One of my Patreons who’s been a viewer of mine for a while,
and has an interesting username, semi famous on the channel now, has said:
“Hi TIK! I was wondering if you could do a video talking about the history of the Czech
National Socialist Party. It doesn't have to be long, I just wanted to learn [...] more
about it and whatever connections it may have had with it's German counterpart.
Cheers!” Okay, Hitler’s Nazi Party
was originally founded as the DAP (German Workers’ Party) in January 1919 before Hitler was on the
scene. Later in 1920, Hitler renamed it to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).
But the NSDAP wasn’t the first Nazi Party. Another Nazi party was founded in Austria in
1903 called the DAP (German Workers’ Party) just to confuse us. This was later renamed the German
National Socialist Workers’ Party (DNSAP). But again, this wasn’t the first Nazi Party either.
The first actual Nazi Party was the Czech National Socialist Party which was founded
in 1897 after a portion of the Social Democrat Czech Party split from the main body and formed
a new party. This faction didn’t like the internationalism of the Social Democratic
Party (which belonged to the Second International) and basically wanted a nationalistic version of
the same ideas. Their stated aims were: “Collectivizing the means of development,
surmounting of the class struggle by national discipline,
moral rebirth and democracy as the conditions of socialism, a powerful popular army, etc.”
“A study of its programs reveals other important points: anticlericalism,
an intimate synthesis between nationalism and socialism, trust in the working class,
the peasantry, and the lower middle class, opposition to the nobility - all reminiscent
of German national socialism except for the lack of an anti-Jewish sentiment.”
The Czech National Socialist Party based itself on what’s known as the ‘Taborite’ Movement, which had
been a major faction of the Hussite Movement in the early to mid-1400s. To give a brief history
of this movement, basically a proto-protestant priest called Giovanni Hus was executed by the
Catholic Church in 1415 after criticising the corruption of the church. This sparked a massive
revolutionary movement - the Hussite Revolution - and the Hussite Wars. One of the radical factions
of this movement was the Taborites, who were egalitarianists, collectivists, democrats,
and nationalists, although there is a debate about how democratic or socialistic they actually were.
Later in the 1800s, during the rise of nationalism, socialism and democracy,
many Czechs started to believe that the Taborites were the forerunners of
modernity. The Czechs and Sudeten Germans were influenced heavily by Taboritism,
although they ignored its anti-German character. Instead they embraced its anti-Catholic and
anti-Austrian stance. What’s important here, though, is that Mussolini was also influenced
by the Hussite Revolution, but also by the Czech National Socialist Party. Mussolini
wrote an anti-Catholic book in 1913 that was called Giovanni Hus, the Truthful.
Yes, it was a book about Hus and the subsequent Hussite Revolution in the 1400s. He was fascinated
by the popular movement that sprang up in the wake of Hus’ death. But he only wrote this book because
the Czech National Socialist Party was founded on the principles of the Taborite-Hussite movements.
“Above all, the historic picture of the Taborite “identitarian” revolution made
a strong impact on a group of Czech Socialists who despaired of achieving
international socialism. Hence in 1896 they formed the Czech National Socialist party,
and this induced Mussolini to study the “doubly collectivist” Taborite-Hussite movement.”
The German National Socialists were also influenced by the founding of
the Czech National Socialist Party, to the point that they were scared at one
point that they were just copying what the Czechs were doing. But I would argue that,
even though they were all influencing each other, none of these parties were the same. There are
enough distinctions between Italian Fascism, British Fascism, German National Socialism,
Czech National Socialism, Romanian Iron Guard Fascism, and even Spanish Falangism,
that it’s impossible to say that they were all the same or similar. I’ve done videos
explaining the differences between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism before,
and another video on Spain, and I intend to do one on Oswald Mosley in the near future.
But as an example, Mussolini’s mistress was Jewish. She was also a member of the Fascist Party
of Italy. As were 10,000 other Jews - a third of the adult population of Jews in Italy. Yet,
we’re told that Fascists don’t like Jews? But it turns out that it was the German National
Socialists are the ones who don’t like Jews - not necessarily the Fascists. The Fascists in
Italy weren’t anti-semitic (except for the one anti-Semite weirdo in the party - Julius Evola).
So, I’ve said in the past that Fascism and National Socialism aren’t the same ideology,
even though they did influence each other, and I still stand by that. But
I will also add that Fascism itself isn’t a unified ideology. British Fascists weren’t
the same as Italian Fascists, who weren’t the same as Spanish Fascists.
But something I’ve not mentioned before is the fact that National Socialists aren’t all
the same either. There are distinctions between different factions within the umbrella of National
Socialism. And the Czech National Socialists - the first Nazis - are a fantastic example
of this. Not only were they not anti-Semitic, but at one point they actually embraced Zionism
and supported Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930s (until their country was destroyed
by Hitler). They did adopt a policy during the Second World War whereby they wanted Germans,
Hungarians and Jews to either leave the country or assimilate to Czech culture,
and there were issues that caused tension (like Jewish Zionists asking for special privilages,
which the Czech National Socialists weren’t willing to grant), but they were cooperating
with Zionists at the time, and there was no intent to murder the minorities. In fact, in
contrast to the Czech National Socialists, it was the Czech Communist Party that was anti-semitic.
“The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was, until 1935, the only multinational party in
Czechoslovakia. Yet, it did not recognize Jews as a nationality… As the historian Vit Strobach
has shown, to the extent that the Communist Party concerned itself with Jewish matters,
it was in taking a staunch anti-Zionist position.”
One of the founding members of the Czech Communist Party wrote in 1931:
“Modern capitalism has destroyed the monopolistic economic position of Jews,
disbanded the ghetto, uprooted religion [and] unmasked the Jewish nation as a fiction.”
“Zionism is nothing more than the phenomenon that one can observe in someone on their
deathbed who is filled for a moment with a new will to life just before they die.”
So, this is really interesting because while Hitler’s National Socialist Party
was anti-semitic, the Czech National Socialist Party largely wasn’t. Same with Mussolini’s
Fascist Party in Italy - again, Mussolini had a Jewish mistress. But while the narrative has been
that Fascism is one united doctrine, and that National Socialism was a version of Fascism,
in reality that’s definitely not the case. Hitler not only destroyed Fascist Austria,
but also National Socialist Czechoslovakia. The Czech National Socialists were in power during
the Munich Crisis, were destroyed by the German National Socialists, and fled to Britain. They
then regained power in Czechoslovakia in 1945 during Communist rule (yes, the Czech National
Socialists collaborated with the Communists), and were only ousted by the Communists in 1948.
So Hitler was a Nazi who destroyed a Fascist state and then a Nazi state, and the Czech Nazis (who
weren’t anti-Semitic) fought against Hitler and were on the side of the British and Soviets during
or after the war, were placed back in power by the Communists, and cooperated with them until they
were ousted by the Communists in 1948. Yes, the Communists were collaborating with the Nazis after
the Second World War. In other words, history is far more nuanced than is often made out to be,
and I would also say that a lot of people are simply not aware of this. Hopefully,
this video, and this channel, has gone some way to opening your eyes, and if you’re interested in
more videos like this, you can check out these ones here. Thanks for watching, bye for now.