The right needs to stop falsely claiming that the Nazis were socialists (WaPo)

Good article.

Quote:

Although the Nazis did pursue a level of government intervention in the economy that would shock doctrinaire free marketeers, their “socialism” was at best a secondary element in their appeal. Indeed, most supporters of Nazism embraced the party precisely because they saw it as an enemy of and an alternative to the political left.

Quote:

The Nazi regime had little to do with socialism, despite it being prominently included in the name of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The NSDAP, from Hitler on down, struggled with the political implications of having socialism in the party name. Some early Nazi leaders, such as Gregor and Otto Strasser, appealed to working-class resentments, hoping to wean German workers away from their attachment to existing socialist and communist parties. The NSDAP’s 1920 party program, the 25 points, included passages denouncing banks, department stores and “interest slavery,” which suggested a quasi-Marxist rejection of free markets. But these were also typical criticisms in the anti-Semitic playbook, which provided a clue that the party’s overriding ideological goal wasn’t a fundamental challenge to private property.

Quote:

Unlike much of the European left, many conservatives proved willing to work with Nazis — something they later regretted — an association that tainted postwar European conservatism. When it came time to rebuild European politics after the war, therefore, it fell to center-left parties such as Labour in Britain, the Socialists in France and the SPD in Germany, which abandoned rigid Marxist doctrines, alongside the new center-right movement of Christian Democracy, which rejected traditional nationalism, to take up the challenge. This was the hour of the welfare state, supported by social and Christian Democrats, which encouraged social solidarity within a democratic and capitalist framework.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...outputType=amp

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