Hitler and the rest of his party were National Socialists. What Socialist policies did they enact while in power, if any?

by Cyridius
panzerkampfwagen

While the NSDAP started off with quite a lot of socialist policies, some of which were outlined in the 25 point plan of the 1920s, the party moved more and more away from them as time went on. By the time the party gained control of the government in 1933 Hitler and many others in the party were opposed to socialism. The Night of the Long Knives in 1934 was in part to clean the NSDAP of its members, such as Roehm, who were still leaning towards socialism and wanting socialist policies to be enacted. A great book on these events is "Hitler" by Ian Kershaw. Ian Kershaw has extensively written and talked about Hitler, Nazism, the Third Reich, etc.

Some people will point to the Nazis redistributing wealth as a socialist policy. Others will point out that while they redistributed wealth that isn't necessarily socialist as it was quite often redistributed to the elite, those who supported Hitler and the Nazis, and to war related industries.

The NSDAP was violently opposed to trade unions. Many trade union officials ended up in concentration camps.

So, that being said, did they implement any socialist policies? Socialism is quite often defined as the social ownership of the means of production, etc. In the Third Reich many people in society were denied many rights, they were denied as being citizens, denied as being part of society. With that being so, can anything they did really be seen as socialism when it would be denied to certain groups? That may be splitting hairs but I think it's important. One other thing is that Hitler himself was actually quite disinterested in actual economic policies and would, according to Ian Kershaw, be rather hands off, just ordering that what was enacted not be socialist.