It was not a socialist party. By any true accounting of the facts. Hitler himself denounced Marxism and even voiced how he wished he had changed the socialist name of his party to something else.
Economics was and is always secondary to fascist groups. It seemed to always be a tool in the aim of the more primary goals of concentration of power. In practice though most fascist governments took on the form of a corporatist and corruptly subsidized arrangement with private business. Often promising to protect certain industries and prop them up. Collective bargaining and unions had no power under the Nazis. The power was conferred to the regime and then to a select group of ever more powerful corporate entities. Big corporations the nazi regime favored ended up with a close and favored arrangement.
Not sure how anyone could look at what came out from the Nazis and conclude they were practicing or striving socialists.
They were both socialist and anti-Marxist. Those two things are by no means mutually exclusive. Marxism is internationalist socialism, whereas national socialism is, well, nationalist. And that's exactly where a multi-axial political spectrum comes into play: On a three axis spectrum (liberal - authoritarian, nationalist - internationalist and capitalist - communist), the Nazis and the Soviets shared two rough positions, but were at opposite ends of the spectrum on the third axis.
What is your argument for categorizing them as primarily socialists, as opposed to other identities? Especially economically?
To me, whether you define socialism in the strict textbook sense of social ownership and democratic control of industry, or the more modern post-war nordic style socialism, neither IMO appropriately fits the category of the economic system Nazi Germany organized themselves around.
Which as I said, kinda makes sense because Hitler was not striving for any particular economic utopia, he had some vague guiding principles that seemed to have roots in many different philosophies and populism of the time, and it seemed to just be a means to the larger end of consolidating power, building up the German empire, furthering his social/geopolitical agenda, and maintaining that power structure. So you saw him simultaneously advocating a sort of social darwinism, moderately strong individual property rights, while offering to continue support for certain welfare initiatives and then cutting the legs out from labor while running business and industry in a sort of corporatist arrangement. Forcing trade relations into a perverse mercantilist arrangement organized around the nazi agenda. Demanding ultimate control of the monopolistic industries he fostered, using some marxist style arguments for that action, sure, but seemingly only because it was the path of least resistance at times to allowing him the control he wanted to direct the German empire and further his military and social agenda. Which is my larger point that there was no real guiding economic philosophy Hitler and the nazis strived for that I could find, economic policy and philosophies was seemingly just a means to an end of the primary agenda of their form of ethnic cleansing and fascism. And when something came in conflict with that agenda it almost always lost out.
I get what you are saying about not thinking about things on a two dimensional line, but the premise that nazis were closest to socialists is kinda hard to buy into on close examination.
