Was Hitler a socialist?

It seems obvious that National Socialists ("National Socialist German Workers' Party") were...  socialists.

However, their modern socialist spawn squirm and huff when this simple fact is mentioned.

Historian Paul Johnson (*) sets things straight:

Hitler had no economic policy. But he had avery specific national policy. He wanted to rearm as fast as possible... There was no evidence whatever that Hitler was, even to the smallest degree, influenced by big business philosophy. He bowed to business advice only when convinced that taking it would forward his military and external aims. He regraded himself as a socialist and the essence of his socialism was that every individual or group in the state shold unhesitatingly work for national policy. So it did not matter who opened the actual factory so long as those managing it did what they were told. German socialism, he told Hermann Rauschning, was not about nationalization:

[Hitler:] 

"Our socialism reaches much deeper. It does not change the external order of things, it orders solely the relationship of man to the state... Then what does property and income count for? Why should we need to socialize the banks and the factories? We are socializing the people."

National Socialism was socialist.

One of the chief lies of the Left is that National Socialism was the opposite of communism. The truth is that Nazis and communists were enemies, not opposites. They fought for the same turf, like fratricidal twins.

Nazism might in fact have succeeded, from an economic standpoint, because the socialization of the people, without nationalization of industry, was a much more effective economic strategy. Bureaucrats are better employed to tell industry what to do, rather than to run industry. Some high level bureaucrats have never even run an lemonade stand.

Is National Socialism dead? It's worth asking whether China may pursue a National Socialist course in the decades to come. Perhaps communist regimes must become National Socialist, if they are to survive in the long run.

Where are we Americans in all of this? We are certainly not totalitarian, although there are currents of totalitarian thought in the American Left. If you doubt that, try putting an intelligent design book in your school library, or saying a prayer at your high school graduation, or telling the federal government that you have moral objections to buying contraception for your employees.

From an economic standpoint, note that our American descent to socialism bears a closer resemblance to the National Socialist variety than to the International Socialist variety, on which our President cut his teeth.

Our socialist leaders understand that we need not nationalize our industries to bring socialism to our country. We can yoke our producers to state purposes, while we socialize the people.

It's not a new strategy.

* Modern Times: the World from the Twenties to the Nineties. Kindle location 6420