“National Socialism” was the name for which “Nazi” was shorthand. To some, that name alone made the Nazis socialists, and therefore Leftists. Although, we might remember that the USSR was officially the Union of Soviet Socialist “Republics,” and it is idiocy to deduce that the it and the USA, therefore, had the same system of government. Clearly, at times different people use the same word to mean very different things. So, what was “national socialism”?

Let’s begin by looking at some of the alleged “good” that the Nazis did for ordinary Germans. Once in power, their regime’s extravagant spending on infrastructure and rearmament created millions of jobs in a time of depression. With this, and with their expansion of Weimar’s welfare programs, all the able-bodied worked, and all had at least minimal nutrition and housing.

Still, the great majority of this government-generated prosperity did not actually “trickle down” to the masses. While the great industrialists saw their profits soar despite increased regulations, wage-workers’ real wages (adjusted for inflation) actually fell, despite full employment. The workers had no recourse, though, since independent labor unions had been violently destroyed by Hitler. Under the Nazi regime, terror was used to increase income inequality, not to decrease it. Clearly, these “National Socialists” were not socialists in any conventional sense.

So then, was the Nazi’s “socialism” only a scam? They would answer that the question misses the point. Their system was never meant to be socialism of the Leftist variety — seeking a more equal sharing of wealth and power. Nazism was to be a socialism of the spirit not the flesh, a socialism of the national community, that community as superior race, and that racial nation claiming its rightful place of supremacy through invincible military might. Rich, poor, and middle class. Protestant and Catholic. Bavarian, Berliner and Rhinelander — all were equals, not in wealth, but as members of the Master Race.

In their “bread and circuses” style of domination, guaranteed jobs and expanded welfare benefits would provide just enough coarse pumpernickel for grumbling stomachs. But it was the rebirth of national/racial glory that would provide the hypnotizing spectacle to transport troubled minds — serving up a soufflé of aristocratic airs for downtrodden souls.

National Socialism’s essence, then, was not the welfare state but the “racial warfare state.” The deficit spending that created all those jobs came overwhelmingly from rearmament, not from spending on infrastructure or poverty assistance. However, from this, brutal war had to follow since it was the racially-inspired conquests, plunder and “ethnic cleansing” of the early years of the war that would pay down those deficits. In militarized, racialized National Socialism, full employment in 1936 cannot be causally separated from military aggression in 1939, from death camps in 1943, and from Germany’s utter defeat and ruin in 1945. That so-called “good” the Nazis did was necessarily a part of a morally disgusting and self-destructive mission. In the end, “national socialism” was indeed a cruel scam.

How do democracies die? Aspiring dictators are almost always con artists who offer candy and compliments to lure the unwary into the windowless van of tyranny — “Would you like an infrastructure job, little boy? You’re so racially superior, little girl! Would you like some nationalistic bombast, sir?” In the short term, the despots might even deliver on their promised sweets; superhighways may actually be built. The sugar-high passes, though, and then the bill comes due. On down the road, in the back of the van, the obscene bill always comes due.

Next time, more on the centrality of racism to Nazi “socialism.”
Jim Wiggins is a retired history instructor at Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Natchez.