The Nazi Party generally embraced the notions of regulation, taxation, and income redistribution. Further, it "nationalized" various businesses, meaning that it made some companies the property of the government, allowing ordinary people no influence over such businesses. Thus Nazi economic policy intersected with its mission to have total control over society.
Historian Marshall Dill notes that the Nazis proceeded in two ways. Indirectly, by ensuring that government officials and party leaders were appointed to the boards of directors of major companies, they took control of companies. Directly, the Nazis instructed the government to confiscate and simply assume ownership of some businesses. Marshall Dill writes:
It is instructive to note the infiltration of boards of directors by deserving Nazis: government officials, Gauleiter, etc. The network of interlocking directorates was impressive. On the other hand, the government by no means refused to establish direct ownership and control of industry.
The Nazis, then, were socialists in the sense that they believed that the government should intervene in the marketplace and should own the means of production. The Nazis were clearly opposed to a free market. Marshall Dill continues:
The principle example of direct government participation in industry was the huge Hermann Goering combine, which by the end of its career managed operations ranging from steel mills to the control of canal-boat shipping.
Not only in terms of industrial production, but also in terms of employment, the Nazis wanted the government, and not the decisions of free individuals, to control the economy. Historian William Duiker writes:
Most dramatic were the mass demonstrations and spectacles employed to integrate the German nation into a collective fellowship and to mobilize it as an instrument for Hitler's policies. In the economic sphere, the Nazis pursued the use of public works projects and "pump-priming" grants.
Thus an ever-increasing percentage of Germans became employees of the state, thereby reducing the ability of the free individual to impact the economy. Looking at the rise of Hitler's government and how it took power, and looking at that process from an economic perspective, Friedrich Hayek writes:
The support which brought these ideas to power came precisely from the socialist camp. It was certainly not through the bourgeoisie, but rather through the absence of a strong bourgeoisie, that they were helped to power.
Although the Nazis came to power in 1933, the social and economic forces which gave them control over the Germans began much earlier. Hayek writes that
The doctrines which had guided the ruling elements in Germany for the past generation were not opposed to the socialism in Marxism.
The Nazis opposed Marxism because of "its internationalism" which, the Nazis saw, proved an obstacle to the concrete implementation of certain aspects of socialism. Internationalism reduced the ability of the Nazi government to regulate, to tax, and to eventually own businesses - all of which reduced the power of any free individual to act independently in the economy. The Nazis rejected these elements of Marxism: its internationalism and its democracy. The Nazis saw that these elements were inconsistent with socialism. In this way, the Nazis were developing a form of socialism which was more consistent than Marxism, as Hayek writes, "and as it became increasingly clear that it was just these elements which formed obstacles to the realization of socialism, the socialists" became willing to abandon the program of democracy and internationalism. "It was the union of anticapitalist forces," the socialists and others who opposed free markets and who opposed democracy, "which drove out from Germany everything that was" oriented toward liberty.
In short, the Nazis discovered that a free market and the right to own private property were analogues to political freedom and to free speech. In order to completely control society, which was Naziism's goal as a totalitarian movement, the government had to intervene in the economy, limit the individual's decision-making ability, tax, regulate, and otherwise reduce the freedom and influence of the individual, culminating in government-owned or government-operated industries. Hayek continues:
The connection between socialism and nationalism in Germany was close from the beginning. It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism - Fichte, Rodbertus, and Lasalle - are at the same time acknowledged fathers of socialism.
While the Marxist version of socialism was theoretically internationalist, in the concrete development of socialism, especially after 1914, nationalism was wedded to socialism. In this way, Hitler and the Nazis understood how to make a more effect form of socialism, which would allow them to control spheres of public and private life, and enslave the Germans.
Hitler's economic policies were part of his larger plan to bind millions of Germans who, having lost their freedom to the Nazi government, would be forced to carry out his visions of war, conquest, and genocide.
