The Story of Fascism: Hitler’s 'National Socialism'

Despite calling his party “National Socialist” (a.k.a. Nazi), Hitler abolished unions, privatized many industries, and was backed by corporations.

(This clip is excerpted from my new one-hour special “Rick Steves’ The Story of Fascism in Europe.” Check your local listings for air times — and if you don’t see it, please ask your public television station to add it to their schedule.)

[Britannica]

'Hitler hated unions, so he made a state union everyone had to join'

Did the author think about that for more than 2 seconds?

[soulsey]

Ha! The trade unions in the Soviet Union were a powerless joke.

[noobsaibot]

no need to socialise all industries, when you have socialised the people and have absolute control already.

[rekzahogk]

"Reeee the Nazi's weren't socialists because I'm a socialist and the Nazi's were bad and I'm good" is the takeaway I'm getting from these comments

[abntemplar]

Rick you do know that although both Fascism and National Socialism do share many similarities, they were in fact two different political philosophies one German and one Italian. Giovanni Gentile was the author of the fascist philosophy not Hitler.

[shawn]

At 1 minute, it literally says all German workers were required to join a national labor union.

[herwood]

Hitler fought the unions for the same reason the communists did. He wanted them to serve the socialist cause instead of being self-interest groups. Industrialists like Krupp loved him because he kept them in power, not because he supported their businesses. Capitalism was just a facade. Hitler told them what to produce and sell and at what price. They were functionally the same as commissars in other socialist systems.

[Web]

Im so glad people are pushing back on this now that we have ACTUAL proof they are socialist/a branch or variant of socialism. Recommend T1KHistory on this topic for further research.

[Hoody]

Goebbels was a proud socialist and didn't consider himself nazi. Nazi's borrowed communist ideas. Hitler said "What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish, we shall be in a position to achieve." He disliked Soviet communism, but considered nazism as true socialism.

[marshallj]

Facist were anti capitalist to start off, Giovanni was a socialist

[connorhartson]

I like how the title of this video puts national socialism in quotation marks like it wasn’t what the Nazi’s did. People who say that Nazi’s aren’t real socialists are the same people that say the Soviet Union didn’t practice real communism.

[tonymcelveen]

40 seconds in, "no labour unions" WRONG, there were labour unions

[adarbarrush]

brav, first off fascism is quite different from national socialism. They are both forms of socialism. one, fascism, is Co-op socialism, the other is biological socialism.

[thuggie]

I like how they think placing production quotas on business, also having it is price fixing of goods in the economy and putting that many laws on businesses that they could see them taken by the state if they don't comply, which many of them where and then give them to party official to run was a form of capitalism that's a joke.

[CybreSmee]

“Despite having socialist in the party name, they were super-dooper NOT socialist”. They actually were actually Italian Fascists because…..well, shut up thats why!

[cm-kwnq]

The national socialists hated the unions, also they made them mandatory 😂

[WheelsRCool]

The Nazis overall were variant of collectivist and socialist. There was no concept of individual rights, it was all about your being a cog in the machine of the State. Yes, Hitler abolished unions, but then so did the Soviets. Certain industries were privatized, but corporations only backed the Nazis so long as the Nazis did not seek to outright nationalize them. Socialism contrary to popular belief is not necessarily anti-corporate. Corporations love certain forms of socialism so long as they get a monopoly granted and permanent profits. It's when the government seeks to outright nationalize them that the corporations resist. Marxist-Leninist socialism is the kind that seeks 100% nationalization. The Nazi economy was centrally controlled from the top-down and they also had the largest state-run enterprise in the world at the time.

[janusx]

Nazi Germany had one union, and the industies where state controlled, they used a Gmbh for it, they had free education, a very large youth movement.
In fact if u set the nazi party next to the USSR's pary, they have manny thing in common.

[immortal]

this is not entirely true. Nazi party was actually more socialist than America today. They had no class system and status display was frowned upon. it was more about individual achievement and strength. aka education, atheltisism, physical appearance or race.

[mountedpatrolman]

Sooo, what your saying here is basically National Socialism is, Communism focused on race.