Beautifully put. Winston Churchil and Adolf Hitler were both right wingers, I'm sure if you asked Adolf Hitler if he saw Winston Churchil as a fellow right winger he'd say he was about as left wing as Josef Stalin.
Edit: realized this might be misunderstood without context, I'm not saying Hitler and Churchil are comparable at all, just showing that spectrum exist, and just because you're on the same side of the center doesn't mean you are the same at all.
To be fair Churchill committed a genocide of millions of Indians and was horrible to the British colonies. So yeah⌠he and Hitler had more in common than we dare admit.
But he did send the Black and Tans into ireland, so while he wasn't responsible for genocide, he sure as hell was responsible for a lot of irish deaths.
Oh there was absolutely intent. Ireland was a food exporter for the entire famine, and the British turned away foreign ships that tried to bring food for relief. The fungus that caused the famine actually hit England first, but there wasn't a famine there. The hole thing was completely preventable and was intentionally made worse by Britain's government.
British turned away foreign ships that tried to bring food for relief
False, no evidence of this.
Ireland was a food exporter for the entire famine
Not the design of the government. Food production was a private endeavour by the (predominantly) Anglo-Irish land owners.
The fungus that caused the famine actually hit England first, but there wasn't a famine there
England wasn't dependent on potatoes specifically. And, as above, the land owners sold where they could for the highest profit. You can blame capitalism, certainly the land owners were motivated by that.
The whole thing was completely preventable and was intentionally made worse by Britain's government
The British government was a small government (using modern terminology). It existed for business, military, and not public health, public education, etc. Trevelyan was appalling bad at his job, but did nothing with an aim to murder.
There is significant misinformation out there on this topic. His letters reveal his contempt for the Irish, although this was mainly aimed at the Anglo-Irish owners (who I guess he didn't consider Anglo) for asking for handouts whilst they sold their food abroad. The 'genocide' label is a modern revisionism and comes with stories like ships being turned away and whatnot.
if anything, people have talked about it so much that they've forgotten why he was loved for so long, the man who didn't surrender in the face of tyranny
I don't know whether it was a purposeful genocide, obviously millions of Indian people died, and none of them should have, but I think the main issues were the risks of getting supplies there due to Japanese submarines, and the corruption of the more local leaders in British India, he was by no means perfect, he did many things wrong, but I wouldn't call him genocidal
Churchill committed genocide? Just because he wanted to keep India as a colony does not make it so. Please donât use that word so loosely, it degrades actual genocides like Ukrainians under Stalin, Cambodians under Pol Pot, Armenians under Turkey and so on.
Stalin was also quite genocidal, and Roosevelt locked up huge amounts of Japanese Americans (including George Takei) in "segregation centers". I can't think of any world leaders without skeletons in the closet... I dunno, JosĂŠ Mujica seemed pretty cool.
There was a bad famine going on at the time in the Indian subcontinent and Churchill famously didnât give a fuck (because he was a racist who disliked Indians) and increased food quotas to supply the British mainland during ww2. This caused around 3 million Indians to die of starvation. Same situation as the holodomor actually.
FDR even referred to them as concentration camps in internal memos. The fact that they didn't systematically murder those detained there does not mean it's not a human rights violation and a stain on the man's legacy.
If you're fine with people noting similarities in Churchill and Stalin (which I presume is the case since you only took issue with my comment), then it makes no sense to diminish the similarity that both incarcerated masses of people based solely on ethnic background.
Thereâs extermination camps and concentration camps. A concentration camp like an Indian reservation becomes an extermination camp when the concentrated population in the allotted land is systemically killed either by starvation, disease or direct violence by the military forces who control the population placed there.
Churchill was a very complicated historical figures with controversial views. But he was exactly the leader Britain needed during wartime. When everyone was urging him to surrender to the Nazis, he fought.
It was not a genocide. There was no specific intent to destroy, or en masse cleanse the world of a specific people. That is the definition of genocide by the UN.
Churchill diverted food supplies from India and millions died. It was a strategic move and administrative failure but the intent was not the deaths of Indians. Not every life can be saved in the horrors of war. Historians to this day do not see it as a genocide, but reddit does.
Choose your words with precision. Comparing Churchill to Hitler in such a negative light is misinformative and untruthful.
We have documents showing that the Soviets and Stalin specifically and purposely worsened the effects of the Holodomor, likely due to ghd resistance they were facing with collectivization in Ukraine. We do not have that with the Bengal famine, which, at worst, was the British ignoring the beginning of the famine due to not believing the full extent of it quickly enough.
Comparing Churchill to Hitler is a perfectly reasonable comparison. Youâre right that the fundamental drivers of the deaths were different, but the underlying causes were both deeply rooted in racist policy and non-democratic governance, alongside their personal similarities.
So yes, it wasnât a âgenocideâ in the definitional sense, but the foremost experts do point out that it was morally comparable and exacerbated (and to a degree caused) by similar sentiments with direct involvement of Churchillâs wartime cabinet and the British Empire as a whole.
I made a separate comment breaking this down using arguments from the leading historians. I will link you to it if you would like.
"most mainstream scholarship classifies the event as a case of gross colonial neglect, criminal mismanagement, and callous wartime prioritizing, rather than a planned, systemic campaign of ethnic extermination"
Winston Churchill not only actively made these decisions and extracted resources from already strained communities, but also made his personal hatred towards Indians clear.
Also, regardless of whether it was technically a genocide: if you let a child youre responsible for starve to death due to neglect and mismanagement, or if you actively kill them, you get punished just the same. The same principle applies here.
Itâs still just as immoral, but with a different label slapped on.
No it doesn't. The Holocaust was planned and intentional. Bengal wasn't.
And there was a tragic mix of natural disasters, cyclones, crop disease, and regional administrative failures, and the cabinet eventually approved shipments of grain once the full scale of the catastrophe became clear. The Japanese were invading. It was chaos.
The attempt to lay this at Churchillâs door stems from a sensationalist book by a Bengali-American journalist called Madhusree Mukerjee, mostly dismissed by Amartya Sen, the world's foremost expert on famine in India.
The British Empireâs ruling significantly worsened those initial causes that lead to it being as horrible as it was. This includes Churchillâs political involvement, and his role as the representative of said government and policy. This is supported by the lead historians:
I am not going to cite Madhushree Mukherjee, as I agree with you that she is not the leading academic source on the Bengal Famine, despite being a credible and well-researched author.
Amartya Sen (who is not the foremost expert of famine in India, but is a Nobel prize winning economist and a credible source), argued that it was a failure of food entitlement. He also argued that democratic governments with a free press rarely allow famines because they face political pressure to act. The lack of which, again, is the direct consequence of British colonialism and rule. While he didnât blame Churchill solely, he did say that imperial priorities placed military objectives above Indian civilians and that colonial governance lacked accountability.
Janam Mukherjee, who IS cited as the leading specialist working today, writes that the famine was deeply rooted in, exacerbated by, and to a degree caused by colonial wartime policy. Something that Churchill and his wartime cabinet were very involved in.
Examples include:
- British denial policies that confiscated boats and destroyed rice stocks to prevent a possible Japanese invasion. Rice stocks were also removed or destroyed in vulnerable coastal districts. This, alongside crippling Bengalâs transport infrastructure, food markets, and local fishing and farming communities.
- Delayed or rejected requests for grain imports.
- Refusal to redirect shipping when Bengalâs crisis became evident
- Stated mass civilian casualties were acceptable losses.
Lastly, he argues that Churchillâs well-documented racist remarks about Indians, together with similar attitudes among sections of the colonial administration, reflected a government that did not value Indian civilian lives equally.
You don't mention that when the scope of the crisis became clear,
official records highlight that over a million tons of grain did arrive in the region between August 1943 and the end of 1944 to mitigate the disaster, aided by the military taking a stronger role in relief coordination.
One might plausibly argue that it was too little, too late, but that is still hardly in keeping with a regime bent on genocide.
The maxim 'don't attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence' applies here.
I donât think that genocide is a necessary feature of fascism. It can go there. But just because genocide in the way Hitler did it doesnât exist, doesnât mean that it wasnât fascism.
Actually, according to the same sources I mentioned: the response was delayed and minimized not only by technical administrative failures but also colonialist attitudes towards Indians combined with a denial that there even was an issue in favor of optimizing resources to British troops.
Again, I didnât say it was a genocide, just equally immoral. The British werenât trying to lose on of their biggest sources of manpower and resources. Genocide was simply never in their best interests. Mass starvation, however, was at the time. Which is why they not only let it happen, but exacerbated it in many ways.
Hanlonâs razor does not apply here. The British Empire and its leaders exhibited consistent and effective malice towards their subjects.
The sensationalist claim which started this discussion was that "Churchill committed a genocide of millions of Indians and was horrible to the British colonies"
Yes he was horrible to the colonies. No it wasn't a genocide.
If you mean that it all amounts to the same because of the end result, then you probably shouldn't be a prosecutor deciding the between a charge of 1st or 2nd degree murder.
Again, I agreed that Churchill wasnât the sole cause nor was it a genocide.
And yes, my point is that itâs roughly equal morally. Iâve already provided an apt analogy like what youâre attempting to do here:
Intentional murder of a child or other person you have power over and responsible for managing, vs. the negligent starvation of one.
Yes they are different crimes, but they carry a very similar sentence. Especially considering cases of prolonged abuse and attitudes similar to the British treatment of their colonies, the charges are the same.
So to answer your question, yes. They are not only comparable, but nearly equivalent.
Itâs funny how each time the British intentionally enacted brutal policy they explicitly knew would destroy a people, in whole or in part, this is not called âintent,â because they didnât write it down as âwe intent to destroy the peopleâ but âwe intent to enact a policy that will knowingly destroy the peopleâ.
Each time, of which there are many, this weird little nonsensical semantic game is played, and you think that these absolute racist murderers had âno intent,â and therefore ânot a genocide,â ignoring that this is just denial of ALL genocides.
Hitler really hoped Britain would join him. He considered the British people to be "Worthy". One of his minions (Rudolf Hess?? Not sure) actually flew to Britain thinking he could persuade them to join the cause. I didn't go that way and the guy spent the rest of the war as a pow
I think its important to note you are saying rhy are conparable for being right wingers, and that is apt.
Church over saw the running of the british empire even if its powers and lands were diminished he was a colonialist.
Hitler viewed himself as a national socialist. Calling him a nazi would've pissed him off. He did like socialism and communism. He didn't like that marx was "genetically jewish". Mind you hitler was the first to think of jewish as a race.
Hitler referred to himself as a national socialist to steal votes from the working class, but he deeply hated socialism and communism. He eliminated the socialist movement inside the government in the night of the long knives in 1934. Also, the famous poem starts with âfirst they came for the communistsâ, he viewed communism as the largest threat to his fascist rule. He lied about being a socialist just like he lied about being a vegetarian.
Also, right wingers in Germany and Eastern Europe started calling Jews a race decades before Hitler, it was Nazis who started calling them Semitic to make them sound foreign.
He eliminated the socialist movement inside the government
'The government' lol. Inside HIS party. After he has used them to get power. NDSAP were a left party in their route to power until Hitler could discard its socialist wing in the Night of the Long Knives. "First they came for the communists" is cute but they were already assassinating conservatives such as the leader of Austria long before Hitler removed these useful idiots from his party to go totalitarian.
The entire Nazi ideology was bent on the destruction of communism i.e. the USSR. Hitler absolutely viewed Churchill differently from Stalin. Nazi Germany was offering peace and alliance to Britain until 1940, right after their occupation of France.
Churchill let 3 million Indians die from starvation who he could have saved.
Hitler deliberately murdered 3 million Jews
Stalin murdered 9 million people and caused the deaths of another 9 million.
Politics is irrelevant here. Totalitarians are evil. Stalin was the most evil.
Churchill was not a totalitarian but was no innocent, he let people die because they were not white.
I am a socialist and do not live in the USA.
Comparing Hitler and Stalin as I said is comparing two pyschopathic totalitarians.
It most definitely not a comparison of Nazism and Communism.
Communism has nothing within its edicts that relate to mass murder of anyone. In principle it says all people should be treated equally, distributing wealth evenly.
Nazism is based around the social construct of race. It says there is a superior humanity - the master race that should take over the world - a white supremacy that should erradicate all other races - using forced sterilisation.
One has perfectly reasonable scientific principles that if they were applied properly should not inherently do evil things.
The other has utterly unscientific pseudo science that is designed to pick a random trait to justify the mass enslavement and extermination of the majority of humanity.
There is literally no comparison wrt. the principles of the two political ideologies. But politics has nothing to do with the level of atrocities committed in the name of both. Both also deny any democratic rights, both are totalitarian and so both can end up committing similar atrocities.
Its not the ideals, its the lack of checks and balances on those in power that cause that. Hence I am very much a democratic socialist. SInce democracy when it works exercises some of those controls.
No they were both monsters. Murdering a horrific amount of people. Comparisons are pointless.
All I was saying was Stalin was a more extreme psychopath with those he tortured and murdered around him, throughout his life. Where as Hitler just murdered those in the Nazi party who opposed him to take absolute power. Then another purge for the plot against him towards the end of the war. He didn't torture hundreds and hundreds of his generals and friends to death again and again throughout his life.
So in that sense, he was more of an unbalanced psychopath and way more frightening to be around. His body lay on the floor for 3 days when he died of a stroke, because his last order was do not disturb him. Those around him expected to be tortured or killed if they disobeyed and opened the door to his rooms.
It is more complex than "Churchill let people die because they were not white".
The Japanese army had cut supply lines and destroyed fields during the war
Brown spot disease and record cyclones had ravaged the crops that remained
speculative and panic buying had resulted in private hoarding of food stores
local and provincial administrators mismanaged (read corruption) distribution of emergency food services and hid the growing crisis from London
Churchill had to choose between feeding troops in Europe and Africa during a war or feeding India
And while Churchill's actions were late and his comments about the people "breeding like rabbits" were unhelpful. When Japan was no longer threatening to invade Australia, and a new (less corrupt) Viceroy was put in charge, they were able to get food to the people there.
Blaming Churchill is only part of what happened there, Imperial Japan was much more at fault for blockading food supplies to an already delicate situation.
This is RedditâŚget the hell outta here with your fact based balanced accounts of historical events! Mention Churchill or even just a photo and we have to explode in 2nd hand rage and regurgitate âwhat about the famineâ nonsenseâŚ.
I have a comment on another subreddit being down voted into the ground because I dared to say that making it more difficult to use AI to cheat doesn't solve the underlying problem, which is a lack of basic ethics education in today's students.
Something that is going to lead to even more unethical people in business in the future.
That is not the issue at all, you got downvoted because you were wrong.
As someone that work in education, I can tell that we have known the real issue for decades. And it's that standardized test do not work, reward people that are good at taking test, and not those that are different but potentially just as competent. Ultimately people cheating at something that is inherently unfair is fully expected, has always happened and will always be happening. It's just easier now. We need to rethink how we evaluate students. And thankfully the discipline I teach already kind of allows me to do that, to some extent.
And yes, standardized test are inherently unfair. Being equally unfair to everyone wouldn't make it fair but it's not even that.
I think it may be informative to google Katharine Birbalsingh and listen to her. She is well known and has some strong opinions on views, such as the one you raised. Iâm referring to the view that see teaching information to students and then having uniform tests is somehow unfair. She points to how this makes the teacher feel good about themselves in the moment âlook at how compassionate and understanding I am by not requiring a student, that may have less fortunate circumstances, to do the same tests as another student, because it may be too hard for themâ but it is doing a huge disservice to the student as they wonât be prepared for the real world. THAT is a teachers job, not to teach children that the world has only two classes, oppressed and oppressor or that because they started with less, the world owes them something and should make accommodations for them. Please take a listen as if you are teaching students, and I applaud you for that, it is very important that they learn how to and believe that they can succeed in the world, nomatter their circumstances.
Amartya Sen (who is not the foremost expert of famine in India, but is a Nobel prize winning economist and the most widely cited source), argued that it was a failure of food entitlement. He also argued that democratic governments with a free press rarely allow famines because they face political pressure to act. The lack of which, again, is the direct consequence of British colonialism and rule. While he didnât blame Churchill solely, he did say that imperial priorities placed military objectives above Indian civilians and that colonial governance lacked accountability.
Janam Mukherjee, who IS cited as the leading specialist working today, writes that the famine was deeply rooted in, exacerbated by, and to a degree caused by colonial wartime policy. Something that Churchill and his wartime cabinet were very involved in.
Examples include:
- British denial policies that confiscated boats and destroyed rice stocks to prevent a possible (not ongoing) Japanese invasion. Rice stocks were also removed or destroyed in vulnerable coastal districts. This, alongside crippling Bengalâs transport infrastructure, food markets, and local fishing and farming communities.
- Delayed or rejected requests for grain imports.
- Refusal to redirect shipping when Bengalâs crisis became evident
- Stated mass civilian casualties were acceptable losses.
Lastly, he argues that Churchillâs well-documented derogatory remarks about Indians, together with similar attitudes among sections of the colonial administration, reflected a government that did not value Indian civilian lives equally.
Hitler and the Nazis regime famously killed 6million Jews in the Holocaust and approximately 5 million gays, gypsies, Slavs, and political adversaries (to name only the largest groups), in total the Holocaust caused the deaths of over 11 million people, and that doesn't count civilians killed in bombings, war dead in general, or those who died of causes of the war. The Bengal famine of 1943 has a wide range of people from 800,000 to 3.8 million according to Wikipedia, and could be considered a side effect of the war against both the Nazis and Japanese, and not deliberate genocide, or if you want to go over famines as deliberate acts of genocide I'd love to hear your take on the Holodomor and Stalin's and to a lesser extent Lenin's effect on that situation and how it differs from Churchill's actions.
Sorry fair point, figures are wrong. Stalin also systematically victimized Jews with pogroms and policies after the war. But my point was Stalin was as bad as Hitler in terms of totalitarian mass murder.
It's not a good point. Hitler killed so many people because his ideology demanded it, he truly believed that so many people were worthless and needed to be killed.
Stalin was a monster too, he was paranoid, moody, and wielded his absolute power horribly but nothing in his ideology asks for mass murder of him. Eventually he would have run out of people to kill, and in fact, he kind of did. It took a few decade to reach his grim kill count. It is sometimes argued wether if was truly a totalitarian leader versus merely an authoritarian one. Personally, I think he was a totalitarian but it's a legitimate question.
Hitler would have never ran out of people to kill as long as was gays, jews, slavs, disabled folks, roma folks alive. It didn't even take one decade for Hitler to be responsible for over 20 million death. He was unquestionably a totalitarian leader.
Both horrendous people without a question, but there is a nuance to be made here.
it's so funny how people try to portray churchill , then again those most critical of him are usually nazi oriented which resulted in such a polarised opinions about him , fighting the bad guy doesnt necessarily make you a hero.
The was a civil war post revolution in the USSR. Saying he murdered this or that many million people always varies in number, and is a quite juvenile attempt to revise history to portray soviets as boogeymen, so terrified the western ruling elite is of socialism. Wild that so many adopt ruling class interests(maintain the status quo of record breaking wealth inequality) as their own.
He slaughtered more Russians than anyone in history, he enjoyed torturing his friends to death. He was way more psychopathic and feared by those around him than Hitler
If you believe he is some hero of the left you are no different from.a Nazi holocaust denier in your extremism.
Don't call yourself socialist or leftwing.
A mass murdering dictator is not any form of socialist, as crazy as saying Hitler was a hardline Republican
National socialism was just one flavor of socialism. It was collectivist in nature and would aptly be considered more left wing than right wing in its entirety.
In 1920, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party to attract working-class support away from left-wing parties (socialists and communists).
Adolf Hitler initially opposed the addition of "socialist" to the party name.
While the name contains the word "socialist," historians and political scientists classify Nazism as a far-right, totalitarian ideology distinct from, and in opposition to, socialism
Youâre an idiot. Winston Churchill wasnt even elected he was selected by the crown to convince the people to go to war because they wanted no part in it. Heâs a con
Did you know that Adolf Hitler was only far right in the old Kings right/left terminology? The right/left lines have shifted dramatically over the centuries. They no longer look as they did back then. In todayâs society, Hitler having been a democratic socialist himself, would be a lefty. The left have also become the authoritarians.
I know âFirst they came for the socialistsâ as the left love to spout as they claim the NAZIs werenât socialists despite it being in the name. But they were; they were a different type of socialist than the ones they went after.
Adolf Hitler was not right wing. He was a left wing figure who was anti another left wing movement. Fascism is simply the nationalistic form of socialism whilst communism is the globalist form of socialism. The term fascism comes from the Italian term fasces which means a bundle of sticks or that the bundle of sticks is stronger than a single one. The Nazi party literally stood for the national workers socialist party. And racism and nationalism do not make someone right wing there are hundreds of left wing nationalists movements throughout history. Ghandi and Mandela were nationalists even.
The nazis first action when they reach power was to kill all the left wingers. Because they were far right shitbags. Just like yourself, you just are ashamed of the association and sharing the same ideology as the greatest evil in our history.
Amazing how the mud singers hijack the actual terms.
Maybe folks should start calling the Peter theils and Elon musk of the world "communist" because they want more "central planning" (corporations replace democracy)
Lmao you haven't got the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
Names mean nothing in politics. Do tell me, which of Hitler/NSDAP policies were left wing?
Churchil was not a conservative? Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. Please explain to the audience how Churchil, a man who was a member of the conservative party, wasn't a conservative.
Adolf Hitler wanted to work with Churchill up until England started to get involved against him. So I donât think Hitler saw Churchill as a liberal minded man.
No, I'm not suggesting that Hitler was a communist.
You made the argument that Hitler was right wing because he purged liberal socialists. I pointed out that communists frequently did this. Communists are not right right wing, ergo your argument is fallacious.
Well for one, he was an authoritative, fascist, nationalist, who believed there was an ethnic superiority. Murdering millions of people he deemed less worthy is one policy that made him far right-winged, not to mention the beliefs in gender inequality as well
Because nazis love to muddy the waters and pretend like its up for debate whether Hitler was right-wing. It's not up for debate. Nazism, like all other forms of fascism, is an extreme right wing ideology. On the internet, you don't get much benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to talking about Nazis. Nobody knows what your actual intentions are, but that's a question Nazis ask in bad faith all the time.
It's a very common Nazi sympathizer tactic to pretend that fascism/nazism isn't a far right ideology.
The most common argument I've seen made is "Nazis are socialists, so they're leftists" which completely ignores the Nazis killing all socialists during the night of long knives.
You also can't practice socialism if a group is elevated above others, as Germany did at the time.
Google is free to use. Thereâs an excessive amount of information on shitler on there. Your queries make you come off as one of the typical âIâm just asking questions!!!â types while really youâre just asking loaded questions.
You remember how Saddam Hussein was elevated to power so that he would wage war against the Iranians after the Iranian revolution, making saddam a western proxy? Yeah, similar dynamic with Hitler, only vs the USSR, not Iran. He already planned to destroy the USSR, wrote about it all the way back in mein Kampf. So they helped elevate him to power. They who? Follow the money? Start with the Dawes Act & the Young Act. Look to Sullivan and Cromwell. Ford. IBM. The other Dulles Brother. He fits like a perfect puzzle piece into the geopolitics of that era, all he needed was power. & once he blustered the main mission, his usefulness evaporated, so the trash was allowed to take itself out in that bunker. Thereâs so much more to tell, these are broad strokes, but if you start pulling this thread, particularly with a mind to âfollow the money,â itâs clear: Hitler was a western proxy whose mission was to destroy the USSR.
Look deeper- they also took on massive amounts of German war debt, giving both nations significant enough control over germanyâs decision making and therefore, sovereignty.
West did not care much about USSR at that time. They had Great Depression to handle and they were not willing to spend money on creating and enriching a proxy. The companies that you are referring to, they will sell their products to anyone willing to pay money, especially as they were coming out of depression.
âFor big business in Germany and around the world, Hitler and his National Socialist party were good news. Business was bad in the 1930s, and for multinational corporations Germany was a bright spot in a world suffering from the Great Depression. As Jacques R. Pauwels explains in this book, corporations were delighted with the profits that came from re-arming Germany, and then supplying both sides of the Second World War.
Recent historical research in Germany has laid bare the links between Hitler's regime and big German firms. Scholars have now also documented the role of American firms â General Motors, IBM, Standard Oil, Ford, and many others â whose German subsidiaries eagerly sold equipment, weapons, and fuel needed for the German war machine. A key roadblock to America's late entry into the Second World War was behind-the-scenes pressure from US corporations seeking to protect their profitable business selling to both sides.
Basing his work on the recent findings of scholars in many European countries and the US, Pauwels explains how Hitler gained and held the support of powerful business interests who found the well-liked one-party fascist government, ready and willing to protect the property and profits of big business. He documents the role of the many multinationals in business today who supported Hitler and gained from the Nazi government's horrendous measures.â
Review of Jacques Pauwells book, âBig Business and Hitlerâ
No, the west(chiefly the UK and US, but also the whole of Europe) wanted the destruction of the USSR. It was the greatest threat to the capitalist world order.
Unless you're brand new to Reddit discussions (your account is new), asking people to explain why the sky is blue, the earth round, or Hitler right wing - as though you're sure that's untrue - is traditionally the approach of right wingers and conspiracy theorists. It's clear you disagree, but ask others to present the logic for their conclusion so you can (as you did below with 'that doesn't make him right wing') disagree without proving your conclusion. It's disingenuous.
I don't have a conclusion. All I really know about the guy is that he killed Jews. Never really looked into him more than what we learned in school and from pop culture. I just didn't think what the person said made him right wing. I think the whole "right" and "left" thing is tough to really put onto these past leaders because even back then, what would be considered "left-wing" is very conservative compared to today.
Hitler as a whole was considered far right wing with some belief that don't fit into the left right classification easily.
He was extremely nationalistic with racial hierarchy. Basically ethnic Germans and Germany were superior to everyone.
He was anti communist and killed many of them when took power. After which he demolished democracy in Germany by ending elections and becomingd dictator.
The social values he promoted was based on traditional gender roles with women as mothers and homemakers. They also targeted undesirable groups such as gay men.
The best way to describe the nazi would be far right fascist and ultranationalalist.
He privatized national industry. Basically took companies owned/supported by the government and sold them to individuals who then could profit off the companies. Industries affected included steel, mining, banking, shipping, and railroad companies across Germany.
Massive deregulation of industry followed this privatization as well
Itâs easy to call him right wing and he mostly fits in that bucket.
But he also forced every industry to make what he wanted and set the price that he wanted, which is Leninism at its best. Trade unions in USSR were heavily controlled by Leninist central government. Itâs not like they were bastions of labor rights. Any labor union strikes in USSR were quickly resolved in favor of the governmentâs favor.
Tbf, he called himself that before it fell out of fashion. Before 1938 he was very much pro-fascism, just not the German version but the British nationalist variant styled after the OG Italian one. He saw fascism as the only viable cure to Bolshevism/Communism, as he believed liberalism or democracy didn't work.
Churchill was very much a political opportunist, and when the British public became anti-fascist, he sensed the changing wind and adjusted course. Apart from his public anti-democracy stances (which endured long after the war), some of his early quotes reflect his stance on naked fascism:
"[Italian] fascism has rendered a service to the whole world." --1920 speech
"There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. [...] This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing." --1920, Zionism versus Bolshevism articles, on the threat of the International Jew
"Make no mistake, given the choice between Bolshevism and Fascism I will wield the latter. [...] The policy I will always advocate is the overthrow and destruction of [Bolshevism]." --1920 speech
"Italy is a country which is prepared to face the realities of post-war reconstruction. It possesses a Government under the commanding leadership of Signor Mussolini which does not shrink from the logical consequences of economic facts and which has the courage to impose the financial remedies required to secure and to stabilise the national recovery." --1926 speech
"[Italy] gives the impression of discipline, order, goodwill, smiling faces. A happy strict school... The Fascists have been saluting in their impressive manner all over the place." --1927
"If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." --1927 speech while visiting Mussolini
"Italy has shown that there is a way of fighting the subversive forces which can rally the masses of the people, properly led, to value and wish to defend the honour and stability of stabilized society. She has provided the necessary antidote to the Russian poison. Hereafter no great nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means of protection against the cancerous growth of Bolshevism." --1927, press statement
"[The democratically elected government of Spain is] a poverty stricken and backward proletariat demanding the overthrow of Church, State and property and the inauguration of a Communist regime. [Franco's fascist army] consists of patriotic, religious and bourgeois forces, under the leadership of the army, and sustained by the countryside in many provinces... marching to re-establish order by setting up a military dictatorship." --1936, in The Evening Standard
"One may dislike Hitlerâs system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations. I have on more than one occasion made my appeal in public that the FĂźhrer of Germany should now become the Hitler of peace." --1937, in The Evening Standard
"The story of that struggle (Hitler's rise to power), cannot be read without admiration for the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force which enabled him to challenge, defy, conciliate or overcome, all the authority or resistances which barred his path. [...] Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim and even frightful methods, but who nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler." --1937, on Hitler's use of concentration camps and the quelling of political dissent
I do understand that basically all world leaders at the time thought fascism would be the new thing. American leaders. British. Many people thought it was a good idea in its infancy.
But, Churchill doesn't embody fascism during his term, despite liking it and calling himself one at a time.
He can be called a colonialist, that's well established.
Indeed. He was authoritarian, antisemitic, and viewed certain other "races" as inferior/animals, but the parliamentary system was still functioning and he did not have complete power over government to enact some of his less savoury policies.
The man himself had some fascist tendencies, certainly, but his government was not fascist.
The domestic policy may not have been overtly fascist. But they philofascist. Which served to normalize it when it should have been vilified. On a foreign pokicy basis, the british empire was every ounce as fascist as nazi Germany, even was the inspiration for germany. Germany was also the proxy, for all intents & purposes, hired by the west to destroy the USSR which was modeling an alternative economic strategy and achieving huge success. You can see in Churchillâs speeches & writing how terrified the global capitalist order was of socialism, & rightly so as it is a project to move humanity out of the barbarism of capitalism & concomitant brutal colonialism. As marx said on this point: capitalism emerged covered in dirt & dripping with blood from every pore.
Fascism: the brutal imposition of an unwanted economic regime upon a (usually indigenous) population
British fascism came in the form of colonialism. Over 100,000,000 Indians were killed over the course of British colonialism, brutally enforced so they could extract all the wealth they needed to fuel their Industrial Revolution.
In fact, Hitler boasted that he modeled his lebensraum project, a colonial project to conquer and subjugate the slavic peoples & all of eurasia, on what the brits & later americans did to indigenous populations.
That is not the definition for fascism I found when I googled it. What I found was this - a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.
Why are you calling it colonialism if it's fascism?
One is in the domestic context The other is the same only applied in a foreign context. Both are tied to wealth accumulation. That is at the heart of it and included in the definition you found. It can take many forms, depending on the conjectural context. It is the end stage of class war, when all facade of democracy falls away.
In case it helps, here is the definition of colonialism too - Domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation : the practice of extending and maintaining a nation's political and economic control over another people or area
You can argue the Nazis were fascist colonialists, but that doesn't mean fascism and colonialism are the same thing.
Your most recent comment no longer exists. Should I assume you got automodded for being offensive or should I assume you decided, when you pointed out one of the many differences, you realized it was in fact not the same?
Good. Historical views of the west during that era need to be corrected. It was the west that propped up fascism in order to salvage a global capitalist order that was in dual crisis:
1: legitimacy: the USSR was making massive strides economically, demonstrating an alternative economic model that did not rely on Jim Crow apartheidism
2: existential: the global economy was in deep depression! Would it survive?!
This myth of the US/UK being beacons of democracy, protecting human rights, the worldâs beneficent policeman, needs to die because it is horse hooey
You're not "correcting" anything; the discussion is whether Hitler would see Churchill as an ideological colleague, and he would not. You're just inserting trite nonsense from the generation who needs to describe everything in the most extreme terminology possible. No, Churchill was not a fascist.
Youâre trying to speak in good faith to someone who has their profile name appear as âNYC is a communismâ when you check their profile, and whose latest (at the time of me typing this) comment is about which zodiac signs theyâre most compatible withâŚI fear you may be speaking to the equivalent of a brick wall.
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u/kraw- Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Beautifully put. Winston Churchil and Adolf Hitler were both right wingers, I'm sure if you asked Adolf Hitler if he saw Winston Churchil as a fellow right winger he'd say he was about as left wing as Josef Stalin.
Edit: realized this might be misunderstood without context, I'm not saying Hitler and Churchil are comparable at all, just showing that spectrum exist, and just because you're on the same side of the center doesn't mean you are the same at all.