Sunday, December 23, 2007

A LITTLE HISTORY

Once again, I've run into a "Hitler was a leftist" thread on AOL and I thought I'd enter a couple of excerpts from the Encyclopedia Britannica to help clear up this confusion:

The greatest enemy of Nazism was not, in Hitler's view, liberal democracy in Germany, which was already on the verge of collapse. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict.

In 1930 Hitler made an alliance with the Nationalist Alfred Hugenberg in a campaign against the Young Plan, a second renegotiation of Germany's war reparation payments. With the help of Hugenberg's newspapers, Hitler was able for the first time to reach a nationwide audience. The alliance also enabled him to seek support from many of the magnates of business and industry who controlled political funds and were anxious to use them to establish a strong right-wing, antisocialist government.

In 1932 Hitler opposed Hindenburg in the presidential election, capturing 36.8 percent of the votes on the second ballot. Finding himself in a strong position by virtue of his unprecedented mass following, he entered into a series of intrigues with conservatives such as Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner, and President Hindenburg's son, Oskar. The fear of communism and the rejection of the Social Democrats bound them together.

SOURCE:
Hitler, Adolf.In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 23, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://search.eb.com/eb/article-10115

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