If this article can be believed, they - and other socialists - certainly seemed to think they were. How is it that you know better than they, what their political opinions were?
Whatever its platform was initially, Hitler and Ernst Rohm had perverted the political party to their own ends, and those ends were not Lenin, Marx and Engles.
Even if true - this means they were "not socialist"?
I guess you'd better tell us all what your definition of "socialism" is. Here's mine, in the interest of fairness: public ownership and disposal of property.
You can successfully argue that the Nazis were "not socialist", I suppose, but you can't reasonably do so using my definition. And mine comes from the dictionary. So: what's yours? And where does it come from?
thanks in advance,
Socialism, n. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
NAZI Germany neither owned the means of production nor distribution. By this definition the NAZIs fail to be Socialist. I would also point out that the NAZIs did not seem interested in the "public welfare", at least not from the perspective of the 1930s, 50s or 90s for that matter.
Perhaps this will help, socialism is a political ideology whereas fascism has no particular ideology. The National Socialist German Worker's Party was perverted, by Hitler, Rohm and others, to fit their twisted views.
Let me quote from Juan J. Linz, Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Yale. He is Chairman of the Committee on Political Sociology, Research Committee of the International Sociological Association and the International Political Science Association.
"We define fascism as a hypernationalist, often pan-nationalist, anti-parliamentary, anti-liberal, anti-communist, populist and therefore anti-proletarian, partly anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois, anti-clerical or at least, non-clerical movement, with the aim of national social integration through a single party and corporative representation not always equally emphasised; with a distinctive style and rhetoric, it relied on activist cadres ready for violent action combined with electoral participation to gain power with totalitarian goals by a combination of legal and violent tactics" and further on, "Hostility to the anti-national and anti-human solution that proletarian classism offers to solve the obvious probelms and injustices of the capitalist system".
Doc, the only thing socialist about the NAZI was the word in their name.