Why the Nazi Party Under Hitler Was Socialist

 

One of the greatest political cons of the 20th century is the lie that the Nazi Party was “far-right.” This is a deliberate distortion, designed to whitewash socialism’s crimes and pin them on its enemies. The truth is unavoidable once you strip away the propaganda: Hitler’s party was a socialist movement, nationalist in rhetoric, socialist in substance. 1. The Name Was No Accident The clue is in the title: National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Leftists like to dismiss the “Socialist” part as meaningless, claiming it was just branding. But parties do not attract millions of followers, seize power, and dominate a nation on a “throwaway” word. Hitler and his circle deliberately sold themselves as the champions of workers, the enemies of free-market capitalism, and the saviours of society through collectivist action. That is the socialist pitch in its purest form. 2. The Nazi Economy: State-Controlled Socialism Under the Nazis, free enterprise was a corpse kept alive in name only. Businesses could not set their own prices, wages, or production goals. The State dictated everything. Industrialists were reduced to glorified managers working under state command. Private property existed only so long as it served the Party. In reality, ownership transferred from individuals to the State. This is not capitalism. This is socialism with a nationalist twist. Instead of abolishing property outright, the Nazis allowed it to exist conditionally, subordinated to the collective. The Soviet model seized the factory. The Nazi model let you keep the factory sign on the door but told you exactly what to produce and how. Both destroyed liberty. 3. Central Planning and Bureaucratic Tyranny Socialism thrives on central planning and the Nazis embraced it with zeal. Agricultural production was dictated. Prices were frozen. Labour was controlled. The Nazi regime was not a “free market” nightmare; it was a suffocating web of regulations, controls, and Party oversight. Free competition, the engine of prosperity, was outlawed. Independent business was strangled. Economic life existed not to serve consumers, but to serve the political goals of the State. That is socialism in practice. 4. Hatred of Capitalism The Nazis echoed Marx’s loathing of capitalism. Both targeted the “bourgeois exploiters.” Both demonized “greedy elites.” Hitler’s particular obsession was with “Jewish capitalists,” but the underlying venom was the same socialist hatred of free exchange, private wealth, and markets unshackled from the State. In Nazi propaganda, the “rapacious capitalist” was always the villain, just as in communist propaganda. The scapegoat changed, but the message remained the same: the free market is evil, and salvation comes only from collectivism. 5. The Nazi Welfare State A defining feature of socialism is the promise of cradle-to-grave security and the Nazis delivered it. Workers received subsidized vacations through “Strength Through Joy.” Health programs, pensions, welfare assistance, and job guarantees were expanded. The Nazis offered precisely what socialists always offer: safety nets administered by the omnipotent State, purchased at the price of individual freedom. 6. Socialist Roots of Nazi Leadership It’s no coincidence that many early Nazis were disillusioned socialists and communists. They saw international Marxism failing and instead pushed for a “national” form of socialism that kept the collectivism while draping it in patriotism. Ernst Röhm and the SA stormtroopers openly demanded a full-blown socialist revolution within Germany. Hitler himself repeatedly spoke against both communism and capitalism, rejecting the internationalist Marxist version of socialism in favor of a nationalist one. 7. Socialism, Just Without the Internationalism The only major split between Hitler and Marx was scope. Marx wanted global class struggle. Hitler wanted national racial struggle. Marx blamed the bourgeoisie. Hitler blamed Jews and “foreign capitalists.” Both systems demanded the same thing: the individual must be crushed beneath the boots of the collective, private life subordinated to the State, and dissent stamped out with terror. 8. The Left’s Great Lie Why, then, are the Nazis constantly branded as “right-wing”? Because the Left cannot afford the truth. If the world understood that both the swastika and the hammer and sickle came from the same ideological family tree, socialism’s mask would fall. The gas chambers and the gulags were cousins. The killing fields of Cambodia and the death camps of Auschwitz were not opposites, but siblings. The Left needs Nazism to be “right-wing” so they can distance themselves from its crimes. But history tells a different story. The Nazis were socialist tyrants who centralized power, eradicated markets, expanded welfare, and indoctrinated the population into worshipping the State. That is not capitalism. That is not conservatism. That is socialism. Conclusion: Socialism in All Its Masks The Nazi Party was not a betrayal of socialism, it was one of its ugliest expressions. Strip away the racial ideology, and what remains is a system of collectivism, central planning, economic control, and the crushing of individual liberty. The 20th century was not a battle between Left and Right. It was a battle between liberty and socialism in its many disguises. The Soviet Union wore the mask of international socialism. Nazi Germany wore the mask of national socialism. Both were drenched in blood. And the lesson is clear: socialism, no matter the costume it wears, always leads to death.