@TrPrado I fail to see your point about Wilhelm's turbulent relationship with the Nazis. Wilhelm disliked the Nazis because the Nazis disliked him for leading Germany to its greatest defeat.

One can speculate all he wants about whether or not Hitler really wanted to nationalize German industry. It would have been poor timing to do so in the middle of a war, when a revolution could be disastrous.

Hitler hated Communists because they happened to be occupying his Lebensraum. Laissez-faire was considered less far right in all of Western Europe than today, not just in Germany.

You also fail to see that left-wing politics consists of more than just economy but also social issues.

wjessop, Hitler was not only a dog lover but also a vegetarian. He also banned animal experimentation in Germany and built vast countryside roads to allow Germans to reintegrate with nature.

"He also banned animal experimentation in Germany and built vast countryside roads to allow Germans to reintegrate with nature."

because why test animals when you have Jews and homosexuals to test on.

because he needed a well-trained workforce building roads to move Germany's military more quickly across Europe.

Weimar Republic brought social liberalization which the Nazis vehemently opposed :), your point on his social stances are pretty eh. He was supported by royalists and imperialists of a formerly royal family notable for being considerably conservative. Wilhelm was the least supportive, but he still definitely approved of what Hitler was doing for his country in everything except not putting his (Wilhelm's) family back on the throne. A left-winger won't have that kind of support from a monarch, considering the only reason Wilhelm tolerated them in the Reichstag was so that the people wouldn't revolt and because they had no real power.

Also, you don't have to be a rampant leftist to be a vegetarian. That's just dumb.

wjessop, this is what Wikipedia has to say about Hitler's roads:

"They were termed "Adolf Hitler's roads" (German: die Straßen Adolf Hitlers) and presented as a major contribution to the reduction of unemployment. Other reasons for the project included: enabling Germans to explore and appreciate their country, and there was a strong aesthetic element to the execution of the project under the Third Reich; military applications, although to a lesser extent than has often been thought"

So there were military elements, but nature-gazing was a larger component. Also, the road-building program sounds very similar to Roosevelt's New Deal, which is considered to be leftist.

You have a point about testing on undesirables, but you cannot deny that Nazis were nature sympathizers.

Please don't quote me Wikipedia, when you literally could have written that in to Wikipedia's entry on Hitler and then quoted it to me.

Wheee everyone and everything can be neatly categorized as left-wing or right-wing, obviously, so let's argue about where to pin the blame for the Holocaust as if Hitler gave a fuck whether the Holocaust was left-wing or right-wing, that sounds productive.

You also don't have to be a leftist to appreciate nature. For example, the only part of my family I know of that lives out in the country side is considerably conservative and suspicious of leftists.

Oh yes! Get rid of categories altogether! Bloody out-of-the-box lefty thinking!

TrPrado, Could you list some social changes in the Weimar Republic that the Nazis opposed (other than being anti-non-Aryans)? What is eh about the social stances I listed? Being anti-gun, pro-abortion, pro-atheism, and pro-environment sounds like a pretty solid liberal streak. Wilhelm only supported Hitler for bringing Germany back to a formidable power. Hitler still hated Wilhelm. Wilhelm "tolerated" Hitler because he was being kept under house arrest at his home in the Netherlands. Most vegetarians who refuse meat out of moral concerns are to the left on at least environmental issues.

wjessop, you can check Wikipedia's edit history. I have done no such manipulation. Rightists can appreciate nature, but they typically don't advocate for its protection nor do they encourage ecotourism. Categories exist, that is a fact of life.

@Lethologica I agree that Hitler's political standing shouldn't matter regarding his heinous Holocaust death camps, but I am sick and tired of people claiming that Hitler was representative of the extreme right-wing and associating him with right-wingers of today.

My last, preceding comment was a joke. Look up jokes on Wikipedia if you need to.

Anyone can change the content of Wikipedia, so quoting it is fairly redundant.

I was always taught the nazis were quite far left in most of their policies.

(The genocide part doesn't count)

Pro-censorship, which was something typically carried out by more right-wing governments throughout the 19th century and silenced leftists in USA in WWI
Nazis weren't anti-Christian that's for goddamn sure, considering there was a huge movement of Nazis using Christianity to promote Nazism.
They were against all welfare other than pensions.
Pro-environment can be right wing, just ask Mexico.
Imperialism which was the typical policy of the right-wing
Also dissolving a liberal government established to replace monarchy. Getting rid of a republic is pretty early 20th century typical right-wing if you ask me.

@wjessop Facts in Wikipedia articles of the scale of the one I quoted from typically need to be well-sourced and contain consensus information to survive.

I don't think the modern right-wing is representative of the exact same things as Hitler. I mean, that's why he was considered extreme in his boundaries, and most people aren't that far out in either direction, especially today, especially in the states. Though why anyone explicitly wants to defend and be associated with either left wing or right wing is beyond me, especially when it gets to the point of defending their most extreme bounds.

TrPrado, censorship and totalitarianism are common to the extreme right wing and the extreme left wing as exemplified by the USSR.

Religious views: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler
Hitler employed Christian propaganda to appease the masses, but he was skeptical of religion and became increasingly hostile towards churches.

Hitler's war factories and public projects maintained extremely high employment, so welfare was unnecessary.

Pro-environment can be incorporated into conservatism, as I believe it should be, but conservatives are typically still slower to adopt it because it interferes with the free market.

Imperialism was practiced by all major European countries, so there could be no distinction made there.

I was not defending Hitler. I was pointing out that many of his policies were left wing in response to someone earlier in the thread calling him right-wing, as though that were an insult. I suppose if you consider the left to be all good and all righteous, I would be defending him. I, for one, do not.

Also, the Weimar Republic was more "anti-gun" than Hitler, but that matters even less because citizens of Germany didn't typically own guns anyway so no one cared.

Also, I just said I'm not a leftist, so you're assumption about me is more wrong than you think mine of you and Hitler are. It may come as a surprise to you and others, but I'm actually a centrist. Also, I didn't say you were defending Hitler, I said you were trying to defend the far-right, mostly by dissasociating it from Hitler.

Gun ownership was initially illegal following Germany's defeat in WWI. A 1928 law allowed ownership with registration. Thus the Weimar Republic loosened, not tightened gun control.

And then the Nazis loosened them further.

Sorry if I missed it, but I can't find where you said you aren't leftists. I am disassociating the right from Hitler because Hitler's policies simply can't be seen as rightist.

(Except for to Jewish people, they were no longer allowed to have any because they stopped issuing permits to them.)

Rightist from modern US perspective compared to the extreme rightists of Germany 1930s and 1940s are not the same. What classifies as "left" and "right" depends on both historical and cultural context.

Hitler made guns illegal for Jews and other undesirables. That made (makes?) it more difficult for minority (Bundy and crew?) groups to defend themselves and easier to persecute them.