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Hitler Favored Self-Sacrifice Too
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The mainstream press is aglow over President Obama’s call for Americans to sacrifice for the common good. Obama’s plea mimics that of President Franklin Roosevelt, who asked Americans to do the same thing as part of his New Deal for America in the 1930s.

Back then, it was someone else who was aglow over the president’s call for people to sacrifice for the common good:

“The Reich chancellor requests Mr. Dodd to present his greetings to President Roosevelt. He congratulates the president upon his heroic effort in the interest of the American people. The president’s successful struggle against economic distress is being followed by the entire German people with interest and admiration. The Reich chancellor is in accord with the president that the virtues of sense of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and discipline must be the supreme rule of the whole nation. This moral demand, which the president is addressing to every single citizen, is only the quintessence of German philosophy of the state, expressed in the motto “The public weal before the private gain.” —from a letter Adolf Hitler sent to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Dodd on March 14, 1934, as quoted in John Toland’s book Adolf Hitler: The Definite Biography.

“The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised ‘Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies’ and ‘the development toward an authoritarian state’ based on the ‘demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest.’ —from a review entitled “Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt: What FDR Had in Common with the Other Charismatic Collectivists of the 30s” by David Boaz of Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.

In libertarian contradistinction:

“I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.... It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing….It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.” —from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.