Historians have long pondered the mystery of how, and why, members of various German social classes eventually allowed Hitler to build his National Socialist government.
Getting industrialists to support a socialist like Hitler was indeed quite a challenge. As historian Jonah Goldberg writes,
While there’s a big debate about how much of the working and lower classes supported the Nazis, it is now largely settled that very significant chunks of both constituted the Nazi base. Nazism and Fascism were both popular movements.
The masses marching in the streets, carrying torches, starting fistfights, and throwing rocks weren’t from royal families or the nobility. They were the populist base of the Nazi Party.
The word ‘Nazi’ is an abbreviation for ‘National Socialism.’ The upper classes were opposed to both nationalism and socialism. The aristocracy had historically opposed nationalism, both because it placed the people’s allegiance to the nation above their allegiance to dynastic families, and because ‘nationalizing’ industries and economic sectors was a sure route to poverty.
The upper classes opposed both of Hitler’s ideological foundations, nationalism and socialism, and they opposed his tactics of intimidation, as Jonah Goldberg notes:
In Germany the aristocratic and business elite were generally repulsed by Hitler and the Nazis.
From 1919 to 1933, when Hitler and the Nazis finally seized power, it was largely a working-class mob who supported them. The ‘Brownshirts’ were not from elite classes.
After 1933, the underground opposition, which sought to hinder the Nazis and even to assassinate Hitler, had a disproportionately large number of members from the aristocracy.
Colonel von Stauffenberg, a key figure in the April 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, came from a historic noble family.
Hitler was, simply, a populist:
The Nazis rose to power exploiting anticapitalist rhetoric they indisputably believed. Even if Hitler was the nihilistic cipher many portray him as, it is impossible to deny the sincerity of the Nazi rank and file who saw themselves as mounting a revolutionary assault on the forces of capitalism.
The Nazis exploited feelings of class envy. They had no desire to allow any type of free market. They intended to burden the people with crushing taxes.
Because Hitler wanted to crush freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the freedom of thought, it was a logical and necessary extension of the Nazi program that he would also crush economic freedom.
The Nazis had no respect for the centuries-old heritage of the aristocratic families, and in fact, the Nazis harbored bitter resentment toward such families. That resentment would have, for many of the nobles, a murderous outcome.
