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From: gjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg J Kuperberg)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Nazis
Message-ID: <147@talcott.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 21:57:01 EST
Article-I.D.: talcott.147
Posted: Thu Nov 29 21:57:01 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Dec-84 06:49:44 EST
References: <658@sjuvax.UUCP> <22400042@ea.UUCP> <6207@mcvax.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Harvard
Lines: 37

In article <6207@mcvax.UUCP>, Steven Pemberton writes:
> In article <22400042@ea.UUCP> mwm@ea.UUCP writes:
> > Sigh. How many times does it have to be said. The Nazis (National
> > Socialists) were *left* wing radicals. It says so right there on the label.
> 
> Is this a joke? I remember seeing a film where someone made the same joke,
> and a few years ago everyone had a good laugh when Prince Philip of the
> British royal family made a blunder by saying something similar, though
> seriously.

Ok, Steven, we now know that you can ridicule someone else.  Unfortunately,
your article did not convey any information.  In this case, there is
interesting history involved, so:

The National Socialists were originally a pathetic little socialist party
in Germany.  For some reason Hitler liked some of few members that it had,
so he took it over and made it a very big, but not very socialist, party.
Once he entered the party, he took to monopolizing it immediately.  Some of
the original members resented him for this, and most of these were put to
death in 1934.

Hitler was not in any sense a socialist.  In fact, he didn't care much for
economics at all.  He made a feeble attempt at an economic theory in Mein
Kampf at one point, but you can tell that he simply wasn't very interested.

He made attempts to appeal to both big business and the workers in Germany.
When talking to the workers, he was pro-union, and when talking to
businessmen, he was not.  In the end, he needed the businessmen's money
more than the workers' vote, so he favored them more often.

Hitler was neither a left-wing radical nor a right-wing radical.  He was the
point at infinity; he was simply radical.
---
			Greg Kuperberg
		     harvard!talcott!gjk

"Eureka!" -Archimedes