Was Hitler's regime a right-wing regime?

Question

Left- and right-wing ideologies seem to change over time.

From what I've read so far, the Nazi regime was considered a right-wing party at that time by the people who voted it.

But currently, right-wing activists reject it based on economic grounds. They claim there was no free market, competition etc. But is this really an argument? Because a free market can exist in both leftist and rightist systems. However, I think it tends to degenerate in their extremes. Specifically, a far-left regime will end up granting to much control to the goverment (communism), while a far-right regime should theoretically end up in grating all the power to the wealthiest person(s), so the result is the same. Unlike communism, I'm not aware of the existence of any far-right governments in the present day.

Leaving aside economics, which seem common to both wings, could the Nazis be labeled as right-wing because of their social views (e.g. "The strong has the natural right to rule the weak")?

Answer 1

I think this question illustrates that a simple division of politics in left and right is an oversimplification. One may find that people use left to describe either pacifist, anarchist idealists, whereas other people would classify the Soviet Union as left; the two are very different. Likewise, people may describe Ron Pauls ultra-libertarian ideas as right-wing, but also nazism as far-right; the two are again very different. So phrases like left and right are simply insufficient to describe political positions.

The diversity in answers to this question, as well as the controversy of my answer there (presently +13 -6) also illustrates that the meaning of the phrases left and right are subjective. Personally, I would describe any military dictatorship as far right, but that would be the in the fascism sense of the word, not in the ultra-libertarian sense.

As to more explicitly answer your question: could the nazis be labeled as right-wing because of their social views? — in my opinion, yes. In fact, that is what my controversial answer boils down to — in that answer, I characterise the left-right scale as horizontal vs. vertical power structures. In that interpretation, the strong rule the weak would certainly fall to the far right.

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Side-note: One definition of fascism I have seen jocularly defines fascism as any political idea one violently disagrees with ;). Maybe in the US right the word socialism has supplanted this meaning ;)

Answer 2

The Nazi party was called Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party). As you can note, if you remove "German", you could apply this label to any number of current left-wing parties, and it would fit nicely. No right-wing party I know calls itself "Socialist" or "Workers'", though some do call themselves "National". Nazis themselves insisted they are the right (as in, "correct") socialist party - as opposed to the wrong socialist party, the Bolsheviks.

Name, however, does not define the ideology. Actions do. Let us consider the main traits of the Nazi regime:

• Extreme nationalism. This can be and were, in history, component both of right and left parties.
• Totalitarian control over the information and enforcement of specific ideology, leaving no space for dissent. This is a trait of many left-wing regimes, such as communist ones, but not exclusively.
• Strict governmental control over the economy, while leaving the means of production formally private. This places them at the left - while many left ideologies want to remove private ownership completely, others are content with mere control and not outright ownership. Publicly Nazis were opposed to capitalism, associated it with Jews and vigorously attacked it. Private ownership was greatly restricted and some property - like land - while formally owned, could not be sold or used contrary to the wishes of the state. Overall, this is associated with left-wing ideology.
• Women rights - Nazis ideas about women's place were "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" (children, kitchen, church) which places them at the far right. Other minority rights were similarly non-existent with them.
• Religious matters - Nazis were relatively tolerant to religions that not interfered with their goals, while vigorously persecuting ones that opposed them. Both left and right did that, so here we do not have definite difference.
• Relationship between the individual and the state - the Nazis were very collectivist (where the collective is the nation), which places them on the left.

I would say that economically Nazis were on the left, though not as far left as, say, communists, while socially they were on the very far right.

Answer 3

It was certainly a right-wing regime. German politics at the time had the following rough divisions:

A far left wing, personified by the KPD and USPD, which wanted a radical redistribution of wealth from rich profiteers to people at all levels; a social reorganization, doing away with noble, military, landowning, and industrial elite rulers; and an end to class distinctions and to military adventures that benefited those elites.

A center-left, mostly the SPD (mainstream socialists), which the USPD broke away from during World War One because the SPD wanted to support the war effort. The SPD wanted a more democratic and less autocratic progression to socialism, with a welfare state.

A center, which included the Zentrum (the Catholic Center Party, with mostly Catholic voters, advancing Catholic concerns) and the DDP (the German Democratic Party, an economically liberal ['liberal' in the economic sense, not in the American left-wing sense] party which received more Jewish votes than other parties did), and which tended more to social inclusion than the far right, but didn't want to completely do away with all class distinction or profit-making as the far left.

A center-right, best personified by the DVP, which accepted "traditional" social roles and capitalist profit-making and class distinctions of one kind or another, but which also was too "internationalist" (that is, they cooperated with France and America in renegotiating reparations payments) and not militaristic enough for the far right.

And a far right, personified by the DNVP and the Nazis, which absolutely rejected initiatives of international amity with the former Allies of World War One; which wanted a remilitarized Germany; which did away with many vestiges of class such as the nobility, and which asserted military primacy over the landowning and big bourgeois industrial classes, but which also allowed all the profiteering a fat-cat could want, as long as Hitler had no vendetta and the war effort wasn't hindered (the Nazis' original 25-point program, see http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1708-ps.asp, contained points against war profiteering, but this was of course never enacted, in the case for instance of officials such as Goering, who enriched himself beyond belief); which hated trade unions; which wanted a return to "traditional" social roles (a curtailment of liberation of women or gay people); which was virulently nationalist and almost completely bigoted (though the DNVP did have Jewish founder members such as Fritz Arnold); which was reactionary against the Communist and Socialist revolts that sprang up across Germany especially in 1918-23; and which intended (in the Nazis) war to reclaim Germany's lost land in the east.

Briefly: on the left, an end to profiteers amassing huge wealth; to Germany's old military, landowning, industrial, and noble hierarchy; and to military imperialism. On the right, complete acceptance of profiteering (provided the war effort wasn't hindered); continuation of old hierarchies except the royalty and nobility, with the military at the top; nationalism that always sought a group to exclude, whether by ethnicity, national origin, or religion; and an almost insane devotion to military rearmament and conquest, and explicit embrace of imperialist, aggressive warmaking. Those were (and still are) right-wing traits, and those were the traits of the Nazis. They had very few initiatives that could be described as "socialist" except their nationalization of industries and materiel crucial to the war effort (and in that context, America and Britain did the same thing; see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/business/worldbusiness/13iht-nationalize.4.16915416.html?_r=0).

People on the American right have lately claimed that the word "socialist" in "National Socialist" means that the Nazis couldn't have been right-wing, but this is nonsense, as Hitler busted unions, sided with big bourgeois management, cut welfare payments (as Professor Richard Evans writes about in "The Third Reich in Power"), etc., and hardly enacted any socialist policies at all (unless someone thinks building roads makes a country "socialist").

Answer 4

I think that Nazi regime was unique in world history in that it unlike any other regime before and after had two faces: it externally pretended to be a left-center force, a left-centrist socialist pro-workers, progressive, industrialist, anti-monarchist, anti-religious, pro-women rights, pro-animal rights, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist party. But in reality it turned out that Nazism was actually far more right than any monarchists, Russian "black-hundreds" and conservatives were before. It was hiding its ultra-right face for a while to achieve popular support.

This duality led to many mistakes by individuals and politicians who made deals with Nazi party and Nazi Germany. German Cristians thought they are dealing with a centrist patriotic party when voting for enabling act. Vatican thought Hitler is quite like Mussolini: a moderately conservative centrist. Stalin thought he was dealing with a left-center party of small bourgeoisie. Ethnic minorities also thought Nazis are pro-national self-determination and cultural autonomy.

Many Jews saw that Nazis for a first time in 2000 years allowed Jews to have their own police, ambulance service, postal service, orphanages, and even telephone stations. They did not knew the orphanages and hospitals were designed to quickly separate those unable to work. Nobody could imagine Nazis will kill people in new shining uniforms they just designed for Jewish police (no other regime gives a forage cap with a badge to a condemned enemy).

Many Russians and Ukrainians believed Germans will build a moderate form of Socialism without collectivization and other excesses of Soviet Union.

Many Germans believed that Nazis really protect animal rights for ethical reasons, not just to make a ban on Jewish meat.

In reality it turned out that even conservative clergymen looked like Bolshevicks compared to Nazis.

This masquerade became possible because Hitler departed from earlier tradition typical for ultra-right, volkishe movements. Initially he was even criticized from the far-right positions for even use of the word "party" instead of traditional for the right-wing "league" "movement" or "union". But Hitler was smarter. He abandoned monarchism in favor of unrestricted ultimate dictatorship. He pursued clergy because they were too left for him and Christian principles were too egalitarian and not enough anti-Semitic, although historically religious Christians were the most anti-Semitic group. He denounced aristocracy and social estates in favor of eugenics. He denounced right-wing to promote ultra-right instead.

Answer 5

Just for fun, I filled out a modern American political quiz with the answers that I think Adolf Hitler would have given. Let's see where it goes.

• Abortion is a woman's unrestricted right — Strongly Oppose. Abortion was a felony in Nazi Germany. Well, at least for an “Aryan” woman carrying a healthy child. As many people on the right will point out, abortion was very much supported for “undesirable” racial groups or in cases of genetic diseases. Still, the motivation here was preserving the purity of the race, and not of “women's rights”.
• Legally require hiring more women & minorities — Strongly Oppose. The Nazis believed that women belonged at home. And they definitely wouldn't want to hire more minorities.
• Comfortable with same-sex marriage — Strongly Oppose. The Nazis were very opposed to homosexuality.
• Keep God in the public sphere — Support. The Nazis promoted a state-sponsored religion, though not quite traditional Christianity.
• EPA regulations are too restrictive — No Opinion. Well, they did have the blood and soil movement, but AFAIK the Nazis otherwise didn't focus much on environmental regulations.
• Make voter registration easier — Strongly Oppose. On the grounds that they weren't really into the whole “democracy” thing in the first place.
• Stricter punishment reduces crime — Strongly Support. The Nazi's believed in a strict law-and-order policy.
• Absolute right to gun ownership — Support. They promoted gun ownership for self-defense and military purposes, and relaxed Weimar-era gun regulations (e.g., removing permit requirements for long guns, and lowering the purchase age from 20 to 18). OTOH, they forbade non-Aryans from owning guns.
• Expand ObamaCare — Oppose. Of course, the wording here is too US-centric.
• Vouchers for school choice — Strongly Oppose. The Nazis believed in a state-controlled “education” system, and did not support school choice. Nor homeschooling, a ban that persists in Germany to the present day.
• Prioritize green energy — No Opinion. See above for EPA regulations.
• Marijuana is a gateway drug — Support. I can't find any specific Nazi laws on marijuana. But given its reputation elsewhere as a vice of “unproductive degenerates”, Hitler probably would have frowned on it.
• Stimulus better than market-led recovery — Support. I don't know if Hitler ever considered the 2020-style idea of handling a recession by sending a bunch of government checks to individuals. But doing so would have made it possible to limit the benefits to Aryans, and for the Party to take credit for the recovery, so I think he would have liked the idea.
• Higher taxes on the wealthy — Strongly Oppose. The Nazis avoided increasing personal income taxes for as long as possible.
• Pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens — Strongly Oppose. It goes against their whole racial purity idea.
• Privatize Social Security — No Opinion. AFAIK, the Nazis never considered it.
• Support & expand free trade — Strongly Oppose
• Expand the military — Strongly Support. And how!
• Support American German Exceptionalism — Strongly Support.
• Avoid foreign entanglements — Strongly Oppose. Expansionism and militarism necessarily require foreign entanglements. And they had an alliance with Italy and Japan.

Plugging in these answers gives Hitler a political philosophy label of Populist Conservative, with a Personal Score of 5%, and and Economic Score of 53%. Perhaps some of my individual answers are debatable, but I doubt it would change the overall rating too drastically. So yes, it's fair to say that Hitler was right-wing.

But before you use this information as yet another excuse to bash Trump, note that the Overton Window of Nazi Germany was very different. While many right-wing politicians may “strongly oppose” affirmative action programs or permissive immigration, and thus be considered “racist” by the left, that's nowhere near the same as committing genocide.

And the great Jew-hater would surely balk at today's American conservatives being friendly towards the State of Israel, or having Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager as prominent commentators.

Answer 6

First of all what "left" and "right" refer to. Originally they were the sitting order in parliament after the French Revolution where different factions grouped together on different sides of the room. And the modern usage of these terms is modeled roughly after their political stances.

So the "right" had the conservatives, traditionalists, often religious people and those believing in a natural order of the old regime (church supported absolute monarchy). While the "left" had the revolutionaries, arguing for freedom, equality and brotherhood.

So abstracting from that apparently modern sociology uses the left-right schema as denoting how much a party, group, person, country and so on is in favor or against social hierarchies.

Where left wingers are opposed to social hierarchies and want equality, while right wingers are in favor of social hierarchies or at the very least are fine with them and consider them unavoidable.

This is a pretty useful distinction that helps differentiating a whole bunch of ideologies and applications of ideologies. So for example if you think of all people as equal in value and reject the idea of supremacy/inferiority then international ideas probably reflect that more than nationalist ideas, which favor the progress of one's own nation of that of everybody else's and which often come with ideas of chauvinism/xenophobia/racism towards real or perceived "outsiders".

So with regards to the fact that the Nazis were national(chauvin)istic/racist/xenophobic/antisemitic/abelist/sexist/... Seriously they pretty much checked the box of all of these discriminatory -isms. So with regards to whether they considered human beings as equal or whether they believed in a hierarchical system the answer is a clear 2nd. They were not just considered "right-wing" but FAR-RIGHT. Like they introduced military hierarchies into nearly all domains of life and they have a tough time finding movements and ideologies to the right of themselves.

Though even though we already placed the Nazis on the left-right scale. Let's also for completion talk a bit more about the problem with that scale. And no it's not technically that there are too few axis and it's theoretically also easy to place economical points of view on that scale. Like in it's original idea socialism, basically coops where the workers of a company also own that company and decide for themselves (democratically) what they work, how they work, how they distribute what has been produced or how they invest it. Is a pretty leftist idea, it treats people as equals and avoids social hierarchies but instead goes out of it's way to ensure that in the workplace. While capitalism, where you have a owner/worker relation where the owner can command people to their will, and if they are in dire economic conditions even against their will, and thus have a higher place in the social hierarchy is more right wing.

So while the racist, the nationalist and the capitalist are all in favor of social hierarchies, they don't necessarily need to agree on that hierarchy. So for a capitalist it might be structured by capital, for a racist, race takes the cake and for a nationalist it's the nation. So while it's possible for a racist to make use of capitalism to enforce it's racist ideas, a capitalist could seek his own supremacy over other people without caring positively or negatively about race. So it's a can not a must condition and while the Nazis checked many of these boxes at the same time that only intensifies the rating but isn't necessary.

The real problem occurs though if you try to measure theory and praxis at the same time. Such as looking at "real life socialists". Like as said the theory sounds pretty leftist, but the application... a central state which has the monopoly of power both economically and politically, a hierarchy of party bureaucrats, often "in one country" so nationalist rather than internationalist to the point of fascism. That's actually closer to being right wing than left wing.

On the other end individualism can have variations that are pretty left wing, if everybody does their own thing and doesn't try to subjugate others, that's in no conflict to equality and the lack of social hierarchies, in fact it could be one and the same thing. However if one of them takes a supreme position and uses the individual rights to prevent other people from accessing theirs, then you've got a contradiction, a gradient of power and a social hierarchy which isn't necessarily implied by the ideology but existent in the application.

So you often have the problem of parties being described or even self-described as left/right, but in terms of what they are doing there might be a rather meaningful difference between proposed goals and achieved goals. That being said in terms of the Nazis the distinction is pretty easy. Their goals were right wing, their actions were right wing and they called themselves a right wing party.

The reason why there is a socialist in their name is because they attempted to be a national biggest tent party and so they tried to market to the biggest possible group, not to convince them but to tolerate them. And while today and especially in the U.S. not so popular, in 1920s Germany there had just recently been a revolution a reformist socialist party had the government for the majority at the time and even a communist party scored double digit results, so they used the label solely because it was popular and might confuse some less informed people. But from their actual political goals and their understanding of human relations they had no interest at all in equality not in the workplace and not in society.

Answer 7

Socialism was prevalent in Germany and hitlers selection of national socialism was specific to delineate his group from much of socialism in germany which he considered Jewish. Fascism or fascismo means 'group' in Italian. The american thinker is pro-individual. Mussolini considered himself a socialist, the quotes are there. Hitler modeled fascism into nazism. Also, there are many other quotes from hitler and his contemporaries stating that they are socialist. You also need to look at the 25 point plan. It is very anti-individual, anti-capitalist, centralized government, anti-democratic, anti-parliamentary, and very statist in its policies. That is not right winged. Some of the militarism and nationalism are definitely right winged. Rohm the head of the SA was a self proclaimed socialist, but he was also a militarist, so a union of both wings of politics. He was also gay, and once Rohm became a threat and his behavior fell out of favor with the nazi ideal, he was vanquished. Also, perspective is warranted. Liberalism and conservatism in Germany 1938 is nothing like the american democrat or republican.

Note, that many rightly state that the more conservative business elite in Germany joined ranks with Hitler. But why. The truth of the matter was the communists had won a large portion of the elections and they feared the communists more for their own welfare, and in their own self interests they joined the nazi party. If not, why did they not join earlier in hitlers rise. Some causality that's always omitted.

Also, the fact that academia immediately spouts nazism as right winged should be looked at with biased eyes. What percent of teachers in today's or yesterday's universities are truly left winged. About 90%! So why would teachers from the last 30 years declare nazism as left winged. It's not going to happen.
Anybody with honesty can see that hitler used everyone, including his own people, his own supporters, et. al. He picked the Christian socialists for the 'heil hitler', the deaths head from the Prussian military, etc.

Nazism is a mixture of both left winged and right winged ideology if you have any intellectual honesty. Read his policies before he took authoritarian rule. Hating Jews does not make it right winged, and stating or thinking so just makes you just another lemming fanatic.

Also, look at Wikipedia under socialism. Every instance of racist socialism is removed and labeled separately as right winged. Why? Because it plays into today's american politics. Today Europe is still heavily anti-Semitic but it is almost entirely socialist in politics. It's an amazing numerical coincidence that all those anti-Semites are the vastly right winged minority in Europe. I think not. Be honest and think for yourselves.

Nazism is a mesh of everything hitler could use for himself be it from the volk, the business elite, the militarists, the nationalists, the socialists, the racists, the Christians and Catholics, the pagan, the social Darwinists, the ecological purists, etc.

Answer 8

We can't really leave economics behind. Economics and social aspects cannot be fully disentangled.

Nazism is actually an apt description of its own ideology. Literally, it means National Socialist.

(Building on StasM's answer to show how these examples illustrate the phenomenon:)

-Economically, the Nazis were very much socialist, with the State controlling the economy. Propaganda-wise, there was little if any freedom of speech. Dissent was squashed. This has major social implications. Socially, yes, there was socialist social engineering (sounds redundant, and it is!).

-At the same time, the legitimacy of the regime was founded upon national identity, which was for all practical purposes impossible for the German people to discard. These two conditions are not mutually exclusive, and the necessary preservation of some traditional societal institutions (family, and within some limits religion) does not contradict nor fully prevent the seizure of power by a Socialist government of other vital institutions, to the extent of overpowering and controlling all others. This makes the remaining institutions more like a puppet than an accomplice--very many German citizens in fact had very little or no knowledge at all about the holocaust.

What this shows is that not all of the institutions of society need to be fully dismantled and dissolved into social collectivism before collectivist ideology can seize full power over the people. It is like having a brain hijacked with an otherwise more or less healthy body to do its will. Thus only a limited number of truly controlling institutions need to be monopolized in any Socialist strategy in order to acquire eventual and total control. People who are captives economically effectively enjoy only those freedoms allowed to them by those who are in control of the economy. This is the fundamental tenet of Socialism: If you control the economy, you control the people. If you control either production or consumption, you control the economy. Blackmail will wither the will of the other half to resist. Religious liberty can be maintained on paper so long as the practice of it does not interfere with the State's economic, military, and dogmatic totalitarianism.

So in short Nazism is intrinsically a Left-wing (Socialist) phenomenon, even while it may like an undead ghoul still possess vestigial properties of the host populace as it attempts to usurp and assert commanding authority.

The media on the Left today deny that such a thing can exist, classing all nationalism as far-right. However, this denies the repeatedly observed reality of centralization of power and control of all institutions of society by monopolizing a critical subset through socialization.

The marked animosity between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia conveys no irreconcilable dissimilarity between the Socialist platforms upon which the dictators controlled the people; as between two bloodthirsty feudal warlords, it is merely a natural consequence of the differing national identity and rival ambitions of the two Socialist regimes.