First off, I know the rules of the forum. I do not want to make this a topic about anything current, just a conversation about the subject. If anyone wants to respond to my post do it in the terms of the era, not your own political opinions.
Most people believe that (who have passed History 101 in HS) during WW2 you had 2 opposing extremes in the USSR and the Nazis. One far left, the other far right. For many years I believed the same thing. However getting older and wiser I figured out that there was not much of a difference between Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia. That being said, both hated each other, but why?
Depsite the incredible similarities that exist between them both, why do you think they both hated each other as much as they did? I have my own ideas on this, and will post them later, but I am curious what everyone else thinks before I throw my opinion in.
Before anyone throws in the “Aryan” argument, I think all of us on this board are aware of how the nazis viewed the ‘lesser races’. However historicaly Stalin killed more people in his gulags than Hitler did in his death camps. So if you want to use the Holocaust argument please put it in context.
Germany was violently divided politically before the rise of the Nazis, so after that domestic political violence between left and right, it seems natural that they would consider communism their archenemy abroad as well as at home.
Despite similarities between National Socialism and Communism, there is a major ideological and practical difference.
A fundamental principle of Germany’s National Socialism was that humans are essentially unequal. In practice, this meant the state facilitated a culture/morality in which the strong should prosper at the expense of the weak.
A fundamental principle of Communism is that humans are essentially equal (or equally worthy). Equality is much more difficult to achieve than inequality, and unsurprisingly they failed to attain equality. However, despite elite corruption and cruelty toward real/perceived enemies, the Soviets enforced numerous equalizing policies.
In terms of the greatest factor - I like to look at it this way…
Government control of business (Communism)
vs
Business control of government (Fascism)
There are dozens of other differences though. Racial theories, welcomed or banned religious practices, cultural work ethics, Old Money vs Peasant Class - class warfare, etc, etc ,etc.
It’s not an easy question to answer in a sentence.
Germany was violently divided politically before the rise of the Nazis, so after that domestic political violence between left and right, it seems natural that they would consider communism their archenemy abroad as well as at home.
This comment definitely strikes at the root of the issue, and is a microcosm of the macrocosm. If we dial everything back to the friekorps. Germany’s Armed Militia’s who -funded by the business rich- put down a communist rebellion. We begin to see the root issues.
Old Power vs New Power. The communist were dead set on upsetting the balance, and fleecing if not outright murdering the rich and stealing the wealth for “the people”. And the fascists were a ground of those elite, who essentially grouped themselves together to fight against such a movement.
I’m not a historian or being decisively articulate on this issue, but I think that’s the root you are looking for, and hope that’s the right direction to look.
In addition to these differences, much of the hostility can simply be attributed to Germany and USSR seeking to dominate overlapping territory.
An expansionist Germany (whether Nazi or Communist) was inevitably going to mistrust an expansionist Soviet Union.
In terms of the greatest factor - I like to look at it this way…
Government control of business (Communism)
vs
Business control of government (Fascism)
There are dozens of other differences though. Racial theories, welcomed or banned religious practices, cultural work ethics, Old Money vs Peasant Class - class warfare, etc, etc ,etc.
It’s not an easy question to answer in a sentence.
Totally disagree. None of the Nazi senior leadership came from the business or industrial class. They were all from the radical camp. Watch the Goebbels Diaries, narrated by Kenneth Branagh. All the words that Goebbels uses, in condemning the “bourgeoisie” for not being “radical” enough, and wanting to tear down “existing” morality, was not at all about the business or traditional or conservative of anything. They wanted to tear down the traditional structures and install a new radical regime (which is why the Nazis had minimum wage laws, strong (albeit state controlled) trade unions, just as in the Soviet Union, universal healthcare, the strongest gun control laws in the world, and nationalized workers holidays). They were radicals.
Why did Nazis and Communists hate each other? Because that is what the Left does: Hate those who are most similar, but still slightly different, to them. Which is why the Bolsheviks hunted down and killed the Menshiviks. It is why Stalin called all those Communists whom he put on trial “fascists.” It is why various leftist organizations who are not aligned with one another fight like cats and dogs. For the left, there is nothing worse than an apostate.
Another way of looking at the question is from the following angle. The fundamental thing which Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR had in common was that they were both totalitarian single-party police states, each headed by a ruthless dictator who imprisoned or liquidated his enemies on a vast scale. Speaking in general terms, regimes of this type are far more likely to get into wars with each other, or to get into wars with democratic states, than true democracies are to get into wars with each other. I haven’t investigated the matter, so I may have overlooked some exceptions (perhaps even some glaring ones), but my impression is that over the past couple of centuries – ever since there were enough modern democratic states in existence to make the calculation meaningful – there have been very few wars fought entirely between states which were true democracies. I exclude from this analysis what could be called pseudo-democratic states like the many People’s Republics that existed during the Cold War era, or various nominally democratic states which were in fact headed by entrenched strongmen or by military juntas. Regimes which rule internally by force and intimidation are more predisposed to use the same methods to resolve conflicts with other states than countries where the leaders govern by popular consent (rather than at gunpoint) and are truly accountable to their own citizens.
According to Hitler and his circle, international communism was a jewish conspiracy. They called it “jewish bolshevism”. They claimed that communists and socialists were in league with international banking cartels and these factions had an interest in undermining the German military and culture in order to achieve international bankster rule.
Simultaneously, the national socialists were in competition with the socialists/communists because they represented themselves as a workers party with the interests of ordinary Germans at heart.
Chief among the differences between them were that national socialists enthusiastically supported rearmament and renewed German imperialism (much like Mussolini’s fascists, they argued war and conquest are healthy phenomena). This alone ruled out constructive collaboration between communists and national socialists. I’m not aware of them collaborating at a local level which says alot given that in Weimar (which used proportional representation), parties had to form coalitions to rule.
The rearmament question (closely linked to the question of “war guilt”) was easily the major left/right issue of the time and is part of why the Nazis allied themselves with right-wing parties. Given the popularity of socialism and the onset of the Great Depression (1929), monied elites (such as Hugenberg) decided to pour money into the Nazi propaganda apparatus (around 1930), reasoning that only the Nazis could stop the combined forces of social democracy and communism. Fortunately for the right-wingers, social democrats and communists were bitter enemies and were unable to work together constructively (the Nazis took power before the advent of the “popular front” strategy). The Nazis, on the other hand, gradually integrated more traditionalist and conservative militias into their apparatus, and more and more bourgeois newspapers converted to Nazi supporters in the midst of economic depression.
The German communists, on the other hand, were in league with the Russian Bolsheviks. Ultimately they wanted international communism and an end to nation states. They believed revolution in Germany was critical to attaining their goals. Very few revolutionary communists believed that international communism was possible without first achieving communism in the most advanced Western European nations–namely Germany, France, and England. So both the Bolsheviks and the communists in Germany were desperate to instigate a communist revolution in Germany (even Lenin was apparently closely following events in Germany). They staged several revolts. About the closest they got to power was the Bavarian Soviet Republic (that Hitler apparently experienced firsthand) which was crushed by a series of coups and eventually the Freikorps. Similar events were going down in Italy (though not as directed by Moscow) and the fascists seem to have played a major role in the counterrevolution.
In terms of practical politics and concrete economic policy, Stalin and Hitler did alot of the same things. But that is to be expected given the time in history. Consider that the USA was also undergoing radical changes and moving towards bureaucratic collectivism…the “managerial revolution” in the 20s-30s, emphasizing Fordism, mass production, and technological innovation, was international in scope. The intellectual fashion among economists of the time was inclined towards planned economies and planned production regimes.
The cold war spun Hanna Arendt/Robert Conquest theories and stories regarding the USSR, so called “totalitarianism”, and mass death are up for question. I recommend J Arch Getty, Stephen Kotkin, Grover Furr, and David Glantz for a more balanced appreciation of the period. Chuev’s Conversations With Molotov is worth a read too.
As regards Hitler, I have yet to find a better account of the outright base nature of Nazism than Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
The Communist Manifesto makes an eloquent and convincing case that the economic elite (which they call the bourgeoise) exploits the working class (which they call the proletariat). It is very east to see why Marx and Engles felt that the bourgeoise was indifferent or hostile to the interests of the proletariat.
The Nazis largely agreed with the above assessment. Unlike the communists, the Nazis placed special emphasis on the economic exploitation by Jewish members of the bourgeoise. For the Nazis, a chief cause of the economic exploitation was Jewish enmity towards non-Jews. Marxists believed the exploitation was due to class consciousness, not racial consciousness.
The communist solution to the above problem was for every member of the world’s working class to recognize a common bond with every other member of the world’s working class. United by the bond of common economic status, the world’s proletariat would throw off bourgeoise rule and institute a global communist government.
The Nazi solution to the problem was to awaken a sense of brotherhood toward all German and other Nordic people. German factory owners were told that their workers were valuable human beings. On the off chance any factory owner refused to listen, the Nazi government disbanded the labor unions, and itself assumed their functionality. It dictated terms to the factory owners: a workweek reduced to 40 hours, significantly increased wage rates, improved workplace safety standards, much longer vacation time. The German government also provided heavily subsidized cruises to German workers, so that they could travel and see the world.
The communists were deeply hostile to the bourgeoise. One of the major themes of communism is class warfare; with warfare often understood in the most literal sense possible. The Nazis had a benign view of non-Jewish members of the German bourgeoise. The Nazis made no effort to nationalize the possessions of the bourgeoise. Nor did they object to the notion of German capitalists making profits in their business ventures. Some members of the German bourgeoise had a benign view of the Nazis as they were coming to power. They made large contributions to the Nazis’ political campaign. After Hitler assumed control over Germany, there was no longer a need for privately funded political campaigning. One of the bourgeoise’s main tools for controlling Western democracies–political lobbying dollars–was thus denied to them in Nazi Germany. Perhaps as a result of this reduction in bourgeoise influence, there was not a single major instance of Hitler sacrificing the tenets of his ideology or the needs of Germany in order to benefit the bourgeoise. However, Hitler was still sensitive to bourgeoise concerns. He wanted to give them enough to keep them on his side, as part of his larger goal of a strong, united Germany.
Both communists and Nazis wanted to create a world in which people were willing to sacrifice for something larger than oneself. For communists, that meant sacrificing oneself for the benefit of the proletariat class as a whole. For the Nazis, it meant sacrificing oneself for one’s nation or one’s race.
In an ant colony, ants are united together by the bond of genetic similarity. In ancient times nations were the same way. The Greek word for nation implies a sort of extended clan–a group of somewhat related people. It is reasonable to conclude that most members of any given Greek city state were connected by blood to most other members. (Even if the blood connections were often distant.) These blood relations proved a solid foundation upon which to build national unification and self-sacrifice.
The Nazi basis for unification was therefore based on something which has been proved to work in nature and in the human past. The communist basis for unification–shared economic status–represented a radical experiment, done in the absence of any evidence that experiment would work. In practice, communism has not proved effective at causing people to want to sacrifice for something larger than themselves. With one exception: communists can unite people by persuading them they share a common enemy. The basis of communist unity is hate (toward that common enemy) rather than love (of the world’s proletariat). This is because sharing the same economic status as someone is not a strong basis for love.
On the other hand, there were two bases of Nazi unity: love (of one’s own nation, and one’s own race), and hate (of perceived enemies of the Nazis or the Germans). Because love had been added to the mix, Germans were much more willing to sacrifice for Nazism than the Soviets were to sacrifice for communism. The tremendous sacrifices the Soviet Union made during WWII were made because the Russians were taught to believe the Nazis were monsters. They were not made based on a love for the world’s proletariat, or because of a love for communism, or any other kind of love. Except, perhaps a love for Russia; despite communist propaganda about the need to abandon the notion of nations.
Another point of difference between the Nazis and the communists was eugenics. Under Stalin, a man named Trofim Lysenko was tasked with persecuting Soviet geneticists. Any Soviet scientist who subscribed to modern genetics theory–the idea that traits are passed from parents to children through genes–was either shot in the back of the head or sent to a gulag.
The Nazis, on the other hand, subscribed to the scientific view that traits are passed from parents to children via genes. Accordingly, they sought to improve the gene pool through eugenics. A Nazi propaganda poster lamented the fact that intelligent, law-abiding men were having fewer children than their unintelligent law abiding counterparts; who in turn were having fewer children than unintelligent criminals. Had they remained in power longer, the Nazis would have increased their efforts to counter these dysgenic fertility trends.
A final difference between Nazis and communists is their perspectives on race. The communists welcome the idea of racial intermarriage. For them, the existence of race is a support to the existing social order. Getting rid of race would help the world’s proletariat unite and throw off the bourgeoise oppressors. The Nazis took the polar opposite view.
a sense of brotherhood toward all German and other Nordic people
Unless they happen to be homosexual, disabled (physically or mentally), politically dissident, unwilling to compromise their religious faith, or have mixed ancestry.
So much love, right?
Unless they happen to be homosexual, disabled (physically or mentally), politically dissident, unwilling to compromise their religious faith, or have mixed ancestry.
So much love, right?
You are correct that the Nazis weren’t kind toward political dissidents. The “religious faith” thing is more debatable. Yes, the Nazis went after some religious people who’d been engaging in covert anti-Nazi political activity. But that could be seen as part of their larger effort to suppress anti-Nazi political activity in general.
The Nazis had a more progressive attitude toward homosexual activity than most people in Western democracies. When Hitler learned that the head of the SA had been found in bed with another male, Hitler’s first concern was whether that other person had been an adult or a child. Upon learning that the SA head’s sexual partner was a man, not a boy, Hitler’s reaction was that what he did in his bed was his own business. In the past Hitler had been castigated by Allied historians for his tolerance of “perverts” within the Nazi ranks. More recent historians have praised him for having had more advanced attitudes towards homosexuals than did most of his contemporaries in Western democracies.
The Nazis had a more progressive attitude toward homosexual activity than most people in Western democracies. When Hitler learned that the head of the SA had been found in bed with another male, Hitler’s first concern was whether that other person had been an adult or a child. Upon learning that the SA head’s sexual partner was a man, not a boy, Hitler’s reaction was that what he did in his bed was his own business. In the past Hitler had been castigated by Allied historians for his tolerance of “perverts” within the Nazi ranks. More recent historians have praised him for having had more advanced attitudes towards homosexuals than did most of his contemporaries in Western democracies.
On the other hand, when Hitler ordered Ernst Rohm and other SA men to be liquidated, one of the public justifications for the murders was supposedly that Rohm was either engaged in unspecified “perversions” or was specifically a homosexual. Hitler had no difficulty changing his position on any number of issues, including this one; his priority wasn’t to be principled or consistent or true to his word, his priority was to do whatever was expedient to support whatever his current objectives happended to be.
I also find it hard to comprehend how the Nazis can be described as being progressive on gay rights, given the way that they used a pink triangle badge in concentration camps to identify homosexuals and other “deviants” in the same way that they used yellow stars to brand Jews.
@CWO:
The Nazis had a more progressive attitude toward homosexual activity than most people in Western democracies. When Hitler learned that the head of the SA had been found in bed with another male, Hitler’s first concern was whether that other person had been an adult or a child. Upon learning that the SA head’s sexual partner was a man, not a boy, Hitler’s reaction was that what he did in his bed was his own business. In the past Hitler had been castigated by Allied historians for his tolerance of “perverts” within the Nazi ranks. More recent historians have praised him for having had more advanced attitudes towards homosexuals than did most of his contemporaries in Western democracies.
Your first paragraph is a good point. Hitler was a politician, and came to power largely through the democratic process. He had more in common with other democratically elected politicians than most people realize. Including the willingness to shift principles and pander to his base.
I hadn’t previously heard the pink triangle claim. What is your source for it?
On the other hand, when Hitler ordered Ernst Rohm and other SA men to be liquidated, one of the public justifications for the murders was supposedly that Rohm was either engaged in unspecified “perversions” or was specifically a homosexual. Hitler had no difficulty changing his position on any number of issues, including this one; his priority wasn’t to be principled or consistent or true to his word, his priority was to do whatever was expedient to support whatever his current objectives happended to be.
I also find it hard to comprehend how the Nazis can be described as being progressive on gay rights, given the way that they used a pink triangle badge in concentration camps to identify homosexuals and other “deviants” in the same way that they used yellow stars to brand Jews.
I hadn’t previously heard the pink triangle claim. What is your source for it?
The Wikipedia article on the subject “Pink Triangle” cites various sources:
1. Plant, The Pink Triangle
2. “English-German Dictionary”. dict.cc. Retrieved November 16, 2013.
3. Plant, The Pink Triangle.
4. Plant, Richard (1988). The pink triangle: the Nazi war against homosexuals (revised ed.). H. Holt. p. 175. ISBN 978-0-8050-0600-1.
5. “San Francisco Neighborhoods: The Castro” KQED documentary.
6. Melissa Eddy (May 18, 2002). “Germany Offers Nazi-Era Pardons”. Associated Press.
7. Brocklebank, Christopher (31 May 2011). “New memorial to gay holocaust victims to be built in Munich”. Pink News. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
8. Gianoulis, Tina (2004). Claude J. Summers, ed. “Pink Triangle”. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Retrieved 2014-09-26. “In the early 1970s, gay rights organizations in Germany and the United States launched campaigns to reclaim the pink triangle. In 1973 the German gay liberation group Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) called upon gay men to wear the pink triangle as a memorial.”
9. “Symbols of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Movements”. lambda.org. Lambda GLBT Community Services. 2004. Retrieved 2014-09-26.
10. Jensen, Erik (2002). “The pink triangle and political consciousness: gays, lesbians, and the memory of Nazi persecution”. Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (1 and 2).
11. “The Pink Triangle, displayed annually on Twin Peaks in San Francisco during Pride weekend”. Thepinktriangle.com. 2012-06-14. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
12. Feldman, Douglas A. and Judith Wang Miller (1998). The AIDS Crisis: A Documentary History. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-28715-5. p. 176
Further reading
An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (1999) by Gad Beck (University of Wisconsin Press). ISBN 0-299-16500-0.
The Iron Words (2014) by Michael Fridgen (Dreamlly Publishing). ISBN 0-615-99269-3.
Liberation Was for Others: Memoirs of a Gay Survivor of the Nazi Holocaust (1997) by Pierre Seel (Perseus Book Group). ISBN 0-306-80756-4.
I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror (1995) by Pierre Seel. ISBN 0-465-04500-6.
Heinz Heger (1994). Men With the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-And-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps. Alyson Books. ISBN 1-55583-006-4.
@CWO:
I hadn’t previously heard the pink triangle claim. What is your source for it?
The Wikipedia article on the subject “Pink Triangle” cites various sources:
1. Plant, The Pink Triangle
2. “English-German Dictionary”. dict.cc. Retrieved November 16, 2013.
3. Plant, The Pink Triangle.
4. Plant, Richard (1988). The pink triangle: the Nazi war against homosexuals (revised ed.). H. Holt. p. 175. ISBN 978-0-8050-0600-1.
5. “San Francisco Neighborhoods: The Castro” KQED documentary.
6. Melissa Eddy (May 18, 2002). “Germany Offers Nazi-Era Pardons”. Associated Press.
7. Brocklebank, Christopher (31 May 2011). “New memorial to gay holocaust victims to be built in Munich”. Pink News. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
8. Gianoulis, Tina (2004). Claude J. Summers, ed. “Pink Triangle”. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Retrieved 2014-09-26. “In the early 1970s, gay rights organizations in Germany and the United States launched campaigns to reclaim the pink triangle. In 1973 the German gay liberation group Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) called upon gay men to wear the pink triangle as a memorial.”
9. “Symbols of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Movements”. lambda.org. Lambda GLBT Community Services. 2004. Retrieved 2014-09-26.
10. Jensen, Erik (2002). “The pink triangle and political consciousness: gays, lesbians, and the memory of Nazi persecution”. Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (1 and 2).
11. “The Pink Triangle, displayed annually on Twin Peaks in San Francisco during Pride weekend”. Thepinktriangle.com. 2012-06-14. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
12. Feldman, Douglas A. and Judith Wang Miller (1998). The AIDS Crisis: A Documentary History. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-28715-5. p. 176
Further reading
An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (1999) by Gad Beck (University of Wisconsin Press). ISBN 0-299-16500-0.
The Iron Words (2014) by Michael Fridgen (Dreamlly Publishing). ISBN 0-615-99269-3.
Liberation Was for Others: Memoirs of a Gay Survivor of the Nazi Holocaust (1997) by Pierre Seel (Perseus Book Group). ISBN 0-306-80756-4.
I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror (1995) by Pierre Seel. ISBN 0-465-04500-6.
Heinz Heger (1994). Men With the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-And-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps. Alyson Books. ISBN 1-55583-006-4.
Thanks for the response. I will have to do more digging to determine whether this is valid, or whether it’s another “lampshades made of human skin” type claim. Without doing further research, I don’t want to commit myself to either possibility.
However, a specific subset of the article stood out:
After the camps were liberated at the end of the Second World War, many of the pink triangle prisoners were often simply re-imprisoned by the Allied-established Federal Republic of Germany.[citation needed] An openly gay man named Heinz Doermer, for instance, served 20 years total, first in a Nazi concentration camp and then in the jails of the new Republic. In fact, the Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality from a minor offense into a felony, remained intact in both East and West Germany after the war for a further 24 years.
Assuming the allegations in the article are accurate, the Nazis’ treatment of homosexuals was basically identical to that of the victorious Allies.
More recent historians have praised him for having had more advanced attitudes towards homosexuals than did most of his contemporaries in Western democracies.
What’s your source for this?
OMG more of this “The Communists are worse than the Nazi’s” –-Godel its like every day with you. The lampshade talk and death talk never ends.
@Imperious:
OMG more of this “The Communists are worse than the Nazi’s” –-Godel its like every day with you. The lampshade talk and death talk never ends.
IL, unless Kurt made and deleted a post, you should probably at least read his posts before mindlessly opposing them because you know he has some different opinions than you.
Kurt’s actual post if from a month ago, and it made no mention of Communism.
Consider the topic and how it migrates to the same old soap box. I did read the posts.
That opinion is revisionist " The Nazi’s are not bad guys" crap where he magically brings up the same points about how the Allies and Stalin were just as bad as Hitler, then worse.
I have this old woman tenant that complains about not having a parking space about every 2 months and i got to hear her whench about that for about 20 minutes of listening to this women ( who never takes a breath speaking the entire 20 minutes), While i put the phone down and watch Bonanza on my DVR and occasionally pick up the phone to check if she is done. Well about half way thru the Bonanza episode, i check and she is finished and waiting for me to talk/reply. To which i repeat: " You never had a parking spot and you never will have one unless either you are paying market rents, or someone just decides that they want to give up their parking spot"
Now i tell her when she calls to never bring up the parking issue and a few other things she complains about every single time.
Funny thing is she stops herself midstream and says " just to make this short– i just want to say…" Which is ridiculous considering the filibuster she unloads.
Go look at his posts… all of them… every single one… i mean EVERYONE… I DID THAT, YOU TRY IT so then you can delete your post.
I think nobody should do the soapbox thing around here, especially pro-nazi talk.
