National Socialism: A Boon and a Bane
B.W. Wojciechowski, March 2021
There have been many attempts to construct a Socialist regime, one that lasts with the consent of the population. All Communisms and Socialisms proclaim their internationalism, their service to all the world’s “people” and promote world-wide goals; but in fact, the most successful ones were virulently nationalistic. The best known and arguably most disastrous was that constructed in Germany under the abbreviation: Nazi. However, several other similar approaches can be identified: Soviet Communism in the USSR and now Chinese Communism. So, what are the salient features which make these “Socialist” regimes similar? Well, here are some notable ones:
1. An existing, decadent, regime is unhorsed by riots brought-on by a small, activist and law-defying minority of the population.
2. The activists seize[BW1] power and begin to act without consultation but in the name of “all the people.”
3. The new regime forms a one-party government.
4. Only those who adhere to party goals and discipline are allowed to have roles in operating the system.
5. All those who do not conform and contribute are suppressed or eliminated. To facilitate total control, the populace is disarmed. Only government agents can bear arms (except for hunting guns with limited capabilities).
6. The populace is divided into good and bad segments. In Germany the bad were Jews, Slavs and other “Untermenschen.” The only worthy people were pure Germans, a newly defined race: the Arians. In Communist USSR the citizenry was divided into heroic “workers” and despised land holders, vilified aristocrats plus several other segments deemed not worthy of tolerance. The resultant discord among the population empowers governments in times of peace, they can now use stern and even extralegal means to control the population. In times of war or other emergencies Nationalism gives them power, they can demand sacrifices and allegiance without limits.
7. Their system of laws is no more impenetrable than that in all societies, but it is routinely distorted to protect the establishment or condemn selected enemies via: corruption (judges are influenced to arrive at a predetermined conclusion), compulsion (by maltreatment of the accused or associates), false testimony (usually by coached individuals) or simply by being ignored (often despite overwhelming evidence). When affairs of state or its officials are concerned, the law becomes an instrument of projecting power, not a means of dispensing justice.
8. A system of information-gathering on fellow citizens, down to the level of children reporting on their parents, is constructed. The rewards for this activity consist of public praise as well as career advancement and protection from the law.
9. When it becomes available, the most advanced electronic surveillance means become a regular and largely unannounced means of monitoring the population and intrudes on privacy in subtle, undeclared, ways.
10. Great effort is dedicated to indoctrination of children and the population in general by a constant barrage of slogans, approved art works, patriotic music, distorted history, etc.
11. The available information is carefully controlled and slanted in favor of the regime. This is carried out by information media dedicated to the goals and protection of the regime. Real, objective news, is not a priority.
12. The guiding principle of all propaganda is to instill social cohesion on the basis of Nationalism and obedience to government dicta. Departure from these goals is declared to be silly, un-patriotic, subversive or even treasonous.
13. Political power is passed on to selected individuals by a party apparatus devoid of, indeed averse to, popular inputs. A kind of Socialist Aristocracy is created.
14. Progress is measured by technological and military achievement and the diligence of the workforce who are expected to fill or exceed “norms.” The comfort and satisfaction of the citizens is at best secondary to the safety of worker’s and the comfort and power of the elite.
15. Various foreign powers are accused of ill-will and nefarious designs on the homeland.
16. A sense of need to expand the regime’s influence is inculcated to justify military expenditures and aggression in the name of ensuring security.
17. International influence is maintained by military threats, non-adhesion to accepted international norms and intransigence in negotiations.
18. Such goals of a National Socialist regime are pursued uncompromisingly and forcefully.
Clearly, echoes of these methods are to be found in any form of government but the National Socialists are unflinching practitioners in their forceful and diligent application.
Nazi Germany
Let us see how these principles fared in Nazi Germany. They fared very well in reconstructing a defeated and trouble-ridden budding democracy following German defeat in WWI. Germany was in financial and political turmoil and subject to a strong influence of Russian Communism, stirring political trouble and inspiring inept economic management. Germany was the basket case of Europe. Neighboring and German politicians were “concerned”, soon they would be terrified.
The emergence of a National Socialist Party headed by Hitler offered some of the charms of Socialism already promulgated by the Communists but focused the populace on German Nationalism. To do this, internal enemies of Germany were identified: Jews, Communists and the usual riffraff and unconforming “intellectuals” present in all societies. The “masses” of the population were eager to rid themselves of these elements which they were told, and believed to be, the source of their misery. In due course the Germans, by reputation a rational and systematic people, resorted to genocide to purify their world. And not for the first time, they had done it in Namibia before. This time it would cost them.
Since the Nazi authorities were firm in dealing with their problems, they attracted enthusiastic adherents and enforcers among their faithful followers. Soon, organized formations of demonstrators and suppressors were helping the authorities in their purifying pursuits. Niceties were abandoned because the threats perceived could not be faced with kid gloves. The authorities organized the activists into official formations sponsored by public resources and began to propagandize youth to ensure the indoctrination of future activists who would continuity the pursuit of Nazi goals for a thousand years, it was said.
Under these policies, Germany rapidly recovered as a significant European power, acquired massive modern armaments, made impressive strides in technology, in social coherence and many laudable goals. The Fatherland was made safe and prosperous. The fact that thousands of non-conformists emigrated, were eliminated or abused, was accepted by the increasingly propagandized populace as being all for the good of the Fatherland.
Invented or real foreign enemies had to be confronted next as they were accused of wanting to destroy the obvious achievements of The Reich. Most of these enemies were simply competitors for influence and protecting their own regimes from a regime they both feared and detested. However, nationalists are always paranoid about their purported enemies.
There was another, more real threat, that Germany faced. The resources of the land mass of Germany were not adequate to sustain the increasing industrial and agricultural demands of the Reich. Enemies had to be created to justify confiscatory access to raw materials, particularly motor fuels and agricultural land. Poland was identified as a threat and source of arable land and plans were made to increase access to oil reserves further east, in the Balkans and in Russia. Since Poland was next door it was the first to be attacked by an overt act of war. As it happened this provided justification for more German military adventures because France and Britain declared war on Germany as a reaction to its occupation of Poland. This provided an excuse for Germany to flex its muscles as a modern military power and occupy the Lowlands and France and plan to occupy Great Britain. Unfortunately, France and Great Britain had not prepared for the modern German style of war-fighting. Not being prepared for the next war is a common error among less aggressive regimes.
During this phase and later in WWII Germany put on an impressive military and technological performance, firmly backed by a well-organized industrial base and a patriotic civilian front, until it was crushingly defeated and forced to rebuild under two different political regimes, those the victors found acceptable. Remarkably, with the help of the Western powers and a well-educated, diligent and disciplined society, West Germany soon recovered and became a significant player on the European scene. East Germany, which fell under Soviet tutelage, stagnated economically and socially. After the fall of the USSR the two Germanies were reunited.
Germany’s disastrous WWII adventure was due to Hitler’s stupid foreign policies, the consequent war and many military follies undertaken on Hitler’s command. Hitler was not a military genius. Had Germany negotiated their needs with potential suppliers, governed well internally and avoided opprobrium in the longer term it would have continued to prosper. As it was, Germany endured the hell of war and wholesale destruction. Though its casualties were great they were less than the total of their opponents, a result that increased the pain inflicted on Europe by this example of National Socialism.
Nazi reign was short because of bad policies driven by overemphasis on some of the defining principles of German National Socialism, such as unnecessary expansionism and Nazi racist ideology.
Soviet Communism
Russian National Socialism had different roots and lasted much longer. The preceding Russian Empire was on the verge of becoming a modern state after WWI when disaster struck. Centuries of misgovernment, class arrogance, and economic stagnation caught up with the hereditary aristocratic regime. The immediate opportunity for disruption came when Russian forces performed poorly in WWI. The increasingly aware citizenry of St. Petersburg and many of the major cities was unhappy with the ruling Romanoff dynasty and believed the it was their influence on government that caused the armed forces to perform badly. Moreover, because of an irreparably inept (though increasingly democratic) government, and the lack of rapid progress in modernization, the populace was very restless.
As fate would have it, a doctrinaire and radical solution had been formulated earlier by a couple of European intellectuals; Carl Marx, an English immigrant of Jewish-German descent and Fredrich Engels also an English immigrant of German descent. These two thinkers were living in London and cooperated in developing a theory of a social structure, devoid of hereditary classes, subject to a government which would operate according to the will of “the people.”
The Socialist ideal was intended to be democratic but put an emphasis on a ruling elite who would initially “lead” the people, because it would know better than the masses to whom they promised freedom from oppression and a voice in their society. Clearly the un-prepared masses of people would be lost in chaos and disarray without the guidance of a powerful and wise leadership before the promised egalitarian arrangements could take root. Slogans, arts and information media were mobilized to propagandize the population to accept this “short-term” need. Those who would not agree were clearly deluded and a danger to the welfare of the rest. Off with their heads, dead men cause no trouble. A sensible enough position to take on the defense of a worthy cause. And not that uncommon in earlier and later regimes ranging from despotic to religious.
A major difference between the Nazi state and Communist Russia was that the Nazis coopted private industry to work for the state as needed whereas the Communist bureaucracies took total control of all production, research, agricultural and other operations of the economy. If the leaders are that much wiser than the populace, they will obviously do a better job of managing everything that the fragmented, greedy private economy was doing. Right? Wrong!
The Communists of the USSR had to deal with a more varied population mix than Germany. Their lands already contained peoples of a variety of traditions, speaking dozens of languages and cherishing histories of their often glorious past, before they were conquered by the preceding power of Imperial Russia. They were much more difficult to homogenize than the better assimilated peoples of the Reich. This brought on a need to employ much sterner measures in the control of the USSR citizenry than the Germans had to employ. Millions of people had to be executed, exiled to sparsely populated regions as laborers, starved, confined to concentration camps and otherwise subjected to draconian measures in order to remove them from influence and instill submission in the rest of the population.
The Communists did not fail in indoctrinating a fairly broad segment of their population to glorify the regime and work for it. However, the percentage who lived in fear was much greater than in Germany. What prolonged the survival of the Russian Communist regime was Hitler; he declared a pre-emptive war on his erstwhile ally from the days of their combined attack on Poland. This awoke an ancient patriotism in the Russian population and allowed the regime to demand unstinting services and efforts in the defense of the Motherland. Now the authorities could use the conscripts freely as cannon fodder in defense of the Motherland and so make up for the more modern equipment, resilience and experience of the Germans. The casualties among Russian military were greater than those of the Germans they faced. But Stalin was not worried by the casualties caused by a war in defense of the Motherland. He had already killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of his subjects, in his “struggle” with those who opposed his regime.
The consequence of the war was that an awakened spirit of nationalism followed. This was coupled with access to the riches of the expanded empire which now occupied eastern European countries, except Greece, an achievement which made the Russian citizenry proud and made them forget the atrocities of the prewar past. They were now offering Socialism to the benighted Poles, not to mention making available the benefits of Communism to other previously misguided people. This was played up to the max by government propaganda and bought more time for the regime. However, it was not enough. As time went on the industrial, commercial and lifestyle aspects of the USSR fell behind those of the capitalist West. Civil servants have never been good managers, arguably anywhere. Even the badly destroyed erstwhile enemies, such as capitalist Germany and Japan, rose in development above what the Communists of the victorious and expanded empire of the USSR could deliver.
Propaganda concentrated on defaming the Western allies, sabre rattling, and scaremongering. Too many resources were directed to armaments and unnecessary defense, leaving the population at a much lower standard of living than that in the West. Despite strict censorship and incessant propaganda extolling the virtues of Communism and lying about conditions in the West, reality slowly sunk in. The empire that the USSR had constructed was in danger of collapsing and there was a genuine danger that a vast slaughter would take place leaving the territories of the USSR debilitated for decades. Amazingly, the authorities managed to avoid a serious upheaval, shed the more troublesome parts of the USSR and retain power in Russia in a new guise.
The captive nations such as Poland, East Germany, Romania, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and many others were let loose and promptly got rid of their Communist governments. There too the despised Communists avoided serious repercussions. Only Ceausescu of Rumania was executed. Several others were placed before courts which were often staffed by left-over Communists who were not too harsh with their colleagues.
And so, another National Socialist regime fell but for different reasons than the Nazis. This time it fell due to internal inhomogeneity, a bad economy and an increasingly corrupt upper class, a class whose corruption did not become too obviously in Nazi Germany due to a lack of time and the distraction of the war. The people responsible for the abuse of the citizens under Communism suffered few or no consequences, some even prospered.
Communist China
Ancient China too fell into the clutches of National Socialism. Here the immediate cause was the brutal occupation of parts of the country by the Japanese. The Japanese were defeated in WWII and the occupation of large parts of China relieved. However, neighboring Russia immediately began efforts to have China join the Communist camp to help restrain the capitalist West. They had tried it earlier with post WWI Germany but got a Nazi Germany instead. This time they succeeded. The West once again did not pay serious attention to what was going on. After a prolonged struggle, the Communists took over and began to construct their eutopia in China. It did not go smoothly.
For the major part of the early years the country was ruled by a dictator, Mao Tse Tung. His personality tended to autocracy and his predisposition was not up to running a country as disparate and tradition-bound as China without draconian measures and essential economic help from the failing USSR. To keep order, nationalism was invoked and to help homogenize the population the more numerous Han population was encouraged to become dominant and to populate regions where other peoples constituted the majority.
Part of the homogenization effort involved the “Great Leap Forward” during which supporters of the government, often deluded youths, were given free rein to suppress real or imagined dissidents and those who were said to be “reactionaries.” This dreadful period lasted long enough to depopulate segments of society of such groups as teachers, university professors, and many identifiable leading members of society, often dedicated communists themselves. Selected citizens were persecuted, killed, or sent to re-education and generally speaking had their lives and careers ruined. No law was implemented: the will of the people, that is of the roaming mobs, was enough to carry out whatever summary punishment the people’s “justice” meted out to individuals.
After the Death of Mao, a modernist-nationalist drive made China into a modern imperial state. It was and is vigorously expanding its territory by occupying Tibet, reabsorbing Hong Kong and Macao, building islands in international waters and threating to invade Taiwan. But this and the Han injection into various parts of the empire with inadequately assimilated native populations has started to complicate internal and international politics. China is not a homogeneous entity, never was, and the centrist Han-dominated government’s efforts may yet backfire, they may simply aggravate an age-old problem.
Immediately after the death of Mao, a brief period of instability followed, including some bloodshed. The faction that gained power were a much more modern bunch but no less nationalist, centrist and intransigent. Chinese Communism is now simply a convenient slogan and a structure which allows control to be maintained; modernization and world domination is now the goal of a rising empire. China began to interact with the developed world by joining international and bilateral bodies and increasing their influence-gaining activity is commerce. They also put great emphasis on modernization of the country’s infrastructure and industry. In all of this the Chinese State bent rules, pilfered intellectual property, and maneuver to gain unfair advantage as they pursue their goal of becoming internationally dominant, a goal of all the National Socialist regimes of the past.
Amazingly rapid progress in these endeavors can only be compared to the progress made in Germany in the first decade or so of Nazi domination. Industry has been rapidly brought up to date, roads, railways and airlines placed on a path or rapid development and cities were spruced up, modernized and expanded to accommodate the masses of the rural population which migrated to man industrial projects. The West has to admire, and be concerned by, the technological progress made in recent years. This transformation is destabilizing to rural communities and to traditional Chinese family life. Here too there is potential for serious trouble to come.
Some freedoms of relocation and personal enrichment were made available by the modernizers with the result that the spread in personal wealth has increased by orders of magnitude and involved a broader segment of the population. As in post-Communist Russia, well placed people of the earlier regime were the ones who prospered best. However, while Russian oligarchs soon suffered uncertainties which made many of them migrate out of Russia, the Chinese oligarchs often chose to cooperate with the authorities in building up the economy while building-up their personal wealth. This is reminiscent of what the Nazis achieved but eluded the Russian transformation. Some oligarchs remained in Russia but a lot of ill-gotten wealth left the country.
Today China is aspiring to dominate the world politically and technologically. How this will end is not yet clear, although, due to the political ills of the West, it looks promising. However, there are clouds on the horizon. Like all National Socialists, China has an uncontrolled drive to expand its territory and influence. Like the USSR it contains a number of populations that are not the dominant one, in this case the Han, and therefore have different cultural backgrounds. Efforts are being made to eliminate these Untermenschen but how that will end is not sure. Draconian measures are being implemented to subjugate the Muslim-dominated regions of western China and the Buddhists in Tibet. This harshness, typical of Nationalist Socialist regimes, is planting a seed of dissent that may yet yield bitter fruit.
Other National Socialisms
Two less-often remarked trends of National Socialism are hereditary and designated succession, despite pretentions to be democratic. Two currently active regimes of this type are obvious: North Korea and Cuba. Such regimes are fiercely nationalistic and share the specifications I listed above with the added constraint that a family member or designated successor assumes the position of “Supreme Leader.” All Socialist regimes have at least phases of this: e.g. Cuba and the Castros, North Korea and the Kims. The justification is that once authority is in safe hands why should “the people” be exposed to uncertainty? This sounds eerily like the arguments against term limits in Western democracies. Without being unkind, one may suspect that once an establishment has formed, it hates to give up its self-awarded privileges, no matter what they preach.
The only Nationalist Socialist regimes that have prospered are in Scandinavia. A large part of this success is that these governments have been flexible enough to change or abandon major social and economic policies, ones based on Socialist principles but that do not work. Will they be flexible enough to continue to thrive while hard-to-assimilate immigrants import their unconformable cultures and much greater needs, change the ancient population mix, and vote to promote alien ideas? Uncompromising liberalism may be the poison pill of these regimes
What About the Ideals of Western Democracies?
It is a foregone conclusion that democratic governments, as constituted today, will bribe the voters with their own money. The process is simple: increase the percentage of voters who depend on the government. This includes overpaid and un-shedable civil servants, those on various forms of welfare, those who benefit from ever-increasing government mandated minimum wages, those who are to be assured income subsidies, even if they are working but not earning an income deemed to be minimal by the government, and more. It takes a long-term program to increase the fraction of voters who benefit from such policies but it will eventually place all resources and power in the hands of the government. Who will vote for an opposition promoting individual “freedom,” if it will mean that “free” goodies will become unavailable? A democracy cannot exist if the ruling party has no opposition because the voters have been bribed into impotence.
The negative aspects of aristocratic, dictatorial and other narrowly-based governments were to be avoided in the plans of those who installed democracies in the West. That hope has failed. Today’s Western democracies are firmly in the hands of establishments, often surreptitiously hereditary, and are not the hoped-for meritocracies elected by a well-informed populace. In fact, in order to increase dependency, merit is decried in “progressive” democracies. In many democracies it is already considered evil and “elitist” or “racist” or “sexist” or simply “morally wrong” to take merit as the deciding factor in the choice of an employee for government (civil?) service. And progressive ideologues plan to make it so in private business too. Surely this buys votes of the less competent for a party of “progressives” which makes them employable, and paid beyond their worth …. at the expense of the more productive population and the success of a society competing with others, more demanding of their workforce.
As for the merits of elected officials, most Western governments are full of career politicians who drift in the clouds of governmental operations throughout their careers using public monies to enhance their financial prospects. Efforts to institute term limits and restrictions in taking an insider part in government operations run into a stone wall of objections from the establishment claiming that experienced talents would be lost. It’s patently absurd to claim that the very best and irreplaceable talents of the nation are presently seated in our legislatures or man the civil service. It is the power and the outrageous self-conferred privileges that are so attractive that few legislators are willing to step aside. It has led to cronyism, narrowmindedness and corruption.
Many industries survive the drift of talented people between and within companies. Some employees even get fired! or laid off if their services are no longer needed! something that one can rarely do with unnecessary, incompetent, or crooked government officials, both elected and employed by the civil service. Are all government employees indispensable, and worth their high compensation? Has anyone tried to justify the costs of the civil service, or the expenditures of the government on national goals, or on their own perks and compensation? To see how unlikely, it is that such questions can be answered, read about the documented financial and legal peccadillos of US top level officialdom over the last decades, read about the unconstrained costs of various governmental organizations, their wasteful and/or corrupt purchases, and judge for yourself. There is chicanery and lying and outright corruption in much of what democratic governments and their agencies do … and not just in the USA. How much financial control or justice has been put in place to control this? I say not enough.
The various ails of democracies are a subject I have previously addressed several times in my blogs on Medium and enlarged-on in my book “Democracies.” My feeling is that the citizens of democracies are increasingly-desperately looking for solutions to these problems, while the democratic establishments resist change and spend money that they simply print to buy the votes they need to personally survive in office and continue to prosper. That is a historically documented recipe for disaster. It is not just evil regimes that fail; well-intentioned but degenerate ones will also share that fate.
As decadent regimes decay, they tend to increasingly employ the principles of National Socialism. Read the list at the beginning to see what I mean. This trend creeps in slowly but relentlessly. It allows a government to control the population for a little longer. I invite the reader to judge which of the listed characteristics of National Socialism or its precedents are today creeping into the democracies of the West: unconstrained propaganda? outright lies? legal chicanery? financial irresponsibility? fearmongering? riots?
The fondest hope Western democracies can have is that our leaders will have the wit to allow radical changes to be implemented with little bloodshed. The Russians and the Chinese did it in their systems when they saw the end coming; why can’t we do it for our ailing Western systems? We have often been told that Western democracies are wiser, nicer and more civilized than the illiberal and hostile regimes we deal with. Show me.
