Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian (user search)
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  Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian (search mode)
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Author Topic: Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian  (Read 3254 times)
Middle-aged Europe
Old Europe
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Ukraine


« on: November 15, 2005, 02:36:04 PM »

My view of the Nazi economic policy is pretty simple - they would do whatever they though was of benefit to the Nazi Party, which to them was pretty much the same thing as the nation. If they needed to force a business to do something, they would do it. If leaving a business alone to do what it did was beneficial, they'd do that. The policy was simply whatever it took to push the Nazi agenda and the Nazi war machine forward. Overall, their policies might be considered socialist, but they really didn't have a consistent economic theory or ideology that they ran on.

Couldn't have said it better.

Unlike most (if not all) other political ideologies, economic policies were not a central part of Nazism. It was merely a useful tool to achieve their actual goals... which didn't have much to do with the economy (but with "race", "nation" etc.).

Of course, in their earlier days (around 1920) they had some of these economic proto-theories you could perhaps call "socialist". But such theories are also explainable with a non-economic approach, because many companies, banks etc. in the Weimar Republic were owned by Jews... or at least this is what the Nazis wanted to believe. As a result, there was a direct connection between their anti-Semitism and their "socialism".

Once the Nazis were in power, those theories didn't play much role anymore. In the few cases where Jews were indeed on the board of major companies, they were forced out. As far as the remaining "Aryan" businessmen were concerned... those were sometimes cuddled and sometimes tightly regulated by the Nazis, depending which helped their goals best.

And you have also to keep in mind that the Nazis were also strictly anti-labor union during the Weimar Republic, something you don't call "socialist" usually.
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Middle-aged Europe
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« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2005, 03:07:58 PM »
« Edited: November 15, 2005, 03:14:10 PM by The new and improved Old Europe »

What about the price controls?
Or regulating supply and demand?

This depends on whether we're talking about price controls etc. as programmatic goals from the era of the Weimar Republic or as the actually implented policy once they were in power. The one thing didn't have much to do with the other thing sometimes.

In the first case, a possible explanation could be again anti-Semitism, because the "exploitation of the German worker through Jewish businessmen" had to be ended. In the second case, it could also be seen as measures to prepare the economy for war. Or they simply wanted to "buy" the support of the "common man" for their policies.

Hitler himself didn't have a clue about economy. And he didn't care about the economy. He simply didn't know what to do with it. So he left this matter to other government or party officials. He was pleased as long as everything went according to the plan and enough weapons were produced. This lead to the point where the economic policy of the Third Reich was the result of ideological fightings and rivalries between different groups within the party and the government.

In a rather, uh, "romantic" way, some Nazis saw the agriculture as the "natural and original form of life" for the Aryan man. As a result they tried everything to keep damage from the agricultural sector of the economy and had a suspicious eye on the other sectors, because they were seen as "unnatural" or "un-Aryan". Nazis who ran small businesses wanted to have small businesses totally unregulated and big business (which was controlled by the Jews anyway, according to them) heavily regulated etc.
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Middle-aged Europe
Old Europe
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« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2005, 04:54:47 PM »

So, the end policies were socialistic, regardless of ideological motivation behind them.
This is what I'm arguing.

Only when it seemed to fit the goals. Cheesy
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