I have repeatedly seen claims made by leftist pundits that the Nazis invented the term “privatization” to describe their economic policy. However, since it seems the vast majority of discussion about this leads into people acting in extremely bad faith (ie, calling the Nazis leftists or something else of the sort) I’m hoping this somewhat impartial subreddit will be able to answer the question. Additionally, if this is true, is the way the Nazis used the term the same way it is used now?
No. The word is older than the Nazis, being used by German economists in the 19th century. That said, the term was made internationally famous and popular when used by the magazine The Economist to describe the policies of the Nazi regime. So while things like the enclosure of the commons, can be described as "privatisations", the term wasn't used by British economists to describe it. It could however very well have been used by economists trained in Germany, though I have been unable to dust up such uses of it. All we know is that the concept was known of, at least in Germany, before the Nazis.
However! As said, the term really first entered international discourse, when the magazine The Economist used it to describe the mass privatisations—or re-preprivatisations, reverse expropriations—that the Nazi government undertook—at a historically unprecedented scale—such as the privatisation of the German State Railway and a lot of the mining industry. While something more commonly associated with Thatcher or Pinochet and their neo-liberal policymaking, was done by the Nazis in Germany, a good 40 years ahead of them. Other things the Nazi regime privatised were local utilities, i.e. water and electricity, large swaths of the banking sector, the publicly owned steel works and shipyards, etc. According to Germà Bel they even moved parts of the social services and unemployment services out of the public, and to private organs. The caveat of course being that said private organs often would, in one way or another, be associated with the Nazi party, such as their owner being a high ranking member of the Nazi party, thinking about the Hermann Göring Werke.
So, the term didn't originate with the Nazis, but it was popularised due to the Nazis, who undertook the first mass privatisations of the style we also know from types such as Reagan, Thatcher or Pinochet, i.e. the way we understand the term today.
Literature:
Bel, Germà. "Against the mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930s Germany" in The Economic History Review (2010-02-01)
Kämmerer, Jörn Axel. Privatisierung: Typologie – Determinanten – Rechtspraxis – Folgen. 2001. Mohr Siebeck.
Both should be available online as PDF's.