🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DAMoKt.7HI@nntpa.cb.att.com>,
m.j.miller <mjh@anuxv.mv.att.com> wrote:

[...]

>That's right people don't know the difference.  The fact is that the
>Nazi's may have had "socialist" in their name but were far from
>socialistic.  They did not socialize or nationalize in the way
>that is normally associated with true socialistic or communistic
>powers.  

In the early days of the Nazi party there was a strong true socialist
bent in the party's platform.

>In fact, German industrial magnates supported Hitler
>early on.  The Nazis never posed a threat to German industrialism/
>capitalism. 

The German industrialists agreed to support Hitler only after he
privately repudiated the socialist portions of the party platform. Once
he came to power, it became necessary to also repudiate those persons
in the party who still clung to many of the socialist tenets. SA chief
Ernst Roehm was one who not only clung to the socialist tenets of the
party, he also controlled a large paramilitary force, thereby making
the German Offizerkorps uneasy, and he also had a very large personal
following and represented a rival in power to Hitler. Hitler was able
to wrap it all up by simply doing a surprise raid on Roehm and his
higher staff and bumping them off. After that, I believe the socialist
tenets remained, but became irrelevant.

>During the war the German economy was not even put
>on a full war footing until fairly late - 1943.  

Good thing, too. Hitler made a number of mistakes. That was one of
them.

>Contrast this
>with Great Britain or the US which had far more government
>intervention in the economy during the war years.  

Depends on what you mean by "government intervention". The economy
became a controlled economy, with the destruction of the labor unions,
and the active cooperation of the industrialists. But it wasn't really
a _war_ economy.

>Many of the
>present large German companies made big bucks during the Nazi
>years.  

As did a number of American companies during the 1930s.

>Hitler was enough of a capitalist that he ordered his 
>likeness to be used on German postage stamps and that he be
>paid a royalty for each stamp sold.

My understanding is that Hitler had little use for money. After all, he
could have anything he wanted just for the asking. But he really asked
for little (well, he did ask for Poland, Austria, Czcheckoslovakia,
Denmark, Norway, etc, but you know what I mean). The royalties from
"Mein Kampf" became quite adequate to supply any monetary wants he
might have once it became politic for the average German to have a copy
on the coffee table. That postage stamp story sounds apocryphal.

-- 

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