Goebbels why we are socialists

Finally, on January 10, , all film companies directly or indirectly owned by the state were combined into a single holding company, the Ufa-Film GmbH UFI. Nevertheless, National-Socialist period film — like that of any historical period or national cinema — was never an entirely uniform and isolated corpus. The National-Socialists' usurpation of power in was no more a "zero hour" for German cinema than was the liberation from the Nazi dictatorship in Anti-Semitism was a social reality well before , and not every film made during the Third Reich was equally propagandistic.

Popular films and aggressive propaganda films were fraught in different ways with National-Socialist ideology, and even after there were occasional throwbacks to the more liberal film culture of the Weimar Republic.

From the beginning, the Nazi leadership understood film as a medium of mass indoctrination. The self-styled " Patron of German Cinema ," Joseph Goebbels, gave apparent preference to popular entertainment over aggressive propaganda films. This particular role of film took on additional significance following Germany's invasion of Poland in , marking the beginning of World War II. According to Goebbels, it was "precisely in wartime" that film was to display "its educational benefits"; he also understood "entertainment" as "politically significant, and even decisive for the war effort.

In the midst of war and the mass-scale genocide in German death camps, the German film industry was running at full speed. As film historian Sabine Hake writes, "annual ticket sales shot from million in to [1. In the early s, only the United States had more exhibition venues than Nazi Germany, which had nearly cinemas in Germany and the occupied countries and territories.

It was not until the twentieth century that this lack of connexion found its ultimate expression in the Bolshevist system. The fact that the causes and effective potentialities of Bolshevism were already existent in a latent form in democracy explains why Bolshevism flourishes only on democratic soil, and is indeed generally the inevitable consequence of a radical and excessively democratic conception of the State.

Bolshevism allegedly makes a classless society its aim. The equality of whatever bears a human form, which democracy applied only to political and social life, is set up as a ruling principle for economic life also. In this respect there are supposed to be no differences left. But this equality of all individuals in respect of economic goods can, in the Marxist-Bolshevist view, result only from a brutal and pitiless class struggle.

It is only logical that in connexion with this, Bolshevism should proclaim the equality of nations and races. The opposition between the democratic and the Bolshevist mentality and conception of the State are in the last resort merely theoretical, and here we have the answer to the mysterious riddle which overshadows Europe and the explanation both of the opposition in the lives of nations to-day and of the things which they have in common.

It enables us to see at once why democracy and Bolshevism, which in the eyes of the world are irrevocably opposed to one another, meet again and again on common ground in their joint hatred of and attacks on authoritarian nationalist concepts of State and State systems.

For the authoritarian nationalist conception of the State represents something essentially new. In it the French Revolution is superseded. It is no proof to the contrary that democracy and Bolshevism will not make public admission of any common cause. They put up artificial oppositions of a purely theoretical character which on closer inspection are seen to be without substance. They do not touch the root on the matter. At heart democracy and Bolshevism are closely related and indeed almost identical.

They represent merely different stages in the development of a common outlook. Bolshevism is in a sense the bad boy of democracy. Democracy gave it birth, brought it up, and alone keeps it alive. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfillment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity.

To us state and race are one. Both Otto Strasser and his brother Gregor paid the price for challenging Hitler and advocating for socialism within the Nazi party.

Nazism was a rejection of the basic tenets of socialism entirely, in favor of a state built on race and racial classifications. This was the backbone of the Nazi Party , one that would ultimately lead Nazi Germany on the road toward mass murder.

And that brings us to Rep. In fact, just a few lines up from the section Brooks quoted, Hitler writes on the real enemy who perpetuated the big lie:. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited.

Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping Truth to prevail. No American political party can be compared to the Nazi Party that controlled Germany for 12 years.

Nazism has no American corollary. American liberalism is not at all like Nazism, and neither, for that matter, is American conservatism. Nazism arose in Germany, gained power in Germany, held power in Germany, and would ultimately fall at the end of the Second World War in Germany.

Nazism aligned itself with industrialists and corporations that would ultimately utilize Nazi slave laborers and patent the chemicals used in Nazi death camps to kill millions of men, women, and children.

And comparing American Democrats to Nazis is not just incorrect, but wrong, just as it is when American Democrats and liberals directly compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Nazism was a political project built on anti-Semitism, racism, and dictatorial verve, one that took place in a specific country and at a specific moment in history.

We forget that fact at our own risk. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all.