Yes, between 1933 and 1939, Adolf Hitler presided over massive increases in German/Reich gross domestic products and reductions in unemployment, until my grandfather helped blow it all up a few years later. But those successes say nothing good about Hitler: they were never about making lives better, but always about empowering Nazi ideology.
I note this in light of Turning Point USA communications director Candace Owens’ comments in London on Friday. Specifically, Owens’ bizarre and ignorant statement about Hitler’s “globalism”: “[I]f Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German, everybody to look a different way.”
Owens’ central problem here is in identifying Hitler’s domestic policies as indicators of a lost better nature. Her implication is that Hitler would have been fine had he simply doubled down on economic greatness, creating jobs, and economic growth to benefit national happiness.
The problem here is that Hitler never had this as his ideal. Hitler’s economic policy was always about two larger interests: politically insulating Nazi ideology, and then conquering lands in which to put it into effect. Take it from Hitler himself, who wrote in his ranting 1925 biography, Mein Kampf, of Germany’s destiny to
Hitler’s idea of “soil” was also inherently bound up with his notions of ethnic and ideological purity. In that same chapter of Mein Kampf, Hitler claimed that Jews, “a ferment of decomposition,” had taken over communist Russia. Combining these themes of soil and ethnic-ideological purity, Hitler showed the link between his desire to seize “soil” and his plan to use it for the Aryan peoples.
This is why Hitler was always going to declare war on the Soviet Union: It was what all his investments in the Nazi military and economy had always been meant for. Correspondingly, Hitler’s own words and actions prove the defining delusion of Owens’ argument: that the fanatic’s domestic policies can somehow be isolated as something positive. They cannot be. Hitler’s economic policy only existed to serve his expansionist objectives, and ultimately to secure for his nation annihilation in a brutal war.
Knowledge of history matters, especially when it comes to a topic as important as Nazi Germany. Sadly, Owens offered little contrition for her stupid remarks in a follow up video. Explaining what she meant to say, Owens concluded, “I stand by my statements.” Here we see true arrogance and ignorance together: utter confidence that, having now said what she meant to say originally, Owens’ historical analysis is accurate.
Note: If you’re going to speak about Hitler in Britain, you need to have knowledge. The British understandably have a rather poor view of the Third Reich. Although these sentiments are sometimes offered humorously, bad Nazi history isn’t popular. Those who fought and won the Second World War at least deserve our clear understanding of what they did.
You can watch Owens’ comment below.
Here is video of Candace Owens’ full answer on nationalism and Hitler pic.twitter.com/NfBvoH8vQg
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) February 8, 2019
