We Must Learn the Lessons of Nazi Germany

In an article published by The Daily Telegraph, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, expresses fears over the British Government’s handling of the financial crisis. He sees parallels to the rise of Nazism and claims Germany in the 1930s pursued a “principle” that worked consistently but only on the basis that “quite a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn’t”. Even if Dr Williams stretches the argument against Gordon Brown a bit too far,* I think there are grounds for his fears, although I’m not sure he sees it the way I do. Considering his previous anti-liberal statements, I suspect he wants to see more of state interference. That, in my opinion, would be exactly what Nazi Germany should teach us not to do. What governments need to do now is to let the free market rid itself of bad businesses. Whenever a government intervenes, it tends to benefit the big, established corporations whose products are outdated and unpopular. At the moment, we see this happen when governments grant big loans and bailouts to the auto industry in order to preserve the production of cars no one wants to buy.

Dr Williams is right about one thing. Unemployment is dangerous. It hurts the poor the most and opens the way for populists who seek to blame minority groups. Although Nazism does still exist in Europe, the main threat to our societies comes from Marxism. Extremists who wish to blame the economic downturn on globalisation and immigration find nourishment from Karl Marx’s fabricated conflict theory; which in short states that the entrepreneurs are to blame for poverty, and that society consists of social groups whose interests always conflict—if one group gains, other groups lose. The Marxist solution to everything is war, revolution, torture, and mass murder.

What we should learn from Nazi Germany is how easily Marxist ideas turn into organised slaughter of Jews, gays, disabled, and ethnic minorities. It may not have been Marx’s intention to kill off these groups specifically, but his conflict theory is so easily transformed into general hatred of any minority group that its xenophobic usefulness is more rule than coincidence. In every country that has tried to solve its economic problems with collectivism, people have been subjected to cruelty based on ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

Ironically, Dr Williams is himself best known for his attacks on human rights and minority groups. Which, perhaps, brings us to the most important lesson to be learned from the rise of Nazism in the 1930s: the Christian establishment was there to cheer Hitler when he began to speak of moral uprising and a more just and fair economy.

Even though the idea of a free market ruled by people instead of governments is questioned by many at the moment, I will continue to argue that every attempt to replace liberty with authority is doomed to increase human suffering.

* Dr Williams doesn’t explicitly mention Gordon Brown, but, as Martin Beckford writes, he does make at least one apparent reference to the British prime minister.