If faith and hope were integral to National Socialism, so too, surprisingly enough, was charity. This ceased to be an uncomplicated reflection of hum… - Michael Burleigh

Power was briefly seized by the Communists, who proclaimed a Bavarian Soviet Republic. Their leader, Eugen Levine, received the blessing of Lenin, who characteristically wished to know how many bourgeois hostages had been taken. A ‘classist’ tone was soon apparent. Milk shortages were rationalized with the argument: ‘What does it matter? . . . Most of it goes to the children of the bourgeoisie anyway. We are not interested in keeping them alive. No harm if they die – they’d only grow into enemies of the proletariat.’

Although Christianity was an integral aspect of many early socialist movements – and in Britain remains so to this day – in general the Churches arranged themselves on the side of conservatism, partly as a result of their traumatic experience at the hands of democratic mobs in revolutionary France and elsewhere. This alliance of throne and altar duly broke down as the temporal power of the Churches was challenged by the nation states which vied for ultimate human loyalties.

In northern and western Germany, dynamic leaders such as Gregor Strasser and the Elberfeld journalist Joseph Goebbels wanted to concentrate on breaking into the urban socialist vote… These men espoused a Prussian socialism. Whereas Hitler had recently vented his animosity towards Russia, they regarded it ‘as the socialist nationalist state for which consciously or unconsciously the younger generation in all countries long.’