The Source of Hitler's Success

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The Source of Hitler's Success

by Ludwig von Mises

<http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1691>[Posted December 3, 2004]

The following, written in 1940, is excerpted from Interventionism, An
Economic Analysis, which was originally part of
<http://www.mises.org/humanaction/pdf/nationaloekonomie.pdf>Nationaloekonomie,
the German predecessor to Human Action.
<http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/interventionism/contents.asp>The entire
text is online for the first time.
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 Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini constantly proclaim that they are chosen by
destiny to bring salvation to this world. They claim they are the leaders
of the creative youth who fight against their outlived elders. They bring
from the East the new culture which is to replace the dying Western
civilization. They want to give the coup de grace to liberalism and
capitalism; they want to overcome immoral egoism by altruism; they plan to
replace the anarchic democracy by order and organization, the society of
classes by the total state, the market economy by socialism. Their war is
not a war for territorial expansion, for loot and hegemony like the
imperialistic wars of the past, but a holy crusade for a better world to
live in. And they feel certain of their victory because they are convinced
that they are borne by the wave of the future.

It is a law of nature, they say, that great historic changes cannot take
place peacefully or without conflict. It would be petty and stupid, they
contend, to overlook the creative quality of their work because of some
unpleasantness which the great world revolution must necessarily bring with
it. They maintain one should not overlook the glory of the new gospel
because of ill-placed pity for Jews and Masons, Poles and Czechs, Finns and
Greeks, the decadent English aristocracy and the corrupt French
bourgeoisie. Such softness and such blindness for the new standards of
morality prove only the decadence of the dying capitalistic pseudo-culture.
The whining and crying of impotent old men, they say, is futile; it will
not stop the victorious advance of youth. No one can stop the wheel of
history, or turn back the clock of time.

The success of this propaganda is overwhelming. People do not consider the
content of alleged new gospel; they merely understand that it is new and
believe to see in this fact its justification. As women welcome a new style
in clothes just to have a change, so the supposedly new style in politics
and economics is welcomed. People hasten to exchange their old ideas for
new ones, because they fear to appear old-fashioned and reactionary. They
join the chorus decrying the shortcomings of the capitalistic civilization
and speak in elated enthusiasm of the achievements of the autocrats.
Nothing is today more fashionable than slandering Western civilization.

This mentality has made it easy for Hitler to gain his victories. The
Czechs and the Danes capitulated without a fight. Norwegian officers handed
over large sections of their country to Hitlers army. The Dutch and the
Belgians gave in after only a short resistance. The French had the audacity
to celebrate the destruction of their independence as a national revival.
It took Hitler five years to effect the Anschluss of Austria;
two-and-one-half years later he was master of the European continent.

Hitler does not have a new secret weapon at his disposal. He does not owe
his victory to an excellent intelligence service which informs him of the
plans of his opponents. Even the much-talked-of fifth column was not
decisive. He won because the supposed opponents were already quite
sympathetic to the ideas for which he stood.

Only those who unconditionally and unrestrictedly consider the market
economy as the only workable form of social cooperation are opponents of
the totalitarian systems and are capable of fighting them successfully.
Those who want socialism intend to bring to their country the system which
Russia and Germany enjoy. To favor interventionism means to enter a road
which inevitably leads to socialism.

An ideological struggle cannot be fought successfully with constant
concessions to the principles of the enemy. Those who refute capitalism
because it supposedly is inimical to the interest of the masses, those who
proclaim as a matter of course that after the victory over Hitler the
market economy will have to be replaced by a better system and, therefore,
everything should be done now to make the government control of business as
complete as possible, are actually fighting for totalitarianism. The
progressives who today masquerade as liberals may rant against
fascism; yet it is their policy that paves the way for Hitlerism.

<http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/interventionism/contents.asp> Nothing
could have been more helpful to the success of the National-Socialist
(Nazi) movement than the methods used by the progressives, denouncing
Nazism as a party serving the interests of capital. The German workers
knew this tactic too well to be deceived by it again.

Was it not true that, since the seventies of the last century, the
ostensibly pro-labor Social-Democrats had fought all the pro-labor measures
of the German government vigorously, calling them bourgeois and injurious
to the interests of the working class?

The Social-Democrats had consistently voted against the nationalization of
the railroads, the municipalization of the public utilities, labor
legislation, and compulsory accident, sickness, and old-age insurance, the
German social security system which was adopted later throughout the world.
Then after the war [World War l] the Communists branded the German
Social-Democratic party and the Social-Democratic unions as traitors to
their class. So the German workers realized that every party wooing them
called the competing parties willing servants of capitalism, and their
allegiance to Nazism would not be shattered by such phrases.

Unless we are utterly oblivious to the facts, we must realize that the
German workers are the most reliable supporters of the Hitler regime.
Nazism has won them over completely by eliminating unemployment and by
reducing the entrepreneurs to the status of shop managers (Betriebsfuhrer).
Big business, shopkeepers, and peasants are disappointed. Labor is well
satisfied and will stand by Hitler, unless the war takes a turn which would
destroy their hope for a better life after the peace treaty. Only military
reverses can deprive Hitler of the backing of the German workers.

The fact that the capitalists and entrepreneurs, faced with the alternative
of Communism or Nazism, chose the latter, does not require any further
explanation. They preferred to live as shop managers under Hitler than to
be liquidated as bourgeois by Stalin. Capitalists dont like to be
killed any more than other people do.

What pernicious effects may be produced by believing that the German
workers are opposed to Hitler was proved by the English tactics during the
first year of the war. The government of Neville
Chamberlain<http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/interventionism/section7.asp#_ftn10>*
firmly believed that the war would be brought to an end by a revolution of
the German workers. Instead of concentrating on vigorous arming and
fighting, they had their planes drop leaflets over Germany telling the
German workers that England was not fighting this war against them, but
against their oppressor, Hitler. The English government knew very well,
they said, that the German people, particularly labor, were against war and
were only forced into it by their self-imposed dictator.

 The workers in the Anglo-Saxon countries, too, knew that the socialist
parties competing for their favor usually accused each other of favoring
capitalism. Communists of all shades advance this accusation against
socialists. And within the Communist groups the Trotskyites used this same
argument against Stalin and his men. And vice versa. The fact that the
progressives bring the same accusation against Nazism and Fascism will
not prevent labor some day from following another gang wearing shirts of a
different color.

What is wrong with Western civilization is the accepted habit of judging
political parties merely by asking whether they seem new and radical
enough, not by analyzing whether they are wise or unwise, or whether they
are apt to achieve their aims. Not everything that exists today is
reasonable; but this does not mean that everything that does not exist is
sensible.

The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is left and
what is right? Why should Hitler be right and Stalin, his temporary
friend, be left? Who is reactionary and who is progressive? Reaction
against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos
is not to be commended. Nothing should find acceptance just because it is
new, radical, and fashionable. Orthodoxy is not an evil if the doctrine
on which the orthodox stand is sound. Who is anti-labor, those who want
to lower labor to the Russian level, or those who want for labor the
capitalistic standard of the United States? Who is nationalist, those who
want to bring their nation under the heel of the Nazis, or those who want
to preserve its independence?

What would have happened to Western civilization if its peoples had always
shown such liking for the new? Suppose they had welcomed as the wave of
the future Attila and his Huns, the creed of Mohammed, or the Tartars?
They, too, were totalitarian and had military successes to their credit
which made the weak hesitate and ready to capitulate. What mankind needs
today is liberation from the rule of nonsensical slogans and a return to
sound reasoning.

__________________________________

<http://www.mises.org/content/mises.asp>Ludwig von Mises (18811973) was
dean of the Austrian School.

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