Hitler\'s Rise to Power Hitler

Hitler's Rise To Power

Hitler from early in the 1920s was an opponent of Marxism and Communism as it was developing in Russia, and this antipathy reflected his own concerns while oddly showing a similar vision of power and how to attain it. Hitler comments directly on Marxism and shows his own differences with it in terms of his view of the structure of society. He writes that he made himself familiar with the founders of Marxism. His opposition to Marxism is not entirely ideological -- he also opposes it because Marx was Jewish. He says that the writings of Marxism "taught me to understand the language of the Jewish people, who speak in order to conceal or at least to veil their thoughts" (Knoebel 598). He also states:

The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of number and their dead weight (Knoebel 599).

As this shows, Hitler is enamored of what might be a modified royalist view. For Hitler, Marxism is wrong because it has a political ideology that views humanity as a mass and that is also opposed to his conception of personality:

Thus it denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity the premise of its existence and its culture (Knoebel 599).

For Hitler, this supposed superiority of one race over another is a given and an underlying force in society at all times in history. Indeed, tension between the races because of these perceived differences can be seen as the driving force in history, not economics as is seen by Marx. Marx and Hitler would agree, though, that history is evolving toward a higher level, though for Marx that higher level is a changed economic condition in which the masses are freed from the yoke of oppression and true equality is achieved, while for Hitler the evolution is toward racial superiority and dominance by the Aryan race over the rest of the world. The Third Reich will be that new civilization, with the "proper" race having achieved its rightful pre-eminence.

Allan Bullock points out that Hitler was not interested in economics and instead insisted on the supremacy of politics over economics. As early as 1923, Hitler was saying that the nation could not solve its problems until "the German people understands that one can conduct politics only when one has the support of power" (cited by Bullock 402).