L.K. Samuels
Actually, Joseph Goebbels was very vocal about his beliefs, ideology, and future. From his speeches, diary, and writings, Goebbels blared out powerful dogma, often designed to conceal truths or embellish both nationalism and socialism. He was a born propagandist with the silver tongue and the myth-making skills of George Sorel, a French communist and fascist.
Goebbels was also one of the most vocal and hardcore socialist intellectuals in Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Like Benito Mussolini, Dr. Goebbels had been enamored with Vladimir Lenin and his anti-capitalist revolutionary theories. Goebbels even praised the Russian Communist leader during a large 1925 Nazi rally, explaining to a large audience, “Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler.”[1]
However, Goebbels was no uneducated troglodyte. He earned a doctorate in philology from the University of Heidelberg and became the Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany in 1933. Moreover, Dr. Goebbels eventually became the only other man, apart from Hitler, to become the Nazi Chancellor of Germany in 1945. It was a short stint, lasting less than 24 hours.
Goebbels’ hardcore convictions for socialism and communism first surfaced during his college years. In 1924, he freely admitted in his diary that he favored communism, writing, “Communism. Jewry. I am a German Communist.”[2] In 1925, Goebbels wrote an open letter to explain his warm feelings for socialism, writing, “The social is a stopgap. Socialism is the ideology of the future.”[3]
Goebbels also had a crush on Vladimir Lenin and many aspects of Bolshevism, writing that “Russian Bolshevism” is “not about to collapse. But the Russian soviet system does not endure because it is Bolshevik, because it is Marxist, because it is international, but because it is national, because it is Russia. No Tsar ever grasped the Russian people in its depths, in its passion, in its national instincts as Lenin has…”[4]
Goebbels also acknowledged that the “more the Russian peasant hates the Jew, especially the Soviet Jew, the more passionately is he a follower of agrarian reform, the more ardently does he love his country, his land, and his soil. ‘Down with the Jewish Soviets, long live the Leninist agrarian reform!’”[5]
Due to his oratory skills, Goebbels soon started to engage in many speaking tours by 1925, promoting Nazism, communism, and Leninism. This became apparent at the Nazi Chemnitz rally, where he addressed a crowd of more than 2,000. At this rally, he proclaimed “Lenin” as the greatest, “second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight.” [6]
Some argued that Goebbels was simply joking about his affection for Lenin, who equated Nazism with Bolshevism. But not Curt Martin Riess, a German Jew journalist who had to escape Nazi Germany in 1933. He confirmed that Goebbels was truly “praising Lenin” and sought to draw “parallels between Bolshevists and the Nazis.”[7]
Riess also noted that “In a number of contributions published in the Völkischer Beobachter [Goebbels] celebrated Lenin as the national liberator of his country. The Soviet system does not endure because it is Bolshevist or Marxist or international, but because it is national—because it is Russian,” he penned to a leftist friend.[8] In addition, Goebbels also made it clear that Lenin was in tune with nationalistic sentiments, arguing, “No Czar has ever aroused the national passion of the Russian people as Lenin did.”[9] And, according to Riess, “It is true that in the National Socialist Letters, Goebbels put the accent on Socialism rather than on Nationalism, to such an extent that he sponsored an alliance between a Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.”[10]
And in another quote, Goebbels felt compelled to spell out his support for Lenin, Russia, Bolshevism, and his utter distaste for the West. He wrote:
On this account we look toward Russia, because she sooner than anyone else will accompany us on the path to socialism. Because Russia is the ally given to us by nature against the devilish contamination and corruption of the West. With embittered anguish we must see so-called German statesmen destroy bridge upon bridge to Russia and this anguish is great, not because we love Bolshevism and the Jewish supporters of Bolshevism, but because allied with a sincere nationalist and socialist Russia we recognize the beginning of our own nationalist and socialist assertion.[11]
However, by 1926, Hitler put his foot down and stated that “Goebbels was no longer to indulge in praising Lenin as a ‘national liberator.’”[12] Goebbels did back down, but still found time to express support for “Revolutionary socialism,” “social justice,” and “class struggle.” He did eventually criticize communists, mostly over their perceived lack of true socialist principles, writing, “Communism is nothing but a grotesque distortion of true Socialist thought. We and we alone could become the genuine Socialists in Germany, or for that matter, in Europe.”[13]
Ample Supply of Anti-capitalism
Goebbels had an ample supply of scornful epithets against capitalists. He spat out a series of insults about “The money pigs of capitalist democracy… Money has made slaves of us… Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.”[14]
In another screed against free-market capitalism, Goebbels argued, “One class has fulfilled its historical mission and is about to yield to another. The bourgeoisie has to yield to the working class…. Whatever is about to fall should be pushed. We are all soldiers of the revolution. We want the workers’ victory over filthy lucre. That is socialism.”[15]
Goebbels continued his effort to expose the evil roots of capitalism, explaining that “The system of liberal capitalist democracy is already so rotten inside that there is nothing left to mend or reform. It must be fundamentally destroyed, shattered spiritually and in terms of power politics, so that a young, new generation can build a future on the ruins of the past.”[16]
In the same 1926 “Lenin or Hitler” speech and booklet, Goebbels warned about the exploitation by liberal capitalism. He pushed for a strong socialist economy, arguing that “Simply stated: capital and capitalism are two different things. The struggle is against capitalism, not capital. It is not the fact that there are factories, that there are mining assets, that is to blame for our misery, but rather the way in which they are managed and exploited contrary to the people’s welfare. Capitalism is the immoral distribution of capital.”[17] Goebbels was also, like Hitler, a “social justice” warrior. Echoing Hitler’s call for an “internal social justice,” during his “Why We Are Anti-Semites,” 1920 speech.[18]
Goebbels continued to turn up the volume for socialism and labor, demanding “a strict social justice work and livelihood for the broad masses, residences and bread and thus life joy for the German worker.”[19] At other times, Goebbels slightly changes his message, declaring that “because we are nationalists, we want to promote socialist justice in a new Germany.”[20]
Goebbels was not just mouthing the idol lyrics for “social justice.” He demanded, arguing that “If Germany stays united and marches to the rhythm of its revolutionary socialist outlook, it will be unbeatable.”[21]
But Goebbels was not the only Nazi leader who considered himself a left-wing German National Socialist. In 2011, Prof. Arnulf Baring reminded his German listeners during a TV broadcast, “The Nazis were not right-wing; the Nazis were a left-wing party! National-socialist!”[22] The German historian Götz Aly concurred, writing, “Another source of the Nazi Party’s popularity was its liberal borrowing from the intellectual tradition of the socialist left. Many of the men who would become the movement’s leaders had been involved in communist and socialist circles.”[23]
And what about the National Socialist leader, like Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of implementing the Holocaust? In his memoirs, he recalled: “My personal political feelings lay towards the left, at least emphasizing the socialistic aspect as much as the nationalistic.”[24] In addition, Eichmann confessed that many of his comrades saw “National Socialism and the Communism of the Soviet Republic” as “sort of ‘siblings.’”[25]
Even Hitler once admitted to a former Nazi leader, Hermann Rauschning, that “It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist, but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism. Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it.”[26] On June 10, 1933, Hermann Rauschning was elected president of the Senate of the independent port city of Danzig as a Nazi leader. He was also a close confidante of Hitler. He knew Hitler before and after his ascendancy to Chancellor of Germany in 1933, but he turned against Hitler and Nazism by 1934. Almost immediately, Rauschning began to warn the world about the dangers of both Hitler and Goebbels. He referred to Goebbels as a “logic-chopping” intellectual who “pointed out the kinship between National Socialism and Bolshevism.”[27] In another quote, Rauschning penned, “Goebbels belongs to a widespread type of revolutionary; he is the intellectual revolutionary, mentally alert, inventive in destructive ideas, and a master of inflammatory speech.”[28]
Hitler said little about the political spectrum since most people did not think in terms of Left or Right. Yet, Hitler did give hints about his socialist left-wing followers. In one of his early quotes, Hitler declared in 1921, “Everyone was at one time a Social Democrat,” meaning that most Nazis originated from the left side of the political spectrum.[29] At other times in the early years, Hitler went a little further and confessed, “My party at the time consisted of ninety percent of people from the left. I could only use people who had fought.”[30]
The German historian and Jewish journalist Konrad Heiden was one of the first to back up Hitler’s claims. He called the Nazis the “Party of the Left.”[31] Born in Munich, Bavaria, Heiden lived in the birthplace of Nazism, attending early Nazi Party meetings in Munich by 1921. In his 1934 book A History of National Socialism, Heiden maintained that as the German Worker’s Party coalesced into the Nazi Party, most party members felt themselves to be part of the Left, writing that the “youthful Party still felt itself to be a Party of the Left.”[32]
In another quote, Hitler championed social equity. Addressing his audience as “Comrades,” the Führer declared, “Socialist,’ I derive from the word ‘social,’ meaning in the main ‘social equity.’’[33]
Left-wing Nazism and Fascism
But since Goebbels and other German National Socialist and Fascist leaders embraced “revolutionary socialism” and were outspoken in their disbelief in a Christian god and monarchies, how could they be anything but champions of the extreme left side of the political spectrum? Goebbels himself had labeled the Nazi movement as the “German left.” Where’s the proof? It comes from the world-famous German Historian, Wolfgang Venohr, who quoted Goebbels in his December 6, 1931, issue of The Attack. In his journal, Joseph Goebbels penned, “According to the idea of the NSDAP [Nazi party], we are the German left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national ownership bloc.”[34]
What did other German political parties in the 1930’s think of the Nazis? For instance, the two classical Liberal parties were clearly pointing out the left-wing direction of Hitler’s Nazi Party. During the early 1930s, the German Democratic party (DDP/DSP) and the German People’s party (DVP), both clearly designated as the two main Liberal parties of Germany, warned the populace that the National Socialists represented “a party of the radical left.”[35] Both of these Liberal parties argued that the Nazis “would make a more compatible ally of Communism” rather than liberal or conservative-based parties.[36]
According to Thomas Childers, a Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, the DVP warned the German public that they were being repeatedly duped by the National Socialists. They continuously linked National Socialism with Marxism, writing, “Whoever blindly assails ‘capitalism’ with ruthless proletarian phrases” and “talks of ‘eliminating interest capital,’” would mostly “draw the life-blood… the German economy,” which was “so dependent on the international credit system.”[37] The DVP often affirmed that the Nazis, with “their socialistic program, are not one penny better than the other Socialists.”[38] The DVP declared that the Nazis “want socialism. They want to ‘break interest slavery.’”[39] The DVP condemned the National Socialist programs that they said “violated the principles of private property, ‘and in the Reichstag, the Nazis had supported the most incredible Communist-sponsored proposals.’’’[40] Of course, Goebbels took offense to such rhetoric, writing that the DVP party has always been “the party of property and education,” and therefore, “a typical class party of the bourgeoisie.”[41]
Most interestingly, the DVP complained that the Nazis, “don’t tell the middle class and the peasants” about their real intentions. Instead, in front of the public, the Nazis often “portray themselves as ‘anti-Marxists.’”[42] The DVP repeatedly warned the German middle class that they should “beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”[43]
The other Liberal party (German Democratic Party, known as DDP/DSP) was also attacked and vilified by the Nazi Party, condemned as a “tool of Social Democracy and Jewish big businesses.”[44]
Despite the short-lived Harzburg Front, a coalition of various political groups, including the Nazi Party and the German National People’s Party (DNVP), political animosity continued to escalate. The DNVP, the largest conservative party in Germany, routinely castigated the Nazis because they “appeared leftist,” who denounced Hitler’s ideology as “Bolshevism in nationalist wrapping.”[45]
The Anti-Christian
Both the German Nazis and Italian Fascists held intense opposition to far-right institutions, including the Christian Church, absolute monarchies, and so-called greedy capitalist elites. For instance, Benito Mussolini, a self-described communist and later a “Fascist Syndicalist,” was a life-long militant atheist, who remarked in 1924, “God does not exist—religion in science is an absurdity, in practice an immorality, and in men a disease.”[46] Il Duce was hostile toward conservatives, especially the House of Habsburg and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
As for Goebbels, he wanted to replace Christian religious faith with a heartfelt devotion to Hitler and his socialist state. This anti-Christian rhetoric was to assist in co-opting Christianity. He declared in his diary, “What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church,…”[47]
Apparently, according to Goebbels, Hitler felt the same way, writing in his diary that the Führer “hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity.”[48]
Anti-capitalism and Socialist Revolutionaries
In one of his most scathing assaults against capitalism, Goebbels wrote,
“England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people’s state. And it is not the case that we think England is the richest land on earth. There are lords and City men in England who are, in fact, the richest men on earth. The broad masses, however, see little of this wealth. We see in England an army of millions of impoverished, socially enslaved, and oppressed people. Child labor is still a matter of course there. They have only heard about social welfare programs. Parliament occasionally discusses social legislation. Nowhere else is there such terrible and horrifying inequality as in the English slums. Those with good breeding take no notice of it. Should anyone speak of it in public, the press, which serves plutocratic democracy, quickly brands him the worst kind of rascal. They do not hesitate to make major changes in the Constitution if they are necessary to preserve capitalist democracy.[49]
Goebbels continued, “Germany, on the other hand, has based its domestic policies on new and modern social principles. That is why it is a danger to English plutocracy. It is also why English capitalists want to destroy Hitlerism. They see Hitlerism as all the generous social reforms that have occurred in Germany since 1933. The English plutocrats rightly fear that good things are contagious, that they could endanger English capitalism.”[50]
At other times, Goebbels became quite animated, arguing that “To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole. Socialism is in its deepest sense service.”[51]
During other occasions, Goebbels boasted about the greatness of the National Socialists’ welfare system, gloating, “We and we alone (the Nazis) have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation… The Jews are the incarnation of capitalism.”[52] And to exhibit his dying loyalty to Bolshevism, Goebbels even confessed in 1925 that “in the last analysis better to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal capitalist servitude.”[53]
Goebbels was very truthful about Nazi Germany’s massive welfare system. Over 17 million Germans received government welfare benefits under the authority of the National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) by 1939. For instance, the NSV ran 8,000 day nurseries and funded holiday homes for mothers, including the distribution of additional food for large families. The NSV was involved with a wide variety of other programs and facilities.[54] To make sure that no private welfare was available to the German public, Hitler instructed Hilgenfeldt, the Reich Commissioner for the Winterhilfswerk (Winter Support Programme), to “see to the disbanding of all private welfare institutions.“[55] Apparently, Goebbels was truthful about the Nazis providing far more state-operated welfare than England.
According to Joachim C. Fest, a prominent German journalist, and historian, renowned for his scholarly analysis of Nazi Germany, Goebbels was a radical socialist who “spoke with deep respect for the Russian utopia impulse,” while the Strasser and their followers, cheerfully urged for an alliance with Moscow “against the militarism of France, against the imperialism of England, against the capitalism of Wall Street. Even more socialistic was the group’s economic program: large landholdings were to be abolished, and all peasants were to be organized into agricultural cooperatives; small businesses were to be grouped into guilds; corporations with more than twenty employees were to be partially socialized. Where enterprises continued in private hands, the personnel were to be entitled to a share of 10 per cent of the profits…”[56]
Brendan Simms, a professor of history at the University of Cambridge, pointed out that Goebbels favored class struggle in his early years, declaring that “We will turn National Socialism into a party of class struggle,…”[57] Agreeing with Simms’ assertions, Joachim C. Fest pointed out that Goebbels was “Looking for formulas which could unite the nationalistic socialists with Communists,” and that “Goebbels found a whole catalog of identical attitudes and convictions. He by no means rejected the theory of class struggle. He contended that the collapse of Russia would ‘bury forever our dreams of a National Socialist Germany.’”[58]
So, to almost reach some type of conclusion, Goebbels had considered himself a socialist since his college days. “He never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk.”[59]
The English historian Ian Kershaw, who is considered a well-known expert on Nazi Germany, maintained,
Goebbels and some other northern leaders thought of themselves as revolutionaries, with more in common with the Communists than with the hated bourgeoisie. There was some sympathies for Russia. And there was talk of a party trade union,” which later developed into the broteathian German Labour Front, operated by Robert Ley.[60]
In the final analysis, many revealing details about Goebbels’ ideology have come from Anthony Read, the popular British television producer, screenwriter, script editor, and author. His take was that,
Goebbels saw the ultimate enemy as international capitalism, and those who held power in Germany as its lackey, betraying their nation for personal gain. These were the traditional targets of the Communists, of course, so the Nazis and the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany, were in direct competition for the same constituency, two rabid dogs fighting for one bone… And Goebbels, who has so recently been happy to describe himself as a ‘German Communist’, led the fight with all the intensity of a religious convert.[61]
L.K. Samuels is the author of Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum (2019)
Posted April 20, 2026
NOTES
[1] The New York Times, “HITLERITE RIOT IN BERLIN: Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler and Lenin,” (Nov. 28, 1925) p. 4.
[2] Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography, New York, NY, Random House, 2015, p. 26, “Erinnerungsblätter,” 27, Part 1, Volume 1, page 27, (diary entry: 1924).
[3] Open Letter to Ernst Graf zu Reventlow in the Völkische Freiheit, 1925, as quoted in Goebbels: A Biography, Peter Longerich, Random House, (2015) p. 55.
[4] Nationalsozialismus oder Bolschewismus? National Socialism or Bolshevism), open letter to “My Friends on the Left,” Nationalsozialistische Briefe (National Socialist Letters), (Oct. 15, 1925); Nazi Ideology before 1933: A Documentation, trans. Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp, University of Texas Press, 1978, p. 76.
[5] Ibid.
[6] The New York Times, “HITLERITE RIOT IN BERLIN: Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler and Lenin,” (Nov. 28, 1925) p. 4.
[7] Curt Riess, Joseph Goebbels: A Biography, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1948, p. 31.
[8] Nationalsozialismus oder Bolschewismus? (National Socialism or Bolshevism), open letter to “My Friends on the Left,” Nationalsozialistische Briefe (National Socialist Letters), (Oct. 15, 1925); Nazi Ideology before 1933: A Documentation, trans. Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp, University of Texas Press, 1978, p. 76.
[9] Curt Riess, Joseph Goebbels: A Biography, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1948, p. 25.
[10] Curt Riess, Joseph Goebbels: A Biography, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1948, p. 24.
[11] Joachim C. Fest, The Early Goebbels Diaries, entries for 23rd October 1925 and 31st January 1926. Also found in Fest’s Chapter 7, Joseph Goebbels , Part 2 of The Face Of The Third Reich.
[12] Ibid., p 31.
[13] Curt Riess, Joseph Goebbels: A Biography, Hollis and Carter, London (1949) p. 37.
[14] (The Nazi Party 1919-1945: A Complete History, Dietrich Orlow, New York: NY, Enigma Books, 2012, p 61. Goebbels’ article, “Nationalsozialisten aus Berlin und aus dem Reich”, Voelkischer Beobachter, February 4, 1927.
[15] Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death, Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel, New York, NY, Skyhorse Publishing, 2010, p. 25, conversation with Hertha Holk.
[16] “Lenin or Hitler”, Joseph Goebbels’s speech (19 February 1926). Opera House in Königsberg (Prussia), book published in 1926, Zwickau: Streiter-Verlag, 1926, p. 3.
[17] Ibid., “Lenin or Hitler”, Joseph Goebbels’s, p. 17.
[18] Adolf Hitler’s Aug. 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager, https://carolynyeager.net/why-we-are-antisemites-text-adolf-hitlers-1920-speech-hofbr%C3%A4uhaus.
[19] “The German Worker,” Der Angriff (24 August 1930), as quoted in English translation Attack: Essays from the Time of Struggle, RJG Enterprises, 2010, p. 292.
[20] Joeseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Those Damned Nazis: Why Are We Nationalists? Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932).
[21] “The Winter Crisis is Over” speech on June 4, 1943, at the Berlin Sport Palace, “Überwundene Winterkrise, Rede im Berliner Sportpalast,” Der steile Aufstieg (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944), pp. 287-306.
[22] Arnulf Baring, Professor of history at the Free University of Berlin “Right-wing Terror: How defensible is our democracy?” “Münchner Runde,” ARD broadcaster (November 22, 2011).
[23] Götz Aly Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, New York: NY, Metropolitan Books, (2007), p. 16.
[24] Adolf Eichmann, False Gods: The Jerusalem Memoirs, London, UK: Black House Publishing, 2015, p. 75.
[25] Ibid., Eichmann.
[26] Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, New York, NY, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940, p. 131.
[27] Hermann Rauschning, Men in Chaos, G.P. Putman’s Sons, New York, p. 47.
[28] Ibid., Men in Chaos, pp. 22-23
[29] Hitler: Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924, Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, (editors) Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980, p. 448.
[30] Monologue on Nov. 30, 1941; Rainer Zitelmann, “The role of anti-capitalism in Hitler’s world view,” Wiley Online Library, Nov. 13, 2022; Hitler, A. (1980b), p. 146; Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944 (ed. W. Jochmann). Albrecht Knaus Verlag.
[31] Konrad Heiden, A History of National Socialism, Volume 2, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York, p. 10, original printing date 1934.
[32] Ibid., Konrad Heiden, p. 13.
[33] Speech given on December 4, 1938, quoted in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, translator and editor Norman Hepburn Baynes, vol. one, Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 93.
[34] Der Angriff (The Attack), (6 December 1931), quoted in Wolfgang Venohr’s book: Documents of German existence: 500 years of German national history 1445-1945, Athenäum Verlag, 1980, p. 291). In German: „Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhaßter als der rechtsstehende nationale Besitzbürgerblock.,, The book page and Goebbels’ quote can be found at https://historyuncensored.wixsite.com/history-uncensored/historical-quotes
[35] Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933, Chapel Hill, NC and London, UK: University of North Carolina Press (1983) p. 153.
[36] Ibid., Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter, p. 154.
[37] Ibid., p 154.
[38] Ibid., p. 154.
[39] Ibid., p. 154.
[40] Ibid., p. 154.
[41] Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter, p. 155.
[42] Ibid., p. 154.
[43] Ibid., p. 154, Rettet Deutschland! DVP leaflet, 1930, BA, ZSg.1, 42/8 (2).
[44] Ibid., p. 155.
[45] Thomas Childers, ibid., p. 111.
[46] “Religion: Benito a Christian?” Time magazine, August 25, 1924.
[47] Goebbels, October 16, 1928, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, ed. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, (1963).
[48] Fred Taylor Translation; The Goebbels Diaries 1939–41; Hamish Hamilton Ltd; London; 1982; pp. 304–305) April 8, 1941 diary entry.
[49] “Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. The article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939. Joseph Goebbels’ speech in English is titled “England’s Guilt.”)
[50] Ibid., Goebbels; England’s Guilt, 1939.
[51] As quoted in Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm, Farrar & Rinehart (1941) p. 233, Matthew Lange, Antisemitic Elements in the Critique of Capitalism in German Culture, 1850-1933, Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2007, p. 290.
[52] Victor Klemperer’s I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945, Vol. 2, Random House, Inc. (2001) p. 317. Goebbels’ “Our Socialism” editorial was written on April 30, 1944.
[53] October 23, 1925, The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, edit. Oliver Watson, trans. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1963.
[54] Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939. New York City, New York: The Penguin Press. 2005, p. 489.
[55] Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto (2014). Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 2, 92–93. Wikipedia has a more informative page about the NSV welfare system at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_People%27s_Welfare
[56] Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York (1974), p. 234.
[57] Brendan Simms, voiced by Goebbels in May 1925, Hitler: Only the World was Enough. Penguin Books (2020), p. 105.
[58] Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York (1974), p. 234.
[59] Daniel Hannan in: Leftists become incandescent when reminded of the socialist roots of Nazism, RealClear Politics, March 13, 2014.
[60] Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1881-1936: Hubris, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, (1999), p. 272.
[61] Anthony Read, The Devil’s Disciples: Hitler’s Inner Circle, New York: NY and London: UK, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004, pp. 141-142.
