Were the Nazis socialists?

Summary

History As It Happens: “Were the Nazis Socialists?” (May 19, 2026)

Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Roger Griffin, Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes University, leading expert on fascism

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the contentious and persistent debate: “Were the Nazis socialists?” Host Martin Di Caro seeks clarity amidst political mudslinging and internet tribalism, calling on renowned historian Roger Griffin to separate myth from fact. The discussion explores historical context, ideological complexities, and why the controversy endures.

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Main Themes

• Origins and Evolution of the Debate
• Defining Socialism, Fascism, and National Socialism
• Nazi Program vs. Practice
• Why the Distinction Matters Today

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Detailed Breakdown

1. The Modern Political Debate over "Nazi Socialism"

• Introductory Exchange (01:04–01:44): Clips from a congressional hearing reveal ongoing confusion:

  “It's the Nazis that's terrible, not the socialists.” (01:11, Unnamed Congressional Speaker) “They were the National Socialist Party, but they were Nazis.” (01:13)

• Martin explains that right-wing commentators have fueled this debate by equating National Socialism with left-wing socialism, often for political gain rather than scholarly accuracy.

2. Setting the Historical Record Straight

• Defining Terms (07:06–09:52): Roger Griffin provides the etymology of fascism, tracing its roots to Roman symbols of state power and group solidarity. He stresses that fascism originally meant “a group or league,” not inherently Roman or right-wing.

  “It was a symbol of the power of the state over the individual... But in modern Italian, it just means a group.” (07:06–09:45, Griffin)

• The idea of the group over the individual is central, already distinguishing fascism and early “National Socialism” from liberal individualism.

3. Political Utility of the “Nazi = Socialist” Argument

• Instrumentalization in Modern Politics (11:20–14:00)

  “What interest is it serving to see fascism... as a left wing ideology?... Right wingers can raise this very deep specter of communism, the fear of socialism... That’s... pragmatic.” (11:27–13:39, Griffin)

• Griffin notes that those promoting this view are almost exclusively on the political right, seeking to demonize socialism by association with Nazism.

4. Floating Definitions and the Complexity of 'Isms'

• Dissecting the Meaningfulness of 'Socialism' (14:09–16:25)

  “All isms are... floating signifiers. What they mean, you can't nail them down to mean a certain thing... There is no objective, fixed, neat definition of anything.” (14:09–15:03, Griffin)

• Example: In America, “liberal” means something quite different from how it’s used in Europe; socialism itself has many variants.

5. The Nazi Party Program and Its Socialist Rhetoric

• Early Nazi Policy and the Strasserites (19:05–27:41)
  • Marxist socialists promoted international solidarity and the overthrow of capitalism; National Socialists promoted unity within the German “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft).
  • Notable quote:

    “You end up moving gradually towards national Socialism, small n, small s, which actually sees socialism in one country... a form of socialism which becomes National Socialism.” (21:13–22:25, Griffin)

  • The Nazi party’s left wing (Gregor Strasser, Goebbels early on) was marginalized during the "Night of the Long Knives."

6. What Did “Socialism” Mean to the Nazis?

• National vs. International Socialism (27:41–32:57)
  • Nazi “socialism” was not about socializing the means of production or erasing class, but constructing a racially-defined national community in which every German, regardless of economic status, belonged.
  • Key quote:

    “It is a revolution of mindset and sense of belonging... The national community replaces the international proletariat... It is utterly different from the Marxist concept of a global humanity revolution.” (29:05–31:50, Griffin)

  • In practice, the Nazis left industry and property in the hands of capitalists loyal to the regime, preserving class hierarchy but reconstituting national unity.

7. Nazi Policy in Practice: Not Socialist

• Workers, Capitalism, and Volksgemeinschaft (32:57–38:28)
  • Nazis destroyed socialist/communist trade unions and replaced them with Nazi-run unions.
  • Institutions like “Strength Through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude) aimed to give workers a sense of privilege and belonging, not to liberate them from capitalist exploitation.
  • Roger Griffin:

    “Nazis and fascists who really believed in this national revolution believed that... was to destroy privilege, to destroy corruption, to destroy monopolies, to destroy the class system and replace it by a hierarchical... nation which was exclusive to those considered to really belong.” (34:44–36:05)

8. The Real Difference: National Solidarity vs. Class Solidarity

• Fascism’s Aim to Transcend Class (37:09–38:53)
  • Instead of international solidarity of the proletariat, fascist regimes substituted national solidarity—defining membership by loyalty, race, and shared destiny.
  • Italy’s corporativist economy was a model for organizing labor, business, and state under the regime’s goals.

9. Why the Debate Persists and Why Nuance Matters

• Griffin’s Final Word (38:53–40:25)
  • Right-wing attempts to label fascism as “left-wing” are politically motivated distortions. Ambiguity arises because complex realities defy simple labels.
  • Quote:

    “You need different brushes and you need to question the motivation... It is in the interest of ultra conservatives to fend off any accusation that they are moving to the fascist right... We have to have a much more nuanced view of the world.” (38:53–40:20, Griffin)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Nazi Socialist Rhetoric:

  “We want a society with neither castes nor ranks. Now, that wasn’t Marxism, it was National Socialism.” (05:45, Di Caro summarizing Hitler)

• The Core of Fascism:

  “What is the core of fascism? ... It is palingenesis, rebirth. Rebirth of the nation at an almost anthropological level.” (18:02–18:43, Di Caro)

• On Modern Parallels:

  "Populist right is a form. If you think of Trumpian rhetoric, he could be well accused of a very diluted, non-fascist form of national socialism. It's populist, right-wing, pro-American worker socialism. But that doesn't mean he's a Marxist and it doesn't mean he's a fascist." (39:00, Griffin)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• Congressional Hearing Clips & Modern Debate: 01:04–03:47
• Fascism’s Etymology & Italian Context: 07:06–10:08
• Instrumentalization by Right-Wing Commentators: 11:20–14:00
• Complexity of Political ‘Isms’: 14:09–16:25
• Strasserites and Goebbels’s Socialism: 19:05–27:41
• Analysis of Nazi Program Points: 27:41–32:57
• Nazism in Practice vs. Theory: 32:57–38:28
• Summing Up & Why This Debate Matters: 38:53–40:25

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Conclusion

Final Takeaway:
The Nazis called themselves “socialists” but redefined the term—rejecting Marxist internationalism, preserving capitalist structures, and pursuing a racially and nationally exclusive unity. The debate persists because of political attempts to weaponize historical narratives for modern ideological battles. Griffin urges listeners to understand the difference between the core ideals and the actual practices of historical movements, emphasizing complex reality instead of simple slogans.

Bottom Line:
Nazism is not synonymous with socialism as understood in left-wing, Marxist, or social-democratic traditions. National Socialism was its own, hybrid ideology rooted in nationalism, exclusion, and an anti-Marxist worldview.

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[For further reading, see works by Richard J. Evans, Lawrence Rees, and Roger Griffin.]

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Tap to discover try TikTok now. History as it happens May 19, 2026 were the Nazis socialists?

[C]

Potential is out there for another Hitler Socialists like Hitler to come along with the Nazis.

[B]

It's the Nazis that's terrible, not the socialists.

[C]

Reclaiming my time. They were the National Socialist Party, but they were Nazis.

[B]

They killed Jews and I would get offended when you compare socialists to Nazis. They weren't socialists, they were fascists.

[C]

The Nazi Party.

[B]

It's one of those debates in our hyper partisan too online age that goes away, shedding more heat than light. When the Nazis came on the scene a hundred years ago, it wasn't entirely clear then either. There was socialism and then there was National Socialism. Not on the left, but on the far right of German politics. We'll try to sort it out next with Roger Griffin as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[C]

Because it's in the interests of ultra conservatives to fend off any accusation that they are moving to the fascist right. A populist right is a form if you think of Trumpian rhetoric. He would claim that he's working for the Philadelphian workers, getting work back into America, protecting American workers from foreign competition. He could be well accused of a sort of very diluted non fascist form of national socialism. It's populist, right wing, pro American worker socialism.

[B]

In 2018, at a meeting of the European Parliament, the British politician Syed Kamal said the Nazis were socialists and it caused an uproar.

[C]

We have to remember that Nazis were national socialists. It's a strain of socialism. So let's not, let's not pretend it's a Left wing ideology. They want the same things as you. Let's be quite clear. So, Mr. President, despite all that, despite all that, they don't like the truth. Do you? Yeah. You don't like that. Come on. It's National Socialism, right? Okay, let's. Thank you. A lot happened.

[B]

And the audio clips you heard at the top of this episode were from a congressional hearing in Washington a few years ago. A strange venue for a historical debate such as. It was just mentioned that, sir. And I know you didn't mean it, but think about it. The awful thing about that they were the Nazis. It's the Nazis that's terrible.

[C]

Not reclaiming my time. They were the National Socialist Party, but

[B]

they were Nazis, they killed Jews.

[C]

And I would get offended when you

[B]

compare socialists to Nazis. But maybe not so strange, given the widespread ignorance or confusion over basic political and philosophical subjects. It may be not so strange when you consider the idea that the Nazis or left wingers has been a favorite topic of right wing pundits and politicians who use that history to attack liberals, progressives, socialists, what have you. But is it true? Well, no. If we take socialism to mean the Marxist ideology calling for the overthrow of capitalism and private property and the liberation of the proletariat, the worker, for instance. The historian Richard Evans, in a book review in the Guardian a few years back, excoriated the author Brendan Sims for saying that Hitler's rhetoric was far more anti capitalist than anti communist. The extent to which he was fighting a war against international high finance and plutocracy from start to finish has not been understood at all, Sims argued, while Evans pointed out that the central planks in the socialist platform have always been the belief that that capitalism oppresses the mass of the people and needs to be overthrown or at least moderated and regulated in their interest. Sims claimed that what Hitler did very effectively was to nationalize German industrialists by making them instruments of his political will. But Evans says this was not economic or financial control exercised in the interests of the people. Nor did Hitler nationalize industry or the banks in any meaningful sense of the word. Rather, he set a political course for rearmament as part of his drive to war, and it pushed industrialists such as Thissen and Krupp to devote ever more resources to arms production in the interests of increasing their profits. The result was heightened exploitation of the workers as the overheating of war production forced them, even before 1939, to work longer hours without extra pay. Evans says this was not socialism, whatever else it was. Now Hitler and the Nazis Talked a lot about creating a classless society, a people's community. Our guest in this episode, historian Roger Griffin, says we should watch Triumph of the Will, the documentary by Leni Riefenstahl on the massive 1934 Nazi party rally, to see what that imagined people's community might look like. You standing here today represent something that is happening all over Germany, said Hitler. We want you German boys and girls to absorb everything that we wish for. Germany, we want to be one people. We want a society with neither castes nor ranks. Now, that wasn't Marxism, it was National Socialism. And if you're wondering why that difference matters, Roger Griffin is here. One of the world's foremost experts on the socio, historical and ideological dynamics of fascism, professor emeritus at Oxford Brookes University. Roger Griffin. Welcome back, my friend.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Joining us from Italy, the birthplace of ifascisti, the fascists. That translates to rods in English, right? Strength.

[C]

Well, it's slightly more specific. It's a reference to a symbol of the senator's power in the Roman Empire, which is called fasces, which has an interesting derivation because it comes from the Latin for a rod. But these were a bunch of rods tied around the base of an axe, which makes a neat symbol because it symbolizes the power to either beat with a rod, to whip as a public thrashing, or to cut a head off. And it was a symbol of the power of the state over the individual in order to enforce law and order. But in modern Italian, it has gone through straight from the Latin. Un fascio also just means a group or a bunch. And therefore, un fascia was deeply ambivalent as a word. So it meant a group, and it meant a group. Before the fascists were created, it just meant a political group. And the word started being used during what's known as the intervention crisis, when there were groups trying to get Italy into the First World War. They thought that if Italy could fight in the First World War, the country would be rejuvenated, it would create patriotism, it would stimulate industry, it would create a sense of solidarity, and importantly, they would be part of the peace deal after the war. And even though they were technically allied to the Austrians and the Germans, they actually wanted. They went into the war, and the interventionists wanted them to go into the war on the side of the French and the British and eventually the Americans, because they thought they could get a good deal out of that. So fascia, by the time it was adopted by Mussolini for his new paramilitary group, had already established itself as a neutral term for A paramilitary style rallying lobby. Then it gets used as the symbol of the new fascist party. But far too many historians simply think that this was already a reference to Rome, and it really wasn't. As the fascists got more and more romanized, the Fasces became more and more useful as a Roman simple. But originally it just meant a league, like the German word bund. So it's a good place to start looking at what Nazi and fascist socialism is, because that idea of a group already points to an idea that you're going beyond and away from individualism. This is not a movement based on the cult of the individual as capitalism and modern consumerism is meant to be. It's already placing the group beyond the

[B]

individual, elevating the nation. You know, I wasn't expecting the full history of the term there, but I appreciate you elaborating on that. And then, of course, Mussolini formed his squadristi, the squads who would take rods and beat people over the head. All right, so.

[C]

Well, they also. They make communists drink an oil that gave them diarrhea, which was also one of the punishments. Yeah.

[B]

All right, so political ideologies, Roger Griffin and philosophies are important areas of study. I think today it's self evident with the rise of right wing and left wing populism. But in political discourse, or maybe online discourse, these debates can become, well, rather tribal. Right. The idea that the Nazis were socialists. What I mean by tribal is instrumentalized to make a point. This idea that the Nazis were socialists or left wingers picked up some steam about 20 years ago when a commentator by the name of Jonah Goldberg published a book called Liberal Fascism where he tried to show the origins of modern day progressives are Nazis and Hitler was a leftist, blah, blah, blah. So how do you come at this debate, as a scholar and you pay attention to popular discourse, what people like me talk about on podcasts, you're trying to bridge that chasm. Right, so let's start with that general premise before we start discussing the actual differences between Nazis and socialists.

[C]

Yeah, let's do that. I mean, well, basically, what I've learned to do over time is to ask a lawyer's question, cui borno? What interest is it serving to see fascism, which is conventionally seen as a right wing ideology, as a left wing ideology? And surprise, surprise, you will find when you dig a bit further with people like d' Souza and Goldberg and Reiner Zittelmann in Germany, and I could give you a long list of this, of people with various degrees of academic, academic Complexity and knowledge, trying to recast reposition fascism as a left wing ideology, that they all without exception, are on the right of politics. And then you have to ask, what is the value of re signifying fascism as left? Because it means that right wingers can raise this very deep specter of communism, the fear of socialism, communism, loss of freedom, attacks on religion, the loss of capitalism, attacks on the whole idea of private property, that suddenly by re signifying fascism and locating it on the left, you can annex it to a very deep fear. It's almost as deep as in the early modern Europe. The fear of witches, of socialism as a demonic destructive force in Europe. And it leaves your right wing positions defending holy sacred values like individualism, freedom, right to property, right to religion, et cetera, et cetera. So it's this fear of the collective. And of course, unfortunately, since the Russian Revolution, socialism has in practice what's called actually existing socialism. It's created a whole series all over the world of terrifying totalitarian states which have nothing to do with the original Marxist idealism. So they are reattaching the term fascism to a proven horror, and they're keeping their own right wing values free from contamination by words like fascism. So it's got a very significant pragmatic, tendentious function. If you can dissociate fascism from the right and put it on the left, it means left scrutiny of your own dubious affiliations with things like racism and nationalist war.

[B]

Well, Mussolini at one point had been on the left, not Hitler. But fascism was a right wing movement. I don't understand where this comes from.

[C]

Well, we have to go back to basics. What do we mean? All isms are what they call so beautifully floating signifiers. If you look at them, what they mean, you can't nail them down to mean a certain thing. They are basically our word field and they're associated with a cluster of different things. And it gets even more complicated when you go from political history to political history. A word like liberal, for example, means something different in America than it does in Europe. And if you then go to different systems like socialism or North Korea or whatever, these words will actually shift significantly. So there is no objective, fixed, neat definition of anything. So in a way, the whole semantic thing about what does it mean? If people think that they could find a source with AI or without AI, a quotable, definitive meaning, then that is delusional. Yes.

[B]

Well, that's what happens though, right? Because people will say, I'm sorry to interject here, but they'll go to the Nazi Party program of the 1920s which was ignored. But you can find socialist sounding themes in there.

[C]

Well, absolutely. Let's be academic for a moment. There's a wonderful Oxford professor who spent his life really trying to unpack the idea of ideology. And he ends up with a theory of ideology which says every political ideology can be seen usefully as having a core myth, a core ideal like freedom or equality or female emancipation or whatever. And it develops a cluster around it, what he calls adjacent. They're the close ones and peripheral attributes or qualities around them. I'll give you one example. Fascism in the interwar period is closely associated with a leader cult. But if you look at contemporary fascism, there is no leader cult. To have a leader cult, you need a lot of followers to have a charismatic leader. If you're sitting in a cell of three fanatics in the suburb of Berlin feeding yourself on Nazism, where are you going to get a mass movement from? And where are you going to get a paramilitary force, all uniform from? And where are you going to get the big rallies like the Nuremberg rallies or the big Mussolini rallies? So leadership is not actually a definitional feature of fascism. It's a movable, like a movable feast.

[B]

Same with anti Semitism. Right? Anti Semitism, the Nazis were anti Semites, but the Mussolini guys, they weren't anti Semites until much later. Right.

[C]

That actually is a fallacy, but it's a very interesting one. There was a strain of antisemitism running all the way through fascism, but it moved from, ah, this is the good example of what I've been trying to say. It moved from peripheral or like an underground current into the center. I mean, lots of people think the Nazism was biologically racist and the fascists weren't. Well, that isn't true. There's a journal called Latifaza Dell's the Defense of the Race, written by eugenicists and racial biologists in Italy from the twenties. And the thing is that as fascism starts getting closer to Nazism, that they move to the center. And by the time you get the racial laws of 1938 which declared Jews not to be Italians, biological racism and eugenics have moved much closer to the center, but they're still not definitional. Because lots of people forget that socialists and liberals supported eugenics at the turn of the century. Somebody like H.G. wells, a labour Party idealist, called the Webs in England who created Fabian Socialism, they were eugenicists. So eugenics, for example, is a good example of an attribute of an ism, which is actually Movable between different ideologies. If you said, oh, he's a biological racist and therefore he's a fascist, that is a misuse of words because word fascism. What is the core of fascism? Is it socialist? Do we want to answer that?

[B]

Yes, we should attack that question now. But because I am a graffini, I would tell you the core of fascism or what makes it different from other right wing populist movements is palingenesis, Rebirth. Rebirth of the nation at an almost anthropological level. So Hitler, Adolf Hitler, among his first tasks as he was drifting through life after the First World War, he stayed in the military for a while because he was trying to figure out what to do with himself. And his superior officers gave him political instruction courses in June of 1919. I am taking this from Richard Evans great book, the Coming of the Third Reich. This chapter is titled the Rise of Nazism. The courses Hitler attended were designed to root out any lingering socialist sentiments from regular Bavarian troops and indoctrinate them with the beliefs of the far right. So my question to you, Roger Hitler's views of socialism at any point in his political career. I just referenced 1919. That's the very beginning. Could he have been considered a socialist?

[C]

Well, you see, let's get back to that ism. I mean, what is a socialist? Well, it's very clear for a start, let's start with common sense. There's a revolutionary socialism, Russia, 1919, and there's Maoist socialism, et cetera. Yeah, all the socialist democracies called people's democracies in the Eastern bloc under the Soviet rule. So there is definitely a revolutionary socialism. But there also is a gradualist Fabian anti revolutionary socialism, which is normally called social democracy or democratic socialism. And that specifically renounces the idea of revolution. So you can be a socialist and not want a revolution, but what do you want? Well, conventionally, a socialist sees in unbridled, unharnessed, uncontrolled capitalism a source of massive inequality. Now the crucial thing is where does a socialist see the inequality that has to be remedied? Does he or she see it solely in his own country or does he actually see it as part of a global inequality, which means that you have to somehow redistribute wealth and power globally. And then you start seeing not only capitalism in your own country as the enemy, the bosses, the musks, the multi trillionaires, et cetera. But you see imperialism, you see international capitalism, you see 100 years ago, you see the colonies, you see the exploitation, you see slavery, you see all this as a scourge on humanity, millions and millions of suffering exploited human beings. And you start becoming an international socialist, but not necessarily a revolutionary socialist. If you see your socialism simply as a project for your own country and you see nationalism as the curse of the working classes. As a classic, I mean the standard left wing line on the First World War, nations are fighting each other for the benefit of the industrial capitalists. They were the crooks of the world, the people who were making money out of war. But there's another socialist position where you actually say we want equality for our nation, but we are not part of an international socialist project. And at that point you can start moving towards a form of socialism which becomes National Socialism with a small N and a small size. And at that point you believe you can create more equality in your own country to make it stronger and that you can stop the communists wrecking your country by trying to annex it to Russia and destroy your capitalist industry and the strength of your nation. So you end up moving gradually towards national Socialism, small N, small S, which actually sees socialism in one country. And what you will find very early in the Nazi party is that people like Goebbels and Hitler, but also very importantly a left wing of the Nazis under Gregor Strasser. The Strasserite Nazis were specifically influenced by socialist ideas, but they wanted socialism and the freedom from capitalism. And of course this got bound up with antisemitism, freedom from Jewish finance, Jewish international national exploiters, et cetera. They saw this as the project of Nazism. And it was when the SA was eradicated by Hitler in the Night of the Long Knives that that put pay to the so called left wing of Nazism.

[B]

But Nazism was not a workers movement like the Socialist Party, center left and socialist parties in Germany at the time.

[C]

Well, that's complicated. There is a strange middle class assumption and I'm not accusing you of being middle class. Some people think there's a natural class affinity between if you're very rich, you favor hyper capitalism and if you're middle class, you favor conservative right wing politics and capitalism. And if you're working class, you have a natural affinity with socialism and Marxism. But actually that doesn't function at all because actually it's a lot of the most idealistic socialists come from the middle classes because they are educated enough to have a deep sense of offense from the exploitation that they have the privilege of seeing because of their middle class situation. Especially if they're sort of Christian and they look around and they see, I mean it takes Somebody like Charles Dickens, who documented in his novels the utter poverty of the working classes in London. I mean, that's almost socialist. He sees Britain in the early 19th century, in the Victorian age as an age of absolutely horrific class divides between a brutalized, impoverished working class, poor class living in squalor, and then a totally different world of the middle classes and then a totally different world of the upper classes now. So middle class people can be drawn to radical socialist values. And very interestingly, there's a very powerful tradition in the working class of extreme patriotism. And it's one of the fallacies of middle class intellectuals that working class people are not really nationalistic. What Gramsci. If we're going to get really academic. What the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who was actually arrested and stuck in jail by Mussolini, realized when he started wondering why it was Mussolini in power and not Marxists in power was that they had underestimated the patriotism and nationalism of the exploited people. Most, so called proletariat do not see their situation as being defined by capitalism. They see it as being defined in nationalistic terms by things like foreigners and by high immigration or whatever. They don't analyze their poverty in terms of socialism.

[B]

Tap subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get early access and enjoy all of our bonus content or go to History as it happens dot com. So I'm looking for definitive answers. And your answers are complicated. Yes, because it is complicated. But back to the Nazis. So in the early days of the movement you mentioned Gregor Strasser. You're right. I have Lawrence Reiss's most recent book here. The Nazi Mind. Asked by Hitler to grow the Nazi party in the north of Germany, Strasser discussed with his colleagues a more overtly socialist agenda. Joseph Goebbels was one of Strasser's supporters. And Goebbels wrote in his diary on June 15, 1925, Socialism is the final objective of our fight. Now again, we have to dig into what he means there in context. Is he talking about Marxism or the socialism that you described, a national socialism? And what does that mean today? And Goebbels said he was full of suspense as he waited to read Hitler's latest speech to see if it answered the crucial question, will he be a nationalist or a socialist? Well, maybe both. So I have the Nazi Party program up here from 1925, which was ultimately ignored, in my view. Hitler was definitely not a Marxist and he was not interested in liberating the working class. He did discuss a classless society, but it's different than what we consider today to be Marxism, socialism. I'll just mention a couple of these points here and I'll eventually get to a question. Roger. We demand profit sharing in large industrial enterprises. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class. The immediate communalizing of big department stores. Wow. We demand the ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Criminals, usurers, profiteers. Must be punished with death. Wow. Whatever their creed or race. Sorry, I won't go through all 25 points. Try to unravel that idea.

[C]

Well, I mean, the point is that program, that was the original Nazi program written by Federation. This is absolutely what I was talking about, the Nazis. Basically, after the putsch, Hitler tries to get into power with the putsch in 1923. It fails. He sits in the Landsberg prison in a hotel room. Basically. He dictates his Mein Kampf and he really has to think a lot about what he wants. It is absolutely clear that he hates Marxism. Marxism, along with Freudianism and a lot of other things, is Jewish. It's a Jewish philosophy. Communism is Jewish. It's. It's designed to destroy German greatness, et cetera, et cetera. But he definitely wants a thing, and this is the key to fascist socialism. He wants a national community. Now, that community defines the world into two different groups. And one group is very small in global terms, and the other is very big. The small group is Germans. And these Germans are not all German residents, people with German passports or German birthrights. These are true Germans. And that eliminates a whole shopping list of people who aren't really German. The true German community is defined in historical, racial, cultural terms, ultimately in terms of mindset. If they feel furiously patriotically German to the point of wanting to sacrifice their life to being German and making Germany great again and having a German revolution, then they are part of this mystical thing. Sounds far more mysterious if you don't know German. Volksgemeinschaft simply means community of the racially defined people. The Italians had exactly the same idea about the Italians. The Italians were communita Nazionale. They were a national community in which the individual was defined by his amount of fervor for fascism. Now, what this does, even if economic differences and differences of power and responsibility and social power continue under fascism, they are meant to be experienced by the individual as part of a natural hierarchy, culminating in the leader. If you've got a pretty ordinary job and you haven't got the power or wealth of somebody higher than you. This isn't capitalism anymore. This is all to do with your value to the national community. The national community is classless in the sense that you don't have antagonistic groups fighting each other so that the rich in Nazism didn't see themselves as exploiting ordinary Germans because Germans were given a sense of identity and meaning. And in a way, Nazism was a solution to one of the fundamental problems that Marx himself, Karl Marx, saw about capitalist society, which is alienation. Alienation in your work means that you have no inner attachment to your work because it isn't your job, it isn't your business, it doesn't mean anything to you. Nazism created this fantastic sense of the meaningfulness of what you do. And if you want to see a wonderful scene that illustrates that, go to Triumph of the Will, it's online on YouTube and wait for the scene where you have these German soldiers standing up. And one says, I am the baker for the German people. I bake the bread for the German people. Another says, I dig potatoes for the German people. Another says, I'm an accountant for the German people. And all these people have their own individual job and they will have differentials in salary, but they are now defined by their belonging to a national community. And that national community replaces the international proletariat. It's a vision of the nation as the unit in which you have your utopia, your rebirth, your revolution. And therefore it's utterly different from the Marxist concept of a global human humanity revolution to overthrow exploitation of all kinds. And it licenses hatred of out groups and national war. So yes, there is genuinely a hybridization of the concept of the nation with the concept of socialism. We should take the language seriously. This is a national Socialism, which by definition is anti Marxist, anti communist. And it allows you to keep capitalism going, industry, the church, all these institutions. It minimizes the structural change you need, which you get in, say, the Soviet Union. It is a revolution of mindset and sense of belonging and meaning and authority. The pinnacle of it is your leader. The. The principle of the leader. Il duce. Il duce. So it abolishes Marxism and replaces it with National Socialism. And all these other books written by right wingers like Goldberg or d', Souza, et cetera, are basically pieces of sheer propaganda, utterly unacademic, utterly untrustworthy, because they are just basically tailoring the information to denigrate communism and put the twin enemies of the liberal right in one box. The communists and the fascists.

[B]

So let's talk about then in our remaining time. Nazism in practice, because that's important too. I know there's always a difference between theory, theory and practice. But this is to my point about how Hitler was not a socialist or not a Marxist, not interested in liberating the working class, not interested in doing away with private property. He was preoccupied. I have a couple of points here. With blood, race, nation war, expansionism, we can make a mistake by analyzing Hitler and Nazism as being wedded to doctrines, right? When at the end of the day, in the final analysis, what academic term can I come up with here? In the final analysis at least, this is what Lawrence Reese and others have argued. Hitler was willing to allow the Strasserites and others to bicker underneath him as long as they didn't challenge his authority. Nazism in practice, yes, they did get some working class votes. They worked hard on getting that for political reasons. But as you mentioned earlier, many working class people were not attracted to Nazism because of a Marxist or a socialist or a worker liberation angle. And also, once in power, the Nazis cozied up to the big wigs and they were not interested in liberating workers. It was not a workers movement. From that point on, this is a,

[C]

a very big issue. Let's summarize. Nazism and fascism and all fascisms are viscerally in their deepest instincts, anti international communism, anti Marxist, some of them also because Marx was a Jew. But that's a minor point. What they did in practice, the two regimes, very important is what they tried to do to the economy. Nazism destroys the communist trade unions and the socialist trade unions in Germany. But it does replace it with a Nazi trade union movement which is extremely important and it basically hijacks trade unionism. And there is a national socialist unionism which sort of works. I mean, they did, for example, things like taking high class orchestras into factories. Now you could say this is pure propaganda. I think it goes deeper than that. I think the idea of a Volksgemeinschaft and the idea of actually, I mean, for example, if you look at Doppo Lavoro in Fascism, the leisure organization bussed ordinary Italian peasants to seaside destinations which had only been for the middle classes and gave them a taste of middle class tourism. Now is that propaganda? Well, yes, it did look good on the newsreels, but I think that is superficial. The German Kaftor Freude, the strength through joy organization, spent a fortune of energy and money of the Third Reich before the war. The symbol of that is the Volkswagen. It was the Car made to allow good German workers to have something which was a privilege of the middle classes. And I think it's just nonsense to trivialize this. I think that Nazis and fascists who really believed in this national revolution, believed that one of the tasks of that revolution was to destroy privilege, to destroy corruption, to destroy monopolies, to destroy the class system and replace it by a hierarchical, stratified, socioeconomic nation which was exclusive to those considered to really belong. Which, of course in Nazism meant Aryan blood, not Jewish, not this and that. Even in fascism, if you opposed Mussolini, you didn't get executed, you got sent to Sicily and they had to report to. It was called Confino to the police station. It was far milder. But nevertheless, if you were a part of this revolution, you could live with the illusion that class had been transcended and that you were enjoying a sort of National Socialism.

[B]

Yeah, strength through joy. Those were the vacations for good German workers. And you said, doppo Livoro, you know, I've been taking Italian classes for a couple of years, so I know that means after work. So this was about, right, national solidarity, not the solidarity of the proletariat, but

[C]

they wanted to replace Marxist solidarity between an international proletariat with a national solidarity which did allow for solidarity with other fascist nations. Another thing that is missed is that the Axis between Berlin and Rome was not purely pragmatic. There was a real sense of affinity between Fascist experiments. You would get rid of capitalism as a exploitative mechanism. You would make it serve the nation. You'd make sure that all the bosses and the leaders and the trade union leaders, et cetera, all very good Fascists or Nazis. In Italy, they actually created a new type of economy called corporativism. The ideal was that you'd have a new relationship between the workers, the bosses, and the state, which would harmonize their goals to the interest of national. And in Italy, even after the fall of Mussolini, many of those structures of corporatism were retained. A company like Fiat, for example, it was a fascist company. A lot of people don't realize that it actually means. It's the Latin meaning may there be light. But it also stands for the Turin Motor Manufacturers. But it was a Fascist thriving piece of industry.

[B]

So, wrapping up here, Roger Griffin. I feel like my listeners might be frustrated if only, if only if they came into this conversation hoping to get a definitive piece of ammunition for one side or the other. Yes, the Nazis were socialists. No, the Nazis were not socialists. So I guess that's really not a question. It's really not a clear remark, but I think that's where we have to kind of end this and be comfortable with some ambiguity.

[C]

Yeah. And can we ask readers to beware of books trying to annex fascism to socialism in order to demonize fascists and socialists and tar them with the same brush? You need different brushes and you need to question the motivation and the readership of both because it's in the interest of ultra conservatives to fend off any accusation that they are moving to the fascist right. And unfortunately, Trumpist populism has made this debate even more complicated about fascism and non fascism. But there is, in a way what I want to end with is to say that a populist right is a form. If you think of Trumpian rhetoric, he would claim that he's working for the Philadelphian workers, getting work back into America, protecting American workers from foreign competition. He could be well accused of a sort of very diluted non fascist form of national socialism. It's populist, right wing, pro American worker socialism. But that doesn't mean he's a Marxist and it doesn't mean he's a fascist. We have to have a much more nuanced view of the world and we allow for plurality and complexity. But it is a very important, important aspect of fascism that gets missed. They wanted to really did want to create, with a small N and a small ass a national socialism.

[B]

I'm disappointed we didn't mention palingenesis more often.

[C]

No, no, no. I saved that for only for my inner, inner followers.

[B]

You see on the next episode of History As It Happens. Regime change. It can happen in a lot of different ways and it is back in the news again.

[C]

Regardless.

[B]

Going to revisit the one in Vietnam 1963, Kennedy's coup and no Dinh Diem. That is next as we report History as it Happens and make sure to sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for History as it happens.

[A]

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