what were you taught?
January 23rd, 2007 by 
bkmarcus
Here's what I think is an elegant demonstration of the bias in how history is taught: Ask a few friends if they were taught that the Nazis opposed communism. I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't remember much of anything they were specifically taught about the Nazis, but I'm guessing most will answer yes. To those who do, ask this follow-up question:
Were you taught that the Nazis opposed capitalism?
My own experience is that almost no one remembers being taught that — presumably because almost none of us ever were taught that.
Even those who know and remember that "Nazi" is an abbreviation for…
National Socialist German Workers Party
… often fail to think through what the name might mean.
Here's Joseph Göbbels in a 1932 pamphlet:
I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.
[…] If we make clear to the man of the left that nationalism and capitalism, that is the affirmation of the Fatherland and the misuse of its resources, have nothing to do with each other, indeed that they go together like fire and water, then even as a socialist he will come to affirm the nation, which he will want to conquer.
[…]
Socialism will become reality when the Fatherland is free.
Why Are We Socialists?
We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.
Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class.[…]
According to Wikipedia, Göbbels had written an open letter to "my friends on the left" seven years earlier, urging unity between socialists and Nazis against the capitalists. "You and I," he wrote, "we are fighting one another although we are not really enemies."[source]
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:36 pm
This is overly simplistic, bordering on the naive. The Nazis were masters of propaganda, and one of their tactics was to appropriate the mantle of European Socialism while carefully building up a Corporate State. Mussolini was more honest: "Fascism should more properly be called Corporatism". Germany's industrial corporations backed the Nazis all the way, and profited handsomely. The "Socialism" angle was a joke.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Well corporatism is a variety of socialism, too. From a certain perspective, it is state capitalism, or socialist capitalism.
But in terms of free-market capitalism, the Nazis believed in its antithesis.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:53 am
In the same pamphlet Goebbels ties Nazi opposition to Jews to their anti-capitalism: "The Jew is uncreative. He produces nothing, he only haggles with products... As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods."
There's something I definitely wasn't taught in gov't school!
January 25th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Once a communist on Berkeley's campus was badgering me for supposedly not having read the Communist Manifesto. I told him I see about as much value in it as I do in Mein Kampf. He said, "How can you say that? How can you compare a tract calling for a workers' revolution against capitalist exploitation to the views of the Nazis?" I couldn't stop laughing.
February 14th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I hope you were laughing at your own ignorance. It is important to read. You can then be an informed critic of your opponents. Ford, IBM, BMW, Brown Brothers, and Prescott Bush's bank all made profits from Nazi Germany. Hitler was a stooge enabled to discredit socialism just as Stalin and Lenin were stooges to discredit communism. Capitalism will soon die since any Democracy or Republic cannot last under Capitalism. Capitalism favors those with wealth and power. It pacifies a few with fame, riches, and popularity but ultimately capitalism is not compatible with a free society since those with more capital are inherently more free than others.