# A rather sad overlord \[DevNull puts forth his political beliefs\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 7, 2007, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823 "2007-07-07T08:01:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/221 "2007-07-18T21:18:29Z")
[QUOTE=Fear Itself] \*\*“I absolutely insist on protecting private property… we must encourage private initiative”. \*\* \*~~Adolph Hitler, March 24, 1942 \* [/QUOTE] “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance” - Adolph Hitler. May Day, 1927 That is not something a capitalist would say. A socilaist would say they would protect private property because socialists lie to promote their agenda. They also gulag people and oven them. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/222 "2007-07-18T21:26:09Z")
So, Hitler was a socialist. And therefore a liar. But he wasn’t lying in that quote, because it fits neatly with your premise? I’m just trying to picture Norman Thomas or Bertran Russel shoving someone into an oven. Nope, can’t do it. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/223 "2007-07-18T21:34:59Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] That is not something a capitalist would say. [/QUOTE] Unless he was lying. It’s getting so the only people we can trust are the Classic Liberals. Thank god they always tell the truth. ---
**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/224 "2007-07-18T22:03:09Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Which in no way challenges either of the two points I have made: [/QUOTE] It blows the doors off your points. Which is a more likely lie?: A) A capitalist who pretends to be a socialist. A person who likes free markets but hates the thought of six million uber-capitalist Jews not being inside ovens dying. B) A socialist who pretends to be a capitalist. A person who likes the control of the market in govenment hands… of which he is the leader who also likes control the flames of the ovens that kill six million uber-capitalist jews. A free market is free. A socialist market is not free. The first things the Nazis did was to make their ranks surrender their minds. The market was never free. The minds of the Nazis were already controlled. The appearance was meaningless. The Nazi party controlled EVERYTHING. Schools, media, industry, fun. Hitler was their leader. Fun - State provided free of charge in their “Strength through Joy” program Health care - State provided free of charge in their Volksgesundheit Education - State provided free of charge in free and mandatory state schools. Private schools were converted to state schools or closed down. Do you know what Socialism is? Seriously? It goes beyond economics. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/225 "2007-07-18T22:08:06Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] It blows the doors off your points… [/quote] Well, it blows, that much is for sure… > [@](#): > > …six million uber-capitalist Jews… Not sure what you mean by this, but I’m pretty sure I don’t like it. Very, very thin ice. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/226 "2007-07-18T22:32:20Z")
Actually, from the late 19th Century to the time of the Holocaust, a great many Eastern European Jews, possibly a majority, were socialists (in their politics; no doubt many were simultaneously capitalists in their conduct). ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/227 "2007-07-18T22:32:34Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] Do you know what Socialism is? [/QUOTE] Do you? Seriously. Hint: it is not synonymous with authoritarianism or dictatorship. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/228 "2007-07-18T22:32:44Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] Do you know what Socialism is? Seriously? It goes beyond economics. [/QUOTE] I gave this thread a quick skim a couple of pages ago and just as quickly realized it was not worth my time. Having said that, I am now taking the time to tell you that you’re completely clueless as to what socialism means in its current form and as practiced in the majority of the EU. Perhaps it’s time you took **Tom’s** advice from an earlier post and devoted some of all that free time you appear to have, to read some books, catch-up on current and past affairs and stop revising history and making-up horse manure as it suits your needs. In any event, welcome to The Dope. Mayhaps we’ll meet again in a more substantial and/or less nonsensical thread. The Pit might be a good place to tell you what I really think, but as I said before, I really don’t like to waste my time. As it is, you’re more than welcomed to keep this one all to yourself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/229 "2007-07-18T22:45:46Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] Do you know what Socialism is? Seriously? It goes beyond economics. [/QUOTE] Socialism =! totalitarianism. ---
**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/230 "2007-07-18T22:58:54Z")
[QUOTE=Fear Itself] Do you? Seriously. Hint: it is not synonymous with authoritarianism or dictatorship. [/QUOTE] A capitalist, authoritarian dictatorship? I had a poster try to tell me here that Hitler practiced an odd form of Capitalism. Hitler was a socialist. Berkeley.edu says: Socialism - adherence to the theory social organization which believes the proprietorship and the authority of the means of production, capital, land, etc. should belong to the entire community. (I swear it is like people think Hitler had nothing to do with the Nazis) The community is the collective. Nazis were collectivists. Nazi’s hated individuality. Nazis were textbook collectivists. Nazis were collectivism gone wild. There were no worse collectivists in the 20th century. Totalitarianism is incompatible with Nazi collectivism. Totalitarianism is _definitely_ not “an odd form of Capitalism”. Socialism is the economic system of choice for the collectivist. Nazi Germany had more free social programs from cradle to grave than any country I can think of. State paid entertainment? Now that is socialism. Can’t have any private companies making duckets from entertainment in socialistic Nazi Germany, can we? Lordy. It is like Hitler’s propaganda machine is still around. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/231 "2007-07-18T23:15:00Z")
In the word’s of Hitler’s contemporary, [George Orwell:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) > [@](#): > > What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalismthat is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit—DOES NOT WORK. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for the best. Hitler’s conquest of Europe, however, was a PHYSICAL debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result. > > When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddlesteamer of equal horse-power stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism. > > Socialism is usually defined as “common ownership of the means of production”. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does NOT mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it DOES mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc etc) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment. > > However, it has become clear in the last few years that “common ownership of the means of production” is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a classsystem. Centralised ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. “The State” may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money. > > But what then is Fascism? > > Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and—this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism—generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen. > > But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human INEQUALITY, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have “proved” over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that nonnordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the “semi-apes” as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery. > > However horrible this system may seem to us, IT WORKS. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, worldconquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State. ---
**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/232 "2007-07-18T23:31:26Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Socialism =! totalitarianism. [/QUOTE] I know. I would never believe Hitler was a _good_ socialist, or even a good totalitarianist. He sucked at both, but he tried to be a socialist. He claimed to be one and worked hard at it. In Hitler’s own words: ``` "In 1919-20 and also in 1921 I attended some of the bourgeois meetings. Invariably I had the same feeling towards these as towards the compulsory dose of castor oil in my boyhood days" ``` Hated Capitalism.. interesting. He admits this in a fierce sentence of disgust towards Capitalism. "If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand the fundamental importance of this essential principle, if it should merely varnish the external appearance of the present State and adopt the majority principle, it would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground. For that reason it would not have the right to call itself a philosophy of life. If the social programme of the movement consisted in eliminating personality and putting the multitude in its place, then National Socialism would be corrupted with the poison of Marxism, just as our national-bourgeois parties are. " Collectivism over individuality… how odd that it is a running theme. “The National Socialist Movement, which aims at establishing the National Socialist People’s State, must always bear steadfastly in mind the principle that every future institution under that State must be rooted in the movement itself.” Socialist movement. NOT the State. What is a totalitarian movement without roots in the State? It is a collective SOCIALIST movement. “I am a Socialist” (not a Marxist socialist) May 21, 1930 That reading is particularly eye opening. Hitler hated Capitalism. In his own words it disgusted him for people to set their own destiny. He seemed to hate Marxism because that brand of socialism And I found this to be particularly interesting: \*\* “The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism–not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production.” “Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper…” “Private property” as conceived under the liberalistic economic order was a reversal of the true concept of property. This “private property” represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the nation." “I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun… I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realize its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.” \*\* Owwww… ooh. “no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself” chee. ---
**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/233 "2007-07-18T23:33:33Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalismthat is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit—DOES NOT WORK. [/QUOTE] Good luck with that. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/234 "2007-07-18T23:39:56Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] There were no worse collectivists in the 20th century. [/QUOTE] Now look what you’ve done, you’ve hurt Joe Stalin’s feelings. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2007, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/235 "2007-07-19T00:14:38Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] Good luck with that. [/QUOTE] Well, it was a lot easier to believe in 1941, when Hitler’s command-economy state had just trounced the laissez-faire Brits and French so thoroughly on the battlefield, and when Stalin’s brutal tactics had succeeded in turning an underdeveloped, war-devastated, agrarian Russia into a major industrial and military power in less than two decades (something that could never have happened, if Russia had had a free market economy during that period). ---
**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2007, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/236 "2007-07-19T00:25:18Z")
[QUOTE=Fear Itself] Now look what you’ve done, you’ve hurt Joe Stalin’s feelings. [/QUOTE] Why would living under Stalin’s collectivism be worse than living under Nazi collectivism? You still were allowed to think for yourself under Stalin.. even though you could not do what you thought, you could grumble to most people. Under Hitler’s Nazi collective you could not think, do or say anything even remotely against the collective, under penalty of death. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/237 "2007-07-19T00:38:01Z")
Really? Because I just Googled “Nazi Thought Suppression Ray,” and the evidence seemed mixed, at best. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2007, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/238 "2007-07-19T00:57:50Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] Under Hitler’s Nazi collective you could not think, do or say anything even remotely against the collective, under penalty of death. [/QUOTE] So now Hitler was some sort of cross between Kreskin and Santa Claus, who knew what you were thinking, so be Aryan for goodness sake? And what of Hitler’s hierarchy of racial purity, with the Master Race at the top, and the Jews and Gypsies at the bottom? How is that a classless society? As has been pointed out, Hitler did not nationalize German industry in any way that even remotely compares to Soviet collectivization, so your whole argument goes down faster than Eva Braun in a bunker. ---
**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2007, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/239 "2007-07-19T00:59:34Z")
[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip] Really? Because I just Googled “Nazi Thought Suppression Ray,” and the evidence seemed mixed, at best. [/QUOTE] For the good of the collective, the National Socialist party shut down all schools that taught individualism and free thought. The collective did not complain. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2007, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823/240 "2007-07-19T01:07:29Z")
[QUOTE=DevNull] It blows the doors off your points. [/quote] No. It ignores my points and history in order to invent a parallel world in which rhetoric and catch-phrases are not merely more important than reality, they supersede reality. > [@DevNull](#): > > the leader who also likes control the flames of the ovens that kill six million uber-capitalist jews. The Jews are all (evil) things to all (evil) men. In Hitler’s language, the vast majority of the Jews were Socialists and Communists. In the real world, there was a certain level of correspondence based on the fact that many prominent Jewish leaders were in the forefront of the Socialist movement. _Über-Kapitalist_ would not have been among the adjectives he associated with many Jews. > [@DevNull](#): > > A free market is free. > > A socialist market is not free. > > The first things the Nazis did was to make their ranks surrender their minds. The market was never free. The minds of the Nazis were already controlled. The appearance was meaningless. > > The Nazi party controlled EVERYTHING. Schools, media, industry, fun. Time to show you actually have both an understanding and a supporting reference for such a claim. Yes, the Nazis controlled the schools and media. It would be well for you to provide evidence that the Nazis actually controlled industry. Did they dictate which items could be produced or the number that could be produced? Did they set the prices that could be charged (in the years before the war)? Did they set limits on what people could purchase? Waving your hands and crying “control” is little more than a rhetorical device if it cannot be demonstrated in actual actions that the government employed. > [@DevNull](#): > > Fun - State provided free of charge in their “Strength through Joy” program > Health care - State provided free of charge in their Volksgesundheit > Education - State provided free of charge in free and mandatory state schools. Private schools were converted to state schools or closed down. > > Do you know what Socialism is? Seriously? It goes beyond economics. Yes, but it begins with economics. You appear to have confused authoritarian governance, that has been employed by governments under numerous different economic schemes, with a particular economic system that you appear to not understand very well. The _Kraft durch Freude_ program was certainly in line with socialistic practices. It was also not very far out of line with many other European practices. Universal health care had its origins in the socialist movement. (And it is currently employed in a wide range of basically Capitalist nations.) Education has been free and compulsory in the United States from the period before the rise of Socialism. The closing of private schools was an exercise in authoritarianism, not socialism. So, who set the prices on food? Who dictated the amounts of what varieties of foods could be produced? Who set the prices and quantities for cars, houses, beds, stoves, radios, shoes, etc.? Unless you can point to those being determined by the government (prior to the start of the war, as during the war many countries (including the U.S.) controlled many elements of production to prevent interference with the war effort), you have not demonstrated a Socialist society. You have only pointed to an authoritarian society. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rather-sad-overlord-devnull-puts-forth-his-political-beliefs/410823.md?page=13)