Socialism is leftism, Nazism is not, so why were they called, and some people still call them, the National Socialists?
Its precursor, the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist (“Völkisch nationalist”), racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany.[13] The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.[14] Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeoisie, and anti-capitalism, disingenuously using socialist rhetoric to gain the support of the lower middle class;[15] it was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders. By the 1930s, the party’s main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes.[16] The party had little popular support until the Great Depression, when worsening living standards and widespread unemployment drove Germans into political extremism.[12]
Not an expert, but I find a good bit of context here is also that in the elections in 1932 and 1933, the three strongest parties were:
- NSDAP: National Socialist German Workers’ Party
- SPD: Social Democratic Party of Germany
- KPD: Communist Party of Germany
So, it really was just popular at the time to say you were doing socialism, but they also weren’t actually fooling anyone who really wanted these politics, since two other viable and more obvious choices existed.
Just as I thought. Thank you for the answer!
www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/
(This article is from 2017 and adorably states that "Nobody, least of all the millions of rank-and-file right-leaning Americans who voted for Donald Trump, wants to be lumped in with Nazis. It’s a fact, however, that Nazi-friendly organizations, Nazi symbols, and Nazi gestures were in evidence at the disastrous Charlottesville event, whose unfortunate title was not “Unite the Left,” but “Unite the Right.”)
The full name of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, the political movement that brought him to power and supplied the infrastructure of the fascist dictatorship over which he would preside, was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. According to historians, the complicated moniker reveals more about the image the party wanted to project and the constituency it aimed to build than it did about the Nazis’ true political goals, which were building a state based on racial superiority and brute-force governance.
[…]
And this is what came out of Adolf Hitler’s mouth on another occasion when a comrade riled him by harping on socialism (as reported by Henry A. Turner, author of German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, published in 1985): “Socialism! What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism.”
There was a period in the early 30s when the communist and left-wing elements had been purged from the Weimar Republic, and the right-wing working-class German Workers’ Party hoped to court their supporters by renaming itself the National Socialist party. (Imagine if, in pre-Trump USA, the Sanders/AOC DSA had been expelled from the Democratic party, and the Tea Party tried to pull support from them by calling itself the Tea Party Socialists.) But they never adopted socialist ideology—the only thing they had in common was their working-class demographics. Socialism, communism, and anarchism all had their origins in the 19th-century Internationalist movement, which was expressly anti-nationalist—so the very name “National Socialism” was a transparent contradiction in terms.
(That said, Mussolini in Italy did have an early phase where he was a bona fide socialist, but the Italian socialists expelled him for his racism.)
Thank you for the answer!
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea aka North Korea, is not very democratic. Politicians are masters of BS and so they mask what they do and say with a veil of BS to appeal to more people. Socialism is far from extreme, it’s a great middle ground between communism and capitalism, whereas nazis and other far right weirdos don’t know what a middle ground is.
Why does North Korea say they’re a Democratic Republic when it’s a monarchy?
Why are you called Green_Mouse when you’re not a green mouse?
ETA: I didn’t realise what community I was in when I replied to the OP. Apologies for not being more community appropriate in my approach to OP’s question.
Can I ask you something? It’s been bothering me for a while, really… why did you just edit the comment instead of apologizing directly to me? I mean… I asked a historical straightforward question in a historical community, I expected a straightforward answer, but instead I got such a rude response, and even if it wasn’t a historical community, it doesn’t justify this attitude.
You’re right, I should apologise to you. If you’d allow me a moment to explain myself?
A lot of people ask this kind of question in bad faith. I suppose they believe it to be some kind of ‘gotcha’, a “If social democracy is so good then how do you explain the Nazi’s being socialist?” kind of thing. Not that it excuses my behaviour but the thread being mostly downvoted would indicate I wasn’t the only one to make this assumption of your question.
With that being said, it was wrong of me to assume right out of the gate that you were asking in bad faith. As such I am sorry, to you personally, for my behaviour.
Just a quick edit as I realised I didn’t fully answer your question: I apologised to the community first as I was still under the assumption that you were asking in bad faith and it felt more appropriate at the time to apologise for not following etiquette than apologising to someone whom I, wrongfully, assumed wasn’t being honest with their intentions.
One last edit as my ADHD won’t leave well enough alone: This is 100% a character flaw of mine that exists purely in an online space. In person I always give someone the benefit of the doubt but for some reason that tends not to translate to my interactions online. Perhaps I’ve had too many negative interactions in the past.
Your follow up question, where you tell me my first reply to you has been bothering you, would lead me to believe you are being genuine and likely always were. Therefore it’s clear I was in the wrong and that the right thing for me to do is apologise and try to get back into the habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, even online.
Thank you, I accept your apology, and I don’t hold any grudges against you. I thought that maybe because of the poor wording, people misunderstood me, and it looks like it’s true. I am not a very good talker and I am a rather shy person with a lack of experience when it comes to communicating with others and expressing my thoughts.
I appreciate you being vulnerable and sincere with me. I regret that I stole the opportunity for us to start out like this, this has been a humbling interaction, truthfully.
If I could offer a small piece of advice: when approaching topics like the Nazi party or other such historical and contemporary groups, it can help to clearly signal your intent, but I’d steer away from phrases like “I’m just asking questions,” as those are often used disingenuously by people looking to provoke. While I don’t think there’s a need to be overly verbose, I do often find it helpful to over-explain my position so there’s less room for misunderstanding. You may have already noticed that about me, haha.
I know that in a community like AskHistorians it’s completely reasonable to expect straightforward historical responses, but unfortunately, the current political climate doesn’t leave much room for open and good-faith discussion on certain topics without people immediately being on guard.
Because I don’t want to use my real name and surname?
My, admittedly flippant, point was that they called themselves socialists that doesn’t mean they were.
I didn’t say they were, I asked why they were called National Socialists, and why they are called that even today.
The wiki snippet someone else posted explains why back then. They’re sometimes called it today because:
- Many people are functionally politically illiterate and still repeat the BS not knowing it’s BS.
- There are still nazis running around (sadly far too many) who want to muddy the waters and want naziism to once again don the veil of socialism to appeal to people in category 1 who would otherwise despise the nazi’s true intent.
