Well, if we strip away the horrifying ideals and actions of the NS party (no small task, so I ask anyone reading this to forgive me), we can certainly find elements of things we recognize in socialist ideals - basically a centrally led "welfare state" or perhaps rather "provider state".

But social democratic governments of subsequent West-Germany would decades later lead the utterly ruined country into on the greatest economic miracles we have seen in the modern day world, by building the precursor to the "capitalist welfare state". I think it is a stretch to view people like them as a danger to a country, even though they were in many aspects also a centrally lead economy.

I think the better lesson is that it is probably not a good idea to hand over absolute power over a country to a small group of people without term limits, especially if they tend to seem violently opposed to anyone who disagrees with them.

Socialism as understood today is closer to communism with state ownership of private enterprise than the root definition, as Hitler would have it, is private ownership of property but everyone is working for the public social good.

That public good happens to be his political fortunes and racism.

There were essentially two defining aspects to the economic model of Nazi Germany: mass spending on rearmament/the military in general; and privatisation of businesses. The former is not really a right/left thing but the latter is pretty much the complete antithesis of socialism. The privatisation did come with increasingly heavy government regulation - so it certainly wasn't laissez faire capitalism - but socialism as an economic model is pretty much defined by public ownership of business. It's a pretty absurd claim to make that a government selling off publicly owned business en masse - even as most of the rest of Western Europe (including Germany before Hitler came to power) was nationalising more businesses in response to the Great Depression - was socialist.

Aside from privatisation, the Nazi party was also strongly opposed to social welfare and outright banned trade unions, which while not strictly socialist are certainly fairly fundamental aspects of left leaning economic philosophies. There are pretty much no aspects of the economic policies of Nazi Germany that reflect the core tenets socialism.

The essential point being not handing over, whether quickly or slowly through granting excessive regulatory power, the keys to private business and the keys to the economy.

Welfare state, provider state, nanny state - however it's defined, can easily lead to SOME form of despotism. Usually it's the garden variety debauchery and exploitation, which is less dramatic but sounds more fun than Nazism. I see the dangers coming from a pacified, uninformed, divided populace, with increased dependence on the state and decreased desire for independence. That, combined with some catastrophic black swan event, could create a power vacuum with the state ripe for the taking.

Your argument is like saying trump is a socialist because he raised import tax and now gives money to everyone with the last executives power he just made yesterday .
Cherry picking very few actions to define a person as a whole ain’t good

Btw you should learn to differentiate socialism , communism and fascism.
Hitler was more closely to the latter .

Food for tought:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...re-socialists/

Throughout the Second World War, most of the German army's trucks were manufactured by Ford and General Motors at their German plants, with the profits repatriated to the US through shell companies in Switzerland.

The Focke-Wulf 200 Condor maritime patrol bomber and the Focke-Wulf 190 fighter, which was kept quite busy intercepting US bombers, were manufactured by a majority American-owned company, with the profits repatriated.

After the war, all these companies sued the US government for compensation due to bomb damage to their factories inflicted by the USAAF, and they all got paid, in staggering sums.

That's quite capitalist, isn't it?

Mind you, Standard Oil sued the government for lost wartime royalties, because the government had seized a number of their chemical patents, and they lost the case because the federal judge pointed out that Standard's relationship with the Nazi government (supplying fuel and artificial rubber, and helping construct the coal-hydrogenation plants in the Ruhr that produced the Wehrmacht's synthetic fuel for vehicles and aircraft) made it an enemy asset in law. So there's some justice.

It's pretty silly to say that Nazis privatized business as proof they weren't socialist when they did so with the understanding they would be working for the state.

"The Nazis granted millions of marks in credits to private businesses.[63] Many businessmen had friendly relations to the Nazis,[59] most notably with Heinrich Himmler and his Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft[64] Hitler’s administration decreed an October 1937 policy that “dissolved all corporations with a capital under $40,000 and forbade the establishment of new ones with a capital less than $200,000,” which swiftly effected the collapse of one fifth of all small corporations.[65] On July 15, 1933 a law was enacted that imposed compulsory membership in cartels, while by 1934 the Third Reich had mandated a reorganization of all companies and trade associations and formed an alliance with the Nazi regime.[66] Nonetheless, the Nazi regime was able to close most of Germany’s stock exchanges, reducing them “from twenty-one to nine in 1935,” and “limited the distribution of dividends to 6 percent.”[67] By 1936 Germany decreed laws to completely block foreign stock trades by citizens.[68] These moves showed signs of Antisemitism and a move towards a war economy, with the belief that the stock market was being operated by Jews."


You're right the theory of socialism is public ownership of companies, but in reality that almost never is the case in socialist societies. There were still private sectors within communist USSR for example. It's impossible for the state to handle ever matter on its own and Hitler knew he had to outsource the work to service his mission. Ostensibly it was private but when he shut down the stock exchanges he was limiting the freedom of these entities.


"The Nazis banned all trade unions that existed before their rise to power, and replaced them with the German Labour Front (DAF), controlled by the Nazi Party.[81] They also outlawed strikes and lockouts.[82] The stated goal of the German Labour Front was not to protect workers, but to increase output, and it brought in employers as well as workers.[83][83] Journalist and historian William L. Shirer wrote that it was "a vast propaganda organization...a gigantic fraud."[83] Meanwhile, the Chamber of Economics (whose president was appointed by the Reich minister of economics) absorbed all existing chambers of commerce. By 1934 these two groups merged somewhat when the Chamber of Economics also became the economics department of the DAF. To aid this, a board of trustees run by representatives of the Nazi Party, the DAF and the Chamber of Economics was set up to centralize their economic activity.[84]"

This can apply almost equally to Stalin's regime.

Certainly a valid point. And we need only look to early post-WW2 eastern Europe for examples, where Communist parties would win elections and when they later became unpopular simply refused to step down and either invited or welcomed the Soviets in to deal with dissidents.

But it's also important to note that the distinction between socialism and communism that became defined in this period. You had a rise of many socialist democratic parties in Europe, and they were often defined by a strong opposition to communism (which would later lead to its own fragmentation, but that is a long story).

What ya think op turn all the satanic blue states/cities red before they destroy western civilization? That whole map looking red sure would be nice huh?

Rebranding fascism to something more popular is a pretty time honored tactic, be it socialism, conservatism, liberalism, or even communism.

In 1931. This pretty much sums it up.

Let's get to the real point. OP, what do you think the differences are between fascism and socialism? I'm pretty sure that I know what your answer will be.

If you're referring to the northern-European countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, yes they are called by some "socialist democracies." I know Bernie used that term. But as I understand them, and I've met people from those countires, and have researched it a bit, they are free market economies at their core. They're just capitalist + high taxes. Most of them are also small countries with excess capital from oil windfalls and generally have smooth sailing and few cultural problems (incoming muslims has created some issues of late). Another problem they're having, from what I'm told, is a growing class of drug addicts and welfare recipients who don't have the incentive to work.

In any case the term socialism is usually used quite loosely.

I think teaching tame_deuces about the politics of Scandinavian countries is definitely a +EV line for you to take.

Probably not me. I didn't post much at for the past few years, and rarely on the history forum.

Great !
You just discovered the US Democratic Party is centrist and not leftist !
Congrats .....

The used of socialist and communism is distorted by the extreme right because everything to there left is socialism or communism .
For the them only 2 camp exist , disregarding nuances that is The base of centrist , taking best ideas on both side and rejecting the bad .

The 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' was a state-capitalist oligarchy and at times a dictatorship, the 'German Democratic Republic' was merely a Soviet satellite, and the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' isn't democratic, it doesn't belong to the people and it's not a republic, it's an absolute hereditary monarchy.

On the other hand, most West European states have been quite socialist since 1945, but only where it counts and not just for the sake of it, on the whole.

The elites and the press are my enemy--sounds familiar

No, I've known there's a base of centrist democrats, but I know an increasing amount who veer to the far left, and they're very vocal on social media. Judging by Bernie's and AOC's success that's not a stretch to say.

FYP

Lol ....
U just said Bernie his far left while he uses Danemark Sweden etc as being a Model American should follow and you say those countries aren’t really socialist because of there free market .....

Which is it !???

+1

[QUOTE=esspoker;56407218 Judging by Bernie's and AOC's success that's not a stretch to say.[/QUOTE]

Bernie and AOC's views aren't really all that different from FDR's. Our commie grandparents seemed pretty fond of them--hell the maga message is built on nostalgia for that time period

I was pondering to at some point make an anecdotal description of Scandinavian economy / politics / policy. I think it can be more illustrative to many than pouring historical facts and numbers. Perhaps there is a forum interest for it as well, since they often tend to come up in a "socialism vs capitalism" debate, and the reality is... well, a bit more nuanced (as it tends to be).

But suffice to say they have a "checkered" past, often incorporating both elements of a planned economy (socialist) and a capitalist-inspired production economy. Contrary to foreign conception, Scandinavian countries have a very different economic development, they sort of just ended up in a similar place. Sweden has been a "mini-Germany" relying on big industry, a strong monarchy and later on powerful business leaders, Denmark was an agricultural economy that grew into being very pro "small business", Norway was a planned economy that strongly aligned with US production methods to exploit its natural resources and slowly morphed into a capitalist welfare state.

I don't think I want to comment on the issues you listed in a short forum post. Suffice to say there are of course issues like in any country, but by and large these are well-run countries with highly functional welfare states.

esspoker, the better line for you to take is, "there are features common to both socialism and German fascism that I find objectionable." That line isn't as much fun. And it doesn't support the risible statements of people like Glenn Beck and Dinesh D'Souza. But it has the benefit of not being absurd on its face.