The Myth of Hitler's Leftism

[Nolan]

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm

Discuss.

[Che a chara]

that article should be introduced to ignorant Americans.

[La Comédie Noire]

Most of the leftist trappings of the Nazi Party were the idea of Otto Strasser who thought the party should appeal to the working classes. They even took part in a Berlin Transit Worker's strike alongside the Communist Party, of course this little publicity stunt backfired when it ended up scaring away their middle class constituency.

While it can be argued Otto and his brother Gregor Strasser were sincere socialists their policies didn't have a significant effect on the party's overall programme. They never saw it as anything more than a chance to get more votes.

[heiss93]

Here is a critique of the idiotic Communism=Totalitarianism=Nazism, which even many liberals accept. IT comes from from Rothbard, certainly no leftist:

"Fascism and Nazism were the local culmination in domestic affairs of the modern drift toward right-wing collectivism. It has become customary among libertarians, as indeed among the Establishment of the West, to regard fascism and communism as fundamentally identical. But while both systems were indubitably collectivist, they differed greatly in their socioeconomic content. Communism was a genuine revolutionary movement that ruthlessly displaced and overthrew the old ruling elites, while fascism, on the contrary, cemented into power the old ruling classes. Hence, fascism was a counterrevolutionary movement that froze a set of monopoly privileges upon society; in short, fascism was the apotheosis of modern State monopoly capitalism. [10] (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard33.html#_ftn10) Here was the reason that fascism proved so attractive (which communism, of course, never did) to big business interests in the West – openly and unabashedly so in the 1920s and early 1930s. [11] (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard33.html#_ftn11)"

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard33.html

[Sinred]

About the first article:
the author does some major misstakes and misunderstandings in it and i have some deep criticism against it. Most of the points of the checklists are very good and true. But i need to correct a few of them.

* "Individualism over collectivism." National Socialism actually is a collectivist ideology, elitistic for sure. But still view the nation as a entity standing over the individual seeking for career on the cost of race and nation. And i still think conservatives can be viewed as a somewhat collectivistic ideology and liberalism a individualistic one. This however doesnt equal socialism on any level. It still have the same socialdarwinistic, procapitalist and elitist thinking who is recognizable for every extreme right-wing ideology (including objectivism, fascism, paleoconservatism and neoliberaliism), just on a collectivic version.
* "Power politics and militarism over pacifism". Pascifism far from equal revolutionary leftism. We dont view eternal struggle as a part of the human mind, but we do believe in the classwar and kicking the upper class down to where they belong, either 6 feet under or just stripped of they're privileges. And marxist-leninists (and many other revolutionary leftists) do believe in power politics when it comes the democratic majority rule over the minority of old capitalists (who will do anything in their power to smash the workers rule) to build a socialist country. Nazis doesn't however believe in a majority state, less a socialist one, and proclaim a elitist capitalism with no resemblance near socialism. We don't view war as a part of human nature, but we do know what needs to be done.
* "Realism over idealism" Nazis view them self as both idealists and realists. We Marxists view our self philosophic as materialists, which actually is what we can call "the real realism" since you never can (as nazis do) combine the philosophy that some ideas is eternal (idealism) would have something to do with reality (realism). Thats the major critic against nazis from us marxists when it comes to ideology: nazis are deluded, metaphysical idealists which ideology have nothing to do with the reality outside lala-land. Meanwhile, us marxists keep it real.
* "Meat-eating over vegetarianism."As for meat-eating vs. vegetarianism, i dont even see the relevance. Meat-eating doesnt make you less of a marxist in anyway. Class struggle does, and i have no problem whatsoever with my class eating meat. Idont view vegans as less revolutionary either. Its just that the argument sounds like hippie-bullshit to me and only maybe can find some support in anarchist circles or some ecologist muppets.
*Same goes for "Gun ownership over gun control". It doesnt per see make you a marxist being against gun ownership. Im sure (or atleast hope) we can all agree that under capitalism this (as in for example USA) is often a reactionary quest, often related to conservative loonies. But we shall keep in mind that it very well may come a period where we need to arm the people during the revolution and i, for one, dont see a problem with getting knowledge of how to use a gun or even buying one to practice for future reasons. Thats actually one of the first things im going to do when (if) i move to USA. Its not a problem owning a gun, its how you motivate it.
* "Pragmatism over principle". Every revolutionary got to keep in mind that principles must not exclude pragmatism. We adjust our self to the current struggle and dont (or at lest shouldn't) dedicate our self to unchangeable principles or dogmatic thinking. Our only principles is that we believe in power to the people, the well of the people, fighting for the future and smash capitalism, but they way towards those goals must be pragmatic is we ever gonna succeed liberating the human species under the boot of capitalism.
:cool:

[Dimentio]

Meat-eating and vegetarianism are generally not connected with any ideologies in particular. Though vegetarianism tend bo me more usual on what is considered the extreme fringes.

[Nolan]

Most of the leftist trappings of the Nazi Party were the idea of Otto Strasser who thought the party should appeal to the working classes. They even took part in a Berlin Transit Worker's strike alongside the Communist Party, of course this little publicity stunt backfired when it ended up scaring away their middle class constituency.

While it can be argued Otto and his brother Gregor Strasser were sincere socialists their policies didn't have a significant effect on the party's overall programme. They never saw it as anything more than a chance to get more votes.

It can be argued that Strasser and friends were some type of pro-labor pseudo-socialists, but not in any way Marxists or communists. The higher-ups in the Nazi Party never saw them as anything more than an asset. They were purged from the party later on.

[CallMeSteve]

I was amazed how much socialist rhetoric Hitler used in the Memoirs of a Confidant text by Wagener. Basically he talks about the ruling elite in industrial society exploiting the workers, and how socialism could change this. That is, if it wasn't usurped by jews of course... :rolleyes:

Still, easy to see how some less-educated people might think Hitler had leftist leanings, if only from his writings and not his actions (obviously he had heavily anti-proletarian policies, such as destruction of unions, RAD scheme, big business contracts etc.). A man of many contradictions.

[Dimentio]

I was amazed how much socialist rhetoric Hitler used in the Memoirs of a Confidant text by Wagener. Basically he talks about the ruling elite in industrial society exploiting the workers, and how socialism could change this. That is, if it wasn't usurped by jews of course... :rolleyes:

Still, easy to see how some less-educated people might think Hitler had leftist leanings, if only from his writings and not his actions (obviously he had heavily anti-proletarian policies, such as destruction of unions, RAD scheme, big business contracts etc.). A man of many contradictions.

Hitler was a man run by his emotions. Basically, he had no ideology in real terms. For one moment, he could rave and rant about morality, decency and chivalry, the other moment, he could start to rage about that humans should behave like monkeys and be completely ruthless towards one another.

The only thing which was constant was his antisemitism.

[CallMeSteve]

I believe you are right on him not having a true ideology and being guided by his emotions.

On the topic of Hitler's constants, to his anti-Semitism (including the global Jewish conspiracy) I would also add his hatred of France and French culture, anti-Bolshevism (again, tied in with anti-Semitism) and his hatred of Poland.

From what I have studied, these three are really the only continuing themes in his works through Mein Kampf, the Secret Book and Memoirs of a Confidant.

[Nolan]

Lol, some jackass called TylerNull (http://www.youtube.com/user/TylerNull) told me this on a Jonah Goldberg video when I refuted the ridiculous notion that the nazis were socialists. He didn't even address my points.


Yes, the left-wing socialists were "anti" right-wing socialists, and visa verse. Much like the Shia Muslims are "anti" Sunni Muslims. And the one sect is often claiming the others aren't "true".

So, what?

The fact that left wing and right wing socialists are socialists is a bit more than a "notion". All are fascistic.

Beyond that, your claim that one sect of socialism "has nothing to do with" another is nonsensical. All socialists share the common signature traits, as Goldberg discusses.

[Red Commissar]

Lol, some jackass called TylerNull (http://www.youtube.com/user/TylerNull) told me this on a Jonah Goldberg video when I refuted the ridiculous notion that the nazis were socialists. He didn't even address my points.

That's what you get for trying to have an argument with a youtube user :D

[danyboy27]

Its freaking obvious that the national socialist where not really socialist or communist for that matter.

The abolition of free Union and the creation of the Deutch Arbeit Front is a brilliant exemple.

There was a lot of social measure Taken by the reich, but their sole goal was to keep the population obedient and to avoid them to dissociate themselves with the regime, creating what the high ranking called, the National community.

Everywhere the german went, the party was involved somehow; factories unions,cheap public show and Art exposition sponsored by the NSDAP, community actions by the hitler youth, All those measure where nothing but a Method to abolish class struggle in order to allow the NSDAP to have a better control over the population regardless of their income,bourgeois, poor or rich, putting in their brain that they where nothing more, nothing less, than a part of the state itself, a part of the furher.

this state of dream only died out when the leadership was completly bankrupted and collapsed in 1945.

classes where not abolished but controlled, and this goes completly against what communism stand for.

the nazi where national-socialist
not national-socialists

[Die Rote Fahne]

This article is a god send to anyone who is sick of arguing with retards who think the Nazis were socialists or left wing at all.

[Nolan]

This article is a god send to anyone who is sick of arguing with retards who think the Nazis were socialists or left wing at all.

Why is that opinion so prevalent among the right-wing of recent?

[Dimentio]

Why is that opinion so prevalent among the right-wing of recent?

"Argumentum ad hitlerum"

-------------------

Hitler was a vegetarian! Therefore, vegetarianism is evil!

Hitler liked Wagner! Therefore, if you listen to Wagner you are a nazi!

Hitler disliked modern art! Why do you dislike modern art? Do you like Hitler?

:lol:

On a serious note, right-wingers do not like that Hitler is identified as right-wing, so they would do everything in their power to toss him over to the left field.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Why is that opinion so prevalent among the right-wing of recent?

Because it's easier for far right conservatives to distance themselves from Nazism by saying it is left wing than right wing instead of accepting the reactionary, conservative, and capitalist nature of Nazism.

[Nolan]

More depressing facts for the deniers of nazi capitalism:

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/51/pauwels.html

[Bankotsu]

A study of the Nazi system:



The position of the industrialists in Nazi society was complex and very important. In general, business had an extraordinary position. In the first place, it was the only one of the Quartet which drastically improved its position in the Third Reich. In the second place, it was the only one of the Quartet which was not coordinated significantly and in which the "leadership principle" was not applied. Instead, industry was left free of government and party control except in the widest terms and except for the exigencies of war, and was subjected instead to a pattern of self-regulation built up, not on the "leadership principle," but on a system where power was proportional to the size of the enterprise.

In these strange exceptions we can find one of the central principles of the Nazi system. It is a principle which is often missed. We have been told that Germany had a corporate state or a totalitarian state. Neither was true. There was no real corporate organization (even fraudulent, as in Italy and Austria), and such an organization, much discussed before and after 1933, was quickly dropped by 1935. The term "totalitarian" cannot be applied to the German system of self-regulation, although it could be applied to the Soviet system.

The Nazi system was dictatorial capitalism—that is, a society organized so that everything was subject to the benefit of capitalism; everything, that is, compatible with two limiting factors: (a) that the Nazi Party, which was not capitalist, was in control of the state, and (b) that war, which is not capitalist, could force curtailment of capitalist benefits (in the short run at least). In this judgment we must define our terms accurately. We define capitalism as "a system of economics in which production is based on profit for those who control the capital." In this definition one point must be noted: the expression "for those who control the capital" does not necessarily mean the owners. In modern economic conditions large-scale enterprise with widely dispersed stock-ownership has made management more important.... Accordingly, profits are not the same as dividends, and, in fact, dividends become objectionable to management, since they take profits out of its control.

The traditional capitalist system was a profit system. In its pursuit of profits it was not primarily concerned with production, consumption, prosperity, high employment, national welfare, or anything else. As a result, its concentration on profits eventually served to injure profits.

This development got the whole society into such a mess that enemies of the profit system began to rise up on all sides. Fascism was the counterattack of the profit system against these enemies. This counterattack was conducted in such a violent fashion that the whole appearance of society was changed, although, in the short run, the real structure was not greatly modified. In the long run Fascism threatened even the profit system, because the defenders of that system, businessmen rather than politicians, turned over the control of the state to a party of gangsters and lunatics who in the long run might turn to attack businessmen themselves.

In the short run the Nazi movement achieved the aim of its creators. In order to secure profits it sought to avert six possible dangers to the profit system. These dangers were (1) from the state itself, (2) from organized labor; (3) from competition; (4) from depression; (5) from business losses; and (6) from alternative forms of economic production organized on nonprofit bases. These six all merged into one great danger, the danger from any social system in which production was organized on any basis other than profit. The fear of the owners and managers of the profit system for any system organized on any other basis became almost psychopathic.

The danger to the profit system from the state has always existed because the state is not essentially organized on a profit basis. In Germany this danger from the state was averted by the industrialists taking over the state, not directly, but through an agent, the Nazi Party. Hitler indicated his willingness to act as such an agent in various ways: by reassurances, such as his Dusseldorf speech of 1932; by accepting, as a party leader and his chief economic adviser, a representative of heavy industry (Walter Funk) on the very day (December 31, 1931) on which that representative joined the party at the behest of the industrialists; by the purge of those who wanted the "second revolution" or a corporative or totalitarian state (June 30, 1934).

That the industrialists' faith in Hitler on this account was not misplaced was soon demonstrated. As Gustav Krupp, the armaments manufacturer, writing to Hitler as the official representative of the Reich Association of German Industry, put it on April :5, 1933, "The turn of political events is in line with the wishes which I myself and the Board of Directors have cherished for a long time." This was true. The "second revolution" was publicly rejected by Hitler as early as July 1933, and many of its supporters sent to concentration camps, a development which reached its climax in the "blood purge" a year later. The radical Otto Wagener was replaced as chief economic adviser to the Nazi Party by a manufacturer, Wilhelm Keppler. The efforts to coordinate industry were summarily stopped. Many of the economic activities which had come under state control were "re-privatized." The United Steel Works, which the government had purchased from Ferdinand Flick in 1932, as well as three of the largest banks in Germany, which had been taken over during the crisis of 1931, were restored to private ownership at a loss to the government. Reinmetal-Borsig, one of the greatest corporations in heavy industry, was sold to the Hermann G๖ring Works. Many other important firms were sold to private investors. At the same time the property in industrial firms still held by the state was shifted from public control to joint public-private control by being subjected to a mixed board of directors. Finally, municipal enterprise was curtailed; its profits were taxed for the first time in 1935, and the law permitting municipal electric-power plants was revoked in the same year.

The danger from labor was not nearly so great as might seem at first glance. It was not labor itself which was dangerous, because labor itself did not come directly and immediately in conflict with the profit system; rather it was with labor getting the wrong ideas, especially Marxist ideas which did seek to put the laborer directly in conflict with the profit system and with private ownership. As a result, the Nazi system sought to control the ideas and the organization of labor, and was quite as eager to control his free time and leisure activities as it was to control his working arrangements. For this reason it was not sufficient merely to smash the existing labor organizations. This would have left labor free and uncontrolled and able to pick up any kind of ideas. Nazism, therefore, did not try to destroy these organizations but to take them over. All the old unions were dissolved into the German Labor Front. This gave an amorphous body of 25 million in which the individual was lost. This Labor Front was a party organization, and its finances were under control of the party treasurer, Franz X. Schwarz.

The Labor Front soon lost all of its economic activities, chiefly to the Ministry of Economics. An elaborate facade of fraudulent organizations which either never existed or never functioned was built up about the Labor Front. They included national and regional chambers of labor and a Federal Labor and Economic Council. In fact, the Labor Front had no economic or political functions and had nothing to do with wages or labor conditions. Its chief functions were (1) to propagandize; (2) to absorb the workers' leisure time, especially by the "Strength Through Joy" organization, ( 3 ) te tax workers for the party's profit; (4) to provide jobs for reliable party members within the Labor Front itself; (5) to disrupt working-class solidarity.

This facade was painted with an elaborate ideology based on the idea that the factory or enterprise was a community in which leader and followers cooperated. The Charter of Labor of January 20, 1934, which established this, said, `'The leader of the plant decides against the followers in all matters pertaining to the plant in so far as they are regulated by statute." A pretense was made that these regulations merely applied the "leadership principle" to enterprise. It did no such thing. Under the "leadership principle" the leader was appointed from above. In business life the existing owner or manager became, ipso facto, leader. Under this system there were no collective agreements, no way in which any group defended the worker in the face of the great power of the employer. One of the chief instruments of duress w as the "workbook" carried by the worker, which had to be signed by the employer on entering or leaving any job. If the employer refused to sign, the worker could get no other job.

Wage scales and conditions of labor, previously established by collective agreements, were made by a state employee, the labor trustee, created May 19, 1933. Under this control there was a steady downward reduction of working conditions, the chief change being from a period wage to a piecework payment. All overtime, holiday, night, and Sunday rates were abolished. The labor trustee was ordered to set maximum wage rates in June 1938, and a rigid ceiling was set in October 1939.

In return for this exploitation of labor, enforced by the terroristic activity of the "party cell' in each plant, the worker received certain compensations of which the chief was the fact that he was no longer threatened with the danger of mass unemployment. Employment figures for Germany were 17.8 million persons in 1929, only 12.7 million in 1932, and 20 million by 1939. This increased economic activity went to non-consumers' goods rather than consumers' goods, as can be seen from the following indices of production:


1928 1929 1932 1938


Production 100 100.9 58.7 124.7

a. Capital goods 100 103.2 45.7 135.9

b. Consumers’ goods 100 98.5 78.1 107.8


Business hates competition. Such competition might appear in various forms: (a) prices; (b) for raw materials; (c) for markets; (d) potential competition (creation of new enterprises in the same activity); (c) for labor. All these make planning difficult, and jeopardize profits. Businessmen prefer to get together with competitors so that they can cooperate to exploit consumers to the benefit of profits instead of competing with each other to the injury of profits. In Germany this was done by three kinds of arrangements: (1) cartels (Kartelle), (2) trade associations (Fackverbไnde), and (3) employers' associations (Spitzen-verbไnde). The cartels regulated prices, production, and markets. The trade associations were political groups organized as chambers of commerce or agriculture. The employers' associations sought to control labor..

All these existed long before Hitler came to power, an event that had relatively little influence on the cartels, but considerable influence on the other two. The economic power of cartels, left in the hands of businessmen, was greatly extended; the employers' associations were coordinated, subjected to party control through the establishment of the "leadership principle," and merged into the Labor Front, but had little to do, as all relations with labor (wages, hours, working conditions) were controlled by the state (through the Ministry of Economics and the labor trustee) and enforced by the party. The trade associations were also coordinated and subject to the "leadership principle," being organized into an elaborate hierarchy of chambers of economics, commerce, and industry, whose leaders were ultimately named by the Ministry of Economics.

All this was to the taste of businessmen. While they, in theory, lost control of the three types of organizations, in fact they got what they wanted in all three. We have shown that the employers' associations were coordinated. Yet employers got the labor, wage, and working conditions they wanted, and abolished labor unions and collective bargaining, which had been their chief ambition in this field. In the second field (trade associations) activities were largely reduced to social and propaganda actions, but the leaders, even under the "leadership principle," continued to be prominent businessmen. Of 173 leaders throughout Germany, 9 were civil servants, only 21 were party members, 108 were businessmen, and the status of the rest is unknown. Of 17 leaders in provincial economic chambers, all were businessmen, of whom 14 were party members. In the third field, the activities of cartels were so extended that almost all forms of market competition were ended, and these activities were controlled by the biggest enterprises. The Nazis permitted the cartels to destroy all competition by forcing all business into cartels and giving these into the control of the biggest businessmen. At the same time it did all it could to benefit big business, to force mergers, and to destroy smaller businesses. A few examples of this process will suffice.

A law of July 15, 1933, gave the minister of economics the right to make certain cartels compulsory, to regulate capacity of enterprises, and prohibit the creation of new enterprises. Hundreds of decrees were issued under this law. On the same day, the cartel statute of 1923 which prevented cartels from using boycotts against nonmembers was amended to permit this practice. As a result, cartels were able to prohibit new retail outlets, and frequently refused to supply wholesalers or retailers unless they did more than a minimum volume of business or had more than a minimum amount of capital. These actions were taken, for example, by the radio and the cigarette cartels.

Cartels were controlled by big business, since voting power within the cartel was based on output or number of employees. Concentration of enterprise was increased by various expedients, such as granting public contracts only to large enterprises or by "Aryanization" (which forced Jews to sell out to established firms). As a result, on May 7, 1938, the Ministry of Economics reported that 90,448 out of 600,000 one-man firms had been closed in two years. The Corporation Law of 1937 facilitated mergers, refused to permit new corporations of below 500,000 marks capital, ordered all new shares to be issued at a par value of at least 1,000 marks, and ordered the dissolution of all corporations of less than 100,000 marks capital. By this last provision 20 percent of all corporations with 0.3 percent of all corporate capital were condemned. At the same time share-owners lost most of their rights against the board of directors, and on the board the power of the chairman was greatly extended. As an example of a change, the board could refuse information to stockholders on flimsy excuses.

The control of raw materials, which was lacking under the Weimar Republic, was entrusted to the functional trade associations. After August 18, 1939, priority numbers, based on the decisions of the trade associations, were issued by the Reichstellen (subordinate offices of the Ministry of Economics). In some critical cases subordinate offices of the Reichstellen were set up as public offices to allot raw materials, but in each case these were only existing business organizations with a new name. In some cases, such as coal and paper, they were nothing but the existing cartels.

In this way competition of the old kind was largely eliminated, and that, not by the state but by industrial self-regulation, and not at the expense of profits, but to the benefit of profits, especially of those enterprises which had supported the Nazis—large units in heavy industry.

The threat to industry from depression was eliminated. This can be seen from the following figures:


1929 1932 1938


National income, 1925-1934

prices billions - RM 70.0 52.0 84.0


Per capita incomes, 1925-1934 prices - RM 1,089.0 998.0 1,226.0


Percentage of national incomes:

to industry 21.0% 17.4% 26.6%

to workers 68.8% 77.6% 63.1%

to others 10.2% 5.0% 10.3%


Number of corporate bankruptcies 116 134 7


Profit ratios of corporations

(heavy industry) 4.06% -6.94% 6.44%


In the period after 1933 the threat to industry from forms of production based on a nonprofit organization of business largely vanished. Such threats could come from government ownership, from cooperatives, or from syndicalism. The last was destroyed by the destruction of the labor unions. The cooperatives were coordinated by being subjected "irrevocably and unconditionally to the command and administrative authority of the leader of the German Labor Front, Dr. Robert Ley," on May 13, 1933. The threat from public ownership was eliminated under Hitler, as we have indicated.


It would seem, from these facts, that industry was riding the crest of the wave under Nazism. This is quite true. But industry had to share this crest with the party and the army.... Party participation in business activities was not the threat to industry which it might appear to be at first glance. These participations were the efforts of the party to secure an independent economic foundation, and were largely built up of unprofitable activities, or non-Aryan, non-German, or labor-union activities, and were not constructed at the expense of "legitimate" German industry. The Hermann G๖ring Works arose from government efforts to utilize low-grade iron ore in Brunswick. To this was added various other enterprises: those already in government control (which were thus shifted from a socialized to a profit-seeking basis), those taken from newly annexed areas, and those confiscated from Thyssen when he became a traitor. The Gustloff Works, in complete party control, were made up of non-Aryan properties. The Labor Front, with sixty-five corporations in 1938, was an improvement over the previous situation, since all, except the People's Auto enterprise (Volkswagen), were taken from labor unions. Other party activities were in publishing, a field of little concern to big industry, and largely non-Aryan previously

http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/09.html

[Bankotsu]

The Nazi system was capitalism in an extreme form.

This will never be admitted by the capitalists.

[Nolan]

I'm IPlayWithFire135. TylerNull thinks Hitler was socialist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsFoiVZDSRs

[CartCollector]

I'm IPlayWithFire135. TylerNull thinks Hitler was socialist.
Good for him. Why do you care?

[Nolan]

Good for him. Why do you care?

He pisses me off. Troll him please.

[Che a chara]

I think we should also look at the '25 point programme' of the Nazis (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm) and see how Hitler progressed this policy and how much of it was actually implemented in German society.

I think because of it's initial content of having some 'equal social' issues many right-wingers try to relate to this programme as pure socialist in nature, and i'm sure just coincidentally they forget (god bless their wee cotton socks) the ultra fascist points of it and also forgetting that none of it was put into effect.

[Bankotsu]

The German Workers' Party had been founded by a Munich locksmith, Anton Drexler, on January 5, 1919, as a nationalist, Pan-German, workers' group.

In a few months Captain Ernst Rohm of Franz von Epp's corps of the Black Reichswohr joined the movement and became the conduit by which secret Reichswehr funds, coming through Epp, were conveyed to the party. He also began to organize a strong-arm militia within the group (the Storm Troops, or SA).

When Hitler joined in September 1919, he was put in charge of party publicity. Since this was the chief expense, and since Hitler also became the party's leading orator, public opinion soon came to regard the whole movement as Hitler's, and Rohm paid the Reichswehr's funds to Hitler directly.

During 1920 the party grew from 54 to 3,000 members; it changed its name to National Socialist German Workers' Party, purchased the V๖lkischer Beobachter with 60,000 marks of General von Epp's money, and drew up its "Twenty-five-Point Program."

The party program of 1920 was printed in the party literature for twenty-five years, but its provisions became more remote from attainment as years passed.

Even in 1920, many of its clauses were put in to win support from the lower classes rather than because they were sincerely desired by the party leaders.

These included (1) Pan-Germanism; (2) German international equality, including the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles; (3) living space for Germans, including colonial areas; (4) German citizenship to be based on blood only, with no naturalization, no immigration for non-Germans, and all Jews or "other aliens" eliminated; (5) all unearned incomes to be abolished, the state to control all monopolies, to impose an excess-profits tax on corporations, to "communalize" the large department stores, to encourage small business in the allotment of government contracts, to take agricultural land for public purposes without compensation, and to provide old-age pensions;(6) to punish all war profiteers and usurers with death; and (7) to see that the press, education, culture, and religion conform to "the morals and religious sense of the German race."

As the party grew, adding members and spreading out to link up with similar movements in other parts of Germany, Hitler strengthened his control of the group. He could do this because he had control of the party newspaper and of the chief source of money and was its chief public figure.

In July 1921, he had the party constitution changed to give the president absolute power. He was elected president; Drexler was made honorary president; while Max Amann, Hitler's sergeant in the war, was made business manager.

As a consequence of this event, the SA was reorganized under R๖hm, the word "Socialism" in the party name was interpreted to mean nationalism (or a society without class conflicts), and equality in party and state was replaced hy the "leadership principle" and the doctrine of the elite.

The the next two years the party passed through a series of crises of which the chief was the attempted Putsch of November 9, 1923. During this period all kinds of violence and illegality, even murder, were condoned by the Bavarian and Munich authorities.

As a result of the failures of this period, especially the abortive Putsch, Hitler became convinced that he must come to power by legal methods rather than by force; he broke with Ludendorff and ceased to be supported by the Reichswehr; he began to receive his chief financial support from the industrialists; he made a tacit alliance with the Bavarian People's Party by which Prime Minister Heinrich Held of Bavaria raised the ban on the Nazi Party in return for Hitler's repudiation of Ludendorff's anti-Christian teachings; and Hitler formed a new armed militia (the SS) to protect himself against Rohm's control of the old armed militia (the SA).

In the period 1924-1930 the party continued, without any real growth, as a "lunatic fringe," subsidized by the industrialists. Among the chief contributors to the party in this period were Carl Bechstein (Berlin piano manufacturer), August Borsig (Berlin locomotive manufacturer), Emil Kirdorf (general manager of the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate), Fritz Thyssen (owner of the United Steel Works and president of the German Industrial Council) and Albert V๖gler (general manager of the Gelsenkirchen Iron and Steel Company and formerly general manager of United Steel Works). During this period neither Hitler nor his supporters were seeking to create a mass movement.

That did not come until 1930. But during this earlier period the party itself was steadily centralized, and the Leftish elements (like the Strasser brothers) were weakened or eliminated...

http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/09.html#28
(http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/09.html#28)