Are Nazis far left or far right?
Nazism is a tricky animal. It doesn't easily fit into the traditional "left vs right" system that we love so much. Most political scientists will probably tell you that Nazism is considered to be right wing.At its core, Nazism is extremely right wing. They believe in things typically associated with the far right, such as extreme nationalism, militarism, "traditional values", authoritarianism, and xenophobia. They hated communism, liberalism and socialism (despite the name- I'll get to that later), and they blamed most of society's ills on those groups. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the first thing they did was pass laws to make those parties (communist and socialist) illegal and imprisoned their leaders.But as you delve deeper into their brand of philosophy, things become murkier. The Nazis also rejected capitalism and western notions of democracy. Hitler felt capitalism was corrupt and was tainted by Jews, thus was undesirable. He felt private ownership was ok as long as it conformed to his views and contributed to the nation sufficiently. He even threw blame at right-wing German political parties, claiming that they were lazy and it was their fault that Jews had made Germany lose World War I.If you asked Hitler if his party was left or right wing, he would tell you they were neither (just before having you imprisoned). Despite the extreme right wing stuff I already mentioned, the Nazi government had no problem stealing ideas from the left. They nationalized some industries, ran some socialist programs like national healthcare, and even took control of trade unions.But it was more of a pragmatic desire for full control over everything and through that control, a way of enforcing their beliefs on everyone, and not any sort of left-wing ideology, that led them to do these things. They believed that things needed to be run by the government, not to resolve class warfare or bring about a workers' paradise, but to keep people under control and protect against communism. So, for example, nationalized healthcare would allow them to better weed out "undesireable" people- there was a program, the Aktion T4, which killed off people with genetic disorders and disabilities (because the idea that German people needed to be "pure" was important to the Nazis).As for the socialist thing i mentioned early on... if you cruise the intergoogles, you may run across websites, particularly those run by people who sit on the right-wing, who claim that Nazism was socialist because "Nazi" is short for "National Socialist"; the full name of the Nazi party was "National Socialist German Workers Party" (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, or NSDAP). They see the "socialist" in their name as full irrefutable proof that the Nazis were "socialist", and therefore, left-wing. Throw in some of the socialist style policies the Nazis played, and it almost seems to make a solid case.The fact that the word "socialist" appears in their name doesn't automatically make them socialists. Ever heard of the "German Democratic Republic"? That's what communist dictatorship East Germany officially called itself. Same for the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"- North Korea, one of the most undemocratic countries ever. Hitler and his Nazi stooges fully admitted that they only added "socialist" (along with "national") to their party's name in 1920 to broaden their appeal (the party was originally called the "German Workers Party").Now, to be fair, until 1934, there were originally two sides of the Nazi party. There were the mainline ones led by Hitler and Göring, who eventually won out and their "philosophy" was the basis of Nazi Germany's. The other faction, led by brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, actually believed in socialism and wanted to incorporate a lot more of it. Otto eventually went into exile, and in 1934 Hitler had Gregor and the rest of the "Strasserites" murdered in the "Night of the Long Knives", to prevent any in-fighting in the party. This permanently ended that "socialist" wing of the party.
