Talk:Nazi Party/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions about Nazi Party. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

IMO, this article is quite long and has enough written material to be split. I added the split template, please discuss. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.1.15.120 (talk) 16:05, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

The article seems to imply that the inclusion of the swastika symbol in the party propaganda occurred sometime between 1920 and 1925. Is a more precise date available?

♠William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp 43-44) states that Hitler conceived the idea of using the swastika in the summer of 1920.

Creating and declaring a party symbol would have been within Hitler's party authority at that time, as he had become director of propaganda for the party. While there is discussion of the symbol in Mein Kampf, there is no clear indication by Hitler of the precise source of the swastika idea, although he did note that it tended to appear in the proposals made to him by other party members. In any event, the idea was not original to him and the symbol had been in familiar usage for considerable periods (see, e.g., the article on the Thule Society {a right-wing organization familiar to Hitler}, which shows a swastika on the society's poster dated 1919; Shirer also notes that the notorious Ehrhardt Brigade (a freikorps brigade) had painted the symbol on their helmets prior to intervening against the Kapp Putsch in Berlin in 1920, and that Hitler may have observed it again there when the brigade was in Munich). In Mein Kampf, Hitler says that the a similar design was brought to him by a dentist, who appears to have been Dr. Friedrich Krohn. SixBlueFish (talk) 17:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)♠

"The Swastika symbolized the replacement of the Christian Cross with allegiance to a National Socialist State." There is no citation given for this. While that may be a conclusion Christians may reasonably draw from subsequent events, did Hitler or the party itself ever explicitly state that this was what the swastika was meant to symbolize? tjaques nov 14 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.34.225.122 (talk) 14:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Who translated that from german? I'm realy convinced that it should be translated to "National Socialist Labor Party of Germany" or "National-Socialistic German Labor Party". This (my opinion) is based on the meaning in Arbeiterpartei and (...)sozialistische which does not primarily mean "Party for Workers." Its intent is to suggest "Party for Work".

• Please sign your comments.
• National Socialist German Workers Party is the usual translation. My German is not very good but I think Labor Party is usually translated as Arbeitspartei. Adam 03:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

"Workers Party" is also the more literal translation - "Arbeiterpartei" means "Partei der Arbeiter", meaning either a party "von Arbeitern" or "für Arbeiter". Labour might be admissable as the more common English term, though literally it would mean "Arbeitspartei" (party of the labour) in German. But since "Workers Party" is the common term it should be used here. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 14:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

25 years ago, when I took German in college, it was translated as "workers party." It was also spelled something like NationalSozialistischeDeutscheArbeiterpartei (no spaces between words) which is quite common in the German language. I can't recall if the first letter of each word was capitalized.CyranoDeWikipedia 23:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

no, it's not common!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.164.238.83 (talk) 12:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I took German as well, and I think Cyrano was confused about the common practice in German of creating compound words. That said, I have never seen the name Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterspartei compressed into a single compound word. There are rules for creating a compound word, and just removing the spaces isn't always sufficient.130.13.41.140 (talk) 16:57, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The "Labor Party of Germany" thing is I'm afraid a not-too-subtle rehash of a popular revisionist claim that the Nazis were nothing more than Communists themselves and that the whole Nazi period and it's crimes can therefore be attributed to the bogey of the left, a theory we get cranked out fairly endlessly on this and many other Nazi-period pages on Wikipedia and which is utter drivel. Wearily we have to say yet again that a very considerable majority of academics who have closely studied this subject concur that the most appropriate translation is the one we have as the title of this article. Also shortened to "Nazi". Thank you. MarkThomas 19:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC) ...and it turns out they are a party of the Left, but more to the point big government. I don't see Workers or labor being that big of a conflict (LVAustrian (talk) 22:30, 12 June 2009 (UTC))

I have now copied two images from the Adolf Hitler article and they have both been deleted as copyvios. How can photos be within the guidelines at one article and outside them at another? Adam 06:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't quote me on this, but I think the concept is called "fair-use." It allows for the use of copyrighted images in articles dealing with the subject of the images in question, as long as they don't harm the images' commercial viability and are of the lowest quality possible. The use of a fair-use image on one article might be a copyvio on another because there's little justification for its use. However, you'd best be served by asking someone with a more thorough knowledge of copyright law. --Impaciente 00:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

This article at this point only focuses of NSDAP in Germany. A separate chapter on pre-unification NSDAP in Austria can be written at National Socialist German Workers Party/temp-Austria. I myself is not an expert on this issue. --Soman 14:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The article makes no mention of German election, 1933 but does mention many of the previous elections. Given that this election was the last election before the Hitler dictatorship, I think it deserves a mention, but I don't know where to put it in. I'll just make this note here -- Ch'marr 03:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

May I ask what is the source of this statement ? I agree that many Germans supported the party, but you need country-wide polls and sociological research to state "majority". If such research was conducted, would anyone provide the source ? Or wouldn't it be better to say "support of many Germans" ? 213.247.163.6 23:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

When you become a registered Wikipedian I will be happy to debate this question with you. Adam 03:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

cool debates

Well I am a registered wikipedian, and I would say that this party did not have the support of Jewish Germans, Gay Germans, German Jehovah's Whitenesses, Socialist Germans, disabled Germans...shall I go on. So can we see this sociological study that suggest the "majority" of Germans supported this party. As I recall the election in which Hitler took power saw only a minority of Germans voting. Now don't get me wrong, I am not trying to suggest that Nazi power came from a minority of Germans and ya for revisionist history and all that. I am only suggesting that Hitlers party came to power with one group of Germans scapegoating another group of Germans. A large and non-unified group that included the Germans I mentions earlier. So, where are the stats that prove this logic wrong?

And of course my dumb ass forgot to sing my above postDkriegls 07:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The NSDAP won less than 44% of the vote, and never more in a fair election. So "majority" is purely a guess as there was no fair election in which they won a majority of votes. --DerRichter (talk) 08:04, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

When creating links to this article, I have always been bothered by the excessive length of the article name. Most people prefer to link to the redirect Nazi Party than to point to this article directly; I've often corrected their links in order to avoid the redirect, but I have come to wonder if it is really worth it. Most wikipedia article titles follow the convention of using the most popular name for a country or political organization, even if it is not the full official name. Thus we have a main article called Nazi Germany rather than Great German Reich; we have Soviet Union rather than Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; we have North Korea instead of Democratic People's Republic of Korea; we have Conservative Party (UK) rather than Conservative and Unionist Party (UK); and so on. Following the same principle, I propose to move the content of this article to Nazi Party. -- Nikodemos 22:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Totally disagree. "nazi" is a term not of their creation, and is used less frequetly by Germans. In the case of "north korea" I would likewise like to see North Korea become a redirect to the proper name as well. user:Pzg Ratzinger

Unfortunately, that is not normal practice on wikipedia. When deciding on the name of an article, we do not use "official" names but rather the most common names. "Nazi Party" has 1,350,000 Google hits,[1] while "National Socialist German Workers Party" has only 90,800 hits.[2] That's a ratio of almost 15:1 in favor of "Nazi Party". Clearly, the term "Nazi Party" is by far the most common. -- Nikodemos 01:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I know this has been discussed and debated to death, but I'd support a move request. The last debate was quite a while ago and was essentially derailed by an awful lot of invalid reasons to leave it here, without regard for common English usage. Kafziel ^Talk 19:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I am considering being bold and doing a unilateral move; policy is very clear on this subject, and there seems to be little interest in discussion. -- Nikodemos 04:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that you open official move request, since this move was already discussed and rejected. -- Vision Thing -- 09:03, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Vision Thing. Better to get consensus for it (or against it, if it comes to that) than just move it and risk being reverted tomorrow. Kafziel ^Talk 13:16, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I have officially proposed the move and summarized my arguments below. -- Nikodemos 07:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Read Robert Gellatey - "Backing Hitler"

National Socialist German Workers Party → Nazi Party — As it currently stands, the name of this article clearly disregards Wikipedia:Naming conventions. The policy in a nutshell states that "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." The majority of English speakers overwhelmingly use the term "Nazi Party". "Nazi Party" has 1,350,000 Google hits,[3] while "National Socialist German Workers Party" has only 90,800 hits.[4] That's a ratio of almost 15:1 in favor of "Nazi Party". In other articles, we have already established the fact that political parties and entities do not need to be listed using their full official names, especially when those names are very long. For example, we have a main article called Nazi Germany rather than Great German Reich; we have Soviet Union rather than Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; we have North Korea instead of Democratic People's Republic of Korea; we have Conservative Party (UK) rather than Conservative and Unionist Party (UK); and so on. The sheer length of the name "National Socialist German Workers Party" is probably the reason why most English speakers prefer to use a shorthand. It also means that linking to this article is certainly not second nature right now. -- Nikodemos 07:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.

• Oppose, no immediate reason. Also 'Nazi Party' is far more ambigous. There have been 'Nazi Parties' in many countries, but just one NSDAP. --Soman 12:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support, for the several reasons mentioned by nominator here and those in previous discussions. Kafziel ^Talk 22:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support - per nom. Any other 'Nazi Parties' can be dabbed if it's deemed necessary to have them under that name. Ask any English speaker for the name of the party that Hitler led, they'll say the Nazi Party. Conversely, ask any English speaker who/what were the Nazi Party, they'll tell you the party led by Hitler! robwingfield ^(talk) 22:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I've never heard it called the "National Socialist German Workers Party" in English, except in introductions when explaining what Nazi or NSDAP means. I've never heard of any other organisations being literally called a "Nazi Party" either. FiggyBee 02:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support. It's conventionally just called the "Nazi Party" in English, and when it isn't, it's called by its German name, either abbreviated as NSDAP, or in full. -- The Anome 02:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support per Robwingfield. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:35, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support - the common name in English, and easily the primary use of the term. Warofdreams talk 04:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Comment below. -- SigPig \^{SEND - OVER} 05:16, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support - most people know it as the Nazi party - NSDAP is nowadays chiefly a term familiar to academics and historians and those more knowledgeable on the subject. The term and it's German wording and English translation should however be mentioned and discussed in the subsequent article. MarkThomas 12:16, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support per policy. -- Vision Thing -- 19:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC) See below. -- Vision Thing -- 13:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons listed below:

• "Nazi" has very negative connotations and is not in the interest of our NPOV policy. Titling this article by the party's formal name; shows that this is a very serious article dealing with the party and not a cliché. A similar situation applies with Viet Cong being located at National Liberation Front of South Vietnam so as to be completely neutral - despite that Viet Cong is more common to English speakers.

• Oppose for reasons mentioned above, but also because the term Nazi isn't official, but slang, adopted through English. --Gregh2k 03:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Sheesh. "Murder" has negative connotations - should we call it "involuntary externally-motivated life termination"? Interesting though that the Viet Cong thing has been neutralised out - NPOV gone bonkers, a growing issue on WP. MarkThomas 12:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• There are other Nazi groups now rendering this term ambiguous, even if only in a minor way.
• The party didn't call themselves a "Nazi Party", so this term is really inaccurate the article explains the etymology of the term "Nazi". It's like having Communists at "commys" or "reds".
• This has been debated extensively already.
• Many formal publications use NSDAP and National Socialist German Workers' (/Labour) Party.
• Every other Wikipedia, just about uses National Socialist German Workers Party or variation of that. (I recognise this isn't really a valid argument- but it should be a factor).
• The title isn't that unbearable it fits across the page.
• Redirects really fix any problems users might have searching for NSDAP.

Kyle sb 11:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose, as explained by Soman. There are many "Nazi Party"s around the world. /Slarre 02:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose, 'Nazi' is derogatory and incorrect. It is widely known. If not, well it's redirected from Nazi Party so people might learn something. Generally the purpose of an encyclopaedia don't you think?

• Oppose, NSDAP got 1,630,000 hits on Google.
  • "Nazi Party" got 3,000,000 hits on Google.
• Support move this since "nazi party" is the most common known in the world. Not a lot of people know that it stands for national socialist, blah blah blah party." That is not common. Look at General Motors, Toyota, they are not in the page where it says "Toyota Motor Corporation." Move this now. I think German wikipedians want this as it is. Move ASAP. I don't care whether "nazi" sounds negative or positive, it should be moved since that is the most common name. Look at Nazi Germany, do you want that to be moved to "Deutsche Reich"? ** "Nazi Party" got 3,000,000 hits on Google.

71.208.116.200 00:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose - "Nazi Party" is ambiguous. Reginmund 00:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • It's not ambiguous. Nazi Party googled almost always shows nazi germany nazi party 67.41.195.38 03:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
• Did you actually perform the Google search? %20 of the results were Neo-Nazi groups. Reginmund 04:47, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
• Support The neutrality argument is usually fallacious; but here it is more so than usual: The NSDAP's customary name has negative connotations because the Nazis spent twelve years earning them. We should call the Nazis Nazis because that is the primary sense of the term; 80% usage is the figure usually held to invoke WP:PRIMARYMEANING . Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

NSDAP

NSDAP, acronym from the official name National Socialist German Workers' Party, has 1,680,000 Google hits [5]. That is more results then "Nazi party" (1,350,000 ) and "National Socialist German Workers' Party" (90,800). Besides that, by using popular form of official name we will avoid ambiguity and negative connotations. So it has all the advantages of the titles "Nazi party" and "National Socialist German Workers' Party", and none of theirs weaknesses. -- Vision Thing -- 13:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you are wrong. "nazi party" got 2,600,000+ hits http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=nazi+party&spell=1

I think _you_ are wrong, try using google more accurately: 157.000 hits http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&hs=lSR&q=%22nazi+party%22+-wikipedia&btnG=Search vs. 1.880.000 hits http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&hs=A8l&q=%22NSDAP%22+-wikipedia&btnG=Search

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.

• Support per policy. -- Vision Thing -- 13:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Add any additional comments:

• Comment. Note also, for example, the East German secret police are under Stasi, not "Ministry for State Security"; the early Soviet secret police is under Cheka, not "All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage"; and Hitler's Finest are listed under Gestapo, not "Secret State Police". Even Nazi regime itself is called Nazi Germany, as opposed to the official (in English) "(Greater) German Reich". -- SigPig \^{SEND - OVER} 05:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Not true, Stasi is under its official name. Cheka is used because it would be uneccesary to transliterate it. "Gestapo" was actually used by the Nazis. The Nazi regime didn't call themselves Nazi Germany, they called themselves "Deutsches Reich" (German Empire). Reginmund 04:52, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Nine votes for moving article back to the previous title of "Nazi Party", two for leaving article at "National Socialist German Workers Party"; 81% in favour of the move. Moving article accordingly. -- Karada 11:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

It's ok to be bold, but there is no reason for it. Page will be moved by administrator once the discussion is over. -- Vision Thing -- 13:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I am an administrator, and I just moved it on the policy-driven basis that after two days, 80% of votes in the survey called for a move back to original name, which is also the name preferred by the Manual of Style. This is also statistically supported by the count of links to this article and usage on Google. That seems pretty straightforward to me. This compares with 20% support for "National Socialist German Worker's Party", and just one new vote for "NSDAP", added after I made the move. After adding your vote, there's still a two-thirds supermajority against "National Socialist German Worker's Party" with just 17% of votes, and "Nazi Party" still comes out as the consensus choice. I'm sorry, but consensus, policy, and common use all point one way on this issue. 66% > 17%, and policy > voting. -- Karada 14:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that isn't noted on your user page and you didn't close discussion as it's customary once page is officially moved, nor did you remove banner on top of the page and request from "Requested moves" page. Anyway, discussion isn't over since there is a possibility to change page name to NSDAP, which has 1,680,000 Google hits (330,000 more than "Nazi party"). I just added that suggestion, and nobody else had the time to vote for it. -- Vision Thing -- 14:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Not in English usage, which is the criterion specified by the MoS. You only get that figure if you aggregate results for all languages, which is not surprising, since "Nazi Party" is an English usage, but the acronym is used internationally. Try "advanced search" and select "English pages only". Restricting the search to English usage only then gives 1,320,000 hits for "nazi party" vs. 335,000 for NSDAP.

I still believe that closing the discussion was appropriate, given the rationale above. I suggest that the article remain at Nazi Party for now, and that if you want to move it to NSDAP, you should relist it on the requested moves page for moving to that name. -- Karada 15:09, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that NSDAP is used more internationally. I thought that NSDAP is a good compromise between those who object the move and those who support it. But if nobody is interested in that suggestion I'm not going to press it. -- Vision Thing -- 19:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, as far as I am concerned, this move to "Nazi Party" looks totally strange and unprecise to me. If this term is a common one in the english-speaking countries, ok, but maybe it would be better to use it in the Wikipedia for Simple English. The historically correct term is NSDAP or the long Form of it, and in my opinion Wikipedia should stick to actual history, and not todays perspective on it. Same goes for Nazi SS, Nazi SA and all the other "Nazi"-tagged articles. --Trickstar (talk) 11:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Trickster. Links on wikipedia often reflect editing convenience rather than usage. In addition, "most common usage" doesn't really control on Wikipedia when the usage is informal; the article on the U.S. is not entitled "America" even though that's what most people use in informal speech. Warren Dew (talk) 06:11, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, negative connotations associated with the word "nazi" make this article no longer neutral. Ill vote for the change BACK to National Socialist German Workers Party. Why cant we have the long version, and have a short comment "commonly known as the Nazi party" Adderz91 (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on this article. A user is blanking the section on Hoess's SS ranks and awards and "trivial and validiating a criminal organization". It sounds like personal feelings, but I wanted to get the opinion of other editors since the user has reverted twice to this article section blanking. -Husnock 13:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The user is also now removing large sections from the Reinhard Heydrich article. Other opinions are needed. -Husnock 14:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

A further issue has arisen on the SS ranks article where a user is changing the rank translations in the articles to translations which contradict the sources of the article. The user claims he knows German better than the sources. Sorry to post here, but this page is more heavily watched than the ranks page. Need some more folks on thsi as I dont want to go beyond 3RR. Thank you! -Husnock 05:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone have any stats on what percentage of the population were actual members of the Party? Of course including breakdown by years since presumably more and more people joined, at least until maybe 1944-5, for reasons like career advancement.

Note I am *not* asking for percentages of Germans who *voted* National Socialist, but rather who were card-carrying Party members.

Critic9328 02:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I've posted on more than one occasion, a political party template to briefly overview the ideology of the Nazi Party, show its official newspaper, and its official emblem. Now some may think that putting this here may be amateurish for Wikipedia and is trivial, but the page for the Italian National Fascist Party has such a template as does the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, put this one does not. Remember that this is supposed to be a page for the party itself not soley the ideology, so such a template would make the page look more complete. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by R-41 (talk • contribs) 19:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC).

Against the idea. Frankly, the more it looks like serious comment and the less it looks like a Nazi fan-fest the better. Roger 20:37, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

A template won't make the site a "fan-fest", it is just supposed to correlate with other pages. I do not see the USSR Communist Party page turning into a fan-fest for communists, neither do I see the Italian Fascist party page turning into a fan-fest for fascists. It is simply a political template with an overview, like most other pages have for political parties. I know that everything to do with Nazism IS OBVIOUSLY controversial. I recently posted the template on the site, it does not look like anything that could create a nazi "fan-fest" to me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.95.182.157 (talk) 22:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC).

The Nazis exert a magnetic pull on certain types of personality. Communists (with the notable exception of Señor Guevara) don't. Roger 11:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Well the template to me doesn't look like anything that will grab attention. Its not like I put a big propaganda poster in it or something. The template is being used to make the article similar to those of, yes, other totalitarian parties listed in wikipedia. If neo-nazi extremists start posting crap all over the place, then wikipedia can put a lock on editing the page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by R-41 (talk • contribs) 15:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

I don't understand how "socialists" are in the list of the "perceived... enemies"(in the third paragraph) while the word "Socialist" is included in the name of the party?

Chiloa (talk) 16:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

• Just because a particular word is in the name of a political party or country does not mean that the party of country lives up to that word. For example, there have been many countries with the words Democratic Republic of... in their names, but were actually totalitarian, not democratic at all.Spylab (talk) 16:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Its important to understand that 'National Socialism' isn't just 'National'+'Socialism'. In German its a composite word, and if one component is removed from the name then the whole meaning is lost. --Soman (talk) 17:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Soman, as far as you know, did the Nazi persecute the socialists? Chiloa (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Is there any questioning of that? --Soman (talk) 21:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Not from me. Chiloa (talk) 21:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC) Do you have an explanation for the word socialist in the name of the party?

Chiloa (talk) 21:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this a beginning of a series of insinuations? --Soman (talk) 23:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

If you don't have an explanation, no problem. If you see insinuations: sorry and forget it. I felt that your first comment was making a lot a sense and encourage me to ask you more. Chiloa (talk) 01:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, I just recalled endless debates on this on other articles and templates, for which you should of course not be blamed. The explanation itself is very simple. National Socialism is a distinct ideology, which includes socialist elements. However, it is not part of the socialist movement as such and it makes sense to talk about National Socialists and Socialists as two distinct political groups. The major differentation between National Socialists and the contemporary mainstream of socialist movement (social democrats, left socialists, communists) is the total denial of National Socialists of the whole concept of class struggle. That said, National Socialism is not completly heterogenous, there were always dissident trends within it, and there has been points of convergence between National Socialists and Socialists. --Soman (talk) 08:34, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

What kind of "socialists" the Nazi were "persecuting"?

Chiloa (talk) 14:05, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Communists, Social Democrats, SAPD, other leftwing groups (like KAPD, KPO, etc.), --Soman (talk) 14:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

All!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.164.238.83 (talk) 12:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Chiloa (talk) 15:16, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how to edit this site properly enough yet, but it's downright bad documenting to label the party position 'far right' and 'fascist' when in fact domestically the country was overwhelmingly collective and in fact leftist, with the rightist elements mostly coming into play in how Hitler chose do deal with non-Aryans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.63.70.196 (talk) 19:18, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Collectivist or not, the Left does not have a monopoly on authoritarianism. Certain types of authoritarianism that are usually associated specifically with the Right such as nativism, racial segregation, militarism, and anticommunism (as the Nazis practiced). If you automatically associate leftism with collectivism, that would place most libertarians and anarchists on the "far-right" which generally isn't their accepted position. Not to mention most dictatorships would qualify as left-wing.

Honestly people, describing Nazi Germany as far right is simply NOT correct. Regardless of how much you would love to dump the Nazis in with the Republicans/Conservatives in the US and Britain, the Nazi party was quite simply NOT right-wing. And no I am not mindlessly defending my ideology; there have been many totalitarian Conservative regimes. The Taliban, Medieval Europe, The American Civil War's Confederacy, both Protestants and Catholics during the Reformation, The Spanish Inquisition etc. I am not saying group them with the Communists, just do not incorrectly describe them as Right-Wing. --71.210.215.95 (talk) 16:19, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're still missing the point. You're still viewing this as a "left/right" axis in which all left wing parties represent socialism and all right wing parties represent capitalism. This is simply untrue. Libertarians can be described as both far right and far left, but they are nowhere NEAR the Nazis... So how does that work?

We're concerned with their social views, not their economic ones. Economically, the Nazis were quite centrist, favoring something almost deadset between capitalism and communism, but socially, there can be no doubt, they were extreme right.

The reason I know you're defending your ideology is because you claimed that calling them far right is lumping them in with Republicans. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The republican party is far from extreme, and even the most rabid Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons couldn't begin to touch the extremity of the Nazi ideology. ReignMan (talk) 14:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I just say that we ought to have maybe a traditionalist versus secular progressive classification per Bill O'Reilly's classifications of far-right and far-left people and ideologies as "anti-traditionalist". Nickidewbear (talk) 22:26, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

About the only difference between Socialists and National Socialists was "workers of the world unite" versus "German workers unite." Almost all of their political beliefs meshed. The differences lie in how to get socialism to the masses. Mussolini discovered that Italian workers didn't care about French workers who didn't care about American workers, and so on. Later, Hitler used this same type of nationalism. Woodrow Wilson used a similar type of nationalism for his war socialism from 1916 to 1920. When the Americans grew weary of socialism, Warren Harding won the 1920 election on a "return to normalcy." That is, to end socialism.

Is this to say that all nationalism is socialist and left wing? No, but it is to say that any dictator will use nationalism to rouse the people and get them united to a cause. In the 1930s, the Japanese military revived the bushido code. This was taught to children in grade schools up through college to prepare them for the military. Was the Japanese government from 1930-1945 left wing? No, for one thing they despised communism. Did that make them right wing? No. All this just made them totalitarianists.

Each political party likes to take the worst examples of politics and ascribe those to their opponents. Hence Nazism is either left wing or right wing depending on which side of the fence you sit. It is also the most wildly inaccurate way to define Nazism. It is better grouped with other statist governments like North Korea, the USSR, China, Mussolini's Italy, Japan from 1930-1945, etc. Neither left nor right wing, they all just feel the need to plan everything, even down to the detail of the everyday life of their citizens.

TooMuchTime (talk) 21:47, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

If you've got too much time, TMT, you should use some of it to study history. Wilson jailed Socialists, lots of them, along with anarchists and other folks opposed to his war. And the NSDAP beat up and murdered actual Socialists at every opportunity. Don't try to confuse things with an etymological fallacy (like pretending Japan's "Liberal Democratic Party" is either liberal or democratic.) --Orange Mike | Talk 23:05, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I see a lot of uninformed responses to the initial question of why socialists would be listed among enemies of the National-Socialist German Workers' Party. I will tell you the correct answer. The NSDAP considered themselves the true socialists. Italy's Fascists also considered themselves socialists; they had the term socialismo fascista, but Hitler and the NSDAP certainly didn't regard them as enemies, because they were nationalists. Marxists, including Social-Democrats, were among the enemies of the NSDAP. Consequently it is a LIE to say that socialists, with a small s, were among the perceived enemies of the NSDAP. The hidden premise is that only Marxists are real socialists. --Hadding —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.1.8.227 (talk) 20:34, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, your not-so-hidden premise is that all social democrats (or at least most) are Marxists; and the usual subtext to that is the implication that all Marxists are Leninists, and that all Leninists are Stalinists. Neither your explicit nor your implicit premises, of course, match with reality. --Orange Mike | Talk 03:25, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I did not say or imply any of the things that you impute.

Social-Democracy is in its origin an heretical form of Marxism. The founding ideology of Social-Democracy is called Marxist Revisionism. The word Marxist however is not what's crucial. The crucial point is that it's international socialism.

Within the Social-Democracy however there were some discontents that later supported National-Socialism. For example Alfred Ploetz, the coiner of the term racial hygiene, was a SPD member (later an NSDAP member), and Hitler's original sentiments were pro-Social-Democrat until he had a firsthand experience of their anti-nationalism.

The NSDAP had no quarrel with any form of socialism that was not hostile to nationalism. -- Hadding —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.226.236.132 (talk) 04:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Image:PICT4170x.JPG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 00:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

May I ask what is the source of this statement ? I agree that many Germans supported the party, but you need country-wide polls and sociological research to state "majority". If such research was conducted, would anyone provide the source ? Or wouldn't it be better to say "support of many Germans" ? 213.247.163.6 23:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

When you become a registered Wikipedian I will be happy to debate this question with you. Adam 03:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

cool debates

Well I am a registered wikipedian, and I would say that this party did not have the support of Jewish Germans, Gay Germans, German Jehovah's Whitenesses, Socialist Germans, disabled Germans...shall I go on. So can we see this sociological study that suggest the "majority" of Germans supported this party. As I recall the election in which Hitler took power saw only a minority of Germans voting. Now don't get me wrong, I am not trying to suggest that Nazi power came from a minority of Germans and ya for revisionist history and all that. I am only suggesting that Hitlers party came to power with one group of Germans scapegoating another group of Germans. A large and non-unified group that included the Germans I mentions earlier. So, where are the stats that prove this logic wrong?

And of course my dumb ass forgot to sing my above postDkriegls 07:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The NSDAP won less than 44% of the vote, and never more in a fair election. So "majority" is purely a guess as there was no fair election in which they won a majority of votes. --DerRichter (talk) 08:04, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

At the last free elections in November 1932, the SPD and the KPD got 37.3% of the vote between them, the Nazis got 33.1%, the Catholic Centre Party got 11.9%, and the various middle-class parties got 17.7%. Once Hitler was in office and repressed the Communists, these middle-class parties (DNVP, DVP, etc) went over to Hitler, giving him a notional majority. If you take the March 1933 elections, which were reasonably free, the majority is even larger - about 57%. Beyond that, large numbers of SPD, KPD and Centre supporters also went over to Hitler, mainly because of his apparent success in defeating unemployment. All the recent historians I have read agree that Hitler soon won the support of the great majority of Germans, and retained it until at least Stalingrad, and in most cases until the end of the war. There were of course no opinion polls, but the SD took regular and careful soundings of opinion through their large network of agents, and made reports to Himmler. We know there reports were objective because they do record the decline in support for the regime later in the war, and are frank about those aspects of the regime which the population did not approve - attacks on the churches, for example, and the corruption of people like Goering and Ley. It's true that there was a hard core of socialist and communist voters who never accepted the regime, and also an undercurrent of opposition in Catholic areas, but the majority of working-class voters at least passively accepted it. Nearly all German credited Hitler with ending unemployment, restoring order, overturning the Versailles treaty, uniting Germany and Austria, etc. The most recent reference I have on this is Robert Galletely, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford 2001). He says: "Although Hitler and Nazis could not win the support of the majority of Germans in free elections, within a matter of months after his appointment as Chancellor, most citizens came to accept and then firmly to back him." (page 1). This verdict is shared by Kershaw and Fest. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 05:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

There is no basis for such a statement. A majority of Germans may have supported Hitler as Chancellor, or this or that measure, or this or that policy but how can we measure support for a party except by election results? No free (or semi-free) elections ever resulted in a Nazi majority. BTW, lumping together Social Democrats (defending the Republican constitution) and the Communists (out to destroy it) should really be a no-no! Str1977 ^(talk) 12:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The basis for the statement is the work of all the leading historians of the period: Ian Kershaw, Joachim Fest, Richard J. Evans and Robert Galletely. I will give you quotes from all of them if you want. What's your evidence to the contrary? Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 03:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The evidence are the results at the elections in which the NSDAP gained less than 44% all the time. Everything else is mumbo-jumbo opinion. --217.83.54.56 (talk) 17:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm afraid that's just not true. The Nazis were in power for 12 years after the last free elections in 1933, and there is plenty of sound empirical evidence for the state of German public opinion during that time. The two most important sources are the SD's regular reports to Himmler, based on their extensive network of informants, and the reports of the underground SPD. There are also many observations by resident foreign journalists such as Willian Shirer and writers such as Stephen Roberts who travelled in Germany during those years. ALL these sources agree that Hitler's successes in suppressing disorder, curing unemployment, overturning the Treaty of Versailles and bringing Austria and the Sudetenland into the Reich made Hitler phenominally popular by 1939. Only once the war began to go badly did public opinion begin to turn, and even then it remained fairly solid till after Stalingrad. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 23:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The article points out Hitler as the 55th member of the Nazi party, but he was the 555th member. I tried changing it, but someone reverted it back, so I'll just put this here for clarity's sake before reverting. Ian Kershaw's book and photos of Hitler's DAP membership card all support the fact that he was the 555th member, not the 55th. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.24.127.16 (talk) 02:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

He was actually the 55th, 555th was added by the party to give the impression that they had more numbers SGGH ^speak! 11:47, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

♠It is really not possible to read Mein Kampf and come away believing that at the time Hitler joined this ragamuffin group that was laughably calling itself a "political party"-- a group which he actually made fun of in the book -- they had 554 other members.

His descriptions of the early meetings of the Executive Committee (of which he immediately became the seventh member upon his admission into the party), the gatherings, the advertising for meetings, all demonstrate that this was a tiny little group. The initial September 1919 party meeting that Hitler attended (at the command of the Wehrmacht intelligence unit which assigned him the duty), as described in Mein Kampf, had by his own account about 25 attendees. If there is a statement by a historian as reputable as Kershaw to the contrary, I would like to see it. ♠ SixBlueFish (talk) 18:21, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Hey guys the following intro to this states (This included Jews, Slavs, Roma, Arabs, Africans and homosexuals (See also Paragraph 175), along with Jehovah's Witnesses, the mentally and/or physically disabled, socialists, and communists.) In addition to these groups the nazi's targeted gypsies and poles as well. I propose we add these two groups to the sentence. thanks Levi Seigel (talk) 01:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

This is not an article about the Holocaust and does not require a list of everyone persecuted by the Nazi regime. I will rephrase the opening section so that it does not read like a list. Strictly speaking the term "Holocaust" relates only to the Jews. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 02:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I think your reference to "gypsies" is covered by "Roma" and your reference to "Poles" covered by "Slavs". --Trickstar (talk) 11:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It's funny, an encyclopedia is not a democracy, where you can vote on content, and the majority wins. _Facts_ win, but not in the english wikipedia, it seems. Have you ever heard of redirects for popular names? --Trickstar (talk) 11:11, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

This might be confusing because talk for Nazi Party redirects to this talk page, but on the Nazi Party page, there is a sentence: The nazis came from a person named Hitler. Does this sentence really serve any purpose or just vandalism? I would like to delete it if no one has any objections. Thanks --DerRichter (talk) 04:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted the vandalism and removed the redirect on the Talk page. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 08:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Never ever. Why is this article misleading even in the title? There is the article titled Communist Party of the Soviet Union (direct translation of Коммунисти́ческая Па́ртия Сове́тского Сою́за), not the Commie Party or something. I look above and see that people think NSDAP was "THE Nazi party". Geez, it just wasn't. It wasn't even "A Nazi party". Please refer me to any (yes, any) NSDAP document where they identify themselves as the "Nazi Party". --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 10:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a straw man, because the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is most commonly known as... Communist Party of the Soviet Union, not "Commie Party" (i.e. uncommon); whereas the National Socialist German Workers' Party is most commonly known as the Nazi Party. El_C 10:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey, even in the other-language Wikipedias it's always NSDAP (short or the full name). --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 10:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe in those languages Nazi Party isn't the common name, but it is in English (also in Hebrew). El_C 11:02, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

So, when the NSDAP called itseld "Nazi Party"? Its name was NSDAP for 25 years. Its name was not NP (Nazipartei?) even for a minute. All other Wikipedia refer to NSDAP by it's name, even if it's common to say "partia nazistowska" (also notice that not "Partia Nazistowska", this would be stupid or about some other party) in Polish it's still pl:Narodowosocjalistyczna Niemiecka Partia Robotników. It's also de:Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in German. Heck, "Nazi Party" in these Wikipedias are not even bolded as a "common name". It's ru:Национал-социалистическая немецкая рабочая партия in Russian, fr:Parti national-socialiste des travailleurs allemands in French, es:Partido Nacionalsocialista Alemán de los Trabajadores in Spanish, and so on and on and on. --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 10:52, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Irrespectively of that question, sometime, a common name's usage is so overwhelming, it becomes the obvious choice for the title. El_C 11:02, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

An overhelming usage in any other wikipedia is a proper usage. I guess there is or was a party called Nazi Party somewhere, but this was not the NSDAP. Someone said something about North Korea, but North Korea does identify itself as North Korea (their official website says thing like "Can I emigrate to North Korea and live in North Korea?" answered by "You can travel to North Korea only as a tourist, or as a part of a delegation invited to the country by the Government."). NSDAP never. ever. identified itself as "Nazi Party" for anyone. --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 11:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Again, those other Wikipedias are not in English; it's obvious that in English, it is the common name, regardless whether the NSDAP referred to itself as such (for eg., Encyclopedia Britannica uses Nazi-Party as their main title for the entry). El_C 11:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It also uses the name of Third Reich, instead of en's "Nazi Germany". What now, Captain Britannica? (Oh, it also uses proper National Socialism, instead of en's super-silly "Nazism, commonly known as National Socialism" - WHAT? It's actually "National Socialism, commonly known as Nazism", my dear en experts.) --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 11:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Similiar thing - "Nazi Germany". It's like calling the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic or even whole Soviet Union "Soviet Russia" (except they actually did call themselves "Soviet" and the Third Geman Reich did not call itself "Nazi"). Why isn't anyone complaing that the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (merely 54k hits in google) is "a long name" and that the "Soviet Russia" (1.5m hits in google) is a "common name"? Because, um, a proper name is a proper name? --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 11:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

What other common name is there for the latter? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, it is inconsistent. El_C 11:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The "common name" for the Third Reich is still Third Reich (lol Britannica - I guess EB is a rule on the English Wiki on-and-off?). --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 11:33, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

A double-edged sword, seeing how other-language wikipedias tend to use Nazi Germany. El_C 11:39, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Rly? pl:III Rzesza, de:Deutsches Reich 1933 bis 1945 (lol), fr:Troisième Reich, ru:Третий рейх, and so on. It's mixed and I'm not counting, but I think Third Reich is prevailing still. Anyway, Britannica's Third Reich is not rule now? I thought it was few minutes ago? --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 11:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

In a summary, all things Nazi shouldn't be in the article names, unless someone identifies himself as "Nazi" (like the American Nazi Party, which actaully isn't even called this way now, so it should be renamed too) or in the exceptions like Neo-Nazism ("Neo-National Socialism" is just not used at all). Instead, it should be the actual names they used, with only then added "also commonly known as Nazism", "also commonly known as the Nazi party" (or even Party), "also commonly known as Nazi Germany" (and redirects). Education, people. --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 12:10, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Your argument is with a basic naming policy so take it up there. Using other wikis as your evidence won't impress anyone though and neither will insinuating that those who don't agree with you are uneducated. Narson (talk) 12:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah. What evidence is going to "impress anyone"? Your attemts at argumentation such as Encyclopedia Britannica or the issue of North Korea didn't impress me, you know. Britannica mostly uses other names than the en does (the proper ones - you know, Third Reich, National Socialism), North Korea actually does call itself North Korea, too (in their official FAQ), and the "long" real names are used in the en instead of a common names (the example of "Soviet Russia"). Oh noes? So, what now?

As of "education", I meant the purpopse of Wikipedia should be to educate people, not tell them what the "common names" are (they proably know them already) instead of telling them what the actual names are. The things like ""Nazism, commonly known as National Socialism" in the very first sentence are fundamentally false - what is this, Uncyclopedia? --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 13:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I have two links for you. WP:Naming Conventions and WP:Don't be a dick....Asher196 (talk) 13:27, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

"Dick"? Ah, I see how to make a proper arguments now and what is the "evidence going to impress anyone". Fine. How about one link for you. WP:No, fuck YOU. --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 13:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yanno whats funny? I changed the name of the article to National Socialist German Workers' Party back in April. After a few weeks of civil talk page arguments, the name Nazi Party was restored. Then you come along and imply we are all a bunch of un-edumacated morons for using Nazi Party.Asher196 (talk) 13:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

And again and again: "Nazi" is like a "Commie" instead of "Marxist-Leninist" or whatever identify THEMSELVES, as it was invented by their opponents (enemies) and not used by the NS (a multi-million movement of a quarter-century which conquered much of the world) at all. Pretending that this is the real name and that the National Socialism is "just a common name for Nazism"(?!?) is really, really, REALLY stupid. That's all. --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 13:47, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, look, there's an article called NSDAP/AO! Quick, change it into NP/AO! --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 13:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

OK then, maybe now I will. The guy who requested the movie (Nikodemus) argumented this way:

• "For example, we have a main article called Nazi Germany rather than Great German Reich; we have Soviet Union rather than Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; we have North Korea instead of Democratic People's Republic of Korea; we have Conservative Party (UK) rather than Conservative and Unionist Party (UK); and so on. "
• "It is normal practice on wikipedia to name articles according to the most common words used to describe their subjects - thus we have an article called North Korea, not the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."
• "Until the Soviet Union article gets renamed to Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the North Korea article gets renamed to Democratic People's Republic of Korea, this article should be called Nazi Party."

1. Soviet Union called itself Soviet Union. Ever listened to the very National Anthem of the Soviet Union? Единый, могучий Советский Союз! (translated by the en "experts" as the "United and mighty, Soviet land", lol).
2. North Korea calls itself North Korea. In their official FAQ (both questions AND answers): stuff like "However, North Koreans also place a lot of emphasis on social harmony and morals."
3. And I'm pretty sure I'd be able to find "Conservative Party" even said by the leaders of this party.

While National Socialists did NOT call themselves Nazis. Never. This is the meritum. You won't find a single Third Reich document refering to "Nazi Germany", "Nazi Germans" or whatever. Not one of them ever said "come and join the Nazi party", it's Mel Brooks stuff. It was never official. It was never formal. It was invented and used by their enemies ONLY (and this only some of them - Poles preferred "hitlerowcy", "Niemcy hitlerowskie", etc). This was NOT THEIR NAME at all.

(Now, I can say Nazis and I do. Guess why? Because I'm not an encyclopedia.)

The argumentation for the move (repeated and again) was wrong and so for this reason the move should be canceled. --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 14:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, just looking at the "roll poll" above, I can see that there was no consensus to rename this article: 7 to 6. The opinion of "Captain" is not unreasonable.Biophys (talk) 18:07, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Captain Obvious is quite right here. "Nazi Party" only came into general usage because of anti-NSDAP propaganda. It's a hostile, POV term. The original reason for it as I understand was that marxists did not want to give the National-Socialists credit for being in any way socialist. The slang term Nazi conveniently avoided that.

There is a general problem on Wikipedia with people failing to recognize that a majority position and an objective position are often not the same, and this is an example. The fact that it's what "everybody says" doesn't mean that it isn't biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.1.22.35 (talk) 18:51, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

"Hitler's desire to create a territorial empire at the expense of Germany's neighbors was the principal cause of World War II, in which more than 60 million people died."

This is bullshit, friends! Hitler was ONLY responsible for World War 2 in Europe. He was NOT responsible in any way for Japan's invasion of China in 1937 and the Pacific War as a whole! Nor was he responsible for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! CORRECT IT! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.94.186.41 (talk) 20:25, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes its ridiculous to say that Hitler alone was responsible for the war, but I warn the unnamed editor to stop swearing on Wikipedia, its inappropriate, offensive, unacademic, and shameful, considering that anyone can access Wikipedia, even children, so STOP WITH THE OBSCENITIES!--R-41 (talk) 20:24, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

So why exactly was the unnamed editor's use of a particular word so offensive to you? Last I checked, wikipedia is not censored so if this editor wishes to call something bullshit, well god damn it that is his right. Sorry to be rude here, but I take offense when some asshole takes it on himself to be the moral police for everyone else's children. If someone doesn't want their child to see a "swear" word, they wouldn't let said children access the internet. Man It's So Loud In Here (talk) 22:14, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

My point was that there is no point in swearing in discussions. It accomplishes nothing and is used to intimidate other users. Now the above user is filling the page with MORE swearing, including direct insults against me. Sorry for trying to promote civil language on the discussion page rather than vulgarity. Notice that the template at the top says "be polite". All I asked was that the user avoid swearing to stop the promotion of a negative environment. People can swear all they want on Wikipedia but frankly it makes them appear less credible even though they may very well have important points to make I agreed with the user's premise that Germany alone was not responsible for World War II, multiple factors were involved, and the user's objection was understandable, but the obscenities were completely unnecessary as they were meant to completely discredit and humiliate someone else's work. The dispute is over because as far as I know the user has made no more obscenities in their work.--R-41 (talk) 23:32, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

And North Africa. And Atlantic. But yeah, the article is biased against "Nazis". (Lik if it was even needed.) --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 20:42, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

The article fails, when it doesn't shows, the names of main financers of this satanic organization.In 1932, while German army had just 100,000 soldiers(no artillery or tanks), Hitler's private army( SA and SS ), had more than 500,000 soldiers.Who gave money for nazi party, until 1933? Another question is about the german jews, before 1933.Having being the owners of all biggest german banks and the majority of the great german companies, why powerfull german jews, didn't nothing to cut the money to nazi party, until it took power? The article also tells nothing about the fact that following Stalin's orders, the german communist party voted to put Hitler in power, in 1933.Agre22 (talk) 16:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)agre22

The word "Nazi" is slang. I suggest to move the article to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei --Cretino (talk) 05:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia titles articles based on their most common usage in many cases. The official German name means far less to non-Germen laymen compared to the Nazi Party SGGH ^speak! 15:44, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

So, for the common name we can use a #REDIRECT to the official NPOV-term. There ist no problem, finding the page. You don't write article on

Commi Party or Bolschewiki Party, you write article on Communist party. So why don't you do so with articles about Nazi themes? --Cretino (talk) 21:15, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest to move the article to Nationalsocialist Party, the correct translation. --Cretino (talk) 21:17, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Nope, that's not how we do things. It is clearly established that we use the commonly-used name, not some "official version". --Orange Mike | Talk 00:56, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be a perennial topic of discussion and there seems to be a stable majority in favour of 'Nazi Party'. I'd like to contribute one aspect, though, why 'Nazi Party' does look a bit out of place in an encyclopedia.
In the English-speking word there seems to be the impression that 'Nazi' isn't only an exonym but also a self-appelation (it seems there are some US Nazis who apply this term to themselves). Apparently Nazis in English-language fiction also apply that term to themselves. So 'Nazi Party' looks like a popular informal short form.
In the original German context, however, 'Nazi' was/is always invective, never a self-appellation, from the beginnings in the 1920s to the present day (neo-Nazis refer to themselves as some variant of 'national' or 'völkisch'), i.e. the use of the term marks speech as opposed to Nazism. The term being marked as invective, however deserved, does speak against the use as the encyclopedic lemma, IMO. Tschild (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

As a "Quaker" I can tell you that pejorative terms can go through a lot of mutations. Our practice in the English-language Wikipedia is to use the common name in English; subtleties of usage im Deutsch are not especially relevant here. The German-language Wikipedia community has to decide for itself. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

National Socialist German Workers' Party is not German, and it is not some official name, it is the, one and only, official name. Can't think of any other political parties that are not on official name but on nick name, although it might be an exception, official context is official context. --Pudeo⺮ 13:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME: "use the most common name of a person or thing". The common name for them in English is "Nazi Party". --Orange Mike | Talk 14:46, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

This is not the first time this has come up for discussion, it seems endemic to this article. I personally prefer 'National Socialist German Workers' Party' as the article name, the whole common name issue is ripe with original research. We could separate between name of the party and a more general description of it. I think there are various examples were the usage of 'Nazi Party' should not necessarily be seen as the name of the party but a characterization of it. --Soman (talk) 22:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I suggest speedy move to National Socialist German Workers' Party. We are supposed to have an encyclopaedia here. The present title is almost as good as would be Soviet Commie Party for the CPSU. In which encyclopedias (paper or online versions) has User:Orangemike seen NSDAP entitled vulgar-primitively as Nazi Party? --Pan Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 10:49, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

So do I. --Cretino (talk) 07:18, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Nah, let's follow Wikipedia policy like other articles. Shot info (talk) 11:35, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

In de:WP the term is Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei = National Socialist German Workers' Party. The equivalent to Nazi Party, Nazi-Partei, is not of encyclopaedic use, neither in English, nor in German. Presenting colloquial phrases violates the wikipedia-policy. You don't write article about the Communist party as Commy Party, do you? --89.247.63.48 (talk) 22:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Again, wikipolicy s for the common name. That you dislike the term 'Nazi Party' as common is not a compelling argument to ignore all rules. We need exceptional reasons to deviate from standards, and I don't think this is an exceptional situation. Infact, i think this is exactly one of those situations the rule was created for. An argument based on policy is needed to move a page, not argumentsbased on what you feel has more gravitas. As an aside, what some other wiki does matters very little to us. --Narson ~ Talk • 23:38, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Curiously we don't hear Mel Brooks singing "Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the National Socialist German Workers' Party" now do we? :-) Shot info (talk) 23:47, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

You don't write an article on Abe Lincoln, but Abraham Lincoln, even if people commonly call him Abe. You wouldn't write an article about George W. Bush as The Dork if people commonly called him so. So why are you in favour of using cuss words here? --Cretino (talk) 23:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

WHOA! what's with the unilateral pagemoves??? I certainly see no consensus for a move here.-RunningOnBrains 00:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I have reverted them. There is no demonstrable consensus here, definatly no reason to ignore WP:COMMONNME. Serious academics do still use 'Nazi Party' and 'Nazis', it is used by the public at large as well...I fail to see why there is an impetus for such a move. --Narson ~ Talk • 00:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Furthermore, I think it is clear that the more-or-less undisputed English language term for the German "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" is "Nazi". Sure, it is not a literal translation but that is not the point. The French for "potato" is "pomme de terre" ("apples of the earth"). Languages are not always symmetrical. Nazi is not a "cuss word" and if it was good enough for Churchill it is probably good enough for us. --DanielRigal (talk) 00:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, even when it is translated into the long form, it follows English language rules and seperates National Socialist into two words. Nationalsocialist is just literal translation taken too far. I was more thinking of chaps like Martin Gilbert rather than Churchill. --Narson ~ Talk • 00:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

There is far too much messing about with the content of the infobox. Because the Nazis are an universally accepted shorthand for evil, people on the right want to paint them as being on the left and vice versa. This is childish POV pushing and it has to stop!

Nazi economic policy incorporated elements of left and right wing economics. I can understand why people on the libertarian right don't like being lumped in with them, or with the notion of the right as authoritarian in general, but painting them as far-left is a perfectly bonkers response. The historical consensus has always been to put them on the far-right and we can't refuse to reflect an externally reached consensus just to keep people happy.

I am not going to start editing the box myself, except to revert blatant nonsense, as I want us to reach a consensus here.

I propose that "Fascism" and "Racism" be added to "Ideology", although this is covered under "National Socialism", it doesn't hurt to make it explicit.

For "Party position", I would be happy to see "far-right" be replaced by "extreme right" (which provides a clear distinction between them and legitimate right wing thought) or for us to agree not to use the terms "left" and "right" at all. After all, the Nazis are not defined in history by their economic policies but by their crimes. Perhaps "Authoritarianism" and "Dictatorship" provide a good starting point? Perhaps "Militarism" and "expansionism" fit in one or other category too?

What do we all think? --DanielRigal (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The problems with finding a universally accepted label for the 'party position' (which is highly contextual) in this article just illustrates a wider problem of having 'party position' in infoboxes at all. I think it should be removed from the infobox template. --Soman (talk) 22:13, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree on 'positions' issue. I'd add, that using the infoboxes in case of historical parties is very controversial, so I'd remove this box altogether from the article at hand. --Pan Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 10:56, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I can see how the box works better for normal political parties that identify themselves with a normal political position but fails for the Nazis who were as much a criminal organisation as a political party definable within the normal spectrum of legitimate political and economic thought. I think it is good to have some sort of an infobox with the logo and existence dates on it but maybe the political party infobox is the wrong type to use. Is there a more generic one for organisations? --DanielRigal (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

This whole back and forth between "far-right" and "far-left" is ridiculous. These terms have no accepted meaning and hence the only solution is to either leave them out alltogether or go by the placement at the time. And in the 1920s/30s the NSDAP was placed on the far right of the political specttrum. Alternative definitions (e.g. left = collectivist, right = individualist) may be valiant efforts towards a systematic classification but until they are universally accepted (which would impact the classification of the NSDAP anyway) cannot be transferred back in time. Str1977 ^(talk) 20:43, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

If you want to not call the NSDAP (Nazi Party) a "far-left" party, please stop consenting that they were a "far-right" party. You're kvetching when I say that the Nazi Party was to the far left, and do nothing when someone reverts the infobox back to listing Nazi ideology as "far right". Also, I at least give support as to why I call the Nazi party a far-left party; and your only excuse as to why you call them "far right" is apparent historical classifications, but history would prove you right only if Herbert Hoover wasn't classified as to the right and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as to the left. Nickidewbear (talk) 06:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

The Far-right article lists the Nazi party as being a far right party. The Far-left article doesn't. So the moral is - Nick you need a source that states that the Nazi party is/was a far left party. With that you don't need to edit war. See WP:RS for what is required. Shot info (talk) 07:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Just because an article on the Far Right lists something as far right doesn't mean that it is right. You're using illogical reasoning. Also, DanielRigal said:

I can see how the box works better for normal political parties that identify themselves with a normal political position but fails for the Nazis who were as much a criminal organisation as a political party definable within the normal spectrum of legitimate political and economic thought. I think it is good to have some sort of an infobox with the logo and existence dates on it but maybe the political party infobox is the wrong type to use. Is there a more generic one for organisations?

So, I was using DanielRigal's suggestion for the "Disputable, Unclassifiable" edit.

Nickidewbear (talk) 02:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Please focus on the last three sentences of my post rather than the first one. Ta Shot info (talk) 02:25, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

To say Nazi to German Nationalsocialists is not different than pejoratively calling Muslims "Muzzies" in some more decades, after a heavy propaganda campaign against them. Can anyone ever point out when did German Nationalsocialists ever called themselves "Nazis", opposed to Ashkenazi Jews? Shouldn't Wikipedia's neutrality at least be applied to the terminologies used? If your criteria is just taking propagandistic terms, shouldn't the Persian website of Israel be rather called "Regime of illegal occupation of Israel" or something like that, just because this is the "official denomationation"? Would you accept that just because of how Iranians call other countries? It makes no sense.

So the proposal for the improvement for this article and many branching from this propagandistic denomination, is to change all "Nazi" for "Nationalsocialist". Germanicus24 —Preceding undated comment was added at 03:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC).

I'm sorry, but you can't get any more pejorative about somebody than saying that they are supporters of the NSDAP, whether you translate it as 'Nazis' or just scheißkopfverein. Our policy on neutral point of view does have its limits. --Orange Mike | Talk 04:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Germanicus, please note that calling the NSDAP "Nazi" is not pejorative. Shot info (talk) 04:09, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Err guys? I think we all accept that Hitler and his party drew inspiration from Italy's "Social experiment" Yes?

Mussolini was "Duce" (leader) of the Italian socialists before he broke with the "one true church of Marx" the Socialist International, and established an Italian break away, and as with all splits in churches the original church accuses any who leave of "worshiping the devil" or in this case "being right wing". Musolini remained in friendly correspondence and mutual admiration with Vladimir Lennin and Leon Trotsky, hardly Laissez-faire Anarcho Capitalists? His economic policies, as the NSDAP policies, were based on "State Corporatism". This was not sitting down with capitalists to create monopolies, but was more a system of central planning by trusted experts, those industries which did not comply (e.g. Prof Junkers engine making businesss) were outright stolen from the owners. The NSDAP manifesto also called for the nationalization of "warehouses" (department stores in other translations) hardly a capitalist position?

In any debate drawing upon the work of Historians, we need to know what the historian's political affiliations are. I've yet to meet a centrist or conservative academic historian, have you guys ever met one who wasn't left wing? Might that be colouring the debate a little?

In this debate about left or right, both Hitler and Mussolini would claim to represent a "Third Way" which was supposedly more "progressive" than left or right.~~A.F.F.~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.251.197.61 (talk) 10:52, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Their funding and their political alliances were with fellow parties of the Right, never the left; they attacked and eventually murdered the Socialists as well as the Communists. Only their rhetoric was "left" (and that only occasionally). And if you spent any serious time talking to academic historians, you'd know that plenty of them are conservative or moderate; just not many extreme right-wingers. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:08, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I just dropped by for some info on the eagle used by the NSDAP, and noticed that the article mentions two different eagles, the reichsadler and the parteiadler, symbolizing the reich and the party, respectively. The article also mentions that the two can be separated by the fact that the parteiadler looks over its left shoulder, while the reichsadler looks over its right.

However, all the images of the reichsadler, both in this article and the ones about the German Eagle and about the Reichsadler, the eagle looks over its left shoulder, as the parteiadler. In the image of the reichmark in this article, the eagle seems to be a reichsadler. It would appear that this image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichsadler.svg) has been mislabeled reichsadler, while in fact being a parteiadler. Anyway, it looks odd, especially in the article about the reichsadler where the image directly on the left says "The Parteiadler (not to be confounded with the Reichsadler)" and both look in the same direction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.203.48.154 (talk) 21:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The article states as follows in pertinent part in its Party symbols section:

When the eagle is looking to its left shoulder, it symbolises the Nazi party, and was called the Parteiadler. In contrast, when the eagle is looking to its right shoulder, it symbolises the country (Reich), and was therefore called the Reichsadler.

This statement is correct; the image of the Reichsadler in the article (middle panel of Party symbols) just needs to conform to the statement.

When you examine the images in the German Eagle article (which redirects to Coat of Arms of Germany), you will notice that each one-headed eagle faces over its right shoulder: each of these is therefore a Reichsadler. Also, if you examine the images of both of the 5-Reichsmark coins in the principal article, you will notice that each eagle faces to its right (before (1936) and after (1936) the introduction of the explicit Nazi symbolism on the coin). The coins are national objects and symbols and bear symbols of the Reich and, consequently, also bear the Reichsadler.

There are no left-facing one-headed eagles until the Nazi era. Thus, it is the Reichsadler image that needs to be corrected in the article (i.e. the Reichsadler shown in the middle panel of Party symbols section of the principal article ({which is now incorrectly facing over its left shoulder}). That eagle should be facing over its right shoulder. Note that the Parteiadler in the Nazi symbolism article is correctly facing to its left. SixBlueFish (talk • contribs) 16:30, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure, make the change. Shot info (talk) 22:54, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

This may be just nitpicking, and obviously the party was more white-supremacist than any other racist ideology, but considering the Croats, Poles, Hungarians, Russians, and other Slavic non-Jews (who can be considered "white") that the Nazis targeted, and the idolization of a "Nordic" (that is, western European) people, wouldn't "Nordicism" be a better description of their ideology or at least "white supremacy influenced by nordicism"? 18.244.7.149 (talk) 13:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

But the Nazis didn't consider Slavs, etc. "true whites"; they were into that subset of white supremacy that defines most of "the white race" (to the extent that such a concept has any meaning at all) as non-white and then idolizes the remainder. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The opening paragraph claims that Nazi comes from Nationalsozialistische. The reference says the following: "1930, from Ger. Nazi, abbreviation of Ger. pronunciation of Nationalsozialist (based on earlier Ger. sozi, popular abbreviaton of "socialist")", which means that "nazi" comes from the German pronounciation of national, similar to "sozi" coming from sozial. See also the Wiktionary entry for Nazi: "Representing pronunciation of Nati in Nationalsozialist (‘National Socialist’)." The claim in the opening paragraph should be changed, but I my edit was reverted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Totsugeki (talk • contribs) 19:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

No, the lead is correct. The word is sort of a spin-off on sozi. But since they were National Socialists, instead of just socialists, the first to letters of National were put in place of the so in sozi. Tad Lincoln (talk) 22:29, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you're both right: spinoff on sozi, but based on the pronunciation of the first two syllables of National (pronounced NAH-tsee-oh-NAHL). --Geenius at Wrok (talk) 23:17, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

The term is indeed a spinoff of sozi, but sozi refers to the Social Democrats, not to nazis! Kotika98 (talk) 06:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The lede contains the sentence "The Nazi Party is generally described as being at the extreme or far right of the left-right political axis; however in some two dimensional models, such as the political compass, the Nazi Party is categorized alongside both authoritarian left-wing and authoritarian right-wing parties as authoritarian". Reference #6 does not support this at all.

The political compass has two axes. Their "left-right" axis is an economic one - left being centrally controlled economy versus right being unregulated laissez-faire economy. And the "up-down" axis is a social axis - up being authoritarian (total control) and down being libertarian (laissez-faire).

In the NAZI party, the economy was being run by corporations and not a central government control. Their social order was authoritarian. This would put the NAZIs in the top right quadrant of the political compass - Authoritarian Right.  kgrr ^talk 23:41, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• Germany had price and wage controls, they were anti free trade and would have abolished rent and usery if it wouldn't have been so bad for the economy. But they did also take control and or compel private enterprise against their wishes under the threat of nationalization if the private enterprise did not comply with party wishes. Some big enterprises were taken over by the state in order to produce for the war effort. The anti free trade and anti-capitalist stance of the party puts them at the left side of the spectrum. The political compass website is complete POV outsourced garbage (LVAustrian (talk) 22:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC))

• The reference to the political compass (as well as the article) need to be removed. The political compass is a home-made website without sources. It is nothing but personal opinion and original research both are not allowed by wikipedia rules. There are other (better and more credible) political compasses that can be used but this particular reference should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.193.61.118 (talk) 22:04, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

The Political Compass analysis has achieved quite a lot of traction and is notable, albeit not to the extent that anybody would suggest recasting the whole article in their terms. It is also quite similar to other two dimensional models. I think it should be kept but if we can generalise the description so that it covers at least one other notable two dimensional model's analysis of the Nazis then that would be great. I think those throwing phrases like POV and OR are misunderstanding them. Wikipedia is not a forum for original research or opinions by Wikipedians but notable research and opinions external to Wikipedia are exactly what Wikipedia exists to document. What I am going to do is tweak the description of Political Compasses analysis to make it reflect what they actually say a bit better. In particular, I think "centre right" is misleading given how close they show them to the centre line. The context here is that Fascism described itself as the "third way" between Communism and Capitalism. In economic terms it combined elements of both in a strange way that renders its classification problematic. It is that problematic nature of correctly classifying such an extreme party that we need to document, not push any one view on the readers, although we also need to continue to make it clear that the classification of "extreme right" is the most commonly accepted. --DanielRigal (talk) 23:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

It has no sources for its claims on its websites. There are better source material for this article. Furthermore, the source that is already on this article achieves the aims of the Political Compass source (while being worthy).

So feel free to add the information and sources in rather than deleting sourced (and rather useful) info. O and can you sign your edits please. Shot info (talk) 06:13, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks bogus to me. I can't tell if it's based on their online survey or not. --Weetoddid (talk) 06:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

In what possible sense is the Political Compass a reliable source about the Nazi Party? john k (talk) 15:51, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Umm... because it offers a two-dimensional spectrum, whereas a linear left-right spectrum is problematic in placing fascist regimes? --UNSC Trooper (talk) 18:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The Political Compass, with its many flaws, is nonetheless the most nearly notable example in the English-speaking world of a measurement of politics that does not presume a single-dimensional system. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:29, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The formatting of this page is weird. Because of the matter on the right part of the page, the main article is buried below that, and one might think that all there is of the article is the name of the organization.

This needs to be fixed. I am not competent to do it.

The NSDAP was a FAR LEFT political party. It overtly challenged the communists for the dominance of the left wing in Europe. While communism was anti-nationalist, Hitler used nationalism as a way to promote his extremely socialist agenda. It was also a worker's party, like the communists. The historical fallacy that the Nazis were far right is totally wrong. The Nazis were far left, very similar to Barack Obama.

Got a reliable source (and what is a reliable source - see WP:RS for details)? Shot info (talk) 05:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

National Socialism is not left-wing socialism. The Nazis abandoned most of their socialist ideals once they rose to power. --UNSC Trooper (talk) 06:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

It is perhaps worth noting this is all part of more recent far right rhetoric, where they try to deny their views are 'extreme right' and instead argue they are simply common sense/patriotic/centrist/whatever. As far as I know, academia is not buying it. --Narson ~ Talk • 11:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Guys, you're feeding the troll. "Nazis were far left, very similar to Barack Obama"? --Orange Mike | Talk 14:18, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. ;) --UNSC Trooper (talk) 15:05, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is genuine trolling (saying something just to get a reaction with no genuine conviction behind it). This really is a rising view among supporters of the far right, so it is entirely feasible that it is a good faith comment. There should be some stuff available online in the coming week or so about the shift. --Narson ~ Talk • 15:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

This page lists the National Socialist party as "far right." The new book "Liberal Fascism" corrects this misconception and sets the record straight that the Nazi Party, or National Socialist party, is actually a far left wing party with the same roots as modern American Progressivism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.138.46.184 (talk) 01:42, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Lets wait for something a bit more scholarly than Jonah Goldberg, eh? It still remains a very fringe idea compared to the mainstream view that the Nazis were far right (Even Goldberg admits this is the common view). --Narson ~ Talk • 09:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Since when does Wikipedia use "mainstream views" or consensuses as facts? 24.254.234.95 (talk) 03:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:CON will give you a start on what Wikipedia does. Shot info (talk) 06:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Those do not answer the question, which was valid. Jtjathomps (talk) 13:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I have learnt that Gypsies were also exterminated during WW2. Maybe this should be added? (86.169.125.18 (talk) 16:53, 7 August 2009 (UTC))

The article mentions the Roma. Not the Sinti though (We should probably add that) --Narson ~ Talk • 16:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering if we should include other idealogies that the Nazi party has, like German nationalism? (86.169.125.18 (talk) 16:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC))

Far Right? Absurd. Nazi's were a socialist party that was against private industry and was for government control of the economy, price setting, etc.

It was a far left political party. Whoever wrote the main wiki article is guilty of skewing the truth for political reasons. It would be nice if WIKI would correct this problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cr1973 (talk • contribs) 16:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

It was a party funded by the Far Right, supported by the Far Right, and pushing the agenda of the Far Right, which used the word "socialist" because in most of the world, that word means a party supported by common people and acting in their behalf. While (as we have discussed repeatedly elsewhere) a simplistic single-dimension scale is least useful at the extreme fringes, history shows very clearly that this was viewed by everyone concerned as part of the German Right. It is those who deny this who would be classed as "revionists". --Orange Mike | Talk 19:27, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It was a socialist party by its own definition : the National Socialist party. It specifically endorsed governmental control of the peaks of industry & commerce. The 1939 USSR-German National Socialist alliance was based on a shared core of socialistic ideology. The USSR & National Socialist Germany were rivals for the control of the Left. The supporters of Hitler in the US included Joseph Kennedy. Most people then called them National Socialists or simply socialists. No one in that era confused them with Franco or Mussolini. Stalin & Hitler were both pure socialists, & both despised the West & democracy & capitalism. Joseph Kennedy opined : 'Democracy is dead.' Most people would call this far left. Why can't this be corrected in the article as per NPOV policy? 76.209.230.29 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:32, 24 August 2009 (GMT).

Whoah! The tacit assumptions behind this post are amazing. Joseph Kennedy was a Wall Street insider, a notorious antisemite and defeatist conservative. Hitler was a public admirer of Mussolini from the get-go. (Franco was a mere wannabe and irrelevant to this discussion.) Please study some history of Germany, the U.S., Italy, etc., before posting such bizarre assertions. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Whoah, yourself! The very article you linked admits that Joseph Kennedy was an ardent New Dealer & fervent Democrat. Are you saying that the Kennedy family politicians are conservatives? You would really have to be out there in revisionist Wonderland to think that! You mention correctly that Joseph Kennedy was a notorious antisemite. Stalin was one also & demonstrated it during the war by his purges of Jews from almost all governmental positions. Question : would you term Stalin a conservative? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.209.59.214 (talk) 08:38, 25 August 2009 (GMT)

Yes, he was a New Dealer and a Democrat: neither of those precluded being a conservative; and yes, some Kennedys have been conservatives: they notoriously worked for and with McCarthy. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

We're straying from the original point : the political position enunciated in the side-bar should be revised to either Far Left or Socialist or perhaps something like Hate in order to conform to wikipedia's NPOV.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.209.59.214 (talk • contribs)

Convince the majority of academia to support you, and sure. Until then: no. --Narson ~ Talk • 11:34, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Why won't people simply research the matter of what "Socialism" in "National Socialist German Workers' Party" actually means before they claim the Nazis are far-left. When I first heard of the party's full name, I became confused as well because of the "Socialist" and "Workers'" in its title, having always assumed the Nazis were nationalist right-wingers. National Socialism does not equal left-wing socialism, as Hitler himself often pointed out. The only socialist ideals in National Socialism, as I see them, are Volkish social collectivism and nationalism. Their economic policy was left-leaning interventionist (Keynesianism), sure, but far from socialist. --UNSC Trooper (talk) 14:58, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

You're arguing that they were 'left-leaning interventionist', 'Keynesian' 'economic policy' followers, but somehow not socialists?! Surely, by the time people formally embrace the term socialists & apply it to themselves & endorse its ideology, including explicit support for 'state control of the commanding heights of the economy' (an expression used by both Lenin & Hitler) & expressing their hatred for capitalism, they are part & parcel of 'socialists'. What Hitler was pointing out was that his own putrid brand of socialism was not Marxist & relied on racist struggle as his primary dialectic (with socialist economics being derivative, not primary). Am I misunderstanding you? Are you positing that only Marxist-Leninists are on the official 'Left'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.209.227.130 (talk) 15:01, 26 August 2009 (GMT)

PS, to Narson : 'convince the majority of academia' ? We're dealing with subjective political labelling, not science. Apropos of 'the majority of academia', did they not, a few centuries ago, teach that astrology was a science? Did they not study & teach astrology in the universities? 'The majority of academia' once taught that the universe was geo-centric (ie, Earth-centred). 'The majority of academia', in my lifetime, once opposed all mention of the possibility of continental drift (there was no mention of the word Pangaea). Just 35 years ago, we were taught about global cooling (I'm not making that up!). On a matter as subjective as political labelling, surely wikipedia should appeal to a source more credible than a show of hands of the most loquacious current academics. There could at least be an admission in the side-bar that the political attribution is widely contested & disputed. 76.209.227.130 (talk)

Science, unlike many other human endeavors, is self-correcting. So while "they" may have taught that astrology was science, or that the Earth was the center of the universe (a theory thoroughly discredited since the time of Copernicus), that was then and this is now; now, our scientific understanding is greater. The global cooling bit you bring up is interesting insofar as, since we're on the topic of historic revisionism, the idea of global cooling was one that was only proposed in a handful of scientific papers which were soon dismissed by the majority of academia; indeed, the idea only gained currency in the popular press. This has been repeatedly debunked, yet the myth is durable. But in matters of mainstream political discourse, especially on controversial topics such as this one where people with vested interests are trying to change public discourse to fit their own ideologies, it is essential that the mainstream point of view be represented. I've read the docs myself, and this is a matter of Wikipedia policy. To put a notation in the sidebar that the attribution is widely contested and disputed would be to give credence to the viewpoints of a group who are, by and large, not academics recognized in the field. (I'm sure academics in the field of meteorology or English literature might have an opinion, but that hardly makes them historians or political scientists.) I might also point out that in Mein Kampf, Hitler himself railed against two primary targets: Jews and Communists. Communists clearly embodied the heart and soul of far-left ideology in his time, and it is by that contrast (among the many others mentioned elsewhere on this discussion page, such as Hitler's later brutal crushing of the socialist wing of the Nazi party) that the rationale for labeling the Nazi party far-right is in part justified. 130.13.41.140 (talk) 16:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not claiming that only Marxist-Leninists are on the left, nor am I stating that there weren't leftists influences in the Nazi Party. Almost every far-right faction in modern history tended to lean to center of the economic scale, if not farther to the left of center, because they oppose capitalism but don't seek to destroy it entirely. A perfect example is the British National Party, which has been often criticized for supporting neo-nazi manifestations, and which the Political compass places well to the left of the Labor Party. That might be the case with the Nazis, too. In today's climate, even social democrats who describe themselves to be "socialists" have drifted to the center-right. So given that assertion, the Nazis could very well be more socialist than social democrats since they were clearly hovering on the center and perhaps even center-left. But being a straightforward "socialist" back in Hitler's days meant supporting an aggressive overthrow of the upper class and engaging in a mass workers' revolution, which Hitler never agreed to because of his hatred of egalitarianism and anything associated with the hard-left (and let's not forget that he later crushed the socialist wing of the Nazi Party). Instead, he resorted to a right-wing nationalist revolution with a clearly fascistic baseline. In terms of economic engagement, there's no doubt the Nazis had leftist undertones. Interventionism and the elimination of wide-scale corporate competition, like Hitler did, pretty much disables capitalism in its true sense. It depends on how people choose to use the word "socialist," since it's been raped by the Left and the Right alike. --UNSC Trooper (talk) 16:15, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

What's funny about this debate is how people are still falling for Nazi's propaganda. When the party was forming, they decided upon a very ambiguous name to cloak their true nature. This was because at the time, the German citizens did not fully support their ideas. If we take a look at their fully name: National Socialist German Workers' Party and then attach a a right political leaning or left political leaning to each word you get: National = Right leaning, Socialist = left leaning, German = right leaning, Workers' = left leaning, Party = right leaning. When they passed out leaflets, posters, etc they always cloaked their ideals in common terms, yet behind the scenes, their writings showed their true thoughts. We understand fascism is a far right political theory/thought. Nazism took it even further. History shows that they did not nationalize the corporations as much as brought the corporations to the table to help run the country. (I.E. they were still privately run and got tremendous kick backs from the Nazi government) So it is funny how people are still falling for the Nazi's propaganda. Brothejr (talk) 16:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)\

While this commentary is interesting, it doens't really help improve the article. 76.209.227.130 - if you have some reliable source (click here to see what Wikipedia calls a "reliable source") please propose how you wish to include them into the article. Discussion and commentary really isn't the point of Wikipedia. Shot info (talk) 04:16, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed that the German spelling of the party name is given as Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, yet in the textbooks I had when I took German (4 years in high school), and in several sources around the web, I find that the last word is typically spelled Arbeiterspartei. I'm sure this is a nit-pick, but it just looks wrong whenever I see it. I'd go in and just change it, but then there's the added problem of the pronunciation key, which seems to be based off someone reading the German text verbatim. For web links that you can check out on the spelling, there's an entry over at AntiQbook for Die Preuáische Militärfrage und die deutsche Arbeiterspartei, and a historical capsule at Let's Go Travel, just as two examples. I would need to get my textbooks out of storage to provide citations for them, but surely there are enough other sources available now to fix this?

As for why the spelling difference, I know that the German rules for pluralization are similar to English (add an s, usually), and it's not uncommon to incorporate plurals into compound words. It's the "Workers Party" or the "Workers' Party", not the "Worker Party", after all. The practices may have changed over the years, but since this is an article about a political party that existed during a specific historical period, the spelling rules of that time and for that language ought to be adhered to. 130.13.41.140 (talk) 17:17, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

"Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" is the correct spelling. I've actually never heard "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterspartei". Zara1709 (talk) 17:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

German doesn't generally form the plural by adding "s"; that is only one (and a comparatively uncommon one) among a number of different plural forms. In particular, "Arbeiter" is the same in both singular and plural. "Arbeiters" would be, I think, the genitive singular, so "Arbeiterspartei" means "Worker's Party", while "Arbeiterpartei" means either "Workers Party" or "Workers' Party" (the plural form is the same for all cases). The link you give is to a listing on a book selling site; it doesn't seem all that implausible that the title would be misspelled. The library of congress, which is probably a more reliable source for the names of books, lists a similarly titled book using "Arbetierpartei", and no results for "arbeiterspartei".VoluntarySlave (talk) 18:24, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional research. You're probably right, and I was probably thinking of possession, not pluralization rules. Thinking back on my German classes, I do recall a number of odd plural forms, and quite a few irregularities besides. That said, I also noticed one of the Library of Congress links you gave (the first) renders with some strange characters in the word Militärfrage, probably due to the a with an umlaut --- maybe a poor character encoding choice, but regardless, that doesn't give me a warm fuzzy about the quality of the data. (Maybe it renders better on your browser?) What I'd really like is a scan of a document from the Nazi era showing the full name of the political party, or barring that, a scan from a German text with the full party name.130.13.41.140 (talk) 16:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Entering this page, the first thing that puzzled me was the conflict between the URL and the formal name of the party. I thought it was Wikipedia standard to have the same article title as the words written in bold in the article introduction, as far as possible. Having read many historical books, I find it wrong to call the article "Nazi Party" because it is sub-standard in an encyclopedical article. At least in the article title. Actually I was searching for an article about nazi parties in general and their legal status, and I found this article. That should explain one of the problems. I searched for exactly the topic "nazi party" - nothing more or less - and I found something else that actually had another name.

In the above discussion, a google search is mentioned as an argument. This is completely useless, since the search "nazi party" will render all possible nazi parties, whereas "National Socialist German Workers' Party" is extremely specific. Also, a google search does not tell anything about the situation in which the name is used. Correct usage is not just a question about the number of google hits. In contrast, there are many parameters which are much more important: NPOV, specificity/clarity

In comparison, the article Communist Party of the Soviet Union is found under its full name. There is another article, Communist Party, about such parties in general. The entry nazi party should be reserved for an article about nazi parties in general. An overview of historical and current nazi parties would be very useful. You could always place a disambiguation link at the top pointing to the NSDAP article.--Sasper (talk) 15:41, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME: "use the most common name of a person or thing". The common name for them in English is "Nazi Party". Per above Shot info (talk) 22:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Why is there no mention or link to the 25 points of the Nazi party? This egregious omission is like having an article about the United States of America and never once mentioning the Constitution. It is ridiculous and indefensible. I suggest the main reason is because of the pro-Christian bias in the western profession of history.

Point 24 in the Nazi party manifesto is a serious indictment against Christians who are in complete denial that the Nazi party is/was a Christian organization. If you read these articles on the wiki there are hints and hedges that all try to make the Nazi party look like it was not a Christian organization. The Bias is startlingly obvious. Let us take a look at point 24 itself: ... 24 We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race. The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. ...

Certainly a person could argue that the Nazi party was very open minded and anyone could be a Nazi, but anyone who knows history would disregard such a preposterous argument. Obviously, the entire foundation of the Nazi party was in a Christian theology and the fringe exceptions are portrayed as the actual main stream.

At the very least, the 25 points have to be mentioned in this article - even if they are not added directly. That way interested people can learn the facts on their own and where to start looking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Riluve (talk • contribs) 17:14, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to provide the changes you propose here - don't forget to provide verifiable sources. Shot info (talk) 06:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I was advised to point this out to stop this stupid edit war, if wikipedia's going to be neutral on the subject of the nazi party, then the infobox and the whole article itself should really put greater emphasis on the fact that nazism doesn't lie on either political spectrum and implements greatly from both far-left and far-right politics, rather than just far right based on the opinion of one historian or several (as referenced in the opening). Stating that nazis were more far-right than left seems quite biased in my opinion, seeing as that far right politics are in support of less government control, but once again we must be neutral about this and state it as having a mix of both rather than one having a majority over the other, seeing how controversial the subject of nazism is in society today. - BlagoCorzine2016 (talk) 22:31, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The key phrase here is "in my opinion". There is a long-standing historical near consensus that the Nazis were right wing and the personal opinions of individual Wikipedians count for nothing in this matter. We have to write articles from the sources not from our own opinions. Admittedly, there have been people, some of them notable, who have dissented from that view for various reasons, some of them sincere and even rational. This is why we explain this in a bit more detail in the body of the article. The article can take nuanced descriptions but the infobox can't. We can't fill the infobox up with equivocations and minority views otherwise it becomes unusable. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

But once against historians base their facts on their opinions, which aren't necessarily correct. And I was stating that my opinon was that it was more left wing, but to keep it neutral we should put both spectrums or none. Fascism can be seen as being more right wing since it was more socially conservative, which in some ways may implement right wing ideals, but since the spectrum changes constantly (like democrats and republicans in American politics), it should be treated as both since you could base it on either side. Saying only far-right implies that it means both socially and economically, which is obviously untrue when explaining political spectrums. - BlagoCorzine2016 (talk) 22:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Historians are people who are specialists publishing informed and reasoned opinions in a peer reviewed critical environment. You and I are just people arguing on the internet. You see that we, as individual Wikipedians, simply can't claim parity of esteem with notable professionals. If some bozo was to wander along and give his view that the Nazis were Martians, would you give his opinion parity with that of notable historians? I very much doubt it. Our responsibility as Wikipedians is to document the world as accurately and as neutrally as possible based on independent, reliable sources. If we just write our own opinions then Wikipedia ceases to be an encyclopaedia and becomes just another website. --DanielRigal (talk) 23:02, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

But you keep forgetting the key factor of neutrality here, given how controversial this topic is you cannot place it under either ideology as it may offend plenty of people. And saying that it implements both ideologies IS based on the facts from historians and many others, which is nothing like saying that "Nazis were from mars". I understand that you want to keep this based on reliable independent resources, but keeping it as one ideology on the spectrum in the infobox is not accurate or neutral. I would recommend just saying something like "extreme social conservativism" and "left-wing economics", or just keeping it like I had with a mixation of both Far right and Far left politics, if you'd like to remain neutral per Wikipedia's neutrality policy. This has been debated for many years and we can't just stick with one side or the other as being fact. - BlagoCorzine2016 (talk) 23:12, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It is not intended to be offensive and I really doubt that anybody would find it so. Just because the Nazis were right wing by most measures it doesn't mean that other right wing people are Nazis, any more than the fact that Stalin was left wing makes all left wing people Stalinists. If you look at the link for far right you will see that it goes into detail about the various types of groups it covers and draws a clear distinction with the more mainstream right. BTW: I mentioned Stalin for a reason. There used to be a few, not very bright, people on the far left who thought it would serve their purposes to try to reclassify Stalin as right wing and hence remove the taint they perceived that he had placed on the left and put it on the right instead. It didn't work and it wasn't necessary anyway. It would be fruitless for those on the right to try the same thing. --DanielRigal (talk) 23:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Let me rephrase, confusion rather than offense arises, which inevitabley leads to assumptions that they were only right wing. Another suggestion would be to just add the Nazism sidebar template, or like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union page have it changed to "Ideologies" and add things like "fascism" and "extreme right and left beliefs", it seems to work well with that page and doesn't specifically state "far left" in the infobox. Then neutrality would be in place and the debate between far right and left would be simmered (somewhat) on here. - BlagoCorzine2016 (talk) 23:34, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:NPOV does not mean we are under any obligation to pretend that this is a matter of controversy among serious historians, Blago. Occasional partisans may attempt to muddy the waters by pretending that there was an underlying leftist basis to the NSDAP; but the records make it clear that it was a populist variant of traditional statist conservatism (only from Americans do we get the bizarre asertion that "conservative" always means "less government"). It was run by an Abwehr agent, and got its funding from the big industrialists; it was their useful tool for fighting the Communists and Social Democrats. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Not to mention the internalist ultra-nationalist (yes, I know, tautology) ideology as opposed to the internationalist socialism of the left. As far as I am aware, fascist scholars place them on the far right and I am not inclined to disagree. The Soviet Union is a different page and a different subject, with differing issues (notably the abandonment of internationalism following the 1920s only for it to be later taken up again in the proxy war against the US post WW2 and the establishment of the communist bloc). Wikipedia cares not who it offends, for everyone is offended by something and everything is offensive to someone, we would be a series of blank pages (though at least then I'm sure Jimbo could sell us to Saatchi as some form of art project) --Narson ~ Talk • 22:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I made this page outlining several changes that could be done to the infobox on the Nazi party page. Feel free to discuss on here or on the infobox changes talkpage. - BlagoCorzine2016 (talk) 00:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

There's only one thing wrong with that proposal. "Extremist left" has nothing to do with the Nazi Party. --UNSC Trooper (talk) 16:17, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I thought this had been covered in the section above? Please drop the stick. --Narson ~ Talk • 17:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales/Wikimedia are referenced as part of a series on Nazism. You should probably look into that. Lukehasnoname (talk) 08:22, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

We have to deal with some real idiots from time to time but don't worry, this stuff gets cleaned up pretty quickly. The sidebar has now been protected to stop it being messed about around with and the guy who did it has been blocked. If you spot something like this in future, and nobody seems to be dealing with it already, then you can undo it yourself. If they keep it up then you can report it at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism and an administrator with deal with it. --DanielRigal (talk) 09:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)