Fascism and The Third Reich

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Those Nazi's had their moments, but if you look at what those facsists did with that tiny country to turn around economicly in just 10 years after the war and bring the country right to the brink of world domination, you can't help but be impressed. If Hitler had invaded England, which very well could have happened there would probably be a lot more german speaking people in the world today to say the least. The Nazi's had some seriously perverted ideals, yes but the point that is never appreciated is how they served their population (before destroying their country) is unprecidented. Republican, communist, whatever, whoever, every government ever never came close to providing as much for their people as they did. They made jobs, provided food and shelter for everyone, (that they deemed to be part of their idea) but it has to go to show the immense power that a government has to help people if they were so inclined. The problem is, is that there ARE no governments that serve people, they only serve the power structures who control the world (I call it capitalism despots). Any time anything gets close to that structure it gets singled out and destroyed, in defeating Hitler the capitalist despots managed to win back their control over the worlds economy and keep power away from the masses.

quote="Ambivalence"]

Not designed. Evolved over the last eight thousand years or thereabouts of market forces.

He is wrong. Money itself is an amoral tool which can easily be misused. The important thing is that many people are prepared to do so.[/quote]

So answer me this, is there any other way to beat the capitalist despots other than to nationalize the justice, economic, and banking systems because history sure hasn't shown any other alternatives.

Communism fails. I'd explain more but I feel rather lazy.

Here are the basic problems though:
1) Communism tends to promote an unadaptive institutional framework that cannot really correct itself with any ease.
2) Communism relies on the judgments of policy makers to a higher degree than those policy makers have knowledge on what the idea policy would be.
3) The morality of government leaders would become greatly more important, and yet monitoring them would still be as problematic.
4) Many successes seen in a relatively short time period are partially issues of just creating a massive amount of demand, but they don't necessarily reflect the long run ability of a nation to grow and improve itself or adapt. Even the USSR had a very high growth rate at first, but it decayed and then died.
5) The degree of social control given and required would likely prove incompatible with a free society of any sort.

Perhaps you'll disagree. I mostly called the Nazis "socialist" mostly because that's the element being exalted about their system. However, at least I've probably given a start to the matter.

Hitler didn't serve the German people but his dream of European domination and ethnic cleansing. In defeating Hitler the British and American protected themselves.

Do you mean that a "government who serve its people" is worth suffering from dictatorship, genocides and war crimes ? Did you know that this people is defined only from racist criteria ?

Most snappily dressed military ever.
It's a shame the unethical stuff and aggressive expansion happened, those were some cool uniforms.

^Too much leather for my taste.

Anyway: I don't know much about the economics of Nazi Germant, admittedly, but I seem to vaguely remember something about most of the jobs Hitler created was in the armament industry.. Probably wrong, though.

Fascism and Nazism are two completely different streams of political philosophy.

Fascism is based on national syndicalism. Nazism is based on national socialism. Hitler banned strikes and unions. Fascism is rooted in unions.

While Fascism and Nazism are both nationalist, Nazism promotes superiority based on controversial genetic classifications, while Fascism promotes superiority based on nationality.

Fascism is strongly anti-intellectual, while Nazis encouraged intellectualism, considering the Aryan man to be the pinnacle of wisdom and strength.

There are many other differences. You can't compare and confuse the two.

The early successes of Nazism is due to good economic policy. Likewise, Maoism failed (the CPC became Maoist only in name after Deng Xiaoping came to power) due to terrible economic policies. It has nothing to do with ideology.

It's been done. Command economies fail. Some current command economies: Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba, rural areas under the control of FARC-EP in Colombia. My country was a command economy until 1991 too. One with a terrible human rights record hidden under the banner of democracy and socialism.

Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman argue that economic freedom is required for civil and political freedoms. I agree with them to a certain extent.

Last edited by Khan_Sama on 28 Jun 2010, 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

The NSDAP and Italy under Mussolini are the two prime examples of fascism.


Unions were a major part of the communist movement, and fascism/Nazism are anti-Communist, hence banning the unions.


They were German nationalists, and they tried to define nationality on ethnic grounds, leading to their racial classifications.


Dunno where you get this, but Nazism was very anti-intellectual. The members of the NSDAP were almost all uneducated, and the party had a reputation for being intellectually unsophisticated and coarse.


The Nazi economic policy only produced results that appeared good in the short term, but they were not even remotely sustainable. You could similarly argue that the Soviets had a great economic system because the USSR never went through the Great Depression, but we were able to observe historically that their system was doomed to collapse.

Hi Orwell, thanks for replying. I originally thought the same, but my textbook says otherwise. I would suggest you present that argument to Eddy Asirvatham and K.K. Misra.

On the last point, yes. I meant the early successes. They were indeed non-sustainable.

And well, regarding the Soviet Union - it went through different cycles of change. The first was 'war communism', followed by Lenin's policies regulating small business ownership. Stalin reverted it to a total command economy in the form of 5-year plans, followed by the destalinisation process which once again liberalised small business ownership (I'm not so sure in this area - just read briefly years ago) but continued 5 year planning. I would say that the collapse of the USSR was mainly due to Gorbachov's decentralisation and granting the various Soviet Republics greater powers, along with the disaster of the Afghan campaign, rather than economic policy which is secondary. It's a personal opinion - your opinion is totally welcome and appreciated.

For that time period and that level of technology. I'd dare to say that the Bush doctrine on forward is a modern example of fascism that was solidified under the 9/11 attacks.

Things change as time and technology moves.

Interesting. I haven't read that particular book, but I am basing my opinion largely on one of my history professors who studies German political and diplomatic history, mostly from Bismarck to Hitler.


Well, the Stalinist collectivization programs allowed for some astonishing feats, but at a tremendous and unsupportable cost. I don't know if Gorbachev can be blamed for the USSR's collapse. Certainly he had his part to play, but the Soviet Union was already falling apart in many ways. Glasnost and Perestroika were necessary to prop up a dying state, but they ended up pulling its foundation out from underneath it.

I think that the economic issues would have taken down the USSR even in the absence of Gorbachev's liberalization policies and the failure in Afghanistan. The old-line Communists did not have any sensible or consistently implemented system that could realistically last much longer.

If Hitler had stopped with restoring Germany's place among nations and undoing the injustice of the Versailles Treaty he would have been celebrated as the greatest statesman in Germany history, greater than Bismark. But Hitler was a psychopath and a monster and he lead his nation to ruination.

ruveyn

Can either of you prove that the Nazi economic policy was not sustainable?

What do you demand as "proof"? Also, what elements are you trying to defend? It seems to me that the Nazi regime was similar enough to other controlled economies that many of the criticisms applied there could also apply to the Nazi economic policy. In fact, Orwell makes an explicit comparison between the two movements.

Interesting that you're trying to pick holes in my post rather than Orwell's or Khan Sama's. Both of them have asserted that the Nazis' economic policies were unsustainable, but they have barely supported that assertion at all.
I see you have made a small attempt at that by stating that "it seems" to you "that the Nazi regime was similar enough to other controlled economies that many of the criticisms applied there could also apply to the Nazi economic policy." But I will say now that it seems to me that this is not so.
Nazi Germany's economy was very successful before the war. I think the onus is on those who believe that in the absence of war it would not have remained so to explain why.

You have to recognize that was the first on this thread to question the viability of fascism, effectively equating it with a command economy, which I regard as unsustainable for reasons I argued earlier. I know they barely supported their assertion, but I believe they are taking a thought process similar to my own. If they argue something that I consider ridiculous, then I might start attacking them.


Well, you can clarify as to why you think that the Nazi movement's efforts are different enough from the USSR's economic organization for your point. I see in Nazi Germany the existence of massive economic control policies, such as wage control and other things, which while seeming like "free enterprise" really creates a form of a corporate command economy.

If the Nazi movement really is a command economy of some form, then both the success and the later failure can be explainable using that model by comparing the Nazi economic model to that of the USSR and China, and merely tailoring the explanation to deal with the variations involved.

Hitler did invade the Channel Islands and, as the people there are British, that provides a very interesting look at how we would have fared if we had been occupied.

Answer: we would have collaborated to survive.