We should call the Nazis what they really were — socialists.
Hitler’s party name, policies, and ideology make it undeniable: Nazism was a form of socialism.
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This is a guest essay by Nick Buckley, an author of five books.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Every time someone dares to ponder the question “Were the Nazis socialists?” a tidal wave of unhappy socialists hit back.
Accusations of stupidity, distorting history, and a lack of understanding abound. Some imply darker motives, such as Nazi apologists. This constant flare-up intrigued me: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I remember being quite shocked many decades ago when I first discovered that the word “Nazi” stood for “National Socialist.” The word is a portmanteau, meaning it was created by the joining of two other words.
Nazis by definition were members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. They saw themselves as socialists. Adolf Hitler always referred to himself as a socialist, he personally placed the word Socialist in his party’s name, alongside the word Workers — so it all feels a bit socialistic to me.
It has to be conceded that Hitler was not a trustworthy man. It would not surprise anyone if he used socialism to further his evil ends. Let us forget for a moment that the first political party Hitler tried to join was the German Socialist Party and that he co-founded the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Let us start by defining what socialism means: It is an economic and political system where the community, or the state, owns the general means of production for the benefit of the populace.
Followers of a Welshman, Robert Owen, began calling themselves socialists in 1841. Owen is seen as a founder of the Co-operative Movement in Britain. He said that workers should own the companies they worked for and share the profits among themselves.
To most people, Karl Marx is the modern-day father of socialism. His name is synonymous with a particular vein of socialism: Marxism. His basic idea was the world is split between the workers and the richer capitalists, who exploit the workers. The proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. He thought that when the workers realised their exploitation, they would revolt and take over ownership of production. He believed that the workers when in power, would not exploit others. His ultimate aim was communism, which he defined as a stateless, classless society with free enterprise.
In February 1920, Hitler publicly proclaimed a 25-point policy programme for the German Workers’ Party. A few weeks later, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazi Party. Throughout the 1920s, others sought to change the 25 stated policies within this programme. Hitler suppressed every instance of programmatic change.
This list of policies is worth reading to see what Hitler was ultimately aiming to achieve. I split the 25 points into two categories so I could assess the level of socialistic influence. There are 14 socialist-themed points and 11 nationalist-themed ones. The majority of policies are clearly socialist in nature. Hitler wanted to expand old-age welfare, break the slavery of rent, nationalise businesses, create profit-sharing, and reform land ownership. These are all socialist aims that are still popular today.
Hitler was not a capitalist; he berated capitalism. He referred to it as “democratic warmongers and their Jewish-capitalist backers.” He believed that his war against the UK was fundamentally a battle against capitalism, the German welfare state against the plutocratic-capitalist Britain. He even linked the war with anti-colonialism and the Arab struggle against Britain in British Mandate Palestine; when socialists acquire a new mantra they run with it forever, regardless of facts.
Here is Hitler in 1923, in his own words:
“Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxists have stolen the term and confused its meaning. … We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national.”
I think it is becoming clear that Hitler and therefore the Nazi Party were socialists. They were simply a different type of socialist compared to the word’s generally accepted meaning today. The Nazis stated that they wanted a type of socialism that only benefited the German state and people — national socialism.
Therefore, they created an openly racist form of socialism. Some would argue that all forms of socialism tend towards nationalism and racism. Look at what the Chinese government is doing to the Uyghurs, the Jewish experience in the USSR, and the genocide in Cambodia where ethnic and religious minorities were systematically targeted. All this would sound very familiar to a Nazi living a hundred years ago.
Socialist countries surprise me when they have fortress borders; it’s not very international of them. Unless, of course, it is to prevent their own citizens from wandering off to a better life in a capitalistic country.
Finally, I have seen many arguments explaining that Hitler could not have been a socialist, since he murdered many socialists. This is completely accurate: Hitler killed many socialists. He was an equal-opportunities psychopath; you could say he was an early proponent of equity. It did not matter what race, colour, or creed you were; if he did not like you, then you died. We know he did not like internationalist socialists; he considered them an enemy. He also did not like communism; “Bolshevik-plutocratic world conspirators and their Jewish wire-pullers,” he said. When it came to competition, he eradicated it.
Socialism comes out of revolution. When it is over, the purge begins. If we want to talk about who has murdered other socialists, then we must start with Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Reaching the top of any socialist state requires a level of brutality not within most people.
Northern Ireland has a history of Protestants and Catholics murdering each other; both groups claim they are Christian. Sunnis and Shiites are both Muslim sects and kill each other every day in the Middle East. Many ideologies split and follow different paths, yet claim affiliation with the same ideology. The Nazis followed their own version of socialism, but socialism it was.
The sharing of resources within a defined group has always been practised in a historical sense. It was our way of life when we lived in small tribes. We shared food, since we were all related and pulled together to survive. I believe this innate sense of a very basic type of “sharing socialism” is programmed into human DNA. This is why the idea of a socialist utopia will not die.
But there is a huge difference between sharing in a small family-oriented tribe and sharing in a nation-state of millions. Even after the undisputable atrocities of 20th-century socialism, the idea of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” still reverberates and remains popular. It seems we cannot fight our DNA.
Hence, socialism is a complicated topic that could take a lifetime to unpack and analyse. But from where I am standing, in the broad use of the term socialist, the Nazis were definitely socialists.
Our political divide should no longer be viewed as a Left/Right spectrum, since this makes no sense in today’s world. It should be viewed rather as statism versus individual liberty. Through this lens, you will find the Nazis sat very comfortably alongside all the other socialists.
 | A guest post by
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A well written and accurate critique of the Nazis. The folks who elected Mandatory in New York City are all on board with the, "To each according to his needs". Let's see how they react when the "From each according to his abilities" (and then some) eventually kicks in.
Thank you, Nick Buckley MBE for a tremendous article that reminds us of something very important and revives a long forgotten historical fact: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were socialists NOT fascists. Yes, there are parallels between the two, but their not the same thing. They just practiced their own version of socialism not regular socialism or communism. National Socialism was socialism for the German nation and the Aryan working class and poor. A historical fact that not many people know is that Hitler hated capitalism just as much as he did communism or regular socialism. He believed that the international capitalist system was controlled by the British and the Jews. The war with Britain he believed was one between plutocratic-capitalist Britain and the German welfare state. This was an openly racist form of socialism that was for the non-Jewish German working man and poor only. Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, black people, mixed-race people, and others were ineligible for its benefits. This is not unusual when one considers how ethnic and racial minorities were persecuted, discriminated against, deported, raped, and murdered in other socialist and communist regimes.
Allow me to provide a few examples. The Soviets deported numerous ethnic groups including: Poles, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Crimean Tatars, Crimean, Caucus and Black Sea Greeks, Ingush Chechens, Ingrian and Karelia Finns, ethnic Koreans and Far East Koreans, Kola Norwegians, Volga Germans, Italians of Crimea, Kalmyks, Balkars, Meskheitan Turks, Karapaks, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Armenians, Kurds, Iranians, and Hemshins. This is not even to mention the state’s repression of Christians and Muslims and discrimination against and spying on Jews and refusing to allow them to emigrate to Israel. African and Asian students in the USSR faced racial slurs and insults, physical attacks, open discrimination, and were even murdered in some cases. Mixed-race babies were either aborted or put up for adoption and their mothers deemed prostitutes. The Chinese have occupied Tibet for 50-years and have suppressed its people’s culture, language and religion. The Khmer Rouge under the monstrous Pol Pot persecuted and murdered ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, Cham Muslims, and non-Khmer Cambodians as well as Buddhists, Muslims and Christians.
The North Vietnamese government and its formal successor the Vietnamese Communist government persecuted and viewed with suspicion, the Montagnards or Upper-Land Vietnamese. The Vietnamese Communist government in the mid to late 70s displaced minority groups by doing land confiscations and resettling members of the majority Kinh ethnic group in the Central and Northern Highlands which led to environmental degradation and deep poverty among these minority groups. So you see, racism, ethnocentrism, antisemitism, and other forms of prejudice are not at all unusual under socialism. So the Nazi persecution of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Catholics, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, black people, mixed-race people, liberal democrats, Communists, Freemasons, labor unions, political dissidents, feminists, alcoholics, the unemployed, and any others who didn’t fit into their vision of a perfect world, is perfectly compatible with socialism.
Need more proof Hitler and the Nazis were socialists? Just look at the actions they took in the realm of public policy. They started social programs intended to unlock class barriers, started the German Labor Front to fight for better pay, workplace conditions and hours for German workers, started massive public works projects to put Germans back to work, expanded old-age insurance and welfare, implemented wage and price controls, did production quotas, controlled trade through cartels and monopolies protected by the state, nationalized some industries and banks, did land reform, and Gleichschaltung or in English, Coordination of all aspects of German economic, social and cultural life under the control of the party and state apparatus. The Nazis also considered doing rent control, profit-sharing, abolishing unearned income, and nationalizing all businesses period.
Jews and other minorities were of course, not eligible for any of these welfare programs or benefits. The majority of the points in the 21-point program of the Nazi Party presented by Hitler in 1920, were socialistic in nature. Hitler berated capitalism as “democratic warmongers and their Jewish capitalist backers.” He believed capitalism was detrimental to the the nation-state as a whole because it emphasized the good of the individual over that of the collective good of the whole nation. The Nazis also abolished individual labor unions and threw their heads into concentration camps and created the aforementioned GDF as basically one big labor union for everyone because they believed individual unions to be explorative of workers. If anyone here would like to learn more about how the Nazis were in fact, socialists pick up the fantastic book Hitler’s Revolution by Richard Tedor which uses hundreds of first hand German sources which previously were not available in English to readers from the Nazi’s own ideological literature about their socialist beliefs. Also, Nick makes a good point about in fighting within a group. The Nazis had Ernst Roehm and the Brownshirted thugs of the SA beat up Communists and traditional internationalist socialists. They also kicked the Strasser Brothers and their followers out of the Nazi Party for having beliefs a little too similar to regular socialists for their liking and Gregor Strasser would be murdered on Hitler’s orders during the Night of the Long Knives. I thought his comparisons with the fighting between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland and Shi’ites and Sunnis in various Middle Eastern countries was brilliant. At the end of the day, Mr. Buckley is correct. It’s not about left vs. right anymore, that dichotomy needs to be scrapped. It’s about statism vs. individual liberty. I don’t know about you, but I want to see the latter win out.