WI: Hitler goes Communist?

Not gonna happen. Goebbels was the most senior Nazi figure who might have ended up in a Moscow-line communist party, and even then as a rather idiosyncratic figure. Hitler came from the start from a virulently anti-Marxist tradition and a lot of the leftier gestures of his movement were calculated politics.

I would clarify, though, that many German leftists were heartily nationalistic after their fashion. Who was striking in the occupied Ruhr?

The Strasserists weren't likely to tow Moscow's line.
 
Hitler was rather mercurial, politically, before his joining the nascent German Workers Party as an informant. Yeah, he was quite nationalist, but the specific expression didn't solidify until later.

He was also notorious for editing his own past to make it more in tune with his political ambitions in the present. There is some evidence to suggest that he marched in the funeral procession of the Bavarian Independent Social Democratic leader Kurt Eisner, wearing a black armband of mourning as well as a red arm band of socialist revolution.

Hum. I had read that he was active in army soviets, a fact later supressed, but that source said he urged the men in his unit to stay neutral during the Munich fighting so I put it down to general demoralisation and disillusion. I hadn't know this. And as you say, it's very difficult to know about his early career.
 
The Strasserists weren't likely to tow Moscow's line.

Goebbels didn't start off as a Strasserist, that is, a member of the 'left-opposition' of the Nazi party: earlier, when he was politically involved in terms of his opinions and writing but not active in political organisations, he'd been an out-and-out red. And he remained into his Strasserist period a personal admirer of Lenin.

Oh, and it's 'toe'. :p Forgive me, I know it's obnoxiously pedantic, but I do think that if we the English-speaking world have lost touch with what a phrase actually means, we should stop using it.
 
Hum. I had read that he was active in army soviets, a fact later supressed, but that source said he urged the men in his unit to stay neutral during the Munich fighting so I put it down to general demoralisation and disillusion. I hadn't know this. And as you say, it's very difficult to know about his early career.
He's clearly a complicated person, rather unsure of what he believed and where he stood in the world. About what you'd expect from a depressed, demoralized German soldier who'd been living on 1500 calories a day for the past year.

It would be possible for him to tip the other way, but it's unlikely he'd become a leader figure if he did. He was a big fish in a small pond when he joined the nascent NSDAP, and his ego grew with the party. Had he joined one of the two large and fairly established Communist parties in Germany (the progressively more Soviet dominated KPD or the council communist KAPD) he'd just have been another party member in a large organization.
 
He's clearly a complicated person, rather unsure of what he believed and where he stood in the world. About what you'd expect from a depressed, demoralized German soldier who'd been living on 1500 calories a day for the past year.

It would be possible for him to tip the other way, but it's unlikely he'd become a leader figure if he did. He was a big fish in a small pond when he joined the nascent NSDAP, and his ego grew with the party. Had he joined one of the two large and fairly established Communist parties in Germany (the progressively more Soviet dominated KPD or the council communist KAPD) he'd just have been another party member in a large organization.

Which, in of itself, could provide an interesting Timeline.
 
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