would not on the
whole seem to be nearly as warlike 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 was just another one of that
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 like Hitler and
Mussolini, Peron was a great patriot and nationalist who got the foreign business interests out of
Argentina and tried to make Argentina independent of foreigners generally. 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 enough 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 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. Perhaps
we should be thankful that modern-day 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 as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini were for the
countries that they led down the extreme 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, 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 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 Sir Oswald initially used to EXPEL from the British Union of Fascists
anybody who made antisemitic utterances! When his meetings came under 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 War II. Peron was simply helping out his old 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 one 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 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 explanatory
notes: In addition to Hitler, Mussolini and Peron, the true Fascists of the pre-war period were Dollfuss
in 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 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. 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 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 could comment on the prewar
period from a modern perspective. So note 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 case and therefore one 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 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 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. 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.

And of the three most significant Communist regimes to survive into the 21st 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. 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, 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. 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 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, however, 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 as their routine term of abuse! Ignorance of 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 and the like while older Leftists exert their efforts
within the framework of conventional democratic politics -- 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 deciding 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 Blair and New Labour. Odd, but I cannot 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 quite a few things
from the Duce. ... For a start, Blair extols the virtues of the Third 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, founded Italy's welfare
state. Presumably, most people would agree that such a move was fairly left-wing. 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. 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. If any one man therefore has a claim to embody the Leftist politics of
the 20th century, 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, 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.: Talk Miramax
Andriola, F. (1997) Mussolini segreto nemico di Hitler. (Mussolini: Hitler's secret enemy) Casale
Monferrato: Piemme
Carsten, F.L. (1967) The rise of Fascism. London: Methuen.
De Felice, R. (1977) Interpretations of Fascism Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P.
Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia (1983) Funk & Wagnall's
Galbraith, J.K. (1969) The affluent society. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gilmour, I.H.J.L. (1978) Inside right. London: Quartet.
Greene, N. (1968) Fascism: An anthology. N.Y.: Crowell.
Gregor, A.J. (1979) Italian Fascism and developmental dictatorship Princeton, N.J.: Univ. Press.
Hagan, J. (1966) Modern History and its themes. Croydon, Victoria, Australia: Longmans.
Herzer, I. (1989) The Italian refuge: Rescue of Jews during the holocaust. Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press
Hibbert, C. (1962) Benito Mussolini Geneva: Heron Books.
Horowitz, D. (1998) Up from multiculturalism. 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. See http://www.cis.org.au/Events/JBL/JBL98.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.:
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, 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
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, 1976, p. 306)

[Below is the 25 of the NSDAP Program - This is basically the National Socialist German Workers
Party Platform. It included measures that in effect would redistribute income and war profits, profit-
sharing 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 of the NSDAP Program were composed by Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler. They were
publically presented on 24 February 1920 "to a crowd of almost two thousand and every single point
was accepted amid jubilant approval." (Mein Kampf, Volume II, Chapter I) Hitler 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 people 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, the discontent of the masses and so ensure the continued existence of the
Party.

1. We demand the union of all Germany in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national self-
determination.

2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and the
revocation of the peace treaties of 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, 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 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 accordance with party
considerations, and without reference to character or abilities.

7. 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 population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported
from the Reich.

8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered
Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Reich 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 demand the nationalization of all 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 demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy 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 compensation; the abolition of ground rent, and
the prohibition of all speculation in land. *

18. 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 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 educational establishments must be brought into line
with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the school 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
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 of clubs engaged in the physical
training of youth.

22. We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the foundation of a people's army.

23. We demand legal 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 appearing 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, 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 all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life,
and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand.

24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the State, provided they do not threaten its
existence not offend the moral feelings of the German race.

The Party, as such, stands for positive 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 put the whole of this programme into effect, we demand the creation of a strong central state
power for the Reich; the unconditional authority of the political central Parliament over the entire
Reich and its organizations; and the formation of Corporations based on estate and occupation 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.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 decisions 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 is a tool for improving welfare and equality. A second division is Marxist-
Leninism, 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. 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.

Mussolinis fascism was a state socialism that was explicitly anti-Marx and aggressively nationalistic.
Hitlers 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 bourgeois 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 Not Elected?) and as head of the National Socialist German Workers Party, he
considered himself a socialist, and was one by the evidence of his writings and the his economic
policies.

To be clear, 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).

Ive read Hitlers Mein Kampf (all online here) and can quote the following from 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 fundamental 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 Peoples 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, 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 SocialismFichte, Rodbertus, and Lassalle
are at the same time acknowledged 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. Rays piece (Hitler Was A Socialist, and I was asked who he
is. He has a Ph.D. in psychology, 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 of 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. Hitlers 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, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over
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 and socialism.
That is, true socialism can only be democratic. Right, like the Democratic Peoples 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, 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. Hitlers 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, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over
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, Hitlers 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 Hitlers
warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. 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. Misnomers
are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic
(which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovskys 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, wasnt 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, etc. Generally there have been 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 excluded. 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, 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 companies 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 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 doesnt 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, non-
democratic 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,
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 the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees and 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 Keynesian-
like 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 power, 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, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on
labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazis 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 Nazi 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 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 to the economy, 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? Lets 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 every person on the far right believes in every principle,
or disbelieves its opposite. Most peoples political beliefs are complex, and cannot be neatly
pigeonholed. This is as true of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a leftist,
its 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 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.

Lets review these spectrums one by one, and see where Hitler stood in his own words. Ultimately,
Hitlers 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 a liberal trait. Actually, U.S. conservatives take
considerable pride in being patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed their
lives for their 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 say, an employing business, church, club, family, nation,
or cause then you are a collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a person 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 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, the church, 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
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.
There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were not part of Hitlers state, while there were
Germans outside Germany (for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that Hitlers
political philosophy was not really based on statism as we know it 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 advancement of a community of
physically and psychically homogenous creatures. 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, 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 demands it, even sacrifices it.
(7)

This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the 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 Japans 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 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 ones own sickness and deficiencies, to bring
children into the world, and one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be
considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the nation. Here the state must put the
most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all
who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and therefore pass it on (16)

Merit over equality.

The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises
the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence. But as in economic
life, the able men cannot 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, and 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 because 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 of the most brutal struggle If you do not
fight for life, then life will never be won. (20)

Power politics and militarism over pacifism.

Allan Bullock, probably the worlds greatest Hitler historian, sums up Hitlers political method in one
sentence:

Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitlers ideas can be reduced to a simple claim for power
which recognizes only one relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that of force. (21)

The following quotes by Hitler portray his rather stunning contempt for pacifism:

If the German people in its historic development had 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 world 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
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 peoples 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 advisers 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 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. (32)

Capitalism over Marxism.

Bullock writes of Hitlers views on Marxism:

While Hitlers 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, 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 bring about a perfect era.
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 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. (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 workers 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 (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 Hitlers politics, but, believe it or not,
conservatives on the Internet frequently equate Hitlers vegetarianism with the vegetarianism practised
by liberals concerned about the environment and the ethical treatment of animals.

Hitlers 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 his life. As one historian writes:
Curiously, shortly after her death, Hitler looked with disdain on a piece of ham being 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)

Hitlers vegetarianism, then, was no more than a phobia, triggered by an association with his nieces
death.

Gun ownership over gun control

Perhaps one of the pro-gun lobbys 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, pro-
gun 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 him ever making it:
neither at the Nuremberg rallies, nor in any of his weekly radio addresses. Furthermore, there was no
reason for him to even make such a statement; for Germany already had strict gun control as a term of
surrender in the Treaty of Versailles. The 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) writes:

The Nazi Party did not ride to power confiscating 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. There is no historical evidence that Nazis 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 Nazis passed the German 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 which it
cannot use and hence 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, 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 primarily to the inoculation of mere
knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only
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, 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 movements inner organization is one of expediency and not of principle. (52)

Religion over secularism.

Hitlers 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 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 body 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 of 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 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 misuse of religious conviction for political
ends. (57)

Therefore, let every man be active, each 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 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, based 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 in Vienna and four years of war, Hitler
walked into his first German Workers 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, 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 Hitlers 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 conversation 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 anti-
Semitism. Hitlers anti-Semitism therefore found a receptive audience among Catholic authorities. The
Church also had an intense fear and hatred of Russian communism, and Hitlers attack on Russia was
the best that could have happened. The Jesuit Michael Serafin wrote: It cannot be denied that [Pope]
Pius XIIs closest advisors for some time regarded Hitlers 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.
Bishops were to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clergy were to see to the pastoral care of
Germanys 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 support. A bishops conference at Fulda, 1933, resulted in agreement with
Hitlers case for extending Lebensraum, or German territory. (64) Bishop Bornewasser told a
congregation of Catholic young people at 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 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 Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. 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. (68) Throughout the war, the Catholic
press would remain one of the Third Reichs best disseminators of propaganda.

Pacelli became the new Pope Pius XII in 1939, and he immediately improved relations with Hitler. He
broke protocol by personally signing a letter in German to Hitler expressing warm hopes of friendly
relations. Shortly afterwards, the Church celebrated Hitlers 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 worlds greatest moral leader, he was charged with
precisely that responsibility.

The history of Hitler and the Church reveals a relationship built on mutual distrust and philosophical
rejection, but also shared goals, benefits, admiration, envy, friendliness, and ultimate alliance.

* Home
* Order Here
* Blog
.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX:

HOW A BANKRUPT GERMANY SOLVED ITS
INFRASTRUCTURE PROBLEMS

Ellen Brown, August 9th, 2007

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany.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 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, quoted in "Hitler's Monetary System," www.rense.com, citing C. C. Veith, Citadels of
Chaos (Meador, 1949)

Guernsey wasn't the only government to solve its infrastructure problems by issuing its own money.
(See E. Brown, "Waking Up on a Minnesota Bridge," www.webofdebt.com/articles/infrastructure-
crisis.php, August 4, 2007.) A more notorious model is found in post-World War I Germany. When
Hitler came to power, the country was completely, hopelessly broke. The Treaty of Versailles had
imposed crushing reparations payments on the German people, 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. 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 happened before - the total destruction of the national currency, wiping out people's
savings, their businesses, and the economy generally. Making matters worse, at the end 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. In this they took their cue from Abraham
Lincoln, who funded the American Civil War with government-issued paper money called
"Greenbacks." Hitler began his national credit program by devising a plan of public works. Projects
earmarked for funding included flood control, repair of public buildings and private residences, and
construction of new buildings, roads, bridges, canals, 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 gold, 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 countries were still out of work and living on 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

Hjalmar Schacht, who was then head of the German central bank, is quoted in a bit of wit that sums up
the German version of the "Greenback" miracle. An American banker had commented, "Dr. Schacht,
you should come to America. We've lots of money and that's real banking." Schacht replied, "You
should come to Berlin. We don't have 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 Money that this
was because he temporarily rescued Germany from English economic 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 financial crisis began
with the impossible reparations payments imposed at the Treaty of Versailles. Schacht, who was
currency commissioner for the Republic, complained:

The Treaty of Versailles is a model of ingenious measures for the economic destruction of
Germany. . . . [T]he Reich could not find any way 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 some truly remarkable admissions that
shatter the 'accepted wisdom' the financial community 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. 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 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 strict government
regulation, and prompt corrective measures were taken to eliminate foreign speculation, by eliminating
easy access to loans of bank-created money. Hitler then got the country 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 getting 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, 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 (January 13, 2005); Stephen Zarlenga, The
Lost Science of Money (Valatie, New 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, "Hitler Did Not Want War," 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," Barnes Review (July-
August 1999); David Kidd, "How Money Is Created in Australia,"
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. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.

Home | Also by Ellen Brown | Links | Contact Us | Order Now Bookmark and Share

Powered by Translate

Site by Phoenix Development.

Copyright 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved
.http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany.php
Object1

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany.php

http://www.hermes-press.com/dollar_imperialism.htm