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Balint Vazsonyi, in his essay “Socialism: The Ultimate Evil,” reminds us that communism and fascism are two branches on the tree called Marxism. He makes that point in many of his works.

In his essay he writes that “Technically speaking, Communism is simply the final phase, the ultimate goal of socialism. So is what we call Nazism. ‘Nazi’ is short for National Socialism, merely another variant of socialism. Stalin ordered Nazis to be referred to as “Fascists” only to avoid the obvious analogy with Soviet Socialism. Germans never were ‘Fascists’ - the Third Reich was ruled by the National Socialist German Workers Party.

“Yes, Stalin and Hitler, the prize disciples of Lenin, were twins. So were communism and Nazism. In Budapest, when the Gestapo left, the NKVD (then GPU) did not even bother to change the building in which the tortures and murders took place. They kept the building and the personnel.

“Rather than enemies, Nazism and Communism were the ultimate competitors. Each wanted to conquer and rule,” wrote Vazsonyi.

I have no trouble at all grouping communism and fascism together as two extreme left wing movements. Both controlled people’s money, property, liberty and lives. The only glaring difference is that communism owned the property and means of production, while fascism allowed free enterprise and capitalism as long as property owners carried out the will of the state.

“There are to be no more private Germans,” said Freidrich Sieburg, a Nazi writer in the 1930s. “Each is to attain significance only by his service to the state, and to find complete self-fulfillment in his service.”

Walter Darre, who held the posts of Reich Peasant Leader and Agriculture Minister, assumed an important role in controlling private property in the Reich. He instituted land use plans, organic farming and clean soil programs.

Robert Proctor, in his book “Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis,” writes that....”the Nazis were health fanatics who banned cigarette smoking, promoted vegetarianism and organic gardening, engaged in abortion and euthanasia, frowned on all capital excess and even promoted animal rights. They were environmentalists who locked up the land to promote paganism.”

All this control was carried out by a massive Reich bureaucracy that had no respect for private property. Rather than thinking that all Germans willingly went along with the fascist program - I’m sure many did - others were forced to obey when the Reich told them to act “for the common good” or face brutal state action. Many people - business owners and private property owners - saw what happened to those who disobeyed and left Germany.

I want to end this portion of the debate by posting a humorous FAQ describing an ettiquette of discussing fascism and nazis from the USENET days. It seems that when people reach the end of their tethers, they often resort to calling each other nazis, appropriately or not. That truism is summarized by Godwin's Law, which states that the longer a given thread of discussion, the probability that a comparison of someone or something will be made to Nazis approaches one. (In other words, it almost always happens on long threads.) I think this is a function of angry people wanting to find the worst insult they can imagine, and throwing the label of nazi at them. I think we can all agree that they could be resorting to calling each other communists, but even today there are people walking around with holier than thou looks who are proud to say they are part of a movement partly responsible for the deaths of at least 100,000,000 people.

I realize you're all making a serious point that totalitarianism ends up with more similarities than differences, but I still think it's appropriate to offer some levity after so many strong opinions (all in virtual agreement that Nazis and Communists are both vile).

Here's the introduction:

One of the most famous pieces of Usenet trivia out there is "if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in". Known as Godwin's Law, this rule of Usenet has a long and sordid history on the network - and is absolutely wrong. This FAQ is an attempt to set straight as much of the history and meaning of Godwin's Law as possible, and hopefully encourage users to invoke it a bit more sparingly. Of course, knowing Usenet, it won't do an ounce of good...