Obama’s Economic Nazism
by Bruce Walker (11/2/08)
Barack Obama, in his recently released infamous radio interview of seven years ago, opined that America was beginning to resemble Nazism. No: Obama is wrong. What Obama himself proposes are economic policies almost identical to Nazism. The Left has refused to claim the Nazis, even though the Nazis considered themselves the mortal enemies of conservatives, the champions of “change” which would help ordinary people . . . and socialists. The historical facts show just how much of what Obama wants and what the Nazis actually did look the same.
Obama hopes to tax the rich more. The Nazis did tax the rich more. The Nazis on October 16, 1938 raised the highest income tax rate from 40% to 50%. On February 17, 1939, they raised that highest rate again to 55%. By a decree of September 9, 1939, the Nazis increased income taxes again, but they exempted from that increase those incomes of 2,400 Reichmarks a year or less. High income Germans, not low income Germans, bore the brunt of Nazi taxation.
Obama hopes to restrict the salaries and bonuses of corporate officers and directors. The Nazis did restrict the salaries and bonuses of corporate officers and directors. In October 1937, a law was passed giving complete control to the government of salaries of corporation officers and directors. Later, the tax on directors’ fees was increased from 10% to 20%. Directors of corporations were allowed to grant bonuses only upon condition that those bonuses were directly tied to profit and only upon condition that the board of directors authorize “voluntary social contributions” to employees, granting employees effectively an automatic share in corporate profits. What was the impact of this? M. Fodor, an internationally renowned anti-Nazi correspondent wrote at the time: “The salaries of managers and members of boards of directors were drastically restricted.”
Obama hopes to soak big business with heavy taxes. The Nazis did soak big business with heavy taxes. The act of October 16, 1934 removed the business tax exemption for many types of businesses and increased the progressivity of the business taxes. An act of August 27, 1936 raised the general business tax rate from 20% to 25% and it raised the general business tax to 30% for each year thereafter. On July 25, 1938 corporate profits of more than 100,000 Reichmarks per year were subjected to an additional tax of 35% with that rising to 40% for each year thereafter. On March 20, 1939, the Nazis imposed an excess profits tax. In four years, Nazis had raised taxes to approximately one fourth of the national income.
Obama hopes to drastically curtail large profits from securities transactions. The Nazis did this too. The Loan Stock Law of December 4, 1934 virtually confiscated all dividends over six percent (or in some cases eight percent) by ordering the beneficiaries of stock dividends to invest those monies in state bonds. Even this was deemed to be too generous to the rich. The original promise to pay these stockholders in cash or other bonds was revoked in 1937 through the issuance of tax certificates which bore no interest at all, and beyond that, the owners of these tax certificates could not use them to pay their income taxes or their capital profits tax. They could only use the tax certificates beginning in April 1952, and even then, they could only use the tax certificates in installments. The free movement of private capital almost completely ended under Nazi rule.
Obama talks like a Marxist. Almost everyone except Marxists, writing when the Nazis were in power, said that the Nazis acted like Marxists. Judge Harmon Black, in his 1938 book, If I Were a Jew, noted that the actions of the Nazis in power were essentially those of Bolsheviks: “…the sweeping control that the state has established over the conduct of business—profits, prices, production, expansion of plant and equipment, distribution, exports and imports, banking and credit—without regard for private interests, if they happen to conflict with state policy, is pleasing to millions of former Communists.” Vera Micheles Dean in her 1939 book, Europe in Retreat, written before the Second World War began, said that the Nazis had introduced into Germany a form of graduated Bolshevism. M. Fodor wrote: “It was mostly under Doctor Goebbel’s and Doctor Ley’s influence that National Socialist Germany has become increasingly a socialist state where the capitalist had only a very sorry role to fulfill” and “Doctor Ley has acted as a true socialist (in the Bolshevik sense) on the labor front.”
In 1941, former Nazi boss of Danzig, Hermann Rauschning, wrote that the last part of the German Revolution was Nazism, which was just as much a realization of Marxist as of nationalist ideas, and he notes that the only ones who refuse to admit this are supporters of Marxist theories and Nazis themselves. Karl Lowenstein in the 1940 book, Governments of Continental Europe, writes that there was a convergence in Bolshevism and National Socialism regarding private property, and that this was clear long before Hitler and Stalin became allies. The Nazis were drawn to Marxist ideals just like Obama is drawn to Marxist ideals.
Any American should be very worried about our nation drifting toward totalitarianism, whether we call that totalitarianism Nazism or Marxism. Seven years ago Senator Obama expressed concern that America had been moving toward Nazism. If Obama is elected president, and if he is able to implement his economic program, America will move toward economic Nazism. Socialist totalitarianism is always the same. It never works and it always ends in disaster.
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