On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Krzysztof Szczawinski explains why socialism — of the left (the Soviet Union) and the right (Nazi Germany) — was the economic driver that pushed Europe into war in 1939. German socialism (in one state) could only continue to grow by annexing resources and manufacturing capabilities from neighbouring states, and by August 1939 it was Poland’s turn:
Socialism was at the origin of the war. Not as a coincidence. As a necessity. The socialist economic model generates contradictions it cannot resolve internally – the calculation problem, the misallocation, the stagnation, the mounting failure. War is the exit. It provides the external enemy that explains the internal failure. It justifies the total mobilization the system always wanted. It consumes the surplus population the economy cannot employ. It redirects the resentment outward.
Does this remind you of anything?
The evidence is not subtle. The NSDAP program of 1920 reads like a standard socialist manifesto. The economic reality confirmed it – price controls, industrial planning, state allocation of raw materials, entrepreneurs reduced to government functionaries. Private property in name only. Mises called it Zwangswirtschaft – coercive economy. Hayek dedicated a chapter of The Road to Serfdom to the socialist roots of Nazism. Both writing from observation, not retrospect.
After 1945 the Soviet victors imposed their version and attached the capitalist label to every rival. Western textbooks followed. The lie became the curriculum.
The real divide has never been left versus right. It is collective control versus individual freedom. Once you place National Socialism correctly within the family of collectivisms, the political spectrum becomes legible – and the war becomes explicable.
When the system fails — and it always fails — it needs an enemy. The bigger the failure, the bigger the enemy required.
Imagine being Poland. Squeezed between two socialist systems, both searching for their enemy.
We were it.
