Fascism and its state form – like its other, bourgeois democracy and the parliamentary system – is a product of class struggle. But the course of class struggle varies widely from country to country and so do its outcomes.

Back in 1848 the authors of The Communist Manifesto had good reasons to declare that the German proletariat was expected to be the first in the world to usher in socialist revolution. Actually that happened in Russia and the victorious Russian communists expected the working class in neighbouring Germany to be the next in line. Indeed, post-First World War Germany, being in the throes of the most severe economic crisis, social instability and political breakdown, found itself at a historical crossroads marked by two opposite prospects: socialist revolution or capitalist consolidation. The most advanced sections of the working class in Germany boldly espoused the path of socialist revolution, the big bourgeoisie in alliance with the Junker landlords responded with a counterrevolution. The Left  failed and, as Clara Zetkin pointed out as early as in 1923 (see Appendix), was punished with fascism. Our study, therefore, starts with this civil war, this prelude to the emergence of fascism in Germany.

Revolution and Counter Revolution in Germany

As the first imperialist world war was drawing to a close, the monarchist rulers in Germany were completely discredited and alienated. Popular unrest and upheavals were growing. The year 1918 opened with a general strike involving more than one million workers, demanding peace, bread and the ouster of the Kaiser’s imperialist government. Workers in Berlin were getting organized in Soviet-like councils. Revolutionary ferment also spread throughout the army. It seemed the country was going the Russian way.

In the face of imminent defeat, Germany was eager for peace talks but as a precondition, the US insisted on a civilian government being installed in the defeated aggressor country. Under pressure from victors abroad and the disgruntled masses at home, the ruling dispensation headed by Chancellor Max Von Baden put in place a so-called democratic coalition government, headed by Prince Baden himself and including social democrat leaders like Scheidemann, in the first week of October 1918. The purpose obviously was to preempt revolution and satisfy the victors through a constitutional reform that left the economic system and political power structure intact.

The Spartacus League (SL) and the delegates of revolutionary councils in Berlin, who had been elected during the January 1918 strike, called for another general strike and an armed uprising to overthrow the government of betrayal. In January 1919 Berlin was in the grip of a general strike, with soldiers joining the armed workers, who were taking to the streets of Berlin. The turmoil continued. In November sailors spread the revolutionary ferment to major coastal cities as well as Munich, Frankfurt on Main, Hanover etc. The Kaiser abdicated on November 9 and on the same day, SL leader Karl Liebknecht proclaimed a Socialist Republic. As a counter tactic Scheidemann advanced the slogan of a “free German republic”. Workers’ and soldiers’ councils came up in Munich and other major towns and cities throughout the country (in Berlin they had been already formed). However, the SL lacked the strength to win a majority in the councils and transform them into bodies representing the real interests of the working class and the toiling masses. Gaining a majority in the councils, the opportunist leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Independents (or ISDP, a centrist faction of social democrats) made the councils toe their line. The provisional government—the Council of People’s Commissars—which was elected on November 10 at a general assembly of the Berlin councils, included three representatives of the right-wing Social Democrats including F. Ebert, Scheidemann and three Independents; there was no one from the SL. The Council allowed the Kaiser’s officials to keep their posts and formed an alliance with the monarchist head of the army, P. von Hindenburg.

At the First All-German Congress of Workers’ Councils (December 16–21, 1918) the Social Democratic leaders succeeded in passing resolutions on elections to the bourgeois Constituent Assembly and on the transfer of legislative power to the government. The revolutionaries started an insurrection to seize power. The Ebert-Scheidemann government then switched to an open offensive against the revolutionary workers. It got the foremost leaders of the revolution, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, brutally murdered by members of the right-wing paramilitaries, the “Freikorps” on January 15, 1919.

Rosa Luxemburg’s Last Words

roza rozaRosa Luxemburg had opined, within the party, that an insurrection would be disastrous when the forces of the right were gathering strength. But when it was started, she joined her comrades; arguing that events were now in motion and that standing on the sidelines would be a worse mistake than waiting for the right moment. Days later, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were taken prisoner by the freikorps and summarily executed. Liebknecht’s body was dumped anonymously at the city morgue and Luxemburg’s was found months later in the Landwehr canal.

On the evening of her murder, almost certainly knowing that the uprising had failed and that she personally faced death, Rosa wrote:

“The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built...Order reigns in Berlin! You stupid henchmen! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already ‘raise itself with a rattle’ and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I shall be!”

In the meantime, a Socialist Republic of Bavaria had also been proclaimed in Munich. Extremely ill-prepared, this one also was brutally crushed by the armed forces in early May 1919. Later in the year a new constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly, which met in Weimar town, formalized the foundation of a parliamentary republic, popularly called the Weimar Republic. A half-baked bourgeois republic replaced the monarchy, with big Junker landlords left untouched. Ideologically influenced by opportunist politics, and organizationally divided, the working class was not in a position to lead the revolution to a socialist culmination. However, compared to the House of Hohenzollern’s 400-year rule over Prussia (and 30-year rule over Germany) the republic with all its shortcomings (e.g. the President  having almost arbitrary powers of appointing and discharging a Chancellor, issuing decrees etc.) represented a relatively progressive institution in the sense that it allowed for more open and free development of class struggle. Exactly how that struggle would play itself out in the political arena – and which side would win -- would depend, of course, primarily on the political conduct of the parties representing the antagonistic classes.

From Class Compromise to Fascist Takeover

Every failed revolution evokes a two-pronged response from the ruling class that is threatened but not destroyed. One, brutal repression to try and finish off the revolutionary party; two, some kind of reforms aimed at preempting further attempts at revolution and at the same time expanding its social base among the masses. In Germany the repression was targeted against the SL and then the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) while a reform of the state was introduced in the shape of the Weimar Republic. The first and subsequent governments were formed by a coalition of the liberal bourgeois parties and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Clearly, these were governments of class compromise. To smother the smoldering embers of revolution, the SPD-dominated coalition government introduced what we now call social safety net for the working people. And the capitalists  accepted it for the time being, as a policy of pragmatic adjustment in place of foolhardy confrontation. Explaining this position, a leading German industrialist candidly told his fellow capitalists in June 1919:

“Gentlemen, in Russia events took the wrong turn and, right from the start, industry found itself rejecting the revolution. If we – and this would have been feasible – had taken up a stance of non-cooperation, then I am sure that by today we would have the same conditions as prevail in Russia”.[1]

Lenin too pointed out that the big bourgeoisie learned from the Russian example and adopted an excellent strategy. For a small price of economic concessions, they as well as the Junker landlords thus saved themselves from the threat of revolution spreading from Russia. The SPD and the trade union leadership attached to it (the latter enjoying the support of the vast majority of workers) also did not try to intensify class struggle to resume the revolution.

Political compromises, as we know, are a temporary truce between two warring parties/sides, a period during which the battle goes on by subtler means, with each party trying to outmanoeuvre the other. One side wins, the other loses. In this case the social democrats, in continuation of their 1914 betrayal of supporting the Kaiser’s war policy, backtracked from their own land reform programme and, rather than using the government for extending the scope of class struggle, sought to consolidate class peace and thus hang on to office in the bourgeois parliamentary setup. Naturally they saw the revolutionary communists as major obstacles and sought to remove them by political – and, during the phase of direct confrontation between armed revolution and armed counterrevolution, by physical/conspiratorial means as well.

Alongside the social democratic prototype based on compromise with the big bourgeoisie, alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie and struggle with the revolutionary communists – a prototype that would be replicated all over the world in the decades to come – the revolutionary communists in the form of the nascent SL-KPD had their bout of ‘left-wing communism, an infantile disorder’. They correctly underscored the need for an uninterrupted transition from the democratic to the socialist revolution, but initially failed to make a sober assessment of the overall balance of class forces in the raging civil war, tried to move too fast, and suffered heavy losses, which further eroded the chances of revolution. However, following the installation of the republic, they supported the social democrats in office on every real move in defence of democracy while opposing the instances of capitulation. The failure of the two left parties to unite in struggle against fascism helped the reactionary big bourgeoisie gradually reclaim its dominance (e.g. through the repudiation, in the mid-1920s, of the eight-hour working day that was instituted soon after the foundation of the republic, and the ouster of the social democratic government in Prussia, led by Otto Braun, in 1932). With the National Socialists emerging as the strongest right-wing and ferociously anti-left, anti-labour party within and without the parliament, the big bourgeoisie and the Nazis came closer and closer together. And the absolute supremacy of the big bourgeoisie was finally restored under Hitler’s “Third Reich”, which replaced the Weimar Republic.

Germany in the 1920s

The economic crisis of the 1920s, which matured into the Great Depression by 1929 and led to large-scale economic disruption and intensified class struggle, sets a common backdrop to the emergence of fascist groups in countries like Italy, the US, France, Austria, Romania, Portugal, England and Spain[2], and in several of these the fascists grabbed power too. But it was Germany that had the misfortune of being home to the most savagely successful, genocidal fascist regime.

This was due to a unique constellation of exceptional socio-political developments and anextraordinary political leader doggedly pursuing his mission Conducive objective factors like unprecedented economic woes, disruptions in individual and social lives and the sense of wounded national pride, which followed defeat in the war and the humiliating terms of the Versailles Treaty, and which rendered all classes and strata (with the honorable exception of the industrial proletariat) highly vulnerable to fascist propaganda, are well-known; so we do not go into details of all these. Instead, we investigate the politics of fascism. We try to understand exactly how – with what strategic perspective, tactical maneuvers and modus operandi – Hitler navigated the stormy seas of post-war German polity to reach his goal so fast and with such deadly effect on the national and international planes.

How the Private Became a Politician

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in the Upper Austrian border town Braunau am Inn, not very far from Munich, and ended his own life on 30 April 1945 in an underground bunker in Berlin when he learnt that his nemesis – the Russian Red Army – had already entered the city. His father, Alois Hitler, was a mid-level customs official. In his teens Adolf tried twice to get admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts, but in vain. However, he did manage to earn a living by painting watercolor scenes of Vienna, where he had to spend a few years in homeless shelters after frittering away a handsome inheritance left by his parents. In those days he was influenced by the prevalent currents of German racist nationalism and antisemitism. At the age of 25 he went off to war as a “private” (the lowest-ranking soldier) and was discharged, along with others, in March 1920, after the Versailles Treaty came into force.

At the time of the revolutionary uprisings and counter-revolutionary reprisals in 1918-1919, Hitler was living in Munich, the citadel of extreme right nationalist forces. He neither supported nor opposed the revolution. During the initial high tide he conveniently appeared to lean towards the Social Democrats but overall he just kept a low profile.[3]  Subsequently, of course he always denounced it and its product, the Weimar Republic, while having a word of praise for those SPD leaders who “never intended to spark a revolution” such as Noske, Ebert, Scheidemann, and the Bavarian leader Auer.

Hitler joined active politics in September 1919 when he attended a meeting of the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP) –- one of many ethnically chauvinist, nationalist groups that evolved after 1918 – in Munich. His speech was well-received, and very soon he was invited to join the party. He readily agreed because, although it was a small and unimpressive group in the making, the DAP offered him an opportunity to get ahead quickly and shape the party according to his own ideas. With Hitler as the party’s star speaker, DAP events began to attract larger gatherings. His strident ultra-nationalism and communication skills attracted the attention of his bosses and in a very unusual move, he was also appointed as an assistant to the educational officer in the Regiment he belonged to.

The Demagogue

HitlerThe gift of the gab was Hitler’s prime weapon in building his political career; so why not take a closer look at it?[4]

Contrary to popular belief, Hitler did not speak extemporaneously: he diligently prepared for all his public appearances. He would fill several pages with catchwords and slogans to keep him focused during his two- to three-hour performances. Usually he arrived late to ratchet up the excitement and his speeches followed a set pattern.

Most of the times he would begin calmly, almost hesitantly. As the historian John Toland put it, Hitler spent the first ten minutes or so gauging the mood of his audience with the fine sense of an actor. Only when he was convinced of their approval did he begin to relax. He then started to punctuate his remarks with dramatic gestures — throwing his head back, extending his right arm and underlining particularly vivid sentences with his finger or hammering on the lectern with his fists. At the same time his tone and choice of words became more aggressive. His own excitement was infectious. By the end of his speeches, after a furious crescendo, the entire venue would be in a state of intoxicated fervour, and the orator himself, covered in sweat, would accept the congratulations of his entourage.

Many were the factors that contributed to Hitler’s power as a speaker, starting with his full-bodied and flexible voice—“his best weapon,” as it has been called—which he used like an instrument. He had mastered the “language of the post-war little guy,” peppering his speeches not only with the coarse phrases of a former military man, but also with irony and sarcasm. He was adept at using religious imagery and motifs and showed a great capacity to express what his audience thought and felt: he exploited their fears, prejudices and resentments, but also their hopes and desires. As Hitler’s first biographer, Konrad Heiden, wrote, Hitler was “someone seduced by himself,” someone who was so inseparable from his words “that a measure of authenticity flowed over the audience even when he was telling obvious lies.”

Hitler’s speeches typically began with a look back at the “wonderful, flourishing Germany before the war”. Again and again, he directed his audience’s attention to the “great heroic time of 1914,” when the German people, unified as seldom before, had been dragged into a war forced upon them by the Entente powers. This glorified vision of the past allowed Hitler to paint the present day in hues that were all the darker. His constant refrain was that the revolution of 1918–19 led to Germany’s downfall, casting it into slavery. Those primarily responsible were Jews and leftists whom he described as “revolutionary” or “November criminals.” “The ‘utterly fearless’ army was ‘stabbed from behind’ by ‘Jew-socialists’ bribed with Jewish money,” was how a USPD pamphlet cited a statement by Hitler as early as April 1920. Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the former heads of the Third Supreme Command, had launched the stab-in-the-back legend, which then became a constant component within the propaganda arsenal of right-wing nationalists.

Polemical attacks on the Treaty of Versailles occupied a central position in Hitler’s campaigns, playing upon widespread bitterness about what was perceived as a shameful and humiliating peace. The conditions of the treaty, Hitler repeatedly hammered into his listeners’ heads, condemned it to “serfdom”. He skillfully combined the acerbic condemnation of the Versailles Treaty with hateful attacks on the Weimar Republic and its leading representatives. By turns he excoriated Germany’s new democratic order as a “republic of scoundrels,” a “Berlin Jew government” and a “criminal republic.”

The Building Blocks of Nazism

From the beginning of his political career to the very end, Hitler’s world outlook and politics comprised three basic strands: (a) radical anti-Semitism[5] (b) aggressive anti-Bolshevism/communism/Marxism and (c) racial/national revivalism and chauvinism, complete with a clamour for conquest of “a living space in the East”. Such themes were nothing new in German right-wing politics at the time, but Hitler packaged and marketed them incomparably better than the others. The third component – shrill, supremacist nationalism – would always be there in his speeches and write-ups, but as a rule he would emphasise one particular strand for a particular occasion and audience. Here are a few examples.

In one of his early (1920) speeches, Hitler said:

Being unable to form a state, Jews lived as “nomads…parasites on the bodies of other peoples…as a race within other races and a state within other states.” Driven by their two most prominent racial characteristics, “Mammonism6 and materialism,” they had accumulated enormous wealth “without putting in the sweat and effort required of all other mortals.” With that, Hitler arrived at his favourite subject, international “interest and stock-market capital,” which dominated “practically the entire world…with sums of money growing beyond all measure and—what’s worst—with the effect of corrupting all honest work.” The National Socialists, Hitler claimed, had come forth to combat this destructive force by “awakening, augmenting and inciting the instinctual antipathy of our people for Jewry.” From here, from the global “stock-market and interest capital” holding Germany in its vice-like grip Hitler smoothly moved on to the nightmare of a “worldwide Jewish conspiracy.”

On 24 February 1928, the eighth anniversary of the announcement of the party programme, Hitler proclaimed: “If he [the Jew] behaves, he can stay—if not, out with him!” (Looks like Golwalkar took his infamous warning to Indian Muslims directly from here) But in the same breath he insisted that “We are the masters of our house” and issued an unmistakably murderous threat: “One cannot compete with parasites, one can only remove them.

In another speech in 1920 he said:

“Those who are on top in Russia are not the workers but, without exception, Hebrews.” Hitler spoke of a “Jewish dictatorship” and a “Moscow Jew government” sucking the life out of the Russian people and called on the NSDAP to become “a battering ram of German character” against the “dirty flood of Jewish Bolshevism.”

Now, on what grounds could anyone talk of a “Jewish Bolshevism” or a “Moscow Jewish government”? It is a fact that many  Bolshevik leaders happened to be from a Jewish background, and so were many other communist leaders in other countries. And Hitler was not alone in using this fact to claim that Bolshevism was guided and controlled by Jews, thereby conveniently merging the two enemies. Just see how Winston Churchill pours venom on the Bolsheviks (box).

Regarding Marxism, Hitler believed that by destroying it he could eradicate class conflict and create a “genuine ethnic-popular community.” He was also constantly coming up with new phrases to describe the marriage of nationalism and socialism, the unification of “workers of the mind and workers of the fist.” National Socialism knew neither bourgeois nor proletarian, only “the German working for his people.”

At times he would combine the two objects of hatred: “The Jew is and remains the world’s enemy, and his greatest weapon, Marxism, is and remains a plague for humanity,” he wrote in February 1927 in the Völkischer Beobachter.

Appropriating Christianity

National Socialism depicted itself as a political religion. “What does Christianity mean for us today?” Goebbels wrote in his diary, “National Socialism is a religion.” This view corresponded to the party’s inflation of itself to a “community of faith” and its programme to an “ideological creed.” Like the biblical apostles, the task of the Führer’s disciples was to spread Nazi principles “like a gospel among our people.” This was one reason why Hitler staunchly refused to consider any amendment of the original twenty five-point NSDAP manifesto. He once told his close confidante Hanfstaengl, who once suggested some realistic modifications, “Absolutely not. It’s staying as it is. The New Testament, too, is full of contradictions, but that did nothing to hinder the spread of Christianity.” At the Nazi Party’s 1925 Christmas celebrations, Hitler drew a revealing parallel between early Christianity and the “movement.” Christ had also been initially mocked, and yet the Christian faith had become a massive global movement. “We want to achieve the same thing in the arena of politics,” the NSDP chairman declared. A year later he was explicitly casting himself as Jesus’s successor, who would complete his work. “National Socialism,” Hitler proclaimed, “is nothing other than compliance with Christ’s teachings.”

“…From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing…

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. …With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews.”

Winston Leonard

- Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Zionism versus Bolshevism
(Illustrated Sunday Herald,
8 February, 1920)

In his public speeches, especially in their final crescendos, Hitler often utilised religious vocabulary. He would conclude with a final “Amen!” or invoke his “faith in a new Holy German Empire” or call upon “Our Lord to give me the strength to continue my work in the face of all the demons.” He constantly warned his followers that there would be no shortage of sacrifices along the way. Here, too, he drew parallels with early Christianity: “We have a path of thorns to go down and are proud of it.” The “blood witnesses” who had lost their lives for the Nazi movement, Hitler promised, would enjoy the sort of reverence once reserved for the Christian martyrs.

The Fascist Manifesto

Together with Anton Drexler (a DAP leader from whom he acquired the idea of fusing nationalism and socialism, of freeing the working classes from the “false teachings” of Marxism and winning them over for the nationalist cause), Hitler produced a party programme that forcefully expressed ideas in currency among ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic circles at the time. Ulrich notes that at the top of the agenda was the demand for all ethnic Germans to be united within a greater Germany. This was followed by demands for the revocation of the Treaty of Versailles and the return of Germany’s colonies. Point 4 clearly expressed the party’s anti-Semitic orientation, reading “Only an ethnic comrade [Volksgenosse] can be a citizen. Only someone who is of German blood, irrespective of religion, can be an ethnic comrade. Thus no Jew can be an ethnic comrade.” This was followed by the demands that Jews in Germany be treated as foreigners under the law and that all further Jewish immigration be halted.

Also there were demands for “the eradication of work-free, effortless income” (this was obviously pointed against Jewish moneylenders and bankers) and the “confiscation of all wartime profits without exception”. Demands for nationalisation of large banks, for profit-sharing and for an expansion of the pension system were designed to appeal to the working classes. A promise to communalise large department stores was aimed at the middle classes, and the prospect of land reform at farmers. The programme also contained slogans like “communal welfare comes before selfishness” and “strengthening of central authority”, combined with a pledge to fight against “the corrupting parliamentary system”.

As a whole, the programme/manifesto left no doubt that the aim was to get rid of the democracy of the young Weimar Republic and create an authoritarian government for an ethnic community, which would no longer have any room for Jews. At the same time, it also had a dash of what we now call lemon socialism (nationalization in certain cases, for example)[7]. It was read out to a 2000-strong public event on 24 February 1920, to great applause of the majority and loud protests from opponents from the political Left, who were also in attendance in sizeable numbers.

It is testimony to Hitler’s political acumen  that he added the qualifying phrase “National Socialist” (from which ‘Nazi’ is derived) to the lacklustre “German Workers Party”. Nationalism and Socialism were the two most powerful political trends of the time, and he tried to dupe and attract people of both persuasions. The party was thus renamed as the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (NSDAP) and this meeting came to be counted as the foundational act of the Nazi movement. As Hitler wrote at the end of the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle), “A fire was sparked, from whose embers the sword would necessarily come which would restore freedom to the German Siegfried and life to the German nation…The hall gradually emptied. The movement was under way.”

For Hitler, socialism was of course only a façade. But there were some who took it more seriously – Joseph Goebbels and Gregor Strasser for example. “National and socialist!” Goebbels wrote in his diary. “What has priority and what comes second? There’s no doubt about the answer among us here in the west. First socialist redemption, and then national liberation will arrive like a powerful storm wind.” In 1925 they came up with ideas of a revision of the party programme along these lines. To this end they founded a “Working Association North-west”, which explicitly recognized Hitler as the leader. When they proposed the revision in a conference, they were confident that Hitler would agree with them. Actually the Führer rubbished all that vehemently, declaring the party programme sacrosanct. The Working Association North-west was finished. But before long Hitler befriended and won over both Goebbels and Strasser. It was the last time there would be an open debate about the party’s political orientation, although differences on tactics would surface again.

Notes:

1. Cited by Kurt Gossweiler, op cit. p 121.

2. n the case of Spain, we refer mainly to the Falange Espanola founded by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1933 and a few other kindred groups which were subsequently merged together under the fascist dictatorship of General Franco (1939 – 1975).

3. This approach – concentrating all energy only on his own agenda and organization and refusing to unite with any other party or movement even at crucial junctures – would remain a permanent feature of his politics.

4. he following description is excerpted from Ullrich’s well-researched work.

5.Radical or not, anti-Semitism was a powerful trend in many parts of the world. To cite just one example, the racist pamphlet by American carmaker Henry Ford, “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” -- which had appeared in German translation in 1922 and became a huge hit -- is said to have been a major influence on Hitler.

6. Fixation on money and the drive to accumulate more and more of it.

7. The “anti-capitalist strain” -- hence (national) socialism -- obviously relates to usurious capital, or as Hitler put it, the practice of amassing wealth “without sweat and effort” and was actually targeted at the Jewish community who were dominant in this branch of business. Latent anti-Semitic prejudices  had long been  rife across Europe (recall The Merchant of Venice), so the conditions existed for many to succumb to Hitler’s scapegoating of the Jews in this context. This ‘anti-capitalist’ charade would be maintained in later years too (though never emphasised or acted upon, and kept completely hidden during close interactions with business magnates) so as to project a pro-worker, pro-poor image.

Hitler_I