re: The Buffalo killer was…wait for it….A LIBERAL!!!!

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First, thanks for a thoughtful response.

That passage begins by claiming Nazi Germany’s economic system was socialist, not capitalist. In fact, it was both. In my post, to which you responded, I listed the Nazis party platform, one of which was that critical industries and enterprises should be in the hands of the state. Another claimed that other businesses should have partial ownership of labor. However, it is true that most companies were in private hands and were capitalist. It’s hard to say where it would have ended, because none of that was important to Hitler, who used this platform to get power.

Hitler’s real platform consisted of one plank: to establish the Third Reich and to realize the destiny of the German people to be first among the people of the world. These goals are considered right wing, as opposed to the left wing class struggle, which claims the real brotherhood is not ethnic but is class. Ownership of the means of production is what truly unites and divides, according to Marxists.

Your excerpt claims that private ownership was in name only because the government exercised the real power. This is true, but it was wartime, and in wartime governments suspend normal rules. Hitler never really ruled in peace, because peace was the antithesis of what Hitler was about. His book was named “My Struggle”.

He says that the main evidence that Nazi Germany was socialist was the imposition of wage and price controls in 1936. But the USA did that, also, in WW2, and no one argues that the USA was socialist. Economic thought was very different then and in their naiveté, economists at that time thought price controls could stop inflation. So contrary to your source, this was hardly proof of socialism.

There is much there that points toward socialism, and there is much that points toward right wing nationalism, irredentism, autarky and xenophobia. But we must ask ourselves, was Hitler more about an economic system or was he more about ethnic cleansing and assertion of German power? I think the answer is obvious just by asking the question.

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