No.
There’s a popular meme around to categorise the Nazis as socialists because they want to paint all socialists with the colour of murderous dictators. You do have to wonder why given that Stalin existed.
But It’s In The Name!
To be picky it’s not the word “socialist” that exists in the name of the party but the German word sozialistische. The full party name was: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
At least it was after the renaming of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; a far right party dedicated to fighting the communists (which were quite popular in Germany after the first world war). The renaming (which Hitler initially opposed) to include the word “sozialistische” was ‘intended to draw upon both left-wing and right-wing ideals, with “Socialist” and “Workers'” appealing to the left, and “National” and “German” appealing to the right.’
How About Their Policies?
If you look at some of the policies of the early Nazi party, they do appear to be influenced by the left: anti-capitalist, anti-big-business, etc. These policies later disappeared as the Nazis grew closer to power and they started to need the support of industrialists.
Another way of looking at it was the association with the militant far-right – the Freicorps (both a generic term and a term applying to a specific group of far-right paramilitary thugs). The Nazis were quite happy to associate in their early days with the Freicorps thugs until they became inconvenient and were “disassociated” during the Night of the Long Knives.
Dachau
The first concentration camp (Dachau) was created for Hitler to punish his political opponents – chiefly communists, socialists, or trade unionists. Some will point at Lenin’s suppression of his political opponents to illustrate that this is not an indication that Hitler wasn’t a socialist.
Only Lenin didn’t suppress leftists initially – for example Emma Goldman was free to visit the Soviet Union, observe, and then return to criticise the revolution. Probably necessarily too – Lenin’s Bolcheviks were probably a minority of leftists in Russia at the time.
Fin
Labelling Nazis as socialists is a right-wing deception to hide the fact that the far right come down to evil policies, and to blacken the name of socialism.
Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty to criticise about socialism but the whole “Look how many folk socialists have killed” thing is really a criticism of authoritarian regimes. Many of which (frequently overlooked by the right) were right-wing regimes: Franco’s Spain, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, …
You’ll find some will say “but Stalin killed far more”. Which is true enough, but although Stalin killed an astounding number deliberately, incompetence was also a factor especially when it comes to the famines (and yes there’s a debate to be had about how much was incompetence and how much was maliciousness).
But the key thing is that no serious political historian will classify the Nazis as left-wing. You have to go a lot further than pointing at the name without the audience laughing.
