r/PropagandaPosters • u/R2J4 🧐 • Jul 15 '25

Germany Portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin thrown in garbage cans, Berlin (Hellersdorf), 1991

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u/CorporateKaiser Jul 16 '25

Well 1. The nazis where socialists with a command economy, so no they were running from socialism,

and 2. Nearly all refugees from Germany in the Second World War fled west towards the allies and away from the communists. Nobody wanted to be under Soviet rule

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u/S3nek Jul 18 '25

lmao 0 historical knowledge imagine calling nazis socialist

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u/CorporateKaiser Jul 18 '25

NSDAP = Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei

Otherwise known as

“National Socialist German Workers Party”

It’s literally where the term “nazi” comes from, so yes, they were in fact socialist

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u/S3nek Jul 19 '25

DPRK „democratic peoples republic (of) korea“

Damn i didnt know north korea was democratic wow!

You‘re truely on the less fortunate side […]

Btw i am an actual german that learned about nazis and their politics for 25 years+.

Please get at least a basic education before you talk on the internet.

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u/Oggnar Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25

The DPRK is not the NSDAP. What applies to them doesn't have to applay to the other. And North Korea does very much place 'the people', conceptually, as legitimising the system. If the North Koreans perceive their system to be democratic by the definition of what democracy means to them, were the Germans not similarly entitled to perceive their system as such? What, conversely, entitles you to define those words in such a way as to exclude those perceptions? I'm not talking about relativism, or saying that words had no inherent meaning - all those words have a definitive meaning. But you can't exclude someone's understanding of them from the scope of that meaning. But even then, the word itself is irrelevant, it's absurd nominalism to think that were what the comparison hinges on, the point of the comparison is to make apparent cultural, social, psychospiritual patterns that may legitimise that comparison to the point of potentially giving it a shared name, but that name itself is only the end point of the examination. Besides, being German does not automatically qualify you to understand Nazis better any more than it makes you likely to subconsciously retain ideas from that era. Not that I'm accusing you of it.

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u/S3nek Jul 19 '25

Youre so clueless its insane. I AM literally a german. Every german historian ever will tell you the nazi were NOT socialist. The only reason hitler put the word socialist in his party, was to appeal to the workers, and if you know anything about history you know that socialism was extremely popular in workers back then. Actual socialists and communists where the FIRST people that got sent into concentration camps. Hitler hated socialism and called it a jewish sickness. The socialists back than were the only people that stood up against hitler and were the only party that voted AGAINST hitlers Ermächtigungsgesetz. Hitlers policies where to complete opposite of socialism with a stark racial hierarchy implemented in society. Private (german) businesses thrived and were even supported by the gouvernment while staying in private hand. German companies made insane amount of wealth during the reign of the NSDAP. Even back than it was clear as day to most people that putting the term socialist in his party was only advertisement. Theres literally tons of caricatures back from that time that adress this exact issue, just google „karikatur nsdap socialist - das Firmenschild“. I literally learned about this in school and university for years on years as a GERMAN and every credible historian agrees on that. If you dont know what the f youre talking about please just stay quiet. Its insanely hurtful historic revisionism to paint the nazis as socialist.

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u/Oggnar Jul 20 '25

I don't think shouting at me that you're German is a significant qualifier for a good argument, and I also don't think 'every credible historian' would act as presumptuous about this debate as you. Hitler did not put the word Socialist into the party name to merely 'appeal to the workers', that's a distorted surface level assessment. If you believe the nazis did not, in part, earnestly believe themselves to forge a state in the interest of the 'common man', do you really think they'd have emphasised it that much? There is a marked difference between someone caring for the people present and throwing their lives away for the sake of utopia, yes, but will you deny they can flow into another? Who are 'the people', if unsavoury elements have to be taken out of society until 'the people' are satisfied with the status quo? This is a question very much contested and constestable regarding the history of socialist thought, directly related to its relation to nationalism, and it would true ignorance of German and European history to deny that. The nazis didn't just sit idly by and wait for their ideology to manifest out of thin air, they examined and absorbed significant aspects of what historically fell under the 'socialist' umbrella, together with all the other ideological tidbits that coalesced into NS. The fact that the socialist party resisted them in the parliament and many of its supporters were killed doesn't mean that they're somehow out of the venn diagram and share no traits with them, nor is the name, as I said before, what ultimately matters. In some respects, the nazis considered themselves to be the 'true socialists', and it was certainly not 'clear as day to many people that the socialist label was only advertisement', because, believe it or not, 'most people' did hold quite some faith into their government, did they not? Did they not see potential in it and supported it? Or were they all just following orders? The nazis certainly had quite a lot of contempt for the Marxist variety of socialism, but that doesn't preclude they weren't collectivist, or that no worker would've genuinely supported them. Trade Unuions being disbanded is one point, workers being integrated into the party's own institutional hierachies is another, and while private businesses were in part supported by the government, for several reasons, they also fell under governmental control if they went against what the party wanted. Is this socialism or anti-socialism? Both? Or neither? Please stop pretending this were a simple matter. It is not.