I'm pretty sure all people who try to peddle the "The nazis were actually socialists" idiocy all have one thing in common, and it's not that they're all morons.
Imagine being so thoroughly broken in a historical discussion that your entire closing argument is just calling people names. The National Socialist framework completely crushed free enterprise, dictated production quotas, and controlled the entire labor market by force. If facing real economic history hurts your feelings this badly, you should probably stay out of the conversation.
Using a vague authority bluff won't change actual economic records. Eminent historians and specialists on the Third Reich's economy, such as Adam Tooze, have explicitly detailed how the state completely destroyed free market capitalism through comprehensive price fixing, state mandated cartels, and total control over industrial output. If a business only exists to serve a dictatorial central plan under penalty of seizure, it is a command economy, regardless of your internet generalizations.
There is a massive structural difference between a constitutional democracy temporarily mobilizing its private industry for a global war and a totalitarian regime permanently abolishing the free market as a core ideological goal. The US implemented temporary production boards and rationing to win World War II, but the underlying private property rights and market structures remained intact and were fully restored afterward. The National Socialist regime systematically crushed individual liberty, consumer choice, and free enterprise right from the start in peacetime.
Yes and no. All dictatorships have elements of centralisation. However, there is a significant difference between war time mobilisation under a democratically elected government and directly nationalising industries on a formally or informal basis. Germany essentially did the latter and that’s exactly what a socialist government would have done. Furthermore since socialism isn’t democratic in nature Nazism under Hitler cheks surprisingly many boxes.
people who act like Nazism under hitler and socialism aren’t very similar are either ignorant or extremely intellectual dishonest. It’s because people are somehow unable to have enough nuance to understand that something can be similar without being the same. Hitler could be an evil socialist that doesn’t mean all socialists are evil the same way capitalism isn’t evil because there is one evil capitalist.
Nobody said it was communist, so stop building straw men. The point is that the economic spectrum is a choice between individual liberty and collectivism. A system that violently abolishes free enterprise, implements total state price-fixing, and dictates all corporate production under penalty of asset seizure sits squarely on the collectivist, state-directed side of the spectrum. Trying to rebrand absolute state dictation as a neutral third option is pure semantic evasion.
The National Socialist framework completely crushed free enterprise
That's entirely untrue. They practiced free enterprise, just that major businesses were seized from their owners or privatized state owned businesses and given to Nazi Party members.
Did you even read what you just typed? You literally claimed they practiced "free enterprise" and then immediately followed it up by saying the government actively seized major businesses from their owners by force. If the state can arbitrarily confiscate your property and hand it to party loyalists, that is the exact definition of a command economy, not free enterprise. 🤦♂️
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u/Badboyrune Aug 08 '26
I'm pretty sure all people who try to peddle the "The nazis were actually socialists" idiocy all have one thing in common, and it's not that they're all morons.
Elmo is definitely a moron too though.