Compare and Contrast the rise to power of Hitler and Lenin

Compare and contrast the Rise to Power of Hitler and Lenin

The regimes of Hitler and Lenin were both products of war. For Hitler the war gave his life purpose, and the defeat and the Treaty gave him a grudge. The army, which shared his feelings, gave him the work which led to his joining the Nazi party, and got him out of his little problem after the Munich putsch. For Lenin the War was the last convulsion of imperialism, and though he did not predict the combination of circumstances which provoked the February Revolution, these circumstances were indeed exactly the kind of thing which his analysis of imperialist war would have involved (shortages, casualties etc). Ironically Lenin, like Hitler, owed much to the German army, whose intelligence department brought him to St Petersburg on the famous sealed train. The Bolshevik USP was Peace, the Nazis were supported for promising to revise a Peace.

On the face of it Hitler and Lenin were impelled by precisely opposite ideas. Adapting Low’s famous cartoon Lenin was to Hitler ‘the scum of the earth’ and Hitler to Lenin ‘the bloody assassin of the workers’. Closer inspection reveals similarities between Socialism as Lenin saw it and National Socialism as Hitler did: both were authoritarian, aggressive and contemptuous of cherished progressive ideals such as democracy, liberty, equality, and universal natural rights. Fraternity for Hitler excluded non Aryans, and for Lenin the bourgeoisie. The first instinct of both was for direct action, but the ‘Moscow putsch’ was more successful than the Munich one, so Lenin never had to go through a long democratic agony like Hitler’s prior to 1934. (Instead he went through a short charade of supporting the Constituent Assembly). Not many Russians had seen Lenin’s ideas in print before 1917, whereas ‘Mein Kampf’ was a best seller long before Hitler became Chancellor. For this reason, though we can contrast Lenin’s advocacy of international brotherhood, with Hitler’s nationalism and anti-semitism, such ideas publicly-stated played a much less important role in Lenin’s rise than Hitler’s. On the other hand profound study of Marxism was a marked feature of Lenin’s career and a reason for his supremacy among the Bolsheviks, whereas Hitler had spent more time in doss-houses and trenches than in libraries.

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Economic dislocation was a crucial factor in the rise of both men. For Hitler the post-war difficulties culminating in the hyper-inflation, and then the effects of the Slump were powerful influences, and for Lenin the Bread crisis of February and the question of landownership were equally important in winning support pre-November. Hitler won support on a programme of job creation, which he sincerely implemented (partly by removing the Jewish placeholders); Lenin promised all land to the peasants, which was the opposite of his real intentions. Hitler took care to have the owners of the means of production and exchange (Thyssen, Krupp et al.) on his side, and Lenin, too, for a crucial moment in the Spring of 1917 benefitted from the careful efficiency of the imperialists. Thereafter he gained some credibility by disavowing his former helpers, or at least he managed to fight off the accusation that he was their stooge.

Lenin benefitted from the inability of Kerensky to improve social conditions, and Hitler benefitted from the incapacity of the Weimar governments after Stresemann. The vast social gulf in Russia which Peter the Great had not been able to bridge was part of the context in which the Bolshevik revolution was practical politics. The continuation of Wilhelmine or Bismarckian social attitudes in Germany, on the other hand, made Hitler’s revolution in this sense a counter-revolution. Lenin emerged from the collapse of a social order widely and deeply detested by the Russian people, Hitler profited from the determination that a social order should continue, a determination that went equally widely and deeply into German society. Lenin’s rise was too private, and then too meteoric to be marked by any particular cultural programme, whereas Hitler gained a lot of credence by rejecting the ‘degenerate’ Bauhaus and modernism in all its forms. ‘Peace, Bread and Land’ burst out of a clear sky, whereas the Nazi programme was well trailed in German universities and youth movements in the 20s.

The constitutional platform which Lenin appeared to support was, as has been said, entirely insincere. No significant number of Russians had the slightest idea of the difference between a Bolshevik and a Menshevik, and the coup of November 1917 was not a popular uprising. Lenin did not win a majority in the Constituent Assembly and suppressed it. Hitler was the leader of the best supported party in Germany in July 1932, six months before he became Chancellor. Lenin was a Bolshevik, but Hitler, by deliberate if reluctant choice in the mid 20s, was a Menshevik in the sense that he insisted that the Nazis follow the democratic path. Lenin was an insincere democrat and bad at it; Hitler was an insincere democrat but (with the help of Goebbels) very good at it!

Hitler and Lenin were both master tacticians, adapting their actions to the circumstances of their time. Lenin worked in secret for years and in public for only a short time. Hitler emerged from obscurity very quickly and his public ‘Kampf’ was long and public. Lenin did not mind being brought to power in a German train. Hitler held his nose as he slowly wooed the electorate. Lenin overcame the setback of the July days and Hitler that of the Munich putsch. Lenin outmanoeuvred the ambitious General Kornilov, and Hitler the ambitious General von Schleicher. Kerensky was on drugs and Hindenburg was on his last legs. When Lenin took his tram ride to the Kremlin there was no-one else who could rule Russia; Hindenburg turned to Hitler because he, too, was advised that there was no alternative. Von Papen was one of the ‘useful idiots’ who facilitated Hitler’s rise; Lenin benefitted from the delusions of millions of peasants that he supported their property holding aspirations. Lenin benefitted from the problems of the Kerensky and the Czar, whereas Hitler benefitted from the problems of Lenin and Stalin, not to mention those of Ebert, Bruning, von Papen, von Schleicher and Hindenburg. Neither the Bolsheviks nor the Nazis were one-man bands. Lenin had his loyal ‘Old Bolsheviks’ like Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev and, more recently, Trotsky. Hitler had crucial ‘assists’ from Röhm, Ludendorff, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler and, more recently, Schacht. It is a moot point how important the Reichstag Fire was, but certainly Nazi propaganda did not make much of it, preferring to emphasize the alleged comradeship between Hitler and Hindenburg.

Thus the headmaster’s son and the customs official’s son reached in varying ways their primary goal of power.

H.D.J.Nicklin for DAIS April 2008. Page of

Allowing for the fact that Lenin died too soon to have made the judgement.