The BEST book I've EVER read on Hitler and National Socialism

The best book that I have ever read on Hitler and National Socialism has just been republished. The original, Hitler the Policies of Seduction, by Rainer Zeigleman, I bought for £27, told all you guys about it in late 2019, and said, it's fantastic, you should get a copy. Unfortunately, it was out of print, and so people went onto Amazon and whatever else, trying to find any copy they could get a hold of, and people were saying it was like £600, you know, supply and demand. People wanted it so much that it's gone up in price. Ridiculous. But don't worry, the invisible hand of the free market has spoken, and it has been republished, under a new title, Hitler's National Socialism, by Rainer Zeigleman. Same book, different name, that's all it is. But I still think you should all buy it. Now this is not a sponsored video, but I will do a quick disclaimer. Apparently, Zeigleman's friend offered to send me a copy of the book, but I refused, because I think I used the original book so much in the 5-hour Hitler Socialism video that I kind of feel like I owe it to them a little bit. You know, I relied on this book quite heavily in some of my videos, so I feel like I should pay it back, and also sell it to you guys, because I think everybody here should be reading it. So it's not a sponsored video, but I am selling it to you because you guys kind of need to know this stuff. I think everybody should be reading this book, and the reason why is because, I've said it a thousand times now, history lies in the heart of the debate. You cannot get to the truth unless you're willing to expose yourself to alternate arguments. And the reason why is because, how do you know your worldview is true if you haven't looked at what other people are saying? And so this book, and the original, but this book, will give you the argument that I've tried to present, but maybe you disagree with me, maybe you don't like me, maybe you've heard rumours and whatever else, because there's a lot of stuff out there on the internet, and so you don't trust me. Okay fine, don't trust me then. Trust a German historian who has written a book on it, and is explaining it, and has got references and everything else. Try him instead. And that's why I think we all should be reading this, and it doesn't matter which side of the argument you're on. If you agree with it, well, here's some extra evidence, and this is going to confirm what you already know. If you disagree with it, this is going to challenge you. This will challenge you. This is going to make you rethink, I think, a lot of, at least a significant portion of the way you perceive National Socialism, Hitler, and basically what was going on in the Third Reich. So this book is basically the same as the original, except there's now a 60-odd page introduction, which we'll get to in a minute. But before we get to that, I want to go through what the book is actually about. So it's obviously focused on Hitler and National Socialism, but I'm going to read some of the titles here in the table of contents so you get the idea. So there's an introduction, and then the second section is Hitler and the Revolution. And so he talks about the so-called revolution in November 1918, Hitler's concept of the Hitler's view of other revolutions, like the 1789-1848 revolution, so on and so forth. There's a bunch of revolutions there. Hitler's Putsch of 1923. And then Zeichmann goes into the discussion of, was Hitler a revolutionary? Was the National Socialist Movement a revolutionary movement, or was it a reactionary movement? What's going on there? And he also talks about the Ernst Röhm Revolt as well. That's in the second section. The third section, I'll read the title, Hitler's Social Objectives and his Assessment of the Major Classes of Modern Society. So then he talks about Hitler's view of the social issue, talks about the bourgeoisie, Hitler's view of the bourgeoisie, Hitler's view of the working class, Hitler's view of the lower-middle class, Hitler's view of the farmers and social programs, and all this other stuff. And also the Volksgemeinschaft, which is the people's community, and Hitler's Weltanschauung, Hitler's worldview. Section 4. Hitler's central objective, the revolutionizing of politics and economics, and the restructuring of the economic system. Hitler saw politics as being primary, so that was the main focus, and economics came secondary. Now, some historians have said, well, that means that Hitler didn't understand economics, and blah blah blah. No, he didn't, but the point is that he was still interested in it. What this means is that Hitler said that we won't let the market dictate to us. We will dictate to the market. We will put politics before the economics. Which would be a big clue to some of you. Anyway, so he talks about that debate, also the market, and then planning, private ownership and nationalization, and Hitler's criticism of capitalism, etc. So, interesting. Then Section 5. Hitler, an opponent of modern industrial society? Modernistic and anti-modernistic elements of Hitler's worldview. So, some historians have argued that Hitler was anti-modern, and was against industrial society. And that's why he was going East, because he wanted a farmer's utopia. And Rainer Zeigelman goes through this and just rips it apart, and basically he talks about Lebensraum. And this is where he talks about autarky, but also the shrinking markets concept, which I've outlined in numerous videos now. This is where it is explained. If you don't agree with me, and you don't believe me, blah blah blah, because a lot of people don't, oh this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Well this guy does. Rainer Zeigelman does. German historian. Talking about it. There's a huge section of the book talking about that, and explaining it. So I would 100% recommend that you naysayers pick it up. The next section. Oh, and one final bit about that. So he points out, as Zeigelman points out, there is a difference between Hitler's National Socialism, and, say, Rosenberg's and Himmler's National Socialism. They were more mysticism, they were more cultish I guess you could say, and Hitler didn't like those ideas. He actually criticized it. And there's a section in here talking about that as well. I will also point out that I think Goebbels' version of National Socialism is different to Hitler, and I think also Goering's as well, and there may be others. So this is something where a lot of people think, oh, you know, all National Socialists are the same. In reality, they're actually a collection of different groups, all banded together, which is very interesting, and not many people know that. So here's a nice little introduction for you. Section 6. Hitler's Concepts and Objectives in his Domestic Policies. He talks about how Hitler criticized democracy. Criticized the majority principle, the idea of the mob rule. And then also, he goes on and on, but also goes into the Führer principle, and explains how the dictatorship is the highest form of democracy. And this is where I've mentioned Hitler's democracy before, again, relying on Zeitmann a little bit here, but I talked about that, and how Hitler was actually pro-democracy, which is weird to hear. But again, Zeitmann goes into that, so I'll leave that to him to explain it to you. And then Section 7. Hitler's Self-Assessment in the Political Spectrum. So, was Hitler left or right? How did he see himself? Was he a Socialist? Was he a Nationalist? Was he… what was he? And so, Zeitmann has an entire section on this. One of the things is National Socialism as the synthesis between Nationalism and Socialism. And Hitler's assessment of related or opposing political movements. So, Hitler's views on Social Democracy. Hitler's views on Communism. Hitler's views with Marxism. Hitler's position towards Stalin. Hitler's criticism of Italian Fascism. And the reactionary Franco regime in Spain. We're all told Hitler was a Fascist. No, he wasn't. He was a National Socialist, and he criticised Fascism. Now, he liked Mussolini, it turns out, but he wasn't fond of Fascism overall, and he didn't like Franco. Don't believe me? Read this book. And then there's a conclusion at the end to draw it all together. So, that's what I read. I have somewhere here numerous notes that I made from this book. Absolutely fantastic. And as I say, I recommend all of you to do it. Now, I'm just going to go back to the new introduction at the beginning and talk about some of the stuff that's debated in here. Because Zeitmann published this, I believe, in the 19… either 1980s or 1990s. I think it was 1990s. And so there was some backlash, obviously, back in the day, and there has been since. And some notable names have offered criticism, shall we say, of what Zeitmann said, as well as others. So he says, in this introduction review of the recent historiography, I will address research on Hitler published after 1966. So basically, Rainer Zeitmann published his original book. He got criticism. He's now going to address that criticism in here, which I think he does pretty well. Now he talks about historians that I've never heard of. A lot of these guys are German, and unfortunately I can't read German, so I can't offer much perspective in that. However, it goes back and forth, and to be honest, some of these historians… there is a concept in here which he mentions called the Hitler Enigma. Hitler Enigma. And this concept is that it's Madman Hitler time. And the idea is that these historians haven't bothered to actually look at what Hitler said. They don't want to believe anything that Hitler said. They don't want to even fathom it. They don't care. They're just going to paint this guy as Madman because, I don't know, is it because they're lazy, which is the first option, or is it because they're trying to hide something. So the issue here is that there's a giant elephant in the room, and that giant elephant is making a lot of noise, and it's smelly, and it's big, and it's in the middle of the room. But unfortunately a lot of historians are like, I don't see an elephant anywhere here. It's like, the elephant's over there, it's in the middle of the room. No, no, there's no elephant here, I don't know what you're talking about. It's like, there's a giant elephant in the middle of the room. Oh, you're an extremist, you believe in, you know, you hate elephantism, and you also… I mean, without the elephant, who's going to build the roads? And it's just ridiculous. In a sense, they're all left-wing, and they're all trying to just defend socialism. And so they don't want to look at what Hitler said, because they don't want to see the reflection in the mirror. And as a result of that, we now have a bunch of historians, you know, famous ones like Ian Kershaw, for example, in the book Hitler, you know, that he wrote. We've also got, you know, Adam Tooze, and there's loads of others, there's a few behind me. There's a load in this book, he explains, who are just trying to deny and dismiss and ignore what was actually happening. And so their get-out-of-jail-free card is, Hitler was a madman. Madman Hitler. And as I have shown in numerous videos now, okay, Hitler was evil, absolutely, but it made sense if you accept race and, you know, a few other concepts. It actually does kind of make sense, which is why the Left these days, especially the critical race theorists, are rapidly coming to the same conclusions. Why? Because if you believe in race, and you believe that it's skin colour, or it's Aryanism, or whatever it is, and then you follow, you connect the dots, and follow the logic, you will actually end up exactly where Hitler ended up. Ah, not coincidental is it? And that's because Hitler believed in a bunch of, well, nonsense. But on top of that, he built a logical structure. And so that's what is the problem. Because what, you know, when you look at what Hitler said, it's not too far off of what the Left is saying today. So the Leftist historians are not happy when they offer criticism to Zeitleman, and he knocks them back, which is great. He also talks about, now this isn't a critique, I've mentioned this book before, Gottsallee's Hitler's Beneficiaries. I've told you guys to get this book before. And the way that Zeitleman puts it in the introduction is that, so, Zeitleman's book, the original book, and this one as well, offered the ideologically motivations, let's put it that way, of Hitler and National Socialism, what was going on, and what Hitler was trying to do, what his social policies, what his economic policies were, etc. Gottsallee came along, you know, a decade or so later, published this book, and this basically, even though Gottsallee tried to, you know, he didn't really go into the ideology side of it, he basically confirmed exactly what Zeitleman was saying. And Zeitleman says, you know, the two go together quite, you know, hand-in-hand. Now I didn't know this, but Zeitleman pointed out, because again, I don't speak German, but when Gottsallee's book was first published in German, it caused quite a storm in Germany. It was debated in like the newspapers and stuff, because it was quite radical. And the reason why is because Gottsallee was pointing out stuff that other historians had ignored, like the fact that Hitler was trying to benefit the poor, and was reforming the tax system, which historians like Richard Evans still deny, and so on and so forth. Trying to benefit the poor, taxing the rich. I mean, this stuff had been written before, for example, by a Marxist, you know, guy in hiding in Germany, Gunther Reimann. This is actually a primary source document. I think it was published in 1944, something like that. This is The Vampire Economy. You can get it online for free from the Mises Institute, or you can buy a copy like I did. This is The Vampire Economy, doing business under Fascism, which is incorrect, it's not Fascism, but anyway. By Gunther Reimann. Primary source document, talking about how, yeah, this was a Socialist economy. Except, oh no, it's not, because Reimann offers us an explanation as to why it's not. It's because it wasn't real Socialism. OK, so the fake Socialist economy, which is trying its best to be Socialism. Yeah, so that's a primary source document. And of course, other people have mentioned it too, like Ludwig von Mises in Omnipotent Government, for example. Which again, you can get online for free from the Mises Institute, or you can buy a copy like I did. So you've got a bunch of books here, all kind of confirming what Zeitleman was saying, which is interesting. And Zeitleman goes into the discussion surrounding Gottsallee's, Hitler's beneficiaries. So again, really interesting stuff. I love though that his description of Evans. It's like, Evans, a historian who has his roots in the Marxist tradition. Yeah, I respect Evans for what he did during the Lipstadt and Irving trial, but the guy has really dropped the ball when it comes to National Socialism. There's a section in his Third Reich book, Richard Evans, where he has this massive paragraph where he outlines. So he basically says, oh yeah, some people think that Hitler was a Socialist. And then he outlines this massive argument as to why that was the case, and then goes, ah, but don't worry, Hitler killed Ernst Röhm, so therefore he wasn't a real Socialist. And it's like, really? That's your entire counter-argument? That he killed Ernst Röhm? Richard Evans would really do well to read this book, because Zeitleman actually talks about how the Ernst Röhm thing wasn't even to do with Capitalism versus Socialism. It was actually to do with Violent Revolution versus Non-Violent Revolution, and there's a few other factors as well. So yeah, it has nothing to do with that. So the one or two counter-arguments that Evans offer don't hold up at all to scrutiny. Richard Evans of the Marxist tradition has really dropped the ball. Also, Zeitleman talks about recent biographies of Hitler. There's a couple here I've never heard of because I think they're in German, but he does mention Kershaw and talks about some of the flaws in the book, but praises it as well, which is good. And so, yeah, he also mentions Hayek. I don't know if, because it obviously wrote to Serfdom, I don't know if Zeitleman has read any of Ludwig von Mises and Mifton Government, which will help you a lot if you haven't, and The Vampire Economy. Zeitleman, if you're watching this, these are the books you need to read next. Fantastic stuff. But yes, he does mention Hayek and goes, this, Hayek said the same thing that I'd already concluded myself. It's like, yes, it's weird that, isn't it? If you do read the book, please come back to this video, give it a review. Review it on Amazon, whatever you need to do, because I think more people need to know about this book. It is absolutely fantastic. So there you go. I'm going to leave it there guys. Thanks for watching, bye for now.