Re: Was Hitler a Socialist?

On 8/24/2026 2:18 PM, Julian wrote:
> 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

Control is effectively ownership.