The name [[Nazi]] is a contraction of the full party name, [[National Socialist]] German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP). Nazism, in short, is simply one of several varieties of [[socialism]]. As a political party it controlled Germany from 1933-1945 under [[Adolf Hitler]], resulting in [[World War II]] and a campaign of mostly anti-[[Jewish]] and [[racist]] [[politics]], resulting in [[genocide]] (see the [[Holocaust]]).
Supporters of [[Communism]], or of [[socialism]] in general, like to pretend that Nazism was not socialist but "[[right wing]]", for similar reasons to why [[fascism]] is often associated with the right wing despite being left wing. Despite this, however, it featured enough similarities with Communism that they were in fact closer to the [[far left]], even including anti-Semitism, which Karl Marx had advocated.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20020116231910/http://russp.org/nazis.html</ref>
* It was common in those days, as it is in ours, to identify the [[Communist]]s as [[leftist]] and the Nazis as [[rightist]]s, as if they stood on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. But [[Ludwig von Mises]] knew differently. They both sported the same ideological pedigree of socialism. "The German and [[Russian]] systems of socialism have in common the fact that the [[big government]] has full control of the means of production. It decides what shall be produced and how. It allots to each individual a share of consumer's goods for his consumption."