Hitler was a socialist!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Please. Stop. Now. For the Love of God. And His Son. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Think of the Children. Please. Please. Please. Please Think of the Children.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How dense are you, child? You appear to have all the intelligence and logical thought patterns of a man who repeatedly bashes his head against a brick wall in order to make his skull stronger.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Given what happend to actual Socialists under the Nazi regime (here's a random example), I do find the interwebs-tendency to scream that Hitler-Was-A-Socialist to be in astonishingly bad taste.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Arguing that state intervention in the economy = Socialism isn't very clever. It means that you have to (for example) count all mainstream political parties and institutions in Europe between about 1945 (1940 or so in the case of Britain) and about 1973 or so as Socialist. Even more absurdly, it means that you have to count all European states before the rise of laissez faire as Socialist. And I think that would be a step into lunacy too far even for you.

Now, the sad thing about the internets is that these arguments are so common that you can just...

And it's worth noting how pro-business the Nazi regime was in reality. Somewhere, deep within my pile of box files, I've a little chart comparing donations to the NSDAP from IG Farben (a company critical to the implementation of the Final Solution, as it happens) with IG Farben's profits. I will eventually find it and post it here - makes for interesting reading.

Because the Nazis = Socialist canard isn't worth wasting much time dismissing. No one (no one honest anyway) with a basic knowledge of early 20th century German history takes it seriously.

(for the record, IG Farben was a German chemical giant, the largest company in Europe (some of the time), a major financial donor to the Nazi regime (and as the companies profits went up, so did donations), a major user of slave labour and the manufacturer of Zyklon B. It was broken up (more or less) by the Allies at the end of the War. Krupp is another well-known example of a big company doing well out of the Nazis).

I mean, there's more but I can't be bothered to dig it up right now.

But I repeat my comment about bad taste.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you want an account of the absorbtion of small businesses into conglomerates such as IG Farben

Arguing that such things were Socialist is... laughable. Utterly laughable.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I didn't say ALL government intervention in the economy is socialist, otherwise that would make me one. However, intervention on the Nazi scale was.

And I didn't write "all government intevention". I had in mind large-scale government intevention in the economy - in many cases on a larger scale than the Nazis-in-peacetime. Was Charles de Gaulle a Socialist?
You should note that no one who calls themselves a Socialist thinks that Socialism can be defined as "large scale state intervention in the economy". Regardless, the state intervention of the Nazis was not exactly motivated by Socialist principles...

Myth. The entire economy was rigged up (oh, that's rigged in both possible senses of the word in this context, actually...) to enable a quick rearmament programme. The economy was boiling over by the late '30's and would have likely collapsed in some way had it not been for the war. But as there was no chance of there not being a war with that lot in charge, that's an entirely academic point.

Studies have also shown that ordinary people didn't actually benefit much from the economic "boom" (especially in terms of wages and so on... IIRC one showed that working class wages fell, in real terms, during that period), though how much stock you want to put into them is up to you, of course.

And, once again, a reminder about bad taste.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you want an account of the absorbtion of small businesses into conglomerates such as IG Farben

Arguing that such things were Socialist is... laughable. Utterly laughable.

Read the rest of the post instead of picking parts out of context.

I don't think that I'm picking anything out of context. IG Farben as a Socialist corporation, hmm...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you want an account of the absorbtion of small businesses into conglomerates such as IG Farben

Arguing that such things were Socialist is... laughable. Utterly laughable.

Read the rest of the post instead of picking parts out of context.

I don't think that I'm picking anything out of context. IG Farben as a Socialist corporation, hmm...

I said it was under close state supervision. It's crypto-interventionism, basically.

I think you're missing the point of Nazi economic policy. It's true that everything was geared towards serving the regime (saying "serving the state" isn't exactly right, because the government structure of Nazi Germany was... odd) and to its goals, but there is nothingly remotely Socialist about that (note again how well IG Farben, Krupp and so on did out of the regime). Means and ends should not be confused - the point of Nazi economic policy was to prepare for war. Nothing else really mattered. And that is not Socialism.