The origin of the wrong idea that the nazis were lefties

[Anna Komnene]

I just thought I'd pitch in since I don't think anyone's mentioned it so far, but another example of a stark contrast between Nazis and Socialists is the role of women in their societies and their policies regarding women and marriage structures.

Communist countries like the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba prioritized upward mobility for women and relative gender equality. They wanted women participating in the workforce and in public life. If the workers were to control the means of production, it wouldn't make sense to bar half of the population from participating in that. While outcomes for women in the Soviet Union, etc weren't nearly as rosy as they liked to claim, women had higher levels of employment, civic engagement, higher wages, and more access than they had previously before the communists took power. The relative empowerment of women in their society was a source of pride for the Soviets, and they often liked to point out how they thought women were better off in their society than in the United States.

The Nazis, on the other hand, were extremely regressive on the role of women in society. They were very clear on their thoughts on the matter from the start, and one of the first policies they made as a marriage loan that encouraged young people to marry and could be paid off by having as many children as possible, thus relegating women from public life (where they had begun to occupy more standing during the Weimar Republic) to basically human baby-making machines during the Nazi period. This was not only reflected in the policies of the Nazis but also their propaganda and broader social message. It wasn't uncommon for the Nazi regime to talk about the role of women as mothers being essential and to rail against the idea of any freedom whatsoever for women.

It's not just about the size of the state apparatus but also the purpose. The Nazis used their state to encourage social conformity and required vast segments of their population to serve a specific purpose for the state (ie: making babies and raising them up to be good soldiers and/or future mothers/babymakers). That is pretty much the definition of fascism and the opposite of socialism. The goals of the Nazis and the Socialists couldn't be further apart when it came to how they viewed women and how they treated them in society.