Why did the Nazis call themselves socialists?

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party was founded in 1920, with Adolf Hitler not yet a member but a major influence. If, as we all know, they were a fascist party, why did they include the word “socialist” in their name? And how are we to understand that today?

To start with, we must remember that the word socialism has historically been used to represent widely differing political views. Karl Kautsky, the leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), wrote in 1888 that Thomas More and Thomas Muenzner were two great socialists and that both of them “follow the long line of socialists, from Lycurgus and Pythagoras to Plato, the Gracchi, Cataline, Christ ...”

The common concept is some form of collective management of society—that human needs should be met socially rather than just individually.

At the time the Nazi party was formed, there were probably dozens of organisations and parties in Europe calling themselves socialist. Most had developed during the nineteenth century. Some advocated a form of socialism to be handed down by the state or, like the Fabians in Britain, a society to be designed by an elite.

But Karl Marx and others proposed something entirely different: a new society to be brought about by the self-activity of the masses, particularly the working class. The Fabians recognised this distinction and talked about “a distinct rupture between the Socialism of the street and the Socialism of the chair”.

So historically, despite the many forms of socialism being argued for and parties being established, there were, and continue to be, two main currents, which Hal Draper called socialism from above and socialism from below.

This is a way of looking at the history of socialist ideas. But in the period immediately following World War One, there was an extremely sharp crisis in what these ideas meant in practice. On the one hand the SPD, the largest and most influential socialist party in Europe for decades, had repudiated its politics of international solidarity in 1914 and supported the German war effort. On the other hand, the revolution in Russia in 1917 overthrew traditional ideas and presented what at the time was an astonishing new idea of what socialism would look like—workers’ councils and the complete overthrow of the ruling class. And they added a new word, “communist”. So the meaning of words like “socialist” were quite fluid at that time, and therefore ripe for exploitation.

This was the situation when German fascists first set up the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or DAP) in 1919. The party changed its name to National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) in 1920. Why? The reason is that fascists have always attempted to gain influence in the working class, as a way of recruiting shock troops.

The British Brothers League, a short-lived proto-fascist organisation prior to World War One, had a strategic orientation to the working class in the East End of London, where it could mobilise support by rehashing old charges: that Jews were ousting locals from jobs and houses and that they were the cause of crime.

Formed in 1932, the British Union of Fascists (BUF) did not initially focus on Jews. Its core ideas at the start were nationalism, corporatism (in which social and economic interest groups control the state) and anti-communism—the corporatism gave it a semi-socialist gloss. In 1935, the party turned to building what David Rosenberg called a “belligerent street-level populist movement of agitation and provocation in predominantly working-class areas surrounding Jewish populations”. This strategy reached its peak in 1936, when their attempted march through the East End led to the mass opposition in Cable Street by more than 100,000 Jews and non-Jews.

Mussolini also had an orientation to a corporatist state and used this to try to coopt workers. The Nazi party and Hitler derived their strategy from him—in the early days, while they were still building a base, they used populist and anti-big business rhetoric to appeal to disaffected workers and the lower middle classes.

But at the same time, the party wanted to appeal to extreme right, racist, anti-communist and militarist traditions. As a result of this dual orientation, the name of the party is a mishmash: they tried to draw upon both left-wing and right-wing sentiments—socialist and workers on the one hand, and national and German on the other. In doing this, the Nazis were continuing a longstanding tradition of the German right—attempts to gain traction among workers, combined with antisemitism.

Otto von Bismarck was the first German chancellor after unification in 1871. His court chaplain, Adolf Stöcker, set up the antisemitic Christian Social Workers’ Party in 1878. He hoped to foment hostility against non-Christians (i.e. Jews) among the SPD-voting working class. But when this failed, the word “worker” was removed from the party’s title and, instead, they targeted the petty bourgeoisie with their antisemitic message.

After the end of World War One, there was rapid growth among nationalist, anti-monarchist and antisemitic currents in Germany, which provided a fruitful recruitment ground for Hitler. Although the Nazis presented themselves as anti-capitalist, this was largely conceived in antisemitic terms.

Although they initially relied mainly on propaganda, coercive force began with the creation of an extreme right-wing militia in 1918. It comprised discharged soldiers out of which Jews, leftists and workers were screened, though it was fronted by a Social Democrat, Gustav Noske. The Free Corps, or Freikorps, was 400,000 strong and commanded by officers drawn from the nobility. It was dissolved as an organisation in the mid-1920s, as Klaus Fischer explains, but the members went on to form “the vanguard of Nazism and ... produced the Judeophobic mentality that subsequently defined Hitler’s political foot soldiers”.

There were other roots as well. Anton Drexler, for example, was a militant nationalist who opposed Germany’s loss of land in the Treaty of Versailles. Drexler also argued for a form of national corporatism in which profit-sharing would increase welfare for middle-class Aryans and would override class society by creating a “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft). It was these sorts of ideas that they could label “socialist”.

It was Drexler who founded the DAP, but this was just one of many “völkisch” parties that flourished during the early Weimar Republic period of economic chaos and political instability (1918-1933). The party announced its 25-point manifesto in 1920, signposting much of Hitler’s later strategy—German expansion, especially to the east, Jew hatred and subordination of class interests to the state. At the same time, the party moved from discussion group to campaigning and agitation, particularly among disaffected young unemployed men. They were very open to the type of “blood and soil” nationalism of the Freikorps and other right-wing organisations.

In 1923, the party grew rapidly to 20,000 members, cashing in on a rise in nationalist sentiment after France occupied the Ruhr industrial region. Antisemitism turned from propaganda to action in Berlin in November, with a pogrom in the Scheunenviertel, the area inhabited by poor and working-class Jewish refugees from eastern Europe. The trigger was the failure of the unemployment office to pay out entitlements, which rabble-rousers blamed on Jewish speculation. However, the actions were clearly well planned, as local racists were joined by a mob of up to 30,000 people whipped up by inflammatory speeches throughout Berlin.

Police stood by while they beat up Jews in the streets and attacked Jewish homes and businesses. When the police did move into action, they arrested not the pogromists but hundreds of Jews on charges such as disturbing the peace!

It is not clear who the leaders of the pogrom were, but it demonstrates the atmosphere of the time: rightists attempting to divert working-class attention towards scapegoating Jews. It is likely no accident that Hitler’s failed coup, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, occurred only a few days later, on 9 November.

The Nazis continued their activities among the working class through their paramilitary Storm Detachment (Sturmabteilung or SA) starting in the early 1920s. One prominent activist was Horst Wessel, a leading participant in the extensive street fighting with Communists and other leftists in “Red Berlin” through the late 1920s. Assassinated by Communists in 1930, he became a martyr for the fascist cause. A song he had written became known as the Horst Wessel Song. Interestingly, the music was taken from a communist songbook. The fighting continued after his death. For instance, Communist Anti-Fascist Action engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Nazi stormtroopers. In Prussia between 1 June and 20 July 1932, street fighting between them killed 30 Communists and 38 Nazis.

The Nazi party never changed its name, but its approach to workers—and bosses—changed completely after it gained power in 1933. Having rammed through enabling legislation to give himself emergency powers, Hitler set about implementing the Volksgemeinschaft. But in no way did this have anything in common with socialism. With his slogan “One People, one Empire, one Leader” (Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer), Hitler attacked and incarcerated communists, socialists, trade unionists, Jews, liberals, queer people and oppositionists of all kinds. He also purged his own Nazi stormtroopers in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.

While Hitler was first to last antisemitic, after he gained power, he focused first on the labour movement and only moved against Jews later on. The reason was that he had to destroy the left before advancing his full antisemitic program. He knew he had to destroy the movement that would provide the best defence for his victims.

Hitler took care to remain securely within the capitalist economic framework, including private property and free competition. This made him very attractive to large sections of the capitalists and the educated classes. In February 1933, Hitler met with 25 leading industrialists, including weapons magnate Krupp and representatives of chemical giant IG Farben, who pledged financial and other support for the Nazis. They were well repaid by Hitler’s suppression of the working class and trade unionism.

By the end of the 1930s, the full name of the Nazi party was less in the public eye than the shortened version—National Socialists. The Nazis themselves only rarely used the term Nazi (an abbreviation of the German pronunciation of the first word in the name). The word was most often used as a term of ridicule by opponents: it already existed as a short form of the name Ignatius, common in Hitler’s home region of Bavaria, and implied a backward peasant.

The NSDAP’s name was therefore a ruse. As historian Ishay Landa says, “The trick was to benefit from the popularity of socialism, which was widely seen as the force of the future, but at the same time to distance themselves as much as possible from its substance”. We should not allow ourselves to fall for the trick.