Arguing with Stupid Leftists

[techumseh]

Shawnmmcc: I found a very good article in the English Le Monde on the role played by Ferdinand Porshe and Volkswagen in supporting the Nazi's war aims: http://mondediplo.com/1998/01/11volkswag

Here's an excerpt:

During the war in Europe (1939-41), followed by the world war (1941-45), millions of people were reduced to slavery, not to mention deportations and the extermination of millions of people belonging to defenceless minorities. The Barbarossa operation - the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 - was a particular opportunity for Volkswagen to improve its fortunes, in terms of the exploitation of forced labour. In early August 1940, even before the Battle of Britain, everything was in place to plunder the labour force and material resources of the communists.

Of the three million Soviet civilians reduced to slavery, more than half were women. This was the new order to which Ferdinand Porsche had committed himself. Although it must be said that he personally never had blood on his hands, as an SS activist, he was part of the extermination machinery. Without foreign labour, and in particular that of Soviet slaves, the whole of German industry would have collapsed: in the spring of 1945, Volkswagen’s workforce was 90% non-German. It is an extraordinary paradox that the victims of the fascist order helped to prolong the life of German industry.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Sandman
If Hitler had invaded the USSR for capitalist reasons, he would have tried to turn it into a captive market for German goods, like Britain did in India.

They did. Doing this does not preclude exterminating the peoples living there. Consider Leopold and the Congo. This doesn't mean there weren't other reasons for the invasion as well.

The Nazis never intended to kill everyone. "Lessor" races would be slaves for the German colonists, mush like Indians were for the Spanish, Indians were for the Brits, and Africans were for Brits and the French. If you forget that the Slavs are white for a moment, then the colonization of Eastern Europe seems more more logical.

[Straybow]

Ah, so find one capitalist who signs up with the SS, and therefore all capitalists are in support of the Fascists.

[chequita guevara]

If you're going to stay in the shallow end of the pool, Straybow, don't try and play with the big kids.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Straybow
Ah, so find one capitalist who signs up with the SS, and therefore all capitalists are in support of the Fascists.

No, I told Shawnmmcc I'd look for evidence that German capitalists supported the invasion of the Soviet Union, and that's what I'm trying to do. If you believe otherwise, why don't you do a little research to support your position, and together we'll raise the level of debate on OT.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by techumseh

I don't disagree, Bernd. The claim that capitalism and communism were both part of the same "Jewish conspiracy" was part of Nazi ideology and remains so amoung many neo-nazis today. I think it was part of an attempt to confuse people about the real political and economic forces at play. In practice though, the anti-capitalist and anti-industrialization part was just rhetoric.

Yes, they didn't intend to go after the evil capitalists per se or to introcude social equality for everone. In that aspect national socialism was never much socialist anyway, despite all the rhetoric about the Volksgemeinschaft where only being German would count. And yes, most business guys were quick to support the nazis, or at least to ally themselves with them once they were in power (as unfortunately most Germans, esp. from the conservative side were).

However, it is also a fact that the nazis had no problem at all in going after business guys who did not fit into their picture, or would oppose their rule. In such cases business was treated like any other side that did not collaborate -- with repression and terror. Take the example of famous aircraft maker Hugo Junkers, who was forced to give up control over his factories soon after the nazis came to power because of his political views. Since those factories were regarded as critical for the military plans of the nazis, they did not want to have anyone there in control who was in disagreement with nazi ideology. They kept the name Ju for all the later military aircraft though (Ju87 Stuka, Ju88 etc.), but Junkers himself had nothing to do with that anymore, and he and his family were being put under arrest for some time. He died in 1935.

Also, foreign-politics-wise the anti-capitalist rhetoric served an important purpose as a propaganda tool in justifying hostility and later the wars against the western European countries, because here of course the "struggle against evil bolshewism" argument was useless.

IMO it also gives in interesting insight into the picture the nazis had of themselves. Of course they did not want or even could de-industrialize Germany, but "evil" capitalism became also a metaphorical figure for social changes the nazis hated, because it was in conflict with their pseudo-romantic idea of pre-industrial Germany. In this aspect their movement was rather anti-modernist, while on the other hand of course they used themselves the technical and technological results of modernization and industrialization to a large degree.

[Mr. Harley]

Techumseh - Porsche was one of the Wehrmacht's favored arms producer, the original Tiger II used a turret produced by them that was dropped due to expense issues for one by Henschel. The major producers of German armored vehicles in WW2 were Rheinmetall, Krupp, Henschel, MAN, and Daimler Benz plus some additional production by Alkett, FAMO, MIAG, and Wegmann. If memory serves me correctly both Damiler Benz and Volkswagen (primarily non-armored military vehicles) as well as Porshe were well-connected with the Nazis, as was IG Farben (which profited hugely from forced labor from the various Concentration and Death camps) which was in bed with the SS.

However, I believe you will find that their "support" for Barbarossa is after the fact, as in now that the Fuhrer is suggesting it, they supported it for the profits they could make. There had developed a feeling of German invincibility, and if you promise people something for nothing, most will fall for it. However, until official planning for Barbarossa was started, I believe you will find few sources outside of the Nazis discussing the invasion of the Soviet Union with enthusiasm.

Your cite shows their support of Hitler's policies, and how they planned to profit from them. That in no way shows that there was any other motivator that was significant to the invasion of the Soviet Union except for Lebenstraum. The various vultures hovering around the regime of course made their own uses of the policy, but the policy itself was solely and completely driven by the Great Leader. Again, the cult-like analysis.

[molly bloom]

Some firms were always going to profit from a remilitarization programme, or the more Poujadist elements of National Socialist philosophy, the more so after the purge of the Brownshirts and the decrees enacted against the power of the trade unions; it's also worth remembering that some of the bigger department stores were owned by German Jews, so what might seem like an avowedly anti-capitalist stance was in fact Nazi race policies in action.

I. G. Farben's labour force expanded by 50 per cent between 1938 and 1943, and its profits increased 150 per cent- to a massive 822 million Reichsmarks (as shown in the records of the International Military Tribunal).

It ran industrial 'enterprises' at Auschwitz and of course also contracted to supply Zyklon B, for which it held the patent.

One I. G. Farben director was a key bureaucrat in the offices of the administration of the Nazi's Four-Year Plan, and in the Reich Office for Economic Expansion, I. G. Farben men filled fully two-thirds of the posts.

The Nazis did compel large firms to 'invest' in Nazi Germany's military expansion, but this did not preclude the firms from making profits at the same time- Krupp was induced to support the Buna synthetic rubber project, I. G. Farben to invest (with others) in the Brabag scheme to extract liquid fuel from lignite, and the textile combines were encouraged to develop synthetic fibre manufactories.

There were anti-Nazi businessmen, such as Carl Bosch, but they could be 'encouraged' to retire, especially when they criticised Nazi corruption, or, like Ludwig Kastel, director of the National Federation Geheimrat, or Schlenker, secretary of the Langnam Verein, they could be dismissed for being Jewish.

(see 'Tycoons and Tyrant', by Louis P. Lochner, publ. Chicago 1954)

'The elections of March 5th will only be of use if they are to last for a long time... Only if no heed needs to be paid to votes can the outstanding great changes in constitutional, administrative, fiscal and social matters be carried out.'

Editorial in 'Stahl und Eisen', journal of the Ruhr industry, quoted in Werner Sorgel's 'Metallindustrie und Nationalsozialismus', publ. Europaische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt

I recommend Chapter 12, 'Business', from 'A Social History of the Third Reich', by Richard Grunberger, publ. Penguin Books, 1974

[Sikander]

Originally posted by techumseh

And it's odd that you would just assume that you could just toss off Suharto's name and it would be obvious that the guy didn't know what he was talking about. Suharto led a coup which killed up to a million people, most of them communists. It was also backed by your government, but it wasn't the big bad republicans at that time (1965). No, it was your pals in the Democratic Party.

How does this make him a fascist? Chumbawumba thinks Britain is fascist, is it by this sort of measure?

Originally posted by techumseh

I don't care if you do. At least it would improve the pathetic standard of debate on this issue. Some people seem to think they can state their uninformed opinion as fact, and carry on as if they've learned something.

Irony so good it almost hurts.

Originally posted by techumseh

Like I said, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

But much more often the thousand words is worth a lot more, especially when one is discussing fairly complicated and nebulous concepts like political definitions.

[Mr. Harley]

Molly - if you have read that book (it's on my to-do list) what does it say about ancillery groups supporting German facism/the Hitler state encouraging Barbarossa, versus simply supporting the Fuhrer's decision (as if after 1938 anyone else's opinion made a rat's *ss difference?

[Sandman]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
They did. Doing this does not preclude exterminating the peoples living there. Consider Leopold and the Congo. This doesn't mean there weren't other reasons for the invasion as well.

The Nazis never intended to kill everyone. "Lessor" races would be slaves for the German colonists, mush like Indians were for the Spanish, Indians were for the Brits, and Africans were for Brits and the French. If you forget that the Slavs are white for a moment, then the colonization of Eastern Europe seems more logical.

I don't think Leopold ever tried to convert the Congo into a captive market; his goal was simply resource extraction, by the most depraved means imaginable. The high price of ivory and rubber allowed him to sustain his genocidal campaign. Above all, he was driven by a desire for profit.

Compare that to the German plans for Russia and Eastern Europe. They planned to exile 50 million Slavs to Siberia, and keep the rest as slaves for German settlers, as a part of Hitler's plans for a 'new order of ethnographical relations'. Such plans would be extraordinarily expensive, even with slave labour.

But do you think that Hitler would care? Do you think that he would be constantly checking the balance books, as Leopold did, fretting over whether he was making enough money? I do not think that he would. He'd be quite happy to make a 'loss' in the East, probably for decades, as long as the Germanisation continued apace.

[Odin]

Tecumseh shows what happens when you adhere to an ideology religiously, he sounds like some Soviet top honcho blaming everything on a capitalist conspiracy to keep the Proles down with his thinking that business pulled Hitler's strings.

[chequita guevara]

Odin, you're not really in a position to criticize.

[GePap]

Originally posted by techumseh
No, and here we get to the nub of the issue. We need to define fascism by looking at it externally, analizing it's real goals and makeup, and seeing how it evolves. Much of the stuff H&M wrote was ideological mumbo jumbo to justify their broader goals. It was designed to befuddle the masses with mysticism and psuedo-science. To place it on a par with Voltaire, Hegel or Marx is an act of intellectual vandalism. The ideology of H&M was designed to mislead and confuse. It's clearly still doing so.

What Mussolini and HItler wrote were their own political tracts, with very clear goals and intentions. Most people in Germany never thought the Nazi's would actually go to war, but anyone who had read Mein Kampf would have known war was coming, because Hitler spells it out.

Its incredably funny to see any communist talk about how one needs to look from the outside to know the true intentions...you might as well just conceded then to the people who view communism as nothing more than gulags and forced labor and lack of good toilet paper, because, newsflash, that's how it evolved, the policies that were enacted in communist states.
The irony is in fact too massive to miss.

NO, if you want to understand a complex and actually not too very well fleshed out political ideology, you have to, first of all, read those works seminal to that ideology. Nothng else comes even close to being as important. Again, you might as well claim that instead of reading Marx and Engels when I want to learn about Marxism, I should isntead read what William F buckley wrote about it, cause heck, its obvious, from all the debates that have come up over history, that was Marx wrote was confusing and misleading.

Don't lecture me on Marxism, you liberal.

And yet to think you can lecture ANYONE on fascism!?!?

Fascism arose after the rise of communism, and in response to it. There is not a fundamental difference between German and Italian fascism, nor between them and the Chilean version. All arose out of a desperate desire of the elites of their respective countries to prevent a socialist takeover. In all cases, these classes threw over their democratic trappings and jumped in with the ultra right who promised to save them, which they all did, by means of violence and terror. In all cases there were ideological justifications, but these differed in each case. Basing your analysis on the ideological trappings would lead you to believe they are all quite different. And that's the source of your error.

Wrong. There were deep and fundamenatal differences between the German and Italina forms of fascism, and no, there has been no Chilean form. I think the whole race war and extermination of the weak should be a dead giveaway about some fundamental differences between the Italians and the German forms of fascism.

HIlter was not an elite, he was a shlub from Vienna who never rose further than a sargent in WW1. Mussolini was no elite either. Elites looked down at the clowns and lower class dolts who made up the Nazi leadership, and they certainly viewed Mussolini as a clown.

To call those that formed the fascists and nazi parties elite is strenching that word rather stunningly.

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by Sandman
If Hitler had invaded the USSR for capitalist reasons, he would have tried to turn it into a captive market for German goods, like Britain did in India.

They did. Doing this does not preclude exterminating the peoples living there. Consider Leopold and the Congo. This doesn't mean there weren't other reasons for the invasion as well.

The Nazis never intended to kill everyone. "Lessor" races would be slaves for the German colonists, mush like Indians were for the Spanish, Indians were for the Brits, and Africans were for Brits and the French. If you forget that the Slavs are white for a moment, then the colonization of Eastern Europe seems more more logical.

well, the spanirds were quite bad, but, actually they thought the indians were humans, they married indians, and the continent is largely mestizo nowadays-

The nazis thought slavs were subhuman, and I dont think they would have mixed with the slavs.