Nazism - Position in The Political Spectrum

Position in The Political Spectrum

A majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics. Far right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over others and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but syncretic. Hitler in Mein Kampf directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany, saying:

Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms.

Hitler, when asked whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", claimed that Nazism was not exclusively for any class, and indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps", stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism".

The Nazis were strongly influenced by the post-World War I far-right in Germany, which held common beliefs such as anti-Marxism, anti-liberalism, and anti-Semitism, along with nationalism, contempt towards the Treaty of Versailles, and condemnnation of the Weimar Republic for signing the armistice in November 1918 that later led to their signing of the Treaty of Versailles. A major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organizations that engaged in political violence after World War I. Initially, the post-World War I German far right was dominated by monarchists, but the younger generation, who were associated with Völkisch nationalism, were more radical and did not express any emphasis on the restoration of the German monarchy. This younger generation desired to dismantle the Weimar Republic and create a new radical and strong state based upon a martial ruling ethic that could revive the "Spirit of 1914" that was associated with German national unity (Volksgemeinschaft).

The Nazis, the far-right monarchist and reactionary German National People's Party (DNVP), and others, such as monarchist officers of the German army and several prominent industrialists, formed an alliance in opposition to the Weimar Republic on 11 October 1931 in Bad Harzburg; officially known as the "National Front", but commonly referred to as the Harzburg Front. The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP. The Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party. After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag. The Nazis denounced them as "an insignificant heap of reactionaries". The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their street violence, and the "economic experiments" that would take place if the Nazis rose to power.

Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, initially supported the Nazi Party. His four sons, including Prince Eitel Friedrich and Prince Oskar, became members of the Nazi Party, in hopes that in exchange for their support, the Nazis would permit the restoration of the monarchy.

There were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical. The conservative Nazi Hermann Göring urged Hitler to conciliate with capitalists and reactionaries. Other prominent conservative Nazis included Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.

The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels, hated capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core, and he stressed the need for the party to emphasize both a proletarian and national character. Those views were shared by Otto Strasser, who later left the Nazi Party in the belief that Hitler had betrayed the party's socialist goals by allegedly endorsing capitalism. Large segments of the Nazi Party staunchly supported its official socialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and economic revolution upon the party gaining power in 1933. Many of the million members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) were committed to the party's official socialist program. The leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, pushed for a "second revolution" (the "first revolution" being the Nazis' seizure of power) that would entrench the party's official socialist program. Further, Röhm desired that the SA absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks under his leadership.

Prior to becoming an anti-Semite and a Nazi, Hitler had lived a Bohemian lifestyle as a wandering watercolour artist in Austria and southern Germany, though he maintained elements of it later in life. Hitler served in World War I and after the war his battalion was absorbed by the Bavarian Soviet Republic from 1918 to 1919, where he was elected Deputy Battalion Representative. According to historian Thomas Weber, he attended the funeral of communist Kurt Eisner (a German Jew), wearing a black mourning armband on one arm and a red communist armband on the other. Further that Hitler's political beliefs had not yet solidified, and at that time he supported the idea of a classless society and was an anti-monarchist. In Mein Kampf, Hitler never mentioned any service with the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and he stated that he became an anti-Semite in 1913 in Vienna. This statement has been disputed with the contention he in fact was not an anti-Semite at that time. Hitler altered his political views in response to the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, and it was then that he became an anti-Semitic, German nationalist. As a Nazi, Hitler had expressed opposition to capitalism; he regarded capitalism as having Jewish origins, and accused capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class.

Hitler took a pragmatic position between the conservative and radical factions of the Nazi Party, in that he accepted private property and allowed capitalist private enterprises to exist as long as they adhered to the goals of the Nazi state. However, if a capitalist private enterprise resisted Nazi goals, he sought to destroy it. Upon the Nazis achieving power, Röhm's SA began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction, without Hitler's authorization to do so. Hitler considered Röhm's independent actions to be violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardizing the regime by alienating the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and the conservative-oriented German Army. This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA in what came to be known as the Night of the Long Knives.

Although he opposed communist ideology, Hitler on numerous occasions publicly praised the Soviet Union's leader Joseph Stalin and Stalinism. Hitler commended Stalin for seeking to purify the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of Jewish influences, noting Stalin's purging of Jewish communists such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Karl Radek. While Hitler always intended to bring Germany into conflict against the Soviet Union to gain Lebensraum ("living space"), he supported a temporary strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to form a common anti-liberal front to crush liberal democracies, particularly France.