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The question of who controls the means of production is paramount because he who controls the means of production has the power to control who governs the state. This is why the Brown Shirts were used first as union busting thugs, and then as socialist and communist assassins. There was method to the madness of the Third Reich. The ruling class of Germany sought to regain its' status as a colonial power and to shirk off the restraints of the Versailles accords. To do this, organized labor, and the actual socialists and communists had to be removed from the scene. Once Hitler gained power, legally I might add, and with the financial backing of the German elite,(which you should know if you read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and understood it), those owners retained their ownership and merely retooled for war production as did the United States. Additionally, they were provided slave labor for which they paid the Nazi party a pittance, and retained their profits so long as they remained loyal to the state. Any owner in the United States that turned disloyal would have lost his ownership, so that cannot be justification for claiming that the Nazi's mere power gave them control over the economy. In the end, only when the war was clearly lost, did Germany's upper class turn against their Fuhrer and both plot to produce useless weapons and to assassinate the demented Austrian.

As to your logic, I don't find any. You seem to be stuck reasoning that because two different types of nation states are both powerful, they must be the same. You ignore that they engage in entirely different nation building and social engineering--one nationalizing all land and factories and inculcating into its' citizens the world view that all are equal and that nation states and governments will ultimately dissolve, and the other raising a race and its' historic symbols and institutions to worship of the eternal state while inculcating its' citizens with the idea that they are superior to all other races, and nationalizing only actual people as slaves to serve the master race.

Others in this thread have basically agreed at this point and have just worked out fine details, but you are a stubborn one Tribune. Why do you suppose Hitler put 90% of his armies on the Eastern Front and only 10% on the Western? Could it have been that the ruling class of Germany thought that Britain and the United States would ultimately see the wisdom of joining Germany in fighting communism, all three countries at that time practicing some brand of fascism, the latter two admittedly very mild.

The question of who controls the means of production is paramount because he who controls the means of production has the power to control who governs the state.

And who controlled the means of production? The Nazis.

To do this, organized labor, and the actual socialists and communists had to be removed from the scene.

Leave labels aside for a moment. Rephrase it as "competitors to the party had to be removed from the scene." It's no different than the Soviets.

Once Hitler gained power, legally I might add, and with the financial backing of the German elite,(which you should know if you read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and understood it), those owners retained their ownership

How does that not make the Nazis socialist? What's the difference between co-opting a business owner to do your bidding or replacing him with a "worker's council?" It's the same result. The former's more practical and effective. Your positions seems to be that it would be a violation of socialist principals. I view it as adaptation. The ruling party can still be called a socialist.

And Hitler certainly did nationalize (using the most basic definition of the word) several industries.

Any owner in the United States that turned disloyal would have lost his ownership, .

Actually, what would have and did happen -- I'm assuming by disloyal you simply mean ignore government directives -- would be that the government would, temporarily, take over the facilities. No ownership would be lost. No concentration camp sentence would be levied.

As to your logic, I don't find any.

Well, I'm not surprised.

You seem to be stuck reasoning that because two different types of nation states are both powerful, they must be the same.

Of course not. The United States is powerful. We're neither like Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union.

You ignore that they engage in entirely different nation building and social engineering--one nationalizing all land and factories and inculcating into its' citizens the world view that all are equal and that nation states and governments will ultimately dissolve,

Are you really a conservative? Anyway, it's occasionally interesting to consider the differences but far more useful to note the similarities -- namely that the ideologies of both nations held that the rights of the state/collective/party outweighed the rights of the individual -- including the right to his property.

Others in this thread have basically agreed at this point and have just worked out fine details, but you are a stubborn one Tribune.

I think most of the posters are agreeing with me. :-)

Why do you suppose Hitler put 90% of his armies on the Eastern Front and only 10% on the Western?

Because that's were 90 percent of the fighting was going on. The Russian front lasted from 1940 to 1945. The Western Front basically lasted for 11 months starting in June 1944.

Could it have been that the ruling class of Germany thought that Britain and the United States would ultimately see the wisdom of joining Germany in fighting communism, all three countries at that time practicing some brand of fascism, the latter two admittedly very mild.

The US, facist? You are not only not a conservative (or classic liberal if you will), you are getting silly. Ponder this -- why was Hitler's first ally the Soviet Union?

Streetfighting leads you astray. The opposite of one gang isn't another gang. Rather it's the rule of law, or maybe the rule of love. In any event, two groups can hate and struggle against each other, and yet still not be "opposites" because of all the things they share.

But the idea of opposites is an interesting one. When are things opposite in nature, and when do our minds and language make them so?

The species, genus idea is an interesting one. It's also more a question of relationships and genealogies, rather than identities.

A word like "socialism" has many different definitions. In early 20th century Europe, it was a positive term. Even conservatives appealed to the "true" socialist idea. The debate here is as much about semantics as anything else.

You are a "splitter," who wants to use the word in a narrow sense. Others are "lumpers" who employ it in a more general sense. It's an argument that can't be won because it's about definitions -- axioms, rather than proofs or theorums or conjectures.

When someone says that the Incas or the ancient Egyptians were socialists, I balk. There ought to be a better word to convey similarities between the socialists of the last two centuries and ancient tyrannies.

But when someone argues that socialists are and must be democratic or egalitarian or anti-racist, I likewise disagree. This isn't based on an investigation of what self-identified socialists have actually said historically, but on present-day definitions. There have been racist and inegalitarian socialists.

In any event, Swedish Social Democrats left the control of the means of production in the hands of capitalist elites, yet they are reckoned as being on the left.