Was Hitler a Socialist?

Hitler was undoubtedly an anti-capitalist and a socialist in the modern 
sense of the word


A recurring theme in Elon Musk’s posts on X in recent months has been 
his claim that Hitler was a socialist. He has received both a great deal 
of support and a great deal of criticism on the platform, but hardly any 
of those taking part in the debate have seriously examined the issue. 
Critics of the thesis point out that the means of production were not 
nationalized in National Socialist Germany. They also argue that the 
fact that Hitler had communists and Social Democrats imprisoned in 
concentration camps speaks against this thesis.

The second argument is not convincing. Stalin, too, had tens of 
thousands of fellow communists murdered, denouncing many of them as 
“Trotskyists,” or “fascist agents.” But what about the argument that the 
means of production were not nationalized on a large scale in National 
Socialist Germany?

For traditional socialism, which is based on the teachings of Karl Marx, 
the nationalization of the means of production is indeed the central 
objective. But National Socialism was a form of modern socialism that 
took a different approach.

In May 1937 Hitler declared that he told German industry what it had to 
produce under the Four-Year Plan. If industry said it was unable to do 
so, he would “take that over myself, but it must be done.” If industry 
complied, however, he was glad not to have to take it over himself.

That such statements by Hitler were not empty threats became clear to 
the industrialists no later than on 23 July 1937, when Göring announced 
the formation of the AG for Ore Mining and Iron Smelting Hermann Göring. 
The development which had begun with Hitler’s and Göring’s repeated 
threats finally led to the creation of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, 
which by 1940 employed 600,000 people. The plant in Salzgitter finally 
became the largest in Europe.

Some theorists – both on the left and among libertarians – recognized as 
early as the 1940s that National Socialism represented a new form of 
anti-capitalism. The economist and sociologist Friedrich Pollock had 
earned his doctorate with a dissertation on Karl Marx’s theory of money 
and was a co-founder of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt 
am Main. Ludwig von Mises was known to be, together with von Friedrich 
August von Hayek, the most important representative of the Austrian 
School of National Economics. Both were staunch opponents of National 
Socialism and emigrated to the United States.

In an article on the economic system of National Socialism published in 
1941, Pollock acknowledged that the legal institution of private 
ownership had been maintained, but argued that its actual function had 
fundamentally changed. In his words, this amounted to “the destruction 
of all the essential traits of private ownership, saving one exception.” 
Even the largest companies, he noted, had lost the right to decide 
freely where to invest or when to discontinue unprofitable production; 
these rights had effectively been transferred to the ruling groups.

This is one of the most lucid analyses of the economic structure of 
National Socialism, and it corresponds with what Ludwig von Mises wrote 
in The New York Times on June 21, 1941. Mises argued that the German 
system of socialism, or Zwangswirtschaft, retained some capitalist 
institutions only nominally. Private ownership formally continued, but 
entrepreneurs had effectively been reduced to the status of shop 
managers, while the government determined what and how they produced, as 
well as prices and trading partners. He summarized the system as 
“socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism” – comprehensive 
planning and government control of economic activity, while retaining 
the labels of a market economy.

 From 1940 at the latest, Hitler increasingly became a proponent of the 
state planned economy – partly because he was convinced of the 
superiority of the Soviet Union and its economic system. In his 
monologues to his inner circle (known as “table talks”) on 27/28 July 
1941, Hitler said that “A sensible employment of the powers of a nation 
can only be achieved with a planned economy from above.” About two weeks 
later, he remarked that economic planning was still at an early stage 
and envisioned building an encompassing German and European economic order.

The statement that economic planning was still at a very early stage is 
important because it shows that Hitler was not thinking at all of a 
reduction of state intervention – not even for the time after the war – 
but, on the contrary, intended to expand the instruments of state 
control of the economy even further.

Yes, Hitler was not a socialist in the classical Marxist sense. But he 
was undoubtedly an anti-capitalist and a socialist in the modern sense 
of the word. In this respect, Musk is right.


Rainer Zitelmann