re: #149 Nyet

I would recommend Gtz Aly’s Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, which documents why and how the Nazis developed their welfare state. At he conclusion of the book he states:

i would recommend richard evan’s ‘the third reich in power’ where he explicitly takes up the subject of whether or not the nazis added anything to the social welfare already existing in germany, or did anything to implement socialism under the dictionary definition of nationalizing industry or restricting private property

amazon.com

the book was researched and written in the last 15 years and so is aware of the spurious ideas about nazism and ‘socialism’ - under whatever definition you want to locate the word - which is why he feels the need to subject the question to detailed research

mr. aly’s statements seem to me to be rather on the vague side. it certainly could not be said that the nazis created a welfare state in germany, since in the sense of pensions and health insurance subsidized with taxes, these things had already existed for decades. as for ‘handing out benefits’, perhaps he could supply some detail on what he might mean by that other than the handing out of plunder which the nazis did in the manner of pirates or roman conquerors more than anything else

as for, again, the dictionary definition of socialism - so far from nationalizing anything, the private industrialists in germany during the 30s were ecstatic with how much money they were making from the giant contracts that the nazi government handed out like chocolates

krupp, daimler, messerschmidt, and many others - nazi germany was a paradise for big private corporations