General Discussion

Hitler’s party, the NSDAP, were the “Nationalsozialisten.” If you read the early writings of Göbbels, he was a dedicated socialist. But instead of an authoritarian state where just any peasant could rise to the de facto monarchy (Stalin, e.g.), he wanted one where he was guaranteed to be part of it, and so his socialism morphed into Nationalsozialismus, or National Socialism.

The general aspects of a strictly socialist state as it existed then, i.e. government ownership (or, at least stewardship of allied industry), a closed elite governing at the will—according to them—of ”the people,” and a powerful secret police to ensure that “the people” expressed no public dissent (NKVD, Gestapo, the official name didn’t matter, the function was the same).