[bigdog]

The Nazis Were Marxists

cont....

The Tat Circle is an example of what passes for the Far Right in the Weimar Republic, and if an anti-capitalism and anti-Christian movement is the Right, one must wonder what the Left in Weimar Germany believed.

Germany never had "capitalism," and in his 1938 book, Germany Puts the Clock Back, Edgar Mower writes that when in April 1931 a number of German industrialists visited Soviet Russia they were enthusiastic about the unlimited authority of the Bolsheviks over the workmen, which was what many of them dreamed about for Germany, noting that German owners long since ceased to believe in anything so vigorous as Western capitalism and competition.

While Nazi rhetoric consistently attacked the rich, the well born, the war profiteers, and the industrialists and while Nazi rhetoric consistently championed the working poor, the old, and the unemployed, how did the Nazis act once they had acquired actual power?

If anything, Nazis in power were more hostile to business and to the "rich" when they ran Germany as when they were seeking power through democratic means.

In 1937, four years after the Nazis gained power, Freund wrote of Hitler in Zero Hour that "Only in domestic affairs did Hitler follow his original plan to the letter." Graf von der Golz, the Deputy Commissar in the Ministry of Economics in a speech to businessmen reported in the Nazi periodical Völkischer Beobachter on July 15, 1934:

"Any organization that represents the interests of the employer will be regarded as illegal and disbanded and the guilty parties will be prosecuted." Fritz Thyssen, one of the industrialists who did help bring the Nazis to power, said in 1940: "Soon Germany will not be any different from Bolshevik Russia; the heads of enterprises who do not fulfill the conditions which the ‘Plan' prescribes will be accused of treason against the German people, and shot."

The Nazis on October 16, 1934 raised the highest income tax rate from 40% to 50%, and on February 17, 1939 raised that highest rate again to 55%. A decree of September 9, 1939 again increased income taxes, but exempted incomes of 2,400 Reichmarks a year or less.


Comparative Major European Governments, a 1937 book, notes that through several new laws on December 4, 1934 banking, credits, and stock exchanges passed under complete government control and that the Loan-Stock Law limited stock company dividends to six percent in some cases and to eight percent in others, with profits over that required to be transferred to the Gold Discount Bank, which was in turn required to invest them in government loans or municipal debt service bonds.

Nazi hostility to individual wealth was matched by its hostility to big business. The same act of October 16, 1934 removed the exemption on business taxes for many types of businesses and it increased the progressivity of the business taxes; an act of August 27, 1936 raised the general business tax rate from 20% to 25% and to 30% for each year thereafter;

then on July 25, 1938 corporate profits of more than 100,000 Reichmarks per year were subjected to an additional tax of 35% with that rising to 40% for each year thereafter; and on March 20, 1939, the Nazis imposed an excess profits tax. In four years, Nazis had raised taxes to approximately one fourth of the national income.

Stephen Roberts, in his 1937 book, The House That Hitler Built, noted that compulsory loans had been extracted from banks and insurance companies, and that these grew to such an extent that armament firms complained that they no longer could bear this in addition to all the other assessments like the eight percent Labor Front charges assessed.

Dr. Schacht, an economist who worked for the German government after the Nazis took power, had been compelled to fight with the Leftist economists within the Nazi Party, and that he had refused to join the Nazi Party for a long time. Dr. Schacht had also opposed the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis as economically unsound.

The Loan Stock Law of December 4, 1934 virtually confiscated all dividends of six percent or, in some cases, eight percent by ordering the beneficiaries of stock dividends to invest those monies in state bonds. Even this was deemed to be too generous to the rich.

The original promise to pay these stockholders in cash or other bonds was revoked in 1937 through the issuance of tax certificates which bore no interest at all, and beyond that, the owners of these tax certificates could not use them to pay their income taxes or their capital profits tax -- they could only use them beginning in April 1952, and then only in installments.

In January 1935, all mortgage banks and similar institutions were authorized to "offer" to owners of obligations issued by them a cut to 4.5% per cent in annual interest, for which the owner was to be compensated through a special payment corresponding to two percent of the face value of the obligation and this was "deemed" accepted unless the owner rejected it "in writing" and "within ten days"; in the latter case he also was forced to deposit the obligation with the credit-giving institution.

David Shoenbaum states in his book, Hitler's Social Revolution, that business was frustrated by the failures of the Nazis and soon began simply reading official scripts. And from the 1937 book, The House That Hitler Built, Roberts dismisses as "fantastic" the stories that Hitler came to power as the nominee of the Thyssen group, noting that Hitler received little money from industrialists until 1930, and the Krupp group, a major armaments builder, opposed Hitler as late as 1932.

Once in power, the Nazis checked the industrialists, grabbed for the state dividends above six percent, forced employers to keep unnecessary workers, made them scrap modern labor-saving machinery, and coerced contributions for all kinds of Party purposes.

The Nazis passed legislation to make it difficult to form or maintain corporations and to limit the authority of directors of corporations or of stockholders in corporations. Directors of corporations, for example, were allowed to grant bonuses only upon condition that they were directly tied to profit and upon condition that the board of directors authorize "voluntary social contributions" to employees, granting employees effectively an automatic share in corporate profits.

Later, the tax on directors' fees was increased from 10% in March 1933 to 20% in February 1939. The capital market in Germany was almost completely closed to private issues and banks were subject to a succession of compulsory levies, confiscated reserves and increasingly high taxes. In March 1939, a decree liquidated virtually all holdings of foreign securities.

The Nazis also simply expropriated, with or without compensation to the business owners, canals, dams, roads and other private enterprises if ownership was deemed in the interest of the Reich.

Even if some compensation was given to the owners, the owners themselves could not request compensation for virtual seizure of their businesses when the government wished to seize them.

The same year, the Reich Supreme Court for Finance and Taxation invalidated claims for tax deductions for two spinning mills in Saxony, noting that prior law could be ignored and that tax laws had to be interpreted according to a "National - Socialistic" perspective, to the great detriment of business.

Even when private property rights were suspended by the Nazis in the interests of the "people's community," if there was any compensation to the property owners, "speculative gains" were taxed away.

Vera Micheles Dean in her 1939 book, Europe in Retreat, written before the Second World War began, said that the Nazis had introduced into Germany a form of graduated Bolshevism, focusing first upon Jewish bankers, industrialists and businessmen, but then upon other businesses, noting that the Nazi goal, from which it had not deviated, was to establish an egalitarian society in which everyone is equal and subordinate to the state.


The same year Time Magazine wrote that the "most cruel joke of all" has been how Hitler treated those capitalists and small businessmen who thought National Socialism would save them from radicalism. Some businesses had been expropriated; some were subjected to a capital tax; all had profits strictly controlled; and all were subjected to intense government regulation.

The Nazi regime also had taken over big estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism. The same year Dorothy Thompson wrote that, having robbed the Jews, the Nazis were beginning to rob the Church, and later will almost certainly expropriate the property of the bourgeoisie.

Rauschning in 1938 wrote of Nazi economic policies, "The expropriation of property will inevitably follow, as well as the complete abolition of private enterprise."

Lunn noted the very same year that the decline of economic conditions in Germany was because of socialism and bureaucracy which was leading Germany toward foreign adventures. Two years later, in 1941, Karl Lowenstein wrote that even if industry and big business had helped Hitler into power, these men found a much sterner master in National Socialism.

The Nazis regulated business to death and they were completely indifferent to the effect this had upon businessmen, who the Left often had presented as the secret masters of Nazism.

The Anatomy of Nazism, published by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in 1961, noted that many industrialists who had supported Hitler found out that the Nazis were their masters, not servants, and that an enormous amount of private correspondence was simply new bureaucratic red tape imposed by a vast, new Nazi system of controls.

Fodor the following year wrote that now there was no doubt that the National Socialist regime truly justified the second part of its name, which a few years ago probably was only "window-dressing."

In 1941, former Nazi boss of Danzig, Hermann Rauschning, wrote that the last part of the German Revolution was Nazism, which was just as much a realization of Marxist as of nationalist ideas, and he notes that the only ones who refuse to admit this are supporters of Marxist theories and Nazis themselves.


Rauschning also writes in his book that Marxism itself was part of a single great revolutionary movement which included Marxist Socialism, Nazism, Communist Bolshevism, Fascism and nihilism. Rauschning knew Hitler well and repudiated him and his movement at great risk before the rest of the world recognized the full danger of Nazism.

Karl Lowenstein in the 1940 book, Governments of Continental Europe, writes that there was a convergence in Bolshevism and National Socialism regarding private property, and that this was clear long before Hitler and Stalin became allies.

Such things as freedom of contract, inviolability of private property, and the right to dispose of one's estate were cited as examples of the deep-reaching restrictions in both totalitarian states. National Socialists were socialists.

They had nothing but contempt for what socialists call "capitalism" or what normal people call economic freedom. While it is convenient to portray Nazis as beholden to industrialists and militarists, even from the earliest days Nazis loathed not only industrialists in general but armament makers in particular.

The Nazis raised taxes, punished profits, reduced the power of owners, of managers, and of directors and championed the right of the state or the party to "protect" Germany and German workers from abuses of "capitalists

Nazis were Marxists, through and through.

Although Nazi condemned Bolshevism, the particular incarnation of Marx in Russia, and although the Nazis often bickered and fought with Fascism, the particular incarnation of Marx in Italy, Hitler and his ghastly accomplices were always and forever absolutely committed to that which we have come to call the "Far Left." Nazis were Marxists.