Posted on 04/03/2013 9:58:37 AM PDT by Nachum
WRONG! Hitler in his speeches time and time again talked about removing classes from German society.
The only difference between Nazis and Communists was that the Nazis had snappier uniforms.
The Nazis did not confiscate and nationalize private property (at least not the property of non-Jewish Germans). Hitler had the backing of bankers, industrialists, and aristocratic landowners because regardless of what liberties they lost under his rule, they would at least be able to keep their land and wealth under the Nazis. Far from having their property nationalized, many industrialists like Krupp and Porsche became filthy rich thanks to government contracts. The communists would have seized the property and probably would have killed people like Krupp and Porsche, as happened in Russia.
In other words, private individuals could own businesses and land in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. They couldn't in Communist Russia.
Russia did allow some private enterprise...see the “New Economic Policy”.
The Nazis could nationalize anything they wanted to on a whim, just as the Communists could, but would at times allow private enterprise, when it benefited them.
Stalin put an end to NEP by 1928 or 1929, from then on there would be no private enterprise in the Soviet Union until the last years of Gorbachev.
The Nazis could nationalize anything they wanted to on a whim, just as the Communists could, but would at times allow private enterprise, when it benefited them.
They certainly had the power to do so, but in general they didn't. Virtually no industries were nationalized by the Nazis - factories remained in private hands. Even banks remained nominally private. The only property that was consistently confiscated by the state was the property of Jews and other "non-Germans."
The point is that the German aristocracy, along bankers and industrialists could happily coexist with the Nazi government. They wouldn't be able to do so under Communist rule, which is why they threw their support behind what they perceived to be the lesser evil in the 1930's.
The Nazis thoroughly intended on eventually liquidating the business class once they had won the war.
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