To: andy_card
Nationalism and Socialism are two philosophies at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. Hitler was able to attract both ex-communist workers and their industrialist bosses, by playing both sides off against each other.
Yes, because communism and socialism were so similar, they drew the same people to them. Industrialist bosses, even today, are attracted to socialism because of it's opportunities in the creation of monopolies.
Hitler's Nationalism emphasized supreme loyalty to the nation and the race, what we'd call patriotism, and the errosion to that effect of personal liberties. At the same time, he appealed to the Left by promising full employment and a redistribution of wealth.
This is not inconsistent with socialism. Socialism demands supreme loyalty to the "cause". Because Germany's "people" included only Aryans, the people he was appealing to weren't global workers everywhere...because they weren't any "people" like that, the only ones that counted were his "people".
The Leftist side of the equation was more or less dropped after the 1934 Night of the Long Knives, by which time he had destroyed the Left and now needed to attract the full support of the middle classes. Certainly by the start of the Second World War, Hitler's Nazism was all Nationalism and no Socialism.
Indeed this is false. A quick look at the situation tells us that all industries were under the control of government via strict regulation. The regulations were onerous enough as to be indistinguishable from outright ownership. Pay was dictated, a workers' place in society was dictated, little was left to individual choice or a free market.
The policies in effect exactly parallel those in any other socialist country.
To: Maelstrom
The policies in effect exactly parallel those in any other socialist country. Very much so. During the war Hitler instituted programs of duty-bound labor terms to the reich among the German people. They were used for periods of work in industry, not unlike the Soviet industrial expansion plans. In fact, Goebbels once said that the Stalinist Soviet Union was a model of National-Socialism in action. This was obviously before Hitler turned on his former ally Stalin and decided to challenge the soviets in order to expand his power and resources.
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