Hitler wasn't a left-wing socialist, but his party used the word

Hitler took power in coalition with the conservative right, and his regime jailed communists, Social Democrats and union leaders first. The Holocaust Museum and the German Historical Institute both classify Nazism as far right.

In January 1933 Hitler took power heading what the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum calls "a right-wing coalition government" with the conservative German National People's Party³. Dachau's first prisoners were "primarily German Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists"⁴. With the Communist deputies barred, only the Social Democrats voted against the Enabling Act^5,6.

The museum calls the party "radical far-right," and the German Historical Institute calls it "extreme right-wing"^1,2. The historian Richard Evans writes that calling the Nazis socialist mislabels "what is better seen as populism"⁷. Rainer Zitelmann, who argues Hitler was anti-capitalist, agrees that "the Communists and the Social Democrats had to bear the greater sacrifices," though not, he says, out of any preference for the right⁸.

A reply from the left, shared on Reddit, said Hitler "crushed unions, backed billionaires, and put socialists in Dachau"⁹. Unions and Dachau check out^10,4. His policies favored big industry, through arms contracts and growing employer rights¹¹. But Henry Turner's research found it mostly funded his right-wing rivals before 1933¹². We rate that reply missing context.

The name and some early planks were real. But the program was built on race, and in 1928 Hitler declared the party "stands on the platform of private ownership." Otto Strasser, who wanted "a more radical national socialism," was expelled.

In another post, seen in a screenshot on Reddit, Musk called Hitler "a far left socialist. Literally in the name of his party!"⁹ The party was founded in 1919 as the German Workers' Party and took its longer name in February 1920¹³. That year's program demanded "the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts)," profit-sharing in heavy industry, the abolition of "unearned" incomes and land expropriation¹⁴.

Its core was racial: "Only a member of the race can be a citizen," and "no Jew can be a member of the race." In 1928 Hitler declared that the party "stands on the platform of private ownership" and that the land plank was aimed "primarily against the Jewish land-speculation companies"¹⁴. He told an American interviewer in 1923 that "Marxism is not Socialism" and that his socialism "does not repudiate private property"¹⁵.

Otto Strasser, who pushed "a more radical national socialism," was expelled in 1930¹⁶. His brother Gregor, who in 1932 had sought a deal that would have kept Hitler from power, was killed in the 1934 purge¹⁷.

State control was real, from forced cartels to a central plan in 1936. But most firms stayed in private hands, and the regime moved state stakes in banks and industry back to private hands.

The post Musk quoted cites a "command economy"¹⁸. A 1933 law let the state force firms into cartels¹⁹. From 1936 a Four-Year Plan steered production¹¹, and prices were frozen by decree²⁰. Hitler told industry that if it couldn't deliver, "then I will take that over myself"⁸. The economic historian Peter Temin concluded "the National Socialists were socialist in practice as well as in name"²⁰.

Ownership stayed mostly private²⁰, with exceptions such as the state-run Reichswerke Hermann Göring¹¹. Temin notes the state directed firms "without acquiring direct ownership of enterprises"²⁰. In the mid-1930s it "transferred public ownership to the private sector," Germà Bel found²¹. Rearmament brought firms "hohe Renditen" (high returns), while workers' real wages stayed at or below 1928 levels. Sources differ on how far^11,20.

Where the regime did take property, it often took it from Jews. Under terror and boycotts, many Jewish owners sold for "only 20 or 30 percent of the actual value." After the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, the transfer became compulsory²².