In their breathless rush to discredit the left by equating Nazism to Soviet Communism, the Right has always sought to capitalize on the fact that the word "Socialism" occurs in the official name of the Nazi party.. In spite of this, the philosophies were totally opposed, (although in practice they certainly shared many of the same tactics).

William L Shirer exposes this myth at length, demolishing it repeatedly in his "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." (1960). I suggest you look up his index entry: National Socialist Worker's Party or N.S.D.A.P., "second revolution and "socialism", 41, 123, 126, 128, 143, 147, 176, 180, 204-8, 213-15, 232, 261. It meticulously documents Hitler's systematic purging of all leftist elements and thought from the Nazi party after he came aboard in the early 20s. These page numbers refer to the 1990 Simon & Schuster paperback edition, although I'm sure other editions share the same index entry.

I simply cannot type all of this material here and it is not available electronically, so I will give you key excerpts of just the first few references.

---------------------------------------------------------------p41
"A good many paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans...."

[here he lists a catalog of lefty-sounding Party Points].

"These demands had been put in at the insistence of Drexler and Feder, who apparently really believed in the 'socialism' of National Socialism. They were the ideas which Hitler was to find embarassing when the big industrialists and landlords began to pour money into the party coffers, and of course, nothing was ever done about them."

----------------------------------------------------------p123
"Fiercely independent in spirit and mind, Strasser refused to kowtow to Hitler or to take very seriously the Austrian's claims to be absolute dictator of the Nazi movement. This was to prove, in the long run, a fatal handicap, as was his sincere enthusiasm for the "socialism" in National Socialism.

-------------------------------------------------------p 126
[Describing Hitler's response to party functionaries reaching out to Communist rabble-rousers, early in the party's history]

"To Adolf Hitler, this was rank heresy, and he watched with increasing uneasiness the success of the Strasser brothers and Goebbels in building up a vigorous, radical, proletarian wing of the party in the north.If left to themselves, these men might capture the party, and for objectives which Hitler violently opposed. The inevitable showdown came in the fall of 1925..."

"...Strasser and Goebbels proposed that the Nazi Party jump into the fray..." [a Weimar Plebiscite proposed by the Reds that would expropriate property and funds from deposed nobility]

"Hitler was furious. Several of these former rulers had kicked in with contributions to the party. Moreover, a number of big industrialists were beginning to become financially interested in Hitler's reborn movement precisely because it promised to be effective in combatting the Communists, the Socialists, and the trade unions." [emphasis mine]

----------------------------------------------------p128
[Quoting a 1926 Goebbels diary entry when the latter realized his Socialist proclivities were no longer welcome in the Nazi party]

"Hitler talks for two hours. I feel as though someone had beaten me. What sort of Hitler is this? A reactionary? Extremely awkward and unsteady. Completely wrong on the Russian question. Italy and England are our natural allies! Horrible!...We must annihilate Russia!...The question of the private property of the nobilty must not even be touched upon. Terrible!"

[Needles to say, Dr Goebbels eventually came around to the Fuehrer's POV.]

--------------------------------------------------p143
[quoting Walther Funk]
"The Fuehrer personally stressed time and again during talks with me and industrial leaders to whom I had introduced him, that he was an enemy of state economy and of so-called "planned economy" and that he considered free enterprise and competition as absolutely necessary in order to gain the highest possible production."

[Shirer]: "The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly 'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it."

And it goes on and on, page after page. Naziism was not only anti-Communist, it was as anti Communist as you can get--and it was proudly anti-democratic. The Reds had at least claimed to be democrats.

The Nazis were not only far Right, their program was Rightist; they received all their financial and moral support from the Right. After Hitler took over the Party, Leftist elements were systematically purged. and rightist institutions and power centers cultivated. Any attempt to gain legitimacy by denying Nazi political origins as claimed by an opportunistic American Conservative movement is simply not true. In fact, its a disgraceful and deliberate twisting of the truth.