Atlas / Organisations / National Socialism
National Socialism
NSDAP · 1920–1945 · Germany · Fascist · Held state power · coding confidence high
Contested codingEach axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
A racially defined national community, hierarchy by blood, conquest of living space, extermination of designated enemies.
Economic model
Private ownership and profit preserved and privatised further; state direction of investment for rearmament; free unions abolished and replaced by a state front; slave labour.
Organisation of powers
Total concentration of power in the leader; no parliament, courts, press, or lawful opposition.
Reading note
The 'socialist' in the party name is the most frequently cited evidence in political argument. The regime executed and imprisoned German socialists and communists, retained and expanded private ownership, and transferred state enterprises to private hands. Historians of the period place it in the fascist family; the naming dispute is about the word, not the record.
Check a claim about National Socialism. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored +02
Ownership stayed private and was pushed further private, while allocation was directed by the state for rearmament. That combination sits just right of the midpoint, not at either pole.
- Programme textThe 1920 twenty-five point programme demanded nationalisation of trusts, profit-sharing and land expropriation without compensation.
- Documented act or statuteHitler declared the programme unalterable in 1926 and none of its collectivist points were enacted.
- ScholarshipState holdings in steel, mining, banking and shipbuilding were sold to private owners between 1934 and 1937; economic historians identify this as the first large-scale privatisation programme of the twentieth century.
- Documented act or statuteFree trade unions were dissolved in May 1933 and replaced by the state-run German Labour Front; strikes and collective bargaining were abolished.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored +09
Social order was to be reconstituted on racial hierarchy, with women's role restricted by policy and all autonomous civil association dissolved.
- Documented act or statuteMarried women were pushed out of the professions from 1933 and awarded the Mother's Cross for childbearing from 1938.
- Documented act or statuteYouth, professional and leisure organisations were merged into party bodies under the Gleichschaltung laws of 1933–34.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +10
Every independent institution was either abolished or absorbed within eighteen months of taking office. There is no lower-scoring case available.
- Documented act or statuteThe Enabling Act of March 1933 transferred legislative power to the cabinet.
- Documented act or statuteAll parties other than the NSDAP were banned by July 1933.
- Documented act or statuteState parliaments were abolished and Reich governors appointed in 1934; the offices of chancellor and president were merged.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +09
Federal structure abolished outright and replaced with direct appointment from the centre, plus territorial expansion.
- Documented act or statuteThe Länder parliaments were abolished in January 1934 and their sovereign rights transferred to the Reich.
ID · Rule of membership · scored +10
Membership of the political community was defined by ancestry in statute, with the penalty for exclusion escalating to extermination.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1935 Nuremberg Laws defined citizenship by descent and criminalised marriage across the line they drew.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1939–1945 extermination programme is the terminal case of an ascriptive membership rule.
CH · Method and tempo · scored +09
The party came to office through a legal appointment and then abolished the mechanism that produced it, having already run a decade of paramilitary street violence.
- Documented act or statuteThe SA numbered in the hundreds of thousands and functioned as a standing political militia from 1921.
- Documented act or statuteNo competitive national election was held after March 1933.
Where it came from, and what came after
- takes its doctrine fromItalian Fascism
The March on Rome was the explicit model for the Beer Hall Putsch a year later.
- was succeeded byChristian Nationalism
No organisational link; both are coded here and the distance between them is 14 points.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
- Islamic State1.7
- Sudanese Armed Factions3.6
- Italian Fascism4.0
- Taliban4.6
- Myanmar: NLD and Tatmadaw4.9
- Imperial Japanese Statism5.3
Countries
Arguments this entry is used in
Claims in circulation that turn on where this organisation sits. Each gives the strongest case for it, the strongest case against, and the measurement.
- Were the Nazis socialists?claim check
- Is the populist right fascism?claim check
- Are the far left and far right the same? Horseshoe theory, measuredclaim check
- Is nationalism right wing?claim check
- Is neoliberalism far right?claim check
- Is Milei a fascist? Are libertarians the hard right? Measuredclaim check
Cite this page
Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.