Mark P. @MarkPuttre

The party repeatedly called itself socialist, attacked “interest slavery,” denounced department stores and stock exchanges, and claimed to stand for the German worker against both Marxist internationalism and liberal capitalism. What the word meant inside that movement is the decisive point. For Goebbels and the early Nazi ideologues, “socialism” did not mean the abolition of private property or the dictatorship of the proletariat. It meant the subordination of the individual to the racial community (Volksgemeinschaft). The “folk comrades” were bound together by blood and destiny; the economy existed to serve that collective racial body. Class conflict was to be replaced by racial solidarity. Marxist socialism, with its internationalism and its emphasis on class over nation, was treated as an enemy ideology, not a close relative. That distinction was not cosmetic. Once in power the regime destroyed the independent socialist and communist parties, trade unions, and working-class organizations. It retained private ownership of most enterprises on paper while subjecting production, prices, labor allocation, and investment to extensive state direction and political priority (rearmament, autarky, war). The system was collectivist and anti-liberal. It was not Marxist. So the short answer is that the Nazis used the word “socialist” deliberately and frequently, but they redefined it around race and nation rather than class. Treating that usage as proof that National Socialism and Marxist socialism were simply the same project collapses the actual differences in starting point, enemy, and ultimate aim. The shared features (state command, suppression of independent institutions, coercion) are real. The claim that therefore “the Nazis were socialists” in the ordinary twentieth-century sense of the term is not.

@jaynitx He is showing his reverence of Will Durant.

The asymmetry is deliberate and durable. Nazism sits in Western elite culture as pure, unredeemable evil, while the communist regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot are treated with selective amnesia, contextualization, and residual moral credit. The body counts are not in serious dispute. The difference lies in how the two systems were packaged and processed. Marxism arrived with an elaborate utopian vocabulary of equality, liberation, and historical progress. Even after the famines, purges, and camps, the language of the ideal retained its power and could always be described as a noble project that had been betrayed. National Socialism offered no comparable universalist promise. Its vision was hierarchical, racial, and explicitly anti-egalitarian, which made it easier to treat as pure malignancy rather than a tragedy of good intentions. Wartime necessity and postwar intellectual culture locked the double standard in place. The Western alliance with Stalin required a temporary suspension of moral clarity that never fully reversed. Large parts of the intelligentsia had already invested in the Soviet experiment as the future that worked or as a necessary counterweight to capitalism. Those networks moved into universities, publishing, and the institutions that shape elite opinion. Anti-communism was often coded as crude or right-wing, while anti-fascism remained the highest moral credential. The result was an educational and media environment in which the Holocaust stood as the defining atrocity of the century and the far larger death tolls under communist regimes received briefer, more qualified treatment. The political utility of the distinction completed the process. Because Nazism was defeated and left without respectable defenders, it could be invoked freely as the ultimate warning against the right. Every conservative position could be placed on a continuum ending at Hitler. Fully equating communism with Nazism would have implicated too much of the modern progressive tradition and its soft spot for egalitarian planning. Both systems concentrated power, suppressed independent life, and treated individuals as disposable. Those structural similarities are obvious from the primary record. They are downplayed because one narrative remains useful and the other remains inconvenient.

Calling Hitler a socialist is largely a rhetorical inversion of the long-standing tactic that treats any conservative or right-leaning position as the first step toward Nazism. Both versions use the same mechanism: attach the most radioactive historical label available to the opposing side and treat the association as self-evident. Neither version does serious analytical work. Hitler’s project was not an economic theory. It was a racial-national vision of German dominance, territorial expansion, and the subordination of other peoples. The economy was an instrument to be commanded in service of that vision. He was indifferent to the finer points of socialist doctrine and hostile to Marxist internationalism and class analysis. Treating the presence of state direction or anti-capitalist rhetoric as sufficient to classify the regime as “socialist” in the Marxist sense flattens the actual ideology. The shared structural features with other collectivist dictatorships are real and worth noting. Turning that observation into the slogan “Hitler was a socialist, therefore socialists are Hitler” is the same low-resolution game played from the other direction. It does not clarify the differences in starting points, and it does not improve the quality of the argument. It simply tries to reverse the direction of the smear.

Left and right have lost most of their usefulness as political categories. The left/right spectrum was already a crude simplification in the 20th century. It becomes almost useless once you try to map movements that combine heavy state power, identity politics, economic intervention, and cultural radicalism in different combinations. National Socialism, Soviet communism, modern progressive managerialism, and various nationalist or theocratic projects all force the same tired argument about which side of a 200-year-old French seating chart they belong on. What actually matters is more concrete: the relationship between the individual and the state, the status of private property and voluntary exchange, the role of truth versus narrative, and whether power is constrained by law or treated as an instrument for remaking society. Those distinctions cut across the old labels. Once you start using those criteria instead of left/right, a lot of the standard talking points collapse.

@RobertMDawn @kevinnbass Agreed, you wind up in pretty much the same place. Churchill likened it to trying to distinguish the difference between the North Pole and the South Pole.

Was Hitler a socialist? Too many people assume that because the party called itself National Socialism, it must have been socialist in the ordinary sense of the word. That assumption does not hold up. The inclusion of “socialism” in the party name was largely tactical. Early on it helped attract industrial workers and undercut the actual socialist and communist parties. Once power was secured, the more genuinely left-leaning elements inside the movement were purged or marginalized, and the economic policy that remained was state-directed private enterprise organized for racial and military ends. Calling that system socialist, even in a loose sense, stretches the word past useful meaning. Hitler was not an economic theorist. William Shirer makes this point repeatedly in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Hitler did not start from theories of value, class, or ownership the way Marx did. His core framework was racial and political: the German people as a superior biological and historical entity that must expand and dominate, with himself as the instrument of that destiny. Economics was strictly instrumental. Private property, markets, and business were tolerated only when they served the racial and military goals of the regime. When they conflicted with those goals, they were overridden without theoretical hesitation. This is why the endless online argument over whether Hitler was a “socialist” usually misses the point. National Socialism rejected liberal capitalism and used heavy state direction, but it also rejected Marxist class struggle and internationalism. Race and nation replaced class as the central categories. The economic arrangements were secondary because economics was never the starting point in Hitler’s mind. The recent online habit of insisting “Hitler was a socialist” is mostly a rhetorical maneuver. It tries to attach the moral and historical weight of the Nazi regime to modern left-wing or social-democratic projects by way of a shared label. The maneuver is weak because the core ideologies do not match, and it is unnecessary. Socialism’s own twentieth-century record—famines, purges, economic stagnation, police states—already supplies more than enough evidence of its failures. Dragging Hitler into the argument as a supposed socialist does not strengthen the critique; it muddies it and invites the very semantic fights that obscure the clearer historical cases. Socialism does not require Hitler to look bad. Its own results are sufficient.

@Renanl0000 @brivael Exactly.

First, the presence of the words “socialist” and “workers” in the party name was not pure window dressing from the beginning. There was a real anti-capitalist current inside the early NSDAP (the Strasser wing) that took the economic rhetoric seriously. Hitler eventually destroyed that wing, but he did not abandon extensive state direction of the economy. Price controls, wage controls, forced cartels, production quotas, and the subordination of private capital to political priorities remained central features of the regime. Second, “preserving private property” is not the same as running a free-market or capitalist system. Under the Nazis, ownership was conditional. Firms that failed to meet state goals could be expropriated or have their management replaced. Capital was directed according to the needs of rearmament and autarky, not according to market signals. That is a form of economic control that overlaps heavily with socialist methods even if the ultimate justification was racial and national rather than class-based. Third, defining “the left” exclusively as Marxist internationalism allows the argument to win by definition. Any system that is nationalist, hierarchical, and anti-Marxist is automatically placed on the right, regardless of how thoroughly it subordinates the economy to political command. That definitional move is convenient, but it leaves the actual economic structure under-examined. The regime was violently anti-Marxist and anti-liberal. It was also heavily interventionist and anti-market in practice. Both things are true at once. Reducing the second fact to “propaganda” or “alliance with capitalism” is the part of the standard framing that papers over the continuity of economic control.

Yes, but he didn’t stop at the Social Democrats. The Communists were targeted even more aggressively from the start. After the Reichstag Fire, thousands of KPD members were arrested under the emergency decrees, many sent to the first concentration camps. Both parties were banned. The Nazis treated the actual socialist and communist left as primary enemies, not fellow travelers.

@warnerelliott60 @kevinnbass You're quite correct. I've grown tired of trying to point out to people the difference between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks.

Hitler a socialist? Really? Too many people assume that because the party called itself National Socialism, it must have been socialist in the ordinary sense of the word. That assumption does not hold up. The inclusion of “socialism” in the party name was largely tactical. Early on it helped attract industrial workers and undercut the actual socialist and communist parties. Once power was secured, the more genuinely left-leaning elements inside the movement were purged or marginalized, and the economic policy that remained was state-directed private enterprise organized for racial and military ends. Calling that system socialist, even in a loose sense, stretches the word past useful meaning. Hitler was not an economic theorist. William Shirer makes this point repeatedly in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Hitler did not start from theories of value, class, or ownership the way Marx did. His core framework was racial and political: the German people as a superior biological and historical entity that must expand and dominate, with himself as the instrument of that destiny. Economics was strictly instrumental. Private property, markets, and business were tolerated only when they served the racial and military goals of the regime. When they conflicted with those goals, they were overridden without theoretical hesitation. This is why the endless online argument over whether Hitler was a “socialist” usually misses the point. National Socialism rejected liberal capitalism and used heavy state direction, but it also rejected Marxist class struggle and internationalism. Race and nation replaced class as the central categories. The economic arrangements were secondary because economics was never the starting point in Hitler’s mind. The recent online habit of insisting “Hitler was a socialist” is mostly a rhetorical maneuver. It tries to attach the moral and historical weight of the Nazi regime to modern left-wing or social-democratic projects by way of a shared label. The maneuver is weak because the core ideologies do not match, and it is unnecessary. Socialism’s own twentieth-century record—famines, purges, economic stagnation, police states—already supplies more than enough evidence of its failures. Dragging Hitler into the argument as a supposed socialist does not strengthen the critique; it muddies it and invites the very semantic fights that obscure the clearer historical cases. Socialism does not require Hitler to look bad. Its own results are sufficient.

@MylnNguyen @DanBurmawy Yes, but IRS enforcement of the “Johnson Amendment” has been selective and inconsistent for decades. On paper the rule applies equally to all religious institutions; the difference is (1) who are they endorsing or criticizing, and (2) who actually faces consequences.

Pointing to skills that existed two or three thousand years earlier does not explain the absence of railroads, modern ports, universities, or functioning civil services in the nineteenth century. Those are different categories of achievement. The fact that a civilization once possessed advanced techniques does not mean it was on a path to generate the specific forms of modernity that arrived with colonial rule. The comparison is about what was actually built and left behind in the modern period, not about who had the earliest iron tools.

Was Hitler a socialist? Too many people assume that because the party called itself National Socialism, it must have been socialist in the ordinary sense of the word. That assumption does not hold up. The inclusion of “socialism” in the party name was largely tactical. Early on it helped attract industrial workers and undercut the actual socialist and communist parties. Once power was secured, the more genuinely left-leaning elements inside the movement were purged or marginalized, and the economic policy that remained was state-directed private enterprise organized for racial and military ends. Calling that system socialist, even in a loose sense, stretches the word past useful meaning. Hitler was not an economic theorist. William Shirer makes this point repeatedly in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Hitler did not start from theories of value, class, or ownership the way Marx did. His core framework was racial and political: the German people as a superior biological and historical entity that must expand and dominate, with himself as the instrument of that destiny. Economics was strictly instrumental. Private property, markets, and business were tolerated only when they served the racial and military goals of the regime. When they conflicted with those goals, they were overridden without theoretical hesitation. This is why the endless online argument over whether Hitler was a “socialist” usually misses the point. National Socialism rejected liberal capitalism and used heavy state direction, but it also rejected Marxist class struggle and internationalism. Race and nation replaced class as the central categories. The economic arrangements were secondary because economics was never the starting point in Hitler’s mind. The recent online habit of insisting “Hitler was a socialist” is mostly a rhetorical maneuver. It tries to attach the moral and historical weight of the Nazi regime to modern left-wing or social-democratic projects by way of a shared label. The maneuver is weak because the core ideologies do not match, and it is unnecessary. Socialism’s own twentieth-century record—famines, purges, economic stagnation, police states—already supplies more than enough evidence of its failures. Dragging Hitler into the argument as a supposed socialist does not strengthen the critique; it muddies it and invites the very semantic fights that obscure the clearer historical cases. Socialism does not require Hitler to look bad. Its own results are sufficient.

The inclusion of “socialism” in the party name was largely tactical. Early on it helped attract industrial workers and undercut the actual socialist and communist parties. Once power was secured, the more genuinely left-leaning elements inside the movement were purged or marginalized, and the economic policy that remained was state-directed private enterprise organized for racial and military ends. Calling that system socialist, even in a loose sense, stretches the word past useful meaning. The recent online habit of insisting “Hitler was a socialist” is mostly a rhetorical maneuver. It tries to attach the moral and historical weight of the Nazi regime to modern left-wing or social-democratic projects by way of a shared label. The maneuver is weak because the core ideologies do not match, and it is unnecessary. Socialism’s own twentieth-century record -- famines, purges, economic stagnation, police states -- already supplies more than enough evidence of its failures. Dragging Hitler into the argument as a supposed socialist does not strengthen the critique; it muddies it and invites the very semantic fights that obscure the clearer historical cases. Socialism does not require Hitler to look bad. Its own results are sufficient.

Hitler was not an economic theorist. William Shirer makes this point repeatedly in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Hitler did not start from theories of value, class, or ownership the way Marx did. His core framework was racial and political: the German people as a superior biological and historical entity that must expand and dominate, with himself as the instrument of that destiny. Economics was strictly instrumental. Private property, markets, and business were tolerated only when they served the racial and military goals of the regime. When they conflicted with those goals, they were overridden without theoretical hesitation. This is why the endless online argument over whether Hitler was a “socialist” usually misses the point. National Socialism rejected liberal capitalism and used heavy state direction, but it also rejected Marxist class struggle and internationalism. Race and nation replaced class as the central categories. The economic arrangements were secondary because economics was never the starting point in Hitler’s mind.

Hitler was not an economic theorist. William Shirer makes this point repeatedly in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Hitler did not start from theories of value, class, or ownership the way Marx did. His core framework was racial and political: the German people as a superior biological and historical entity that must expand and dominate, with himself as the instrument of that destiny. Economics was strictly instrumental. Private property, markets, and business were tolerated only when they served the racial and military goals of the regime. When they conflicted with those goals, they were overridden without theoretical hesitation. This is why the endless online argument over whether Hitler was a “socialist” usually misses the point. National Socialism rejected liberal capitalism and used heavy state direction, but it also rejected Marxist class struggle and internationalism. Race and nation replaced class as the central categories. The economic arrangements were secondary because economics was never the starting point in Hitler’s mind.

@AnthonyVicino Bukharin, Tukhachevsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Liu Shaoqi, Peng Dehuai.

@farzyness Bukharin, Tukhachevsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Liu Shaoqi, Peng Dehuai.