What role did the United States and capitalism play in Hitler’s world view?
After seizing power, Hitler’s first target was the communist party. He promised to “liberate Germany from Marxism” and later attacked the communist Soviet Union. For historians like Ernst Nolte, Hitler was, above all, an anti-communist – while leftist anti-fascist scholars have even described him as an “agent of capitalism”. Now, Brendan Simms, professor at the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University, has written a provocative biography that turns traditional interpretations of Hitler’s world view on their head: It wasn’t communism that Hitler hated above all else, but capitalism in general and the United States in particular.
Simms argues that, “the Anglo-American capitalist world order against which Hitler revolted structured his entire political career”. And the root of Hitler’s Jew-hatred? “Primarily to be found in his hostility to global high finance rather than his hatred of the radical left.”
In terms of Hitler’s worldview, Simms claims that communists “were not Hitler’s primary concern”. Hitler’s anxieties were directed at the British and the Americans. “Hitler became an enemy of the British – and also of the Americans – before he became an enemy of the Jews. Indeed, he became an enemy of the Jews largely because of his hostility to the Anglo-American capitalist powers,” he writes.
On the one hand, he admired the United States as an adversary because of its modernity and vast economic potential, but also because of its greater social mobility and better opportunities for workers to make a life for themselves. On the other hand, he feared that the future belonged to the “giant states” and the United States was the biggest among them. He hated the US as a representative of capitalism while also fearing and admiring the country because of its demographic strength: he saw the emigrants who had left Germany and the rest of Europe to seek a new life across the ocean as the most courageous, daring and determined people the continent had to offer. As Hitler saw it, the United States was peopled by the racially sound descendants of British emigrants, combined with the best elements of continental Europe. He did not see Bolshevism so much as a threat in its own right, but as an instrument of “international Jewish capitalism to undermine the working of national economies and render them ripe for takeover by international finance capital (both Jewish and non-Jewish).”
That Hitler attacked the Soviet Union was, in the author’s view, primarily an economic solution to Germany’s problems. Hitler wanted to conquer “new living space” to secure the raw materials and markets that Germany would need to become a world power. According to Simms, Hitler’s policy of eastward expansion was not primarily motivated by ideological concerns, hatred of the Jews nor animosity toward communism. Nor was Hitler planning to establish a reactionary agrarian utopia, as has often been claimed in the previous research: “He looked forward to a modern American-style German east, not back to a traditional rural idyll,” Simms writes.
Simms also sees a close connection between Hitler’s racism and his opposition to capitalism. He writes: “Most importantly of all, Hitler wanted to establish what he considered racial unity in Germany by overcoming the capitalist order and working for the “construction of a new classless society”.”
Is Simms right with his provocative theses? That Hitler was an anti-capitalist is true, but the author could have better demonstrated the central role of anti-capitalism in Hitler’s worldview by devoting more detailed attention to Hitler’s economic thought. In fact, Hitler had developed an inherently consistent system of economic and socio-political thought, as I explain in my book Hitler: The Policies of Seduction.
After launching his offensive against the Soviet Union, Hitler became an increasing admirer of the planned economy – indeed he strove for a fundamental post-war revolution of the German economy. Socialist and anti-capitalist elements played a much greater role in his thinking than is widely believed.
When Simms claims that Hitler was not only an ardent admirer of the United States as a modern industrial country, but also by no means an advocate of an anti-modern, agrarian utopia, he is right on both counts. I offer extensive proof of this in my own study. It is also true that Hitler’s strategy of conquering new living space in the east was not driven by ideological preoccupations, but economics. Simms could have provided even stronger evidence for this thesis had he expounded upon Hitler’s “shrinking markets” theory and his criticism of the German economy’s strong dependence on exports in more detail.
Where the text falls short, however, is in the claims that anti-communist preoccupations did not play a key role in Hitler’s thinking, and that he only attacked the Soviet Union because he saw it as “weak”. On the contrary: Hitler viewed National Socialism as an alternative revolutionary movement to the communist movement. In Hitler’s eyes, the communists were his only serious opponents. He saw them as “fanatics” (this to him was the highest form of praise) who would stop at nothing to achieve their aims. In sharp contrast, he regarded the bourgeoisie as cowardly and weak, and liberal capitalism as a rotten, decadent system that was doomed to fail. Hitler increasingly admired Stalin and no longer believed in his own propagandistic slogans concerning “Jewish Bolshevism”.
The same characteristics of the communist movement which are particularly worthy of criticism from a democratic-liberal point of view earned Hitler’s highest admiration: the totalitarian nature of its ideology, the unrestricted will to seize and hold power and the clearly formulated goal of “fanatically” fighting and “annihilating” all and any political opponents. Hitler considered the communists and the Soviet Union as a far greater threat than this book would have one believe.
The merit of this book, however, lies primarily in the revelation of Hitler’s anxieties about demographics and the great importance he attached to emigration as an element of America’s strength. Simms’ emphasis of Hitler’s strident anti-capitalism and his true economic motivations for the “seizure of living space in the east”, is also an important consideration often overlooked in discussion. No other researcher before Simms has been able to offer such a clear analysis of what was one of Hitler’s major preoccupations.
Hitler: A Global Biography by Brendan Simms, is published by Basic Books.
Rainer Zitelmann holds doctorates in history and sociology and is the author of over 20 books including Hitler – The Policies of Seduction, The Power of Capitalism – A Journey Through Recent History Across Five Continents and The Rich in Public Opinion : What We Think When We Think About Wealth.