Hitler’s Attitude toward Market and Planned Economy, Private Property, and Nationalization

The subject of this paper is not an analysis of the National Socialist economic system, but an analysis of Adolf Hitler’s economic policy ideas – based on a broad range of sources, primarily Hitler’s speeches, writings and ‘conversations’. I apply a threefold grid in order to separate only tactically intended statements (or such that are obviously only intended as propaganda) from ‘programmatic’ and seriously meant statements. In these, we find that Hitler expressed his criticisms of free market economics with increasing sharpness and became a convinced adherent of the control of the economy by the state. The theory that Hitler had been a confirmed believer in private ownership and an opponent of nationalization cannot be sustained because it hides the contradictions – and also the development – of his economic concepts. Hitler was never a supporter of a free market economy, though as a social Darwinist, he valued competition and natural selection. While he did not rule out nationalization, his preferred method was to give entrepreneurs clear instructions from the state on what to produce and how. After the war, he wanted to restructure the economy even more radically in the direction of a state planned economy.