An Overdue Look at Hitler’s Social and Economic Thinking

By F. Roger Devlin

November 2024

Rainer Zitelmann’s book Hitler’s National Socialism is a surprising and important contribution to our understanding of the Third Reich, and deserves to be better known. For many years after the war, most historians either misrepresented Adolf Hitler’s views on social and economic questions or dismissed them as unimportant and incoherent. Moreover, the popular portrayal of Hitler and his government as evil incarnate has made it “virtually impossible for the younger generation to understand the motives of the former large majority that enthusiastically screamed ‘Sieg Heil!’ and placed all of its hopes in Hitler,” as Zitelmann notes.

Many Germans have concluded – logically enough based on what they have been taught — that their grandparents were hopelessly naïve, irrationally criminal, or both. Yet Hitler’s supporters had understandable reasons for behaving as they did. To understand both Hitler’s policies and the widespread loyalty he commanded, a careful examination of his thinking as expressed in his own words is indispensable. Zitelmann’s revealing book represents an effort to heed German historian Martin Broszat’s warning that “the ‘normalization’ of our historic consciousness cannot exclude the Nazi era, cannot only take place around it.”

As a young doctoral candidate at the Technical University of Darmstadt in the mid-1980s, Zitelmann patiently worked his way through the record of Hitler’s own statements: not just Mein Kampf and his public speeches, but previously neglected articles he wrote for party periodicals, and private remarks to colleagues. The result was a dissertation and eventual book, almost half of which consists of direct quotations: an unprecedentedly authoritative summation of what Hitler actually believed. Zitelmann’s study – which has been published in several different editions in both German and English – shows the German leader to have been a serious thinker with a coherent outlook different from either Marxism or free market Capitalism, though sharing certain elements with each.

One reviewer expressed wonder that no one had ever bothered to produce such a book before. In retrospect it is extraordinary to see distinguished historians pronouncing confidently upon Hitler’s views and aims without first conducting any systematic investigation into what he himself had written and said. Such is the power of broadly shared yet preconceived assumptions.

Zitelmann organized his project around three questions previously neglected by historians:

Did Hitler see himself as a revolutionary, and if so, how did he define this term? What were his social objectives and how did he view the principal classes of modern bourgeois society? What were Hitler’s economic thoughts and how did modernistic and anti-modernistic elements effect his worldview?

Because Zitelmann regards the success of NS Germany’s economic policies as the most important reason for the regime’s popularity, he is not concerned about other aspects of Hitler’s thinking, such as his views regarding foreign policy, education, Jews, or culture.

Zitelmann is aware, of course, that public statements by political leaders cannot be taken at face value. Each of Hitler’s speeches was aimed at a particular audience at a particular time, and influenced by tactical considerations. Furthermore, Hitler had a low estimate of the intelligence of the masses, seeing them as more motivated by emotion than by reason, and therefore he sometimes spoke in simple images of Good versus Evil. As a result, his speeches to the general public often deliberately oversimplify his views. Zitelmann therefore carefully checked statements from such speeches against remarks made to his inner circle before accepting them as reflective of Hitler’s real beliefs.

There was a hierarchy among Hitler’s ideas. Regarding many matters, he retained a flexibility and capacity to learn from others. However, throughout his career he clung unswervingly to a few fundamental convictions, arrived at early in life. Zitelmann distinguishes three such primary convictions that organized and guided the rest of his thinking.

First, Hitler saw struggle as the fundamental reality of life. Throughout nature, the strong survive while the weak perish – a reality that is also true in human history.

Second, Hitler believed that the active movers in history’s struggles are neither individuals nor humanity as a whole, nor social classes (as in Marxist theory), but nations. Within the national unit, a large measure of altruism was appropriate, as well as equal opportunity for social advancement. This view should be contrasted with liberal social Darwinism, which saw life as a struggle between individuals, and by which the wealthy, upper-class bourgeoisie regarded themselves as rightful winners who had proven their superiority over those of the less “successful” classes. Hitler despised the German bourgeoisie for what he regarded as its indifference to the legitimate claims of their working-class fellow-countrymen.

Third, Hitler believed that most people are not capable of really independent thought or achievement. History is made by a small number of outstanding personalities who impose their will upon the masses. He called this the “personality principle.”

While Hitler was able to question himself on many matters, and to learn from experience, he did not see any point in tolerating ideas that diverged from the fundamental tenets of his worldview, or that he considered socially harmful. He regarded such tolerance as cowardly and weak. In a speech to Wehrmacht officers in 1944 he said that once he recognized an opinion to be correct, he had the duty not only to make his fellow-citizens accept it, but also to do away with any contrary opinion.

Hitler’s unshakeable self-confidence, notes Zitelmann, was grounded in his astounding success: within two decades he had risen from spokesman of a tiny Bavarian political group that no one took seriously to master of the European continent. This seemed to “confirm that he was right, gave him the feeling of mental superiority over all his critics, and reinforced his belief that he was ‘irreplaceable,’ and that ‘the fate of the Reich’ depended solely on him and his inspired abilities.” Hitler’s overweening self-assurance leant his views a radical character they would not otherwise have possessed, according to Zitelmann, for the main components of his worldview were unoriginal and circulated widely in the Germany of his youth.

Zitelmann also stresses that Hitler’s worldview was internally consistent: the once widely held notion that his outlook was simply irrational, incoherent or “nihilistic” is no longer accepted by any serious researcher. If anything, Hitler may have been excessively consistent, dismissing realities that did not comport logically with his way of thinking.

Hitler took a long view of history, but he achieved only a small fraction of his aims, not merely because he was in power only twelve years, but also because he had to retain the support of existing elites in business, the military, and government administration. So, we cannot infer from his failure to implement a policy that it was not among his serious intentions. Especially in 1941-42, when victory over the Soviet Union appeared all but certain, he spoke of ambitious postwar plans he was never able to realize.

Hitler the Revolutionary

Let us now examine the first line of Zitelmann’s inquiry: “Did Hitler see himself as a revolutionary, and if so, how did he define this term?”

The first question can only be answered with an unqualified Yes. For all his opposition to Marxist Communism, Hitler never spoke of himself as a counter-revolutionary or a conservative, but as a revolutionary with a worldview different from Communism. Even after adopting the course of legality, he regarded the failed putsch attempt of November 1923 as proof of his movement’s fundamentally revolutionary character, distinguishing it from the bourgeois “conservative” or “moderate” rivals it competed against electorally.

Marxist writers have found it difficult to take seriously the revolutionary pretentions of a party that came to power in an entirely legal and constitutional manner. But Hitler took pride in the disciplined and largely peaceful character of his seizure of power, boasting: “hardly any revolution of such large dimensions had run its course so disciplined and unbloodily as the uprising of the German people in these weeks.” Whereas more than three million people fell victim to the Bolshevik Revolution, he said, during the German revolution of 1933 there had not been “a single display window broken, not a store looted, and no house damaged.”

The word revolution is sometimes used to refer to an event, such as the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917. At other times it refers to the process of radical social change that can extend over many years after such an initial political event. This ambiguity is also found in Hitler’s use of the term. Thus, he might speak of his revolution as having been completed, but soon after stress the need to broaden and deepen the national revolution in the years ahead. The decisive point for him was not the initial political event, or whether it was violent or not, but the broader social transformation that followed. The defining mark of revolution for Hitler was, in Zitelmann’s words, “that it had to bring about the victory of a worldview, a grandiose new idea which was to provide the guiding principle for the restructuring of all sectors of life.”

Ideally, such a restructuring should proceed in a “measured and disciplined manner.” Hitler noted that a transformation of the national economy, in particular, could not be carried out abruptly. Whereas Lenin thought in terms of exterminating the hated capitalists, Hitler gradually transformed them into trustees of the state. In a 1937 speech, for example, he stated:

I tell German industry, “You have to produce such and such now.” If German industry were to answer me, “We are not able to,” then I would say to it, “Fine, then I will take that over myself, but it must be done.” But if industry tells me, “We will do that,” then I am very glad that I do not need to take that on.

This is typical of Hitler’s approach to economic issues. He wielded the threat of government intervention or even nationalization to bring restive industrialists into line and, as Zitelmann notes, “the foundation of the Hermann-Göring-Werke and the Volkswagen Werke demonstrated that this was no empty threat.” He rejected full state control of the economy because he understood the value of competition in fostering innovation and efficiency. But with regard to any particular decision on investment or production, his guiding principle was that the good of the nation must take precedence over private interests. In practice, he and the party leadership were responsible for deciding what was in the nation’s best, long-term interest.

Private ownership of land, business and industry as well as competitive private enterprise were maintained in NS Germany, although they came under increased restrictions, especially during the war years. Zitelmann comments: “The moment legal title of possession and the factual right of disposal separate, in other words when the private person can no longer freely decide on the nature, size and timing of the investments to be made, essential traits of private ownership have been abolished.” Hitler never abandoned his long-standing regard for private ownership and competitive enterprise, although his inhibitions against governmental intervention in the economy weakened. During the war years he privately even expressed admiration for Soviet methods. “After the war,” Zitelmann believes, “Hitler did not intend to reduce intervention by the state, but rather to extend the system of planned economy.”

Businessmen and business owners, nearly all of whom supported the National Socialist regime, shared in the economic recovery of the 1930s, enjoying a comfortable and rising standard of living, and continued high social status. This has led Marxist historians to misrepresent Hitler’s policies as designed to benefit “capitalists.” But Hitler’s gradual coopting of private business, and especially large-scale industry, achieved a kind of socialization of the economy at incomparably lower cost than the Soviet system. Whereas Bolshevik policy resulted in widespread famine and armed uprisings, Hitler’s prewar years in power were marked by Germany’s dramatic recovery from the worldwide economic depression.

Writers who seek to interpret Hitler as a “counter-revolutionary” often quote Goebbels’ remark that with the National Socialist seizure of power, “the year 1789 had been expunged from history.” Here again, however, a closer look reveals ambiguity. Hitler did not care for the French Revolution’s ideal of equality, nor the Jewish “emancipation” associated with it. He credited the enlightened absolutism of Frederick the Great of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria with having prevented violent revolutionary upheavals in the German-speaking world. He saw himself as a ruler in that tradition who “had been given the task of removing the conditions for the Bolshevik Revolution by overcoming the outdated bourgeois social order step by step.” However, he was a “counter-revolutionary” only as regards Bolshevik revolution; he understood his own transformation of Germany as a revolution inspired by a different worldview.

As fervently as any liberal, Hitler believed that the feudal structure, policies, and customs swept aside by the French Revolution were outdated. In his view, that Revolution had struck a necessary blow against superstition and clerical power while ushering in an age of discovery, invention, and scientific and technological progress. He frequently contrasted the French Revolution favorably with the German “Revolution” of November 1918: the earlier event was “national and constructive”, “a heroic undertaking” that “produced leaders of stature” (albeit “villainous criminals”) as well as “daring generals,” whereas he viewed the Social Democratic leaders of the German Revolution of 1918 as beneath contempt. Hitler once wrote that the “proposal of a great new idea” was the secret of the French Revolution’s success, and that the revolutionary armies had defeated their enemies because their revolutionary idea was superior. In sum, Hitler saw the French Revolution as motivated by a mistaken and outdated worldview, but as a world-historical event of the first order that had had many positive aspects.

Although Hitler referred to the leaders of the 1918 German Revolution as the “November criminals,” he approved their abolition of the Hohenzollern monarchy, which he believed deserved to perish due to its own failures. German conservatives of the interwar period, by contrast, viewed the overthrow of the monarchy as the essential act of the 1918 Revolution, and one that they hoped to undo. Hitler’s anti-monarchical sentiments were reinforced by what he observed on a state visit to Italy in May 1938. Court etiquette and differences in rank based upon birth were especially repugnant to him. Upon his return to Germany, he even raised the pensions of the retired Social Democratic politicians who had established the democratic “Weimar Republic,” commenting: “Thank God that they got rid of those vermin” (the Hohenzollerns). Occasional public hints before he came to power that he might be open to eventual reestablishment of the German monarchy should be understood, Zitelmann cautions, as tactical concessions to bourgeois conservative allies or President Hindenburg. Nor should anyone suspect monarchist sentiments behind Hitler’s occasional positive references to the old Germany of “order, cleanliness, and dependability” before the First World War. In his private statements to close associates, Hitler was consistently opposed to monarchy and restorationism.

All the same, Hitler considered the question of whether a government was monarchical or republican in form as less important than how well it carried out its most important task of preserving the nation. Measured by this standard, the German “revolution” of 1918 was as much a failure as the Hohenzollern monarchy. In part this was due to bad timing; the Republic was established just as Germany was going down to defeat in the First World War. But this was not the decisive consideration: Hitler cited the example of France’s establishment of the Third Republic following its 1870 loss of the Franco-Prussian War as a successful revolution-in-defeat that led to a mobilization of French forces against her enemy. By contrast, the Weimar Republic was founded on Germany’s humiliation, and rendered her even more defenseless than she would otherwise have been.

Zitelmann quotes the “conservative revolutionary” Arthur Moeller van den Bruck on the possibility of a constructive revolution in the Germany of 1918:

When the deceit which the Entente was preparing and which [US President] Wilson agreed to became apparent, Germany was given the greatest opportunity for a subjugated state: to incite an enormous wave of emotion in the disappointed people, and by an upsurging movement, to hurl their breach of faith back into the teeth of our enemies.

For Hitler as for Moeller, the failure of the Social Democratic leaders to take any such step was their real crime. In other words, Hitler rejected the German Revolution of November 1918 not because it had gone too far but because it had not gone far enough. He dismissed what he called the “so-called revolution of 1918” as a mere change in government personnel.

Hitler frequently reiterated his view that the state is merely a means to an end: namely, the preservation and advancement of the nation, “a community of physically and spiritually similar beings.” In Mein Kampf he wrote that “when a nation is being led to destruction with the help of governmental power, then rebellion by every single member of such a nation is not only a right but an obligation.” He regarded this as the situation existing in the Weimar Republic, saying: “We National Socialists know that with this concept we are revolutionaries in today’s world.”

“When we finally obtain power,” Hitler warned in 1932, “we will keep it, so help us God. We will not let anybody take it away from us.” A revolutionary party claims exclusivity for its teachings, and therefore ceases to be a “party” in the normal sense of the term once it has acquired power. Hitler once remarked that his NSDAP might more accurately be called an “order.” It meant to possess “sole power without any compromise. There must be one will in Germany, and all others must be overcome.”

Hitler’s Social Views and Aims

Zitelmann’s second line of inquiry runs: “What were Hitler’s social objectives and how did he view the principal classes of modern bourgeois society?”

Regarding the German aristocracy, Hitler had little to say at all. He viewed it as a decadent holdover from an earlier era that had rightly been swept aside in 1918 along with the monarchy. No less than his Marxist rivals, he viewed the bourgeoisie and the working class as the two most important groups within modern society.

In a 1922 speech, Hitler traced the unresolved social issues of his own day back to the “streaming together of large masses of workers in the cities” at the time of the industrial revolution, workers “who were not correctly received” by those who “had the moral obligation to take care of them.” In Mein Kampf, he describes this process in more detail:

While the small artisan slowly begins to die out, thereby making the possibility for the worker to gain an independent existence for himself ever rarer, the latter continues to proletarianize. Thus, the industrial ‘factory worker’ is created, whose prime characteristic can be found in his inability to establish an independent existence … Ever new masses of people numbering in the millions moved from the rural villages into the bigger cities in order to earn their daily bread as factory workers in the newly founded industries. The working and living conditions of the new class were worse than sad.

The long working hours characteristic of farm life were thoughtlessly transferred to the new urban industrial setting, destroying the workers’ health. Industrial workers were demoralized by the low value that the new social order placed on their manual labor, and the contrast between their own pitiful salaries and the profits enjoyed by the bosses. The result was the gulf between social classes Hitler observed in Vienna before the First World War, and deplored in the pages of Mein Kampf:

Shining wealth and disgusting poverty relieved each other in stark alternation … The horde of officers, civil servants, artists and scholars was confronted by an even greater horde of workers, the wealth of the aristocracy and business by bloody poverty. In front of the palaces in the Ringstrasse [boulevard] thousands of unemployed loafed about, and underneath this via triumphalis of the old Austria, the homeless lived in the twilight and mud of the canals.

Hitler despised bourgeois conservatives who thought social reform was needed merely to prevent the masses from rebelling or coming under the sway of demagogues. He regarded working class men and women as fellow-Germans with a just and inherent claim on the attention of any national government: the nation could not prosper as long as one large component of it was reduced to dependence and destitution. Of course, limited non-governmental humanitarian efforts were being made to relieve the plight of the poor. In Hitler’s view, however, they merely mitigated the consequences of a perverse social system whose causes had to be eradicated.

Hitler’s criticism of the social conditions arising from industrialization were not meant to imply any rejection of modern industry itself, which he embraced as fostering technological advancement and an increase in national wealth. Rather, he blamed unjust social conditions on the bourgeoisie. Zitelmann distinguishes seven principal components of Hitler’s critique of this wealthy and dominant class.

First, as we have seen, Hitler was disgusted by their lack of concern for the welfare of their laboring fellow countrymen. His “Darwinist” outlook focused on the struggle between nations and races, not individuals or social classes within the nation. To the contrary, he believed Germans had duties toward all the social strata that made up their nation. Narrow class attitudes he regarded as selfish, short-sighted, and harmful to the nation.

Second, he saw the wealthy bourgeois class as exclusively materialistic in its outlook, greedy for profit, and less capable than other social groups of sacrifice for the nation or higher ideals.

Third, he accused the bourgeoisie of identifying the national interest with its own class interest. In a 1927 speech, Hitler mockingly noted: “That person is not a nationalist who says: I sing the national anthem, and then I go and make my profit, and next day I get up because there is a greasy chap sitting next to me who has not taken off his blue overalls, and I cannot sit down next to that.” For such bourgeois patriots, workers were good enough to vote for approved candidates at elections and shed their blood in wartime, but were of little further concern. So bad a name had the bourgeoisie given nationalism, said Hitler, that many workers suspected it meant little more than opposition to their own interests.

Fourth, Hitler accused the German bourgeois and “middle class” parties of lacking any principled worldview, and of being primarily concerned with obtaining – and enjoying the benefits of – power and prestige in government or parliament. Their political aims were limited to law and order, economic development, and the restoration of the monarchy. Hitler considered bourgeois parties incapable of mounting effective resistance to Communism, for Communism was rooted in a worldview, however mistaken, and could only be effectively opposed by a party rooted in a different worldview. Hitler believed that only the Italian Fascists and his own party met this criterion.

Fifth, Hitler hurled the accusation of cowardice at the upper-class bourgeoisie with almost obsessive insistence. As Zitelmann puts it, “there is hardly a speech, or even a remark, by Hitler about the bourgeoisie where he does not accuse it of ‘cowardice’.” This is to be understood in the context of his Darwinist worldview, which interprets life as an all or nothing contest (Vabanque-Spiel) in which success goes to the bold.

The aristocracy in its best days had been devoted to war and the heroic virtues. By contrast, the bourgeoisie that took power from it in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was dedicated to economic production and trade: in other words, to the pursuit of material security and ease. According to bourgeois or “liberal” political theory, the human individual is the primary focus, and society is regarded merely as a collection of individuals. Men are motivated above all by self-interest, that is, to protect their lives and property. For this reason, liberals are unable to convincingly explain why anyone should be prepared to sacrifice his life for his country.

For Hitler, on the other hand, the individual is of secondary importance, and his interests should always be subordinate to the common good of the nation. He was a keen observer of the materialism and risk-aversion of the bourgeoisie, and perceived that the cowardice of that strata was related to its possession of property. He understood that courage is most often found among those without much to lose.

Hitler’s sixth criticism of the bourgeoisie is its inability to provide effective political leadership. The process of elite recruitment in business is completely different from that required in political life. The qualities necessary for effective and successful political leaders, he believed, are “firmness of character, the strong heart and audacious bravery, the highest joy in responsibility, relentless determination, and the most tenacious persistence” – heroic virtues alien to the business world. The liberal age had entrusted political power to a class utterly incapable of wielding it; one that “failed in every critical situation, and in the darkest hour of the nation [the First World War] broke apart pathetically.”

Seventh and finally, Hitler considered the bourgeois class obsolete, writing that “the German bourgeoisie was at the end of its mission and not called upon for any further task.” This mission was presumably related to its role in bringing about the industrial revolution. Like Marx, Hitler saw industrialization as a positive development, but one destined to result in a socialist order.

Hitler’s NSDAP called itself a worker’s party in part specifically to alienate the snobbish bourgeois class that believed the world of work beneath it, as Hitler explained in a 1920 speech:

If Frederick the Great was able to make the statement, “I want to be nothing more than the first official and servant of the state, the first worker,” then today we have all the more reason to demand that no member of the nation should be ashamed of this name, but proud to be allowed to call himself a worker. This should be the most important difference that separates us from those who are drones. Whether in the chemical laboratory, the technical construction office, or as a civil servant in his office or a worker at a machine, for us the term worker is actually the test, because this term shows who is ready for our movement and who is not. Whoever is ashamed of this term is not ready … And it is our objective to win especially those workers for our cause who have been called workers up to now.

We see here that Hitler recognized both a narrow sense of the word worker that referred to the “men of the calloused fist,” or to “those who have been called workers up to now,” as well as a broader sense that included office workers and those who perform mental work – indeed, nearly everyone apart from the idle rich. Starting with the working class, he hoped to attract the support of all fellow Germans, regardless of class, religion or occupation.

Hitler’s appeal to manual laborers enjoyed considerable success: no party of the Weimar period, apart from the Social Democrats and the Communists, could mobilize as many industrial workers as the NSDAP. In light of the fact that 30 to 40 percent of the Party’s members and voters were workers, notes Zitelmann, the often-repeated claim that the NSDAP was a party of the middle-class or lower middle class must be modified.

Hitler knew that manual laborers were not usually distinguished by their intelligence. He emphasized that appeals to them must be emotional rather than closely reasoned, and can scarcely be kept too simple. However, intelligence was not the most important quality he sought in his followers. He even believed that the overdevelopment of the intellect had a harmful effect on natural instinct.

In Hitler’s view, the working class embodied the decisive traits that the propertied classes lacked: courage, strength, vigor, the ability to put their faith in a cause, a determination to fight, and a willingness to sacrifice. He remarked that “a firm character will prevail even with only scant knowledge,” and predicted his ranks would be “filled not only from the universities, but from the factories and mines, and from the farms.” In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that the industrial working class.

did not include the worst elements in its ranks, but quite the opposite, in any case the most vital. The over-refinement of so-called culture had not yet exercised its undermining and destructive effect here. In its broad masses, the new class was not yet infected with the poison of pacifist weakness, but was robust, and if necessary even brutal.

He compared a political party made up of clever people with an army of generals: “It lies in the nature of an organization that it can only exist when a highest intellectual leadership is served by a broad, more emotionally inclined mass.”

The final aim of Hitler’s social-economic policies was, Marxist though it may sound, a kind of classless society. In one of his wartime table talks, he stated outright: “We had a class society! Only by abolishing it could the forces of the nation be set free.” Obviously, his ideal national community would still be characterized by hierarchy and differentiation of function, as any advanced society must be, but it was to be free of destructive class rivalry.

One means of achieving this goal was to increase the prestige of labor. Hitler said:

We want to educate our nation to give up the insanity of class arrogance, the concept that only brain work has value, so that people may learn to understand that all work ennobles him who performs it, and that there is only one thing that dishonors, namely not to contribute anything to the maintenance of the national community.

He supported compulsory labor service, first introduced in a limited form under the Weimar government in response to the depression, but saw its primary justification in its educational value rather than any economic benefits. Labor, he said,

would regain its honor because without regard to origin and rank, the German people, workers of the hand and workers of the mind, would develop mutual understanding through their common service. Every young German had to undergo the difficulties of this service … From this melting pot the German community would emerge.

And he wanted all who would eventually command the work of others to have had the experience, at least once in their lives, of obeying such commands themselves.

Hitler was also a champion of what is now called equal opportunity, or meritocracy. He thought that middle-class and upper-class bourgeois parents should be willing to let their more manually-inclined offspring undergo the appropriate training, rather than insisting on providing them with higher education. This would free up places for the intellectually gifted children of other classes, including even those of manual laborers. The general principle was that only an individual’s natural abilities should determine the sort of work he did, without the distorting influence of family background, class prejudice, or inherited wealth. In accord with his view that the collective is more important than the individual, Hitler justified this ideal less in terms of fairness to individuals than as a means of harnessing the full potential of the nation for the benefit of all.

Of course, the society resulting from such equal opportunity was not itself to be egalitarian; rather, differences in status would be in accord with the differences in men’s natural and acquired abilities. However, Hitler also sought to limit income differentials, disliking the idea that ambition should be primarily directed to the acquisition of money. He pointed out that mankind’s greatest achievements had rarely been motivated by the desire for material success, but were often the work of men who renounced such success in pursuit of their aims.

National Socialism did in fact markedly increase social mobility in Germany, although insufficient time and the disruption of World War II prevented the full realization of Hitler’s vision. Hitler himself emphasized that this would require at least a generation of education according to National Socialist principles.

Was Hitler an Anti-Modern?

Zitelmann’s third and final line of inquiry is, “What were Hitler’s economic thoughts and how did modernistic and anti-modernistic elements affect his worldview?”

Hitler is usually described as being ignorant of (or at best uninterested in) economics, preferring to leave it to “experts” such as Hjalmar Schacht. Early in his political career, he was influenced by the ideas of his self-taught colleague, Gottfried Feder. Between 1929 and 1932, however, he learned a great deal from Otto Wagener, a close colleague who became chief of the NS Party’s Economic Policy Department. (Wagener’s book, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confident, is an important source of information about Hitler’s personality, character, and outlook, as well as his views on economics.)

Hitler’s alleged lack of interest in economic matters, Zitelmann suggests, may be a mistaken inference based on his reluctance to speak in detail about his economic program before coming to power. Privately, however, Hitler gave a cogent reason for this reticence: any concrete proposal was bound to disappoint every private interest group within German society, intent only on a larger share of the pie for itself, whereas he had to be concerned for the entire nation.

Another source of confusion may be Hitler’s frequent assertion about the “primacy of politics” and the “secondary role of economics.” These slogans must be understood in the context of his critical attitude toward bourgeois liberalism, which sees government mainly as a protector of property and enforcer of private contracts. For Hitler, private economic interests necessarily clashed, and were thus a source of division within the nation. He did not believe that a productive economy was unimportant, but rather that it was only one factor making for success in the inevitable global competition against other nations. In that context, not only private profits but even total GDP might be of less importance than other factors, such as military preparedness or independence from foreign imports.

Far from considering economics unimportant, Hitler understood that his most urgent task when he came to power amid a worldwide depression was to foster Germany’s economic recovery. And he accomplished that goal with stunning success. According to an author quoted by Zitelmann:

Already during the first year of National Socialist rule the number of unemployed went down, and the German economy achieved full employment by the end of 1936. In the eyes of the population, the NSDAP was the party which had promised “work and bread” and had kept its word, while other countries were only slowly recovering from the consequences of the world economic crisis.

This was a major reason for the widespread popular support Hitler enjoyed.

Some historians have attributed anti-modern views to Hitler, including even a desire to restore an agrarian order in Germany. Two lines of evidence are presented in support of this thesis: Hitler’s public statements from the late 1920s in support of German farmers, and his wartime plans to settle farmers in the new living space (Lebensraum) conquered from the Soviet Union.

Hitler’s early speeches and articles contain only infrequent and passing remarks about agriculture. In Mein Kampf, however, and in his public statements of the years 1925-28, he emphasized the importance of the agricultural sector for the nation. However, it is important to understand that there was a serious farmers’ revolt in northern Germany during these same years, culminating in a 1928 mass demonstration in which 140,000 people took part. “It is therefore quite legitimate for us to assume,” writes Zitelmann, “that statements made by Hitler in his 1928 speeches are not necessarily to be interpreted as expressions of his worldview but are more likely propaganda slogans for the purpose of gaining further segments of the agricultural community for National Socialism.”

During his years in power, Hitler’s pro-farming remarks were mostly limited to “hollow phrases” in speeches at the NSDAP’s annual rally for farmers. Some of his closest associates claimed that he was uninterested in agriculture, and his Minister of Agriculture once complained of not having been permitted to brief the Führer for two years.

Hitler’s desire to win Lebensraum in the East, announced in the pages of Mein Kampf, was part of a larger project of making Germany and Europe economically self-sufficient, that is, not dependent on trade with foreign nations: a policy known as autarky. Like most of Hitler’s ideas, this was not original with him, but was a popular view in interwar Germany, “promulgated by a flood of books and articles which was simply immense,” according to an author quoted by Zitelmann. The appeal of autarky was largely grounded in memories of misery and dire privation caused by the Allied blockade during World War I. Since Hitler saw economic competition between nations as an enduring feature of international relations, and war as an ever-present possibility, he wanted Germany and Europe to be invulnerable to any future blockade. However, this was not his primary justification for pursuing autarky.

Like Malthus, Hitler was aware of the tendency for population growth to outstrip the resources of any given territory. Increased efficiency of production, as occurred in connection with the industrial revolution, could postpone but not prevent such a development. Hitler also understood that emigration also relieved population pressures, but he saw the emigration of talented Germans as a loss for the fatherland and a gain for her potential enemies.

Another possible solution lay in increasing exports, so that food and raw materials unavailable at home could be imported in exchange. However, Hitler believed such a strategy illusory, for three reasons. First, he believed that wars, at least in modern times, are mainly due to economic competition. For example, he thought a major factor behind Britain’s decision to go to war in 1914 was British fears of an economically expanding Germany. The conclusion he drew was that economic competition as an alternative to war was an illusion: it ended by leading to war anyway. Second, Hitler expected the export market for industrial goods to shrink as formerly agricultural countries industrialized. It would do no good for Germany to increase its industrial output if she had nowhere to sell it. This theory of “shrinking markets” was popular in the Germany of Hitler’s youth. Third, Hitler believed economic competition had already led to an exaggerated development of industry at the expense of agriculture. Large numbers of people moved to the big cities, where they demanded cheap foodstuffs, leading to dependence on foreign goods and the further weakening of domestic agriculture. Hitler feared that this process could eventually lead to the outright destruction of German agriculture, and possibly even famine in times of war or crisis.

If the problem of population outstripping living space could not be solved by increased efficiency, emigration, or peaceful economic competition, the only alternative was for Germany to win new Lebensraum. This would perform the same economic functions for Germany and Europe that extra-European colonies had for France and Britain — providing a source of raw materials and a market for her industrial products. It would permit a restoration of the proper balance between agriculture and industry. And it would render Germany and Europe economically self-sufficient (autarkic), and thus capable of waging war against outside powers if necessary.

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the realization of Hitler’s plans for new Lebensraum appeared imminent. While he did speak of settling farmers in this region, he always intended to maintain the German Reich as an industrial-technological area. Moreover, he considered the newly won territories just as important as a source of raw materials and as a market for industrial exports as it would be for agricultural development. He also intended to build cities within this territory. In short, the view that Hitler saw Lebensraum as a means of returning Germany to a pre-industrial agrarian way of life finds no support in his statements or writings.

Hitler on “Left” and “Right”

Among the most influential preconceptions affecting postwar understanding of Hitler and National Socialism is the notion that they represent the “extreme right” of the political spectrum. Far from being self-evident or the product of disinterested analysis, this interpretation was originally laid down by the Soviet leaders in Moscow and the Kremlin-controlled Communist International. According to their party line, “fascism” (of which German National Socialism is merely a local form) represents the polar opposite of true, international socialism. From this it follows that Hitler represented a desperate final effort by “capitalism” to evert its inevitable downfall. It is this Communist interpretation which has mislead historians into portraying the NS government’s supervision of industry as capitalist control of the state. It also requires that the words Socialist and Workers in the name of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) be dismissed as lies meant to mislead naïve supporters.

This interpretation finds no support in Hitler’s own statements or policies. Zitelmann notes that Hitler’s views as quoted in his study “are often surprising, because we would more likely expect them from a left-wing revolutionary.” In fact, Hitler did not regard himself as either “right” or “left.” He was critical of both, as this report on a speech from 1920 shows:

The national right lacked a social concept, the social left a national one. He admonished the right-wing parties: if you want to be national, then climb down to your people, and away with all this class conceit! To the left he called: you who have declared your solidarity with the whole world, first show your solidarity with your own national comrades; become Germans first!

He also emphasized that his own movement was attacked by both left and right: “Even if we have stood up a thousand times against the regime of Wilhelm II, for the Marxists we are still reactionary monarchists … Even if we fight against Bolshevism, and we are the only ones who really fight, for the ‘nationalists’ we remain Bolshevists.”

Hitler saw his movement as combining features of both “left” and “right.” Of course, this does not mean that he thought of it as centrist or moderate — that was the very farthest thing from his intentions. As early as 1921 he wrote: “What we need is to attract powerful masses, preferably from the extreme left and the extreme right wing.” In Hitler’s view, writes Zitelmann, “the people who followed radical slogans and joined extreme parties, regardless of whether on the right or the left, thereby showed that they were not opportunists or career-minded, but brave and courageous fighting spirits prepared to make sacrifices for their convictions.” Hitler sought to free the right of its class prejudices and the left of its internationalism (which he attributed to Jewish influence) to build a broad and united movement of committed idealists.

Once in power, Hitler proceeded with greater harshness against the Left than against reactionaries and monarchists. As Zitelmann notes, however, this is not because he favored the right, but precisely because he despised “conservatives” and “right-wingers” as weak and cowardly, and therefore assumed that they posed no serious threat. Following the July 1944 attempt on his life by reactionary army officers, he acknowledged that this had been a mistake. Yet Hitler could hardly have come to power or fought the war without relying on such forces to some degree.

Hitler’s National Socialism was intended to be exactly what its name implies: a synthesis of nationalism and socialism. As Zitelmann puts it: “For Hitler socialism was the ruthless pursuit of the interests of the nation domestically according to the principle ‘common good ahead of egoism,’ [and] `nationalism’ was the ruthless pursuit of the interests of the nation abroad.” Hitler himself said that since socialism meant “the representation of the interests of a whole over the interests of individuals,” while nationalism meant “commitment to one’s nation,” the two terms were ultimately identical.

He recalled that the idea of combining nationalism and socialism came to him from the observation that neither of the two principal classes of modern society – the bourgeoisie and the working class – was strong enough to defeat the other. For this reason, continued conflict between them could not result in any definitive resolution, but only in the destruction of the German nation. He believed, moreover, that because of inherited racial differences among human beings, socialism could only work within a nation: “there can be approximate equals only within a national body in a larger racial community, but not outside of them.” Socialism is therefore not workable in a multi-racial society.

Hitler’s privately expressed opinions of Italy’s Mussolini and Spain’s Franco also contradict the idea that he was a man of the right. Although his admiration of the Duce was sincere, he privately criticized the Italian Fascist regime for being insufficiently revolutionary: in its continuation of the monarchy, its corruption by private business interests which it had failed to control, and above all its accommodation with the Catholic Church. Benito Mussolini was a free thinker, noted Hitler, “but he started making concessions, whereas in his place I would have turned more to the revolutionary side. I would march into the Vatican and get the whole crowd out.” Zitelmann states that his wartime alliance with Italy “was purely power-political and in no way ideologically motivated.”

Hitler’s criticisms of Spanish Caudillo Francisco Franco were even harsher. He expressed regret at not having known the man and his political objectives better in 1936: “Had I known the true facts, I would never have permitted our aircraft to be used to destroy the starving and to reinstate the Spanish nobility and black frocks into their medieval prerogatives.” By 1940, Zitelmann writes, Hitler came to regret not having supported the other side.

The often-repeated claim that Hitler was a “far right” leader, and that National Socialism was a “right-wing” ideology is just one of the many widely-accepted historical myths that Rainer Zitelmann diligently identifies and deftly debunks in Hitler’s National Socialism. No one who is seriously interested in understanding just why Hitler and NS Germany won such broad and fervent support can afford to ignore this bold, eye-opening and admirably researched work.

 

 

For Further Reading

Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945. Chapel Hill: Univ. of N. Carolina Press, 2000

John A. Garraty, “The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression,” The American Historical Review, Oct. 1973 (Vol. 78, No. 4)

Richard Grunberger, The Twelve-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winson, 1971

John Lukacs, The Hitler of History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997

David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution. New York: W. W. Norton,, 1980

Brendan Simms, Hitler: A Global Biography. New York: Basic Books, 2019

John Toland, Adolf Hitler. Doubleday & Co., 1976

Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985

Otto Wagener, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Yale University Press, 1985

Mark Weber, “How Hitler Tackled Unemployment and Revived Germany’s Economy,” IHR, 2011 and 2012 ( https://ihr.org/other/economyhitler2011 )

Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler’s National Socialism. Management Books, 2022