The claim that the Nazis were “actually socialist” because they used price controls, wage controls, industrial planning, nationalizations, anti‑profiteer rhetoric, and capital‑location rules is a category error dressed up as insight. It confuses state coercion with socialism and ignores ownership, labor power, distribution, and motive. The Nazi economy preserved private ownership, crushed labor, enriched industrial elites, and mobilized the entire system for racial war. Price and wage controls were used to freeze wages downward, ban strikes, eliminate bargaining, and guarantee profits for Krupp, IG Farben, Siemens, Daimler, and Thyssen. Workers were locked at 1933 wage levels while industrial profits soared. This is authoritarian capitalism, not socialism. Industrial planning under the Four‑Year Plan directed private firms toward rearmament, autarky, and racial expansion. IG Farben received subsidies, guaranteed contracts, and slave labor. Krupp expanded steel and armaments under state protection. Planning plus private ownership equals state‑managed capitalism, not socialism. Nationalizations were tactical and temporary, used to stabilize failing firms, remove Jewish owners, or consolidate cartel power. Banks nationalized in the early 1930s were later re‑privatized. Jewish‑owned firms were expropriated and handed to Aryan private owners. None of this created worker ownership, public ownership, redistribution, or democratic control. Anti‑profiteer rhetoric targeted Jewish businesses, international finance, and “cosmopolitan capital,” while German industrialists were rewarded and enriched. Aryanization transferred Jewish businesses to private German owners at fire‑sale prices. Cartels were strengthened. Profits skyrocketed for firms using enslaved labor. This was racial scapegoating, not class politics. Capital‑location control served military positioning, autarky, and racial colonization. Synthetic fuel plants were placed near coal deposits for strategic independence. Armaments factories moved eastward to support invasion logistics. Private firms built facilities in occupied Poland using enslaved labor. Ownership remained private, profits remained private, labor remained powerless. This is command‑and‑control capitalism, not socialism. Socialism is defined by worker or public ownership, redistribution, labor empowerment, egalitarian goals, and anti‑hierarchy. Nazism preserved private ownership, enriched industrial elites, destroyed unions, banned bargaining, enforced racial hierarchy, and mobilized the economy for war. The Nazi system redistributed wealth upward, not downward. No serious historian classifies Nazism as socialist. The myth persists because it is rhetorically useful, not historically accurate. It allows the speaker to smear modern left economics by association, claim “the left invented totalitarianism,” weaponize the party name while ignoring the party’s policies, and collapse all state intervention into “socialism,” a basic category error. The structure tells the truth. The ownership tells the truth. The labor regime tells the truth. The motive tells the truth. None of it is socialist.