Did Hitler Say That Nazis Are “Mortal Enemies of the Present Capitalist Economic System”?
While attributed to Hitler, this “leftist” quote actually came from one of Hitler’s political rivals.
CLAIM
Adolf Hitler was a “leftist” who stated that Nazis “are socialists [and] mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system.”
RATING
FALSE
ORIGIN
"Back in January 2016, conservative web site Louder with Crowder dipped its toes into the world of fact-checking with an article (“MYTH BUSTED: Actually, Yes, Hitler Was a Socialist Liberal”) that makes the claim that “leftists” have unfairly rewritten history to paint Hitler as right wing, based in part on the fact that the Nazi party had the word “socialist” in its name.
Perhaps ironically, that article opens with a tidbit of literally rewritten history, misattributing a quote by Nazi party member Gregor Strasser to Adolf Hitler:
We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!
Hitler never wrote nor uttered these words. Instead, these are the words of early Nazi party official Gregor Strasser, printed in a 1926 pamphlet titled Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future. That pamphlet, as we will discuss in detail below, attempted to appeal to ultranationalist movements on both the left and the right at a time when the Nazis were a fringe political party seeking to carve out as big a part of the German electorate as possible.
Strasser’s pamphlet went on to make these decidedly non-socialist sounding statements as well:
The spirit of our National Socialist idea has to overpower the spirit of liberalism and false democracy if there is to be a third Reich at all! Deeply rooted in organic life, we have realized that the false belief in the equality of man is the deadly threat with which liberalism destroys people and nation, culture and morals. violating the deepest levels of our being!
We have to reject with fanatical zeal the frequent lie that people are basically equal and equal in regard to their influence in the state and their share of power! People are unequal, they are unequal from birth, become more unequal in life and are therefore to be valued unequally in their positions in society and in the state!..."
http://www.snopes.com/hitler-nazis-capitalist-system/
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Hitler had Strasser executed in 1934.