The identification of Nazi Germany as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of Ludwig von Mises. - George Reisman

Nazis generally did not have to kill in order to seize the property of Germans other than Jews. This was because, as we have seen, they established socialism by stealth, through price controls, which served to maintain the outward guise and appearance of private ownership. The private owners were thus deprived of their property without knowing it and thus felt no need to defend it by force.

When one remembers that the word "Nazi" was an abbreviation for "der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei" — in English translation: the National Socialist German Workers' Party — Mises's identification might not appear all that noteworthy. For what should one expect the economic system of a country ruled by a party with "socialist" in its name to be but socialism?

In any type of socialist state, Nazi or Communist, the government's economic plan is part of the supreme law of the land.