As someone who has been interested in the political development and application of both Soviet/Eastern European Communism and National Socialism for many years, I find this heated topic particularly interesting.
In my point of view, early Nazi literature and propaganda definitely emphasised the priority of the working class, although it was careful never to have its ideology associated with any internationalist affiliation. The NSDAP originated out of an early nineteen-twenties German working class atmosphere, thus its original demands were unsurprisingly indicative of that which is categorized as leftwing, especially regarding its insistence that industries are not only to be nationalized, but their profits also divided. Take, for example, section 2 of the NSDAP’s constitution, which Hitler himself supposedly declared inalterable on Feburary 25th, 1920 at the Hofbrauhausfestsall in Munich. Here, we can see a staunch opposition to classless society in Point 16, (demanding the creation of a middle class) revealing that from the onset, the Nazi’s resented Marxism:
WE DEMAND; THEREFORE:
11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
Furthermore, we see earlier within Point 8 and then later in Point 24 is what perhaps best distinguished themselves from other socialistic oriented parties during the era:
8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Ayran, who entered Germany subsequent to August 2nd, 1914, shall be required forthwith to depart from the Reich.
...
24. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats Jewish materialist spirit within us, and is convinced that our nation can only achieve permanent health from within on the principle: THE COMMON INTERREST BEFORE SELF.
The main theoretical aspect of National Socialist political philosophy was indubitably the legal concept of Volkisch equality, i.e. “ascribed racial equality of opportunity, equality before the law, and full legal rights to those able people of German blood or related Aryan blood, but deliberately excluded people outside of this definition, who were regarded as inferior.” (I took this definition directly from the “Volkisch Equality” Wikipedia page.) Volkism stood for populist socialism only for a particular caste as opposed to any political humanistic universalism. Hence the distain for internationalism whether it be communistic or capitalistic.
Obviously, this racial egalitarianism concept was hardly adhered to in reality, as many senior officials engaged in rampant corruption and also interfered in the judicial process by legislating ex post facto laws applicable to those who already were on trial. Within NS Germany, rule of law was completely neglected and the fundamental legal principle established throughout the western world, nemo est supra legem, was patently violated through Enabling Act. From 1933 up until May 1945, the Third Reich was entirely an authoritarian single party dictatorship whose legislative system could be rewritten depending on the whim of its Führer.
Gottfried Feder’s “fight” against usury and mammonism, Theodor Fritsch’s baseless accusations that economic globalism was entangled within Jewish “spider-web” conspiracy and Anton Drexler’s socialist awaking all linked European-American Jewry for being responsible for the moral and economic downfall of Germany. Americanized consumerism and Soviet communism, they argued, promoted racial mixing thus it had no place to exist within an ideal society. What these volkists aimed for was the establishment of a eugenic society that would devote its care for the übermensch and rid those who were perceived as being unworthy of life. Later on, topics concerning progressivism became the catalyst for heated dispute among National Socialists. Whereas personalities like Gobbles and Goering wanted a new generation of Germans to live in modern urbanized cities, they faced strong resistance from the pastoral
Blut und Boden fraction which emphasized a revival of rural customs and medieval aristocracies. Similar discrepancies existed regarding Art and Religion, although such debates almost always culminated with Hitler giving the final world. It seems that had it have been permitted to last longer, National Socialism would have become a rather abstract political ideology with different streams, similarly to how Communism branches out with different trains of thought, e.x. Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc...
While this was the philosophic intention behind the ideology, controversy among historians proceeds to amasses as to whether or not Hitler’s government succeeded in fulfilling the creation of a welfare state in the strictest sense of the term. Personally, I fall under the predominant camp of those who believe that sometime shortly before or after the Night of the Long Knifes, Hitler largely abandoned the socialistic aims of his party in order to win support from industrialists so that he could build an efficient military-complex capable of conducting massive expansionism, especially in the east. That is why Hitler avoided discussing anything about his left leaning rivals like Strasser, Goebbels and Röhm within
Mein Kampf. Not only was he aware that these powerful figures within the Sturmabteilung posed as a potential danger to his acquisition of power, but Hitler additionally knew that his lebensraum aspirations would have never have got off the ground had their economic policies prevailed. Throughout the span of the Third Reich, it is my opinion (although I might be totally wrong about it, please correct me) NS Germany was the only country out of the European Axis powers to have large-scale organizations designed to serve their domestic working class such as the Kraft durch Freude -KdF, Volkswohlfahrt -NSV and the Deutsche Arbeitsfront -DAF. While these organizations were not by any means perfect nor did they conform with today’s standards within most socialist countries, at least they had provided something to the masses which, from what I understand, either
did not exist or never surpassed the magnitude of their German counterparts within Fascist Italy, Falange Spain, Arrow Cross Hungary, Vichy France, Ustaše Croatia or Romania under Antonescu.
(Comparing the trade/welfare organization(s) belonging to the NSDAP with those that might have existed in other Axis countries would be a really interesting topic, btw.)
Regards