I apologize if this has been asked before. Every time I search for an answer on the internet, I find nothing but conflicting information. Once source says they were extreme left, another says they were extreme right. Thank you for you help.
Almost all of their contemporaries would classify them as extreme right.
Because:
1). They were violently hostile to all center-left and far-left political parties for their entire existence as a party.
2). They formed coalitions with the traditional right in both electoral politics (the colation government that made Hitler Chancellor) and in bureaucratic politics (their uneasy detente with the German army, which becomes more of a co-option of the army as time goes on.
3). They were violently nationalist, and anti-internationalist , compared to the internationalism of the contemporary left.
As the 30's wear on, they form alliances with other far right governments.
They oppose class struggle, a central tenet of Marxists, Democratic and Bolshevik alike.
Basically, they are right wing because they define themselves in opposition to the left, even if they differ with traditionalist conservatives.
Note: note that I define their position in the spectrum based on contemporary politics, not ideology.
Source: Hitler: Hubris&Nemesis (2 volumes) Ian Kershaw
By almost any metric, Hitler and the Nazi party belonged to the extreme right.
First of all, the idea of classifying ideologies between right and left comes from the National Assembly during the French Revolution. The supporters of the French King, Louis XVI, sat to the right, while those advocating revolution and republicanism sat to the left. In the middle you would find those that supported a compromise between the two, like a constitutional parliamentary monarchy.
Because of this distinction there are certain political positions that we can assign to the right*:
This doesn't mean that a certain brand of the right will not reject these ideas, or that a brand of the left may not take some of these ideas as their own; rather this list is what generally can be found in right-wind manifestos.
*If you have any questions about how true these points reflect right-wing thought, I don't mind explaining myself, but I rather delve on the two arguments used to say that Hitler was extreme left-wing.
The first argument takes aim at the economic policies of Hitler, which were very much interventionist, conflicting with the right-wing policy of economic conservationism and laissez faire. And this is true, Hitler intervened in the economy, established mandatory vacations & other workers' rights.
But to him, the economy was simply a means to an end. By reducing unemployment and improving working conditions Hitler gained much needed legitimacy and certainly aided him in his consolidation of power. Not to mention the fact that by putting Germans back to work he was able to improve German infrastructure (the Autobahn) for the coming war and get running the factories that would later produce war materiel.
The second argument used to place Hitler among the extreme left is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with which the USSR and Nazi Germany split Poland among each. It was by every definition of the word, a marriage of convenience: from the time Hitler took part in politics he was vehemently anti-communist, and this conviction can be finally seen in 1941 when he finally attacked the USSR. Both parties to the treaty knew that the thaw in their relationship was a temporary affair, made necessary due to the isolation both countries were experiencing.
Stalin signed the Pact because of how isolated the USSR was, and he had reason to feel lonely. After the 1917 Revolution all of the major powers landed troops in Russia in order to influence the Civil War in favor of the anti-communists (the Whites). And even after the Reds won the Civil War it tooks many countries decades(!) before they were recognized as the rightful rulers of Russia. The USSR was only able to join the League of Nations (similar to the UN) in 1934, almost 15 years(!) after it was founded. Stalin turned to Hitler simply because he was the only leader that was willing to deal with the USSR; Stalin would have wanted alliances with UK and France, but they gave him the cold shoulder.
TL,DR: Hitler was extreme right; No, his intervention in the economy and his dealings with Stalin don't magically turn him into a left-wing
I think George Orwell's definition of Nazism, from "The Lion and the Unicorn" (1940) in interesting. (Although bear in mind that Orwell had biases of his own):
"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 sympathize 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 recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have ‘proved’ over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic 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".
Follow up question:
I have occasionally seen Fascism/Nazisim described as "radical centrism." The main idea was that fascist economic policy was a sort of middle ground between capitalism and communism, but rest of the ideology was radically authoritarian/totalitarian. Is there any truth to that claim or is it an oversimplification?
The NSDAP has a weird history before the rise of Hitler. The link between socialists and nazists are not in ideology, but in their voting base. There was a big working class part of the NSDAP, which Goebbels (the minister of propaganda) wanted to build on. Hitler himself was not so keen on keeping the socialist monicker, but Goebbels idea prevailed. Calling themselves socialist helped them recruit many desillusioned workers.
If you find the sources to be conflicting, you should ask yourself what these sources are and why they present the information. No serious source (who understands what the socialist movement is) could ever call the Nazis leftist. If they are described as left, the source probably have some ideological bias that makes it want to smeer the left for the source's own purposes. It basically makes no sense.