Veritas: Well, Nazi is simply shorthand for “National Socialist”. Both Hitler and Mussolini were at the vanguard of what was to be a worldwide socialist movement.

If you look at Hitler’s domestic policies, such as they were, they were socialist both in policy and, to a lesser extent, in execution. When I say a lesser extent, that is largely a function of Hitler’s reach exceeding his grasp (his vision of “Greater Germania”, for example).

The truly sad fact, and one that you and another poster on the thread astutely pointed out, is that Bush and the Republican Party (albeit with the help of the Democrats) have already pretty much “socialized” America in the last few months. I don’t see Obama coming in and doing anything worse than has already been done.

Interestingly, Hitler, Mussolini and FDR were pretty much working off the same socialist playbook when it came to reviving the economies and fortunes of their respective countries. Obviously, the outcome was markedly different in terms of where Germany, Italy and the US wound up (following WWII), but there is a school of thought that holds that FDR’s policies during the New Deal period were largely failures. It will also be interesting to see the fallout from the policies of these last few months.