Exposing Jewish Lies About Hitler
Here are two parts one is dedicated to exposing the truth on the Jewish lie of Hitler's birth. And the other part is dedicated to exposing the Jewish lies of the funding of Hitler and the Party.
The Jews have a lie for every situation.
The big Jewish lies making a big coming back among the kosher approved, created and backed false fronters today:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/229
Are of Hitler being a Rothschild and Funding Rothschild and other Jewish bankers funding them, both are lies. As we can see:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/237
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/243
The Jewish Rothschilds and collective Race where behind creating and funding Communism its collective take over. The Jews where using Communism to take Germany over with and bring it under their control as they where doing everywhere. Hitler and his government ended the Jewish attempts to take Germany from within and aided other Nations in stopping the Jewish take over, even by military force such as in Spain.
The Third Reich was such an unexpected rise and threat to Jewry the Jew started the second war:
http://gblt.webs.com/Adolf_Hitler_Man_Of_Peace.htm
To destroy his Nation and National Socialist System and invented the big lie of the holocaust:
http://www.onethirdoftheholocaust.com/
http://www.zundelsite.org/
To attempt to discredit and defame National Socialism and Adolf Hitler. Of which the jews are so in fear of just as Vampires fear the sunlight. As its the only system and people to successfully oppose Jewry in a thousand years.
THE MYTH OF HITLER'S 'JEWISH' GRANDFATHER
by Martin Kerr
[note: Martin Kerr is a lifelong activist, a father, and a writer and editor on National Socialist themes. He wrote this standard refutation, which has well stood the test of time, in 1982.]
Hitler was right: The more enormous and preposterous a lie is, the quicker it captures the public imagination and is believed, and the harder it is to dispel.
". . . Since the great masses of people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they fall more easily victim to a big lie than to a little one -- since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.
"Such a falsehood will never enter their heads, and they will not be able to believe in the possibility in others of such monstrous ef¬frontery and infamous misrepresentation; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of the claims as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick. . . ." Mein Kampf(1)
It is one of the cruel ironies of history -- though perhaps not an unexpected one -- that having exposed and denounced the technique of the Big Lie to the world, Adolf Hitler himself became the subject of a whole slew of falsehoods and calumnies.
It is not our purpose here to investigate all of the Big Lies which have been propagated about Adolf Hitler, National Socialism and the Third Reich, but rather to focus on one of the most long-lived and pernicious of these lies: That Hitler was of partially Jewish ancestry.
There are a number of variations of the "Hitler was part Jewish" myth, which generally have two things in common: Most are based on the accusa¬tion that Hitler's paternal grandfather was a Jew, and all are thoroughly discredited by the available documentary evidence. That this charge is still repeated today is a testament to the enduring and burning hatred which Adolf Hitler's enemies still harbor for him, even now, decades after his death. At the same time, it is a classic example of the contempt for the truth which many anti-Hitler System historians display when discussing the National Socialist era in Europe .
In point of fact, the Hitler family, including Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather, is one of unimpeachable Aryan lineage. Through the records of births, deaths and marriages kept by the Roman Catholic church, it is possible to trace Hitler's forebears back hundreds of years.
The family, which lived since time immemorial in Upper Austria, was of solid German peasant stock, and Hitler's immediate ancestors were all either small farmers or craftsmen. (The notable exception to this, of course, was Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, who was a commissioned official in the Austrian customs service.) The spelling and pronunciation of the family name as "Hitler" is a fairly recent development. Older versions include "Huettler" and "Hiedler," the former being the original family name from which the other forms were derived.
The sole irregularity in Hitler's ancestry was the illegitimacy of his father. Because he was born out of wedlock, Alois Hitler bore the maiden name of his mother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, for a good portion of his life. Even after his mother finally married [his father], Johann Georg Hiedler, Alois retained the name Schicklgruber. Not until he was 39 years old did he reclaim his proper family name, which he spelled and pronounced in the manner which the world has come to know: Hitler!(3)
Yet this illegitimacy in itself is not significant or even unusual. As the anti-NS historian Bradley F. Smith notes in his well-researched and generally impartial book Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth (1967):
Although illegitimacy was frowned upon by the authorities, especially the Catholic Church, it was common in the Austrian countryside. In some districts, 40 percent of births were illegitimate. The figure for Lower Austria as late as 1903 was still 24 percent. An illegitimate child in a peasant household, therefore, was not an unusual phenomenon .... "(4)
Unusual or not, the illegitimacy of Alois has served as a crucial factual base for those who seek to spread the falsehood that Hitler had a Jewish grandfather.
Early Smears
As anyone who has firsthand experience in the racialist movement knows, it is common practice for the Jews themselves to attempt on occasion to discredit up-and-coming anti-Jewish personalities by spreading spurious rumors that this or that leader is really a Jew, or a homosexual, or a communist, or a government agent. Indeed, with slanders of this sort even some individuals within the racialist movement will attempt to undercut their political rivals.
Adolf Hitler was the target of such underhanded, contemptible opposition from within the Movement at least as early as July of 1921. A clique of NSDAP members who evidently felt that Hitler was not suited to lead the Party began a whisper campaign that he was of Jewish ancestry.
As is always the case in stories concerning Hitler's allegedly Jewish ancestors, these conspirators had absolutely no documentary evidence for their claims, and relied instead on false innuendo, unfounded suspicions and ill will. Their efforts culminated in the circulation of a leaflet by NSDAP member Ernst Ehrensperger, which read in part:
"Hitler believes the time has come to introduce disunity and dissension into our ranks at the behest of his shady backers, and thus promote the interests of Jewry and its henchmen .... And how is he conducting this struggle? Like a real Jew."(5)
Although this may have been the first effort to smear the Leader in this manner, it certainly wasn't the last. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, those hostile to Hitler propagated a number of variations of this tale, induding versions that were often mutually contradictory. The London Daily Mirror futilely tried to add some substance to this lie in October 1933 by publishing a photograph of a tombstone of a Polish Jew who had borne the same name as the Leader. Two Jewish newspapers, Forward in the United States and Haynt in Poland, quickly took it upon themselves to spread this particular story further, the implication being that the deceased Jew were Hitler's grandfather!
However, since this specific Jew was born in 1832, he was only five years older than Hitler's father, which meant that he couldn't have been the man who sired the illegitimate Alois [Ed.--i.e., unless the Jew in Poland sired the Fuehrer's father in Austria at age five.]
Thus the first "Jewish grandfather" story was laid to rest.(6)
The infamous anti-National Socialist propagandist Konrad Heiden, himself part-Jewish, also suggested in his venomous biographies of Hitler, published in 1932 and 1936, that the Leader was of Jewish descent.
Although these books were highly regarded in circles hostile to the Movement, this one lie was correctly deemed too unlikely to be taken seriously and was generally dismissed.(7)
Hans Frank's Big Lie Disproved
Strangely enough, the most persistent version of the myth was not widely publicized until 1956, long after the Leader's death, with the publication of Franz Jetzinger's Hitlers Jugend: Phantasien, Luegen-und die Wahrheit (Hitler's Youth: Fantasies, Lies and the Truth). Whereas previous attempts to stigmatize Hitler by accusing him of being part-Jewish simply took the form of wild rumors which were as devoid of documentation as they were detached from reality, Jetzinger at least made some effort to back up his case.
Bradley Smith summarizes Jetzinger's charges:
In the German edition of his book, Hitlers Jugend (pp. 28-35), and especially in the later English abridgement, Hitler's Youth (pp. 19-30), Jetzinger argues, with increasing enthusiasm, that Alois Hitler's father was really a Jew from Graz by the name of Frankenberger ....
Jetzinger's only source for these surprising contentions is Im Angesicht des Galgens (In the Face of the Gallows), written by Hans Frank, former Nazi lawyer and Governor General of Poland, while awaiting execution at Nuremberg.
In a narrative studded with demonstrable errors (that were exposed in part by Jetzinger's own research) Frank states that towards the end of 1930 he went to Austria on Hitler's orders to investigate a threat of exposure of an alleged Jewish ancestor of the Fuehrer.
In Graz, Frank claims that he learned Alois' mother had been employed by the Jewish family Frankenberger, that she had become pregnant while in their employ, and that the family paid her support money in later years on the assumption that the child's father was the young Frankenberger .... Frank's narrative is vague and lacks confirming evidence. He claims letters were extant to support his story, but neither he nor anyone else has ever been able to produce them.(8)
Although it most assuredly was not his purpose in once again raising the "Jewish grandfather" allegation, Jetzinger performed in this way a valuable service to our Movement, for his accusation spurred other researchers on to determine once and for all the truth or falsity of the myth.
What these researchers found, of course, was that Hans Frank was lying.
The German historian and biographer of Adolf Hitler, Werner Maser, who is somewhat less hysterical in his opposition to National Socialism and its founder than other anti-NS writers, discovered that:
"... None of the Frankenbergers known to have lived in Graz [Ed.--capital of Upper Austria, whence, BTW, Arnold Schwarzenegger] could have been the father of Alois Schicklgruber, nor does there appear to be any trace of a German Jew bearing this name or any variant thereof in the nineteenth century.
"Indeed, from the end of the fifteenth century until a decade after Maria Anna Schicklgruber's death, no Jews were residents of Graz. Under the terms of the treaty concluded on March 19, 1496 between Emperor Maximilian I and the Styrian towns, all Jews were to be expelled from the province by January 6, 1497
".... Not until 1781, in the reign of Joseph II, were they allowed to re-enter the Duchy of Styria and then only. for a few weeks at a time, ... when they were admitted to the annual fairs in Graz, Klagenfurt, Laibach and Linz against the payment of a fixed sum.
"But as early as September 9, 1783 the rights of the Jews were again curtailed, a measure that was reinforced by further discriminatory regulations in 1797, 1823 and 1828. This situation remained unchanged until the beginning of the 1860s ....(9)
In other words, it is simply impossible that in 1836 Adolf Hitler's paternal grandmother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, could have become pregnant by a Jew in Graz named Frankenberger, prior to giving birth to Alois Schicklgruber/Hitler, Adolfs father, in 1837.
Picture
Graz City Hall. We are told one "Frankenberger" impregnated Hitler's
grandmother in Graz by 1837, although no Jews were in Graz before 1860. . . .
Of course, the truth has seldom acted as a constraint on the more rabid anti-Hitler writers, such as Jetzinger. When, in 1956, the German magazine Der Spiegel published the results of an investigation which were the same as Maser's findings, Jetzinger was apparently unfazed. Smith notes:
"In the English abridgement of his work, Jetzinger dismissed the Spiegel story, not by presenting new evidence, but by restating with increased emphasis that he believed Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather was Jewish."(10)
It is impossible to ascertain today why Hans Frank told this unfounded and outrageous false¬hood. It is clear from the confused state of his biography(11) that he suffered a mental collapse from the strain of his imprisonment and the Nuremberg kangaroo-court proceedings. One can only assume that the "Jewish grandfather" story he related was the product of this psychological debility.
..
It is less clear why Jetzinger so uncritically accepted Frank's story, especially after it was factually refuted by other anti-National Socialist historians. And it is absolutely astounding that still other historians continue to this day to parrot such nonsense in the face of a wealth of solid evidence disproving it.
Anti-Hitler Writers Ignore the Evidence
For example, the System historian Robert Waite, in a book published in 1977 (some 21 years after the Spiegel investigation), relates Hans Frank's assertion that Hitler's paternal grandfather was Jewish, saying:
"Despite Frank's reputation as the 'Butcher of Poland,' there would seem to be reason for believing his story. He wrote his memoirs as a condemned man who had converted to Catholicism. He wrote, in part, to expiate his sins. He had no apparent reason to misrepresent Hitler or to invent the story."
Waite's work, by the way, is entitled The Psychopathic God Adolf Hitler, the title indicating the level of historical objectivity which the author maintains throughout the book.
Others, while repeating Frank's long-disproved charges, have been less enthusiastic about an unqualified acceptance of them. Joachim Fest, in his biography of the Leader, concedes that Frank's story is "exceedingly dubious" and that "recent research has further shaken the credibility of his statement, so that the whole notion can scarcely stand investigation."13
Having said this, however, Fest proceeds to speculate that Hitler himself may have believed Frank's tall tale and that "Frank's findings [sic] forced Hitler to doubt his own descent."(14) It should come as no surprise that Fest produces zero evidence to back up this peculiar notion.
Perhaps the most widely-read recent biography of the Leader is John Toland's Adolf Hitler (1976). Ignoring the investigations into Frank's story by Der Spiegel, Bradley and Maser--all of which were available to him--and spurning any personal research into the matter, Toland says that Alois Hitler's father was probably a man from the neighborhood. There is a slight possibility that Hitler's grandfather was a wealthy Jew named Frankenberger or Frankenreither; that Maria Anna had been a domestic in this Jewish household in Graz and the young son had gotten her pregnant. (15)
He goes on to cite Jetzinger as one source for this story, remarking that Jetzinger's book is "generally accurate." It should be noted that Toland [Ed.--1912-2004] may have a personal psychological motive for wishing to believe the discredited "Jewish grandfather" tale: He himself is a race-mixer with a Japanese wife and thus may be overly eager to project his own lack of racial integrity onto others.
Yet for all their scholarly dishonesty, Waite, Fest and Toland (each of whom is at least nominally Aryan) do not begin to approach the absurd claim made by the Jewish psychologist Walter Langer.
In The Mind of Adolf Hitler (1972), he presents what is perhaps the most brazen and insulting version of the "Jewish grandfather" lie. In this "psychohistorical" analysis of Hitler's personality, Langer relates an account of Hitler's ancestry which maintains that his paternal grandfather was actually a member of the Rothschild family living in Vienna. He does not offer a single piece of evidence or documentation to substantiate this remarkable claim, but instead lists "several factors which seem to favor its possibility," including:
". . .the intelligence and behavior of Alois [Hitler's father], as well as that of his two sons [Adolf and Alois, Jr.], is completely out of keeping with that usually found in Austrian peasant families .. . . Such ambitiousness and extraordinary political Intuition are more in keeping with the Rothschild tradition."
In other words, Hitler was too intelligent and capable to have been descended from humble Aryan peasant stock and therefore must have been part Jewish.
What incredible arrogance!
We noted earlier that the very first people to spread the canard that the Leader was Jewish were Hitler's opponents within the Movement. Thus it is sad but un- surprising that his present-day racialist critics have tried to breathe new life into this falsehood. "Direct Action," a Canadian racialist newsletter with National Bolshevik leanings, repeated the Hans Frank accusation as recently as December 1980.(17) It further charged that S5 leader Reinhard Heydrich was also one-quarter Jewish, and declared that one of the real reasons that the traitor Gregor Strasser was executed at the time of the Roehm putsch was that he had "proof" of all this.' (18) The newsletter does not explain why Hans Frank was not executed by the SS, too, if he was also in possession of this elusive "evidence."
Lies Die Hard ...
Lies die hard-especially, when they are deliberately propagated by scoundrels disguised as scholars or by those who have a political axe to grind. And yet, sometimes real events lend an aura of credibility to that which is false.
The unfortunate attraction that National Socialism exerts over certain unstable, self-hating Jews and part-Jews is well-known throughout the Movement.
This is particularly true of the grotesque, distorted parody of true National Socialism which has been labeled "Hollywood Nazism." Since the revival of the Movement in the early 1960s [Ed.--by George Lincoln Rockwell, 1918-1967, Cmdr, USN], there have been a number of Jews who have so strongly identified with the Movement that they have concealed their racial ancestry and joined our ranks. In at least three cases(19), these sick individuals have risen to positions of media prominence before having their backgrounds exposed.
In the most notable of these instances, Frank Collin/Cohn, founder of the splinter group which calls itself the National Socialist Party of America, was widely presented to the public by the media as the classic example of a "Nazi" leader who was secretly a Jew. (20)
This and similar cases only serve to reinforce the popular misconception that Hitler himself was of Jewish descent.
Insult or Compliment?
These tales are spread, of course, in the hope that they will somehow discredit Adolf Hitler, his Idea and his Movement. National Socialists take such accusations as an insult-and rightly so.
Still, in a way, they are an unintended compliment. In the case of great men, it is quite common for Jews and others to besmirch their Aryan pedigree or reputation, or claim Aryan accomplishments as their own. Christopher Columbus was also Jewish, they would have us believe, and likewise Shakespeare was a homosexual, Beethoven a Negro and Thomas Jefferson a race-mixer. When the Jews and their lackeys raise such preposterous allegations against the Leader we may wax indignant outwardly, but inwardly we should smile.
We should smile because we know that such accusations are totally false, and can be so proven. But we should also smile because we know, as National Socialists, that Adolf Hitler's memory belong not only to his few faithful disciples today but ultimately to the entire Aryan race.
"Gentlemen!
Never forget this: Your names will long be forgotten even before your bodies have rotted away in the earth. But the name Adolf Hitler will still be a light in the darkness.
You cannot murder him by drowning his memory in your slop-buckets and you cannot strangle him with your filthy, ink-stained fingers. His name exists forever in hundreds of thousands of souls. You are far too insignificant to even touch him.
He loved Germany, he fretted over Germany. When he fought for honor and respect it was for German honor, for respect for Germany and when there was nothing left, he gave Germany his life.
What have you given so far? Which one of you would give his life for Germany? The only things you care about are riches, power and never-ending luxury items. When you think of Germany, you think of indulging your senses without responsibility, without cares?
Trust me on this: The Fuehrer's utter unselfishness in word and deed alone guarantees his immortality. The fact that the bitter fight for Germany's greatness wasn't crowned by success, as with Cromwell's in Britain, has a lot to do with the mentality of the people involved.
On the one hand the Englishman's character is essentially unfair, ruled by jealousy, self-importance, and a lack of consideration. But he never forgets he is an Englishman, loyal to his people and to his crown. On the other hand, the German with his need for recognition is never first and foremost a German.
Therefore it doesn't matter to you, you insignificant beings, if you destroy the entire nation. Your only guiding thought will always be: me first, me second, me third.
In your worthlessness, you will never think of the welfare of the nation - and with that pitiful philosophy you wish to prevent the immortality of a giant?
Paula Hitler, Berchtesgaden , May, 1st. 1957
FOOTNOTES
I. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 231-232.
2. For a good discussion of the Hitler family, and especially Adolf Hitler's immediate antecedents, see Bradley F. Smith, Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth, chapters one and two, passim, Hoover Institution Publications, Stanford, California, 1967.
3. Ibid, p. 29.
4. Ibid, p. 20.
5. Werner Maser, Hitler: Legend, Myth and Reality, pp. 9¬10, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., English translation, New York, 1971.
6. Ibid, p. 10.
7. Ibid, p. 12.
8. Smith, p. 157.
9. Maser, p. 13. See also p. 351, f. 46. 10. Smith, p. 159.
11. Smith, p. 158.
12. Robert G. L. Waite, The Psychopathic God Adolf Hitler, pp. 126-127, Basic Books: Inc., Publishers, New York,1977.
13. Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, p. 15, Harcourt Brace Jovano¬vich, Inc., English translation by Richard and Clara Winston, New York, 1973.
14. Ibid.
I5. John Toland, Adolf Hitler, pp. 3-4, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1976.
16. Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler. The Secret Wartime Report, p. 113, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1972.
17. "What Strasser Knew," Direct Action, number 26, pp. 10-11, Toronto, Canada, December 1980.
I8. Ibid,p. 11.
19. Frank Collin/Cohn (discussed here), Daniel Burros (of the American Nazi Party, the National Renaissance Party and the Ku Klux Klan) and Robert Burros (of the National Renaissance Party -no relation to Daniel Burros). There have been others, but these were the most prominent.
20. "Immigration Records Prove Frank Collin is Jewish," WHITE POWER, number 86, pp. 4-5, George Lincoln Rockwell Party, Inc., Arlington, Va., July-August 1978.
My note on the next information piece, Hitler was a member of the Thule society as evidenced:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/172
Link to 1933 Copy of Mein Kampf:
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/IC6BTp2CepQ00bJbom7CxqF9SYHcYBP9ds1NV0_DS7EgEntAgtXv1serykQRYLuNQ4tnybKuVBbziluGK2TqPXlbPXuGRyl_5Pg/MEIN%20KAMPF%20-%20ADOLF%20HITLER%20%5B1933%5D.pdf
Demystification of the Birth & Funding of the NSDAP, Part 1 and 2
Veronica Kuzniar Clark
What exactly did the NSDAP represent and who were its founding members? Why and how did Adolf Hitler transform the party from an unimpressive proletarian workers' party to a full-fledged political machine that obtained absolute power in Germany? Perhaps more importantly, how was it funded? We answer these questions in this introduction.
But first, we begin with an examination of the early stages of the NSDAP and its recruiting process. One must understand how this process unfolded if one is to understand the NSDAP's position on Judaism and Freemasonry as well as the prevailing social and political order of the day. Naturally, we also reveal what some of the other important aspects of its early development were, which necessitates a fair amount of myth-busting about Hitler, including who actually gave him money.
Triumvirate: Leadership, Development, and Unity
Adolf Hitler, contrary to his own self-myths and the myths of others, was never poorat least, not until he had drained his savings and entitlements gallivanting in Vienna. Many historians have written that Hitler simply lived day-by-day wasting both his money and time, but in so doing they overlook Hitler's experience and "life education" that later played such an important role in the development and direction of National Socialism as well as the Second World War. The development and direction of both can be traced to Hitler's experiences during those "lost" years.
Hitler, like so many other young German men and women of his day, fell from middle-class status into that of the "wretched proletariat." This was something that young Hitler refused to accept. He was deeply embittered by his Vienna experiences, which offered false promises of prosperity and hope for young people with enough willpower and talent. The prevailing dissonance of the time and place in which he grew up inculcated in him a burning desire to change these circumstances, which is precisely what he did after 1933.
Hitler was so resentful of the class-ridden society that was Vienna, and Austria and Europe generally, that one of his key aims throughout both the peace and war years was cultivating a system of merit. One's birth station was not what mattered. What mattered were one's talent, loyalty, dependability, and fortitude, notably in the face of adversity and uncertainty.
Hitler was able to overcome most embedded class barriers in two distinct ways:
1. He recruited both men and women from all social classes and accordingly tailored his speeches and disposition to each, depending on his/her social standing.
2. He supplanted economic valuation with racial valuation.
Let's look at the first point. Hitler needed the broadest spectrum of German society he could get, so this meant that he needed to appeal to men, women, young, old, wealthy, poor, unemployed and employed alike. Women were amongst Hitler's most devoted and fervent supporters in the early years. So were low-wage earners, small businessmen, and foreign nobles, such as White Russian émigrés who wished to see the return of the Russian monarchy.
They provided Hitler with a physical audience, elite and business connections, and monetary support, most of which ended up being granted in the form of IOU credit.
Hitler needed industrialists as much as he needed the workers, elites, and disenfranchised foreigners. Since his goal was to raise the station of all Germans, he had to win them all together, which required a strategy of multi-class appeal. When he met and spoke with counts, duchesses, and other members of the former aristocracy, he addressed them in an appropriate manner. His etiquette, speech, and personal manners proved impeccable in such company.
When he met or spoke with industrialists, such as Fritz Thyssen, he tailored his behavior and manner to match that of the hopes and fears of industrial Germany. At the same time he was careful to scale back his socialistic language in such company, so that the industrialists would not misidentify him as a Marxist-Communist. He had to convince them that he would crush Marxist-Communism and uphold their industrial powerbase in the face of the growing mass of disenchanted, underpaid workers who felt they were being cheated and exploited by German industry.
Whenever things got economically tough, the workers suffered wage and benefit cuts. They blamed the industrialists, but Hitler saw that the industrialists were also suffering: many went bankrupt during the inflation as well as during the Great Depression. The crippling Versailles reparations forced most German industrialists and exporters into an untenable economic position, which in turn harmed German workers. This meant that Hitler had to at least hint at future German rearmament, which was covertly occurring anyway.
On the other hand, Hitler had to promise the workers, his single largest and most important support base in almost every respect in the formative years, that he would not allow the state or industry to exploit them or continue treating them as automatons. We can see that balancing the wants and needs of these three core sectors of class-ridden Germany was far from simple. But Hitler did it, and nearly bloodlessly.
Now to the second point: Hitler had to come up with a unifying ideology for Germanic peoples. This task seems simple in retrospect, because Germany was a homogenous society by today's standards. However, back then this was not how the German situation was seen. Germany may have been racially homogenous, but class antagonisms were so deep-seated that few if any German elites and nobles were interested in sharing political or social power with lower-class and middle-class Germans.
The Junkers (estates Lords) treated their farmhands (serfs) as second- or third-class citizens and ordered them to pack up and get out if they dared to vote against their landlord employers. Most of the Junkers refused to set aside the feudal lifestyle, which helped fuel growing mass discontent for monarchy and aristocracy. This only served the interests of republicans and Freemasons, both of whom wished to see the end of monarchy for good. We will discuss their motivations later. For now it is enough to say that their motives were far from benevolent.
German class divisions trumped any sort of racial or ethnic solidarity. Not surprisingly, one finds that the desire to unite all Germans as racial comrades was found almost entirely amongst the lower- and middle-classes, and even many middle-class Germans did everything they could to cling to their bourgeois station, even if it meant keeping the lower-classes downtrodden. As one can see, Hitler's goal was anything but simple.
How, then, did Hitler unite Germans? And how successful was he? Hitler united Germans by invoking an ideological concept similar to Italy's Romanita, as espoused by Benito Mussolini. Hitler's concept was Nordicism: the basic, simplified premise of which was that all Germanic peoples were united by their Nordic racial component, and because they were united by this common "race soul" or blood component, why should they fight or be divided?
While such a unifying idea sounds both feasible and reasonable, many resisted nonetheless. The Junkers, former nobility, and many other business elites in Germany saw Hitler as nothing other than a lowly former corporal who had no clout given his petit bourgeois (lower middle-class) upbringing.
Hitler was only partially successful in uniting all Germans as Volksgenossen. His lack of complete success in this regard, an unattainable goal to be sure, later proved to be his undoing. Elites amongst the officer corps did immeasurable damage to Hitler and his war effort, but the story of their treachery and sabotage is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Might Hitler have been more successful had he been more racially inclusive early on? Not necessarily. Mussolini, unlike Hitler, was not racially exclusive at any point and expended a great deal of effort and time attempting to recruit non-Italians to the Italian fascist cause. He was largely unsuccessful, especially in Ethiopiathis in spite of the fact that he had Ethiopians trained as pilots (before the Tuskegee Airmen even came into being) and promised them higher status within a Fascist Italian Empire.
We may deduce from this example that Hitler having merely extended his hand openly in the beginning to non-Germans would not have guaranteed National Socialism's political or military success. Mussolini did so, and his tolerant hand was rejected. Indeed the U.S. and Britain did not win the Second World War due to non-white conscription, but because they supported and funded the Soviet war machine and were willing to bomb Germany indiscriminately.
This brings us back to our main point, which is that unifying a body of people, regardless of whether it is homogenous or diverse, is no easy task. Hitler was only able to convince the lower- and middle-classes that racial value must supersede economic (class) value. Most of the German elites were never won over to his Nordicism.
So, what does all of this mean? First, it means that a party that wishes to succeed must appeal to women and men both, citizens of all ages, and all social classes. A sensible and serious leader and party cannot afford to leave any group out. Naturally this all depends on the individual nation and citizenry in question, as Hitler's brand of politics and leadership were formed with a specific time, culture, people, and place in mind. It was not intended for export, but for adaptation in multiple contexts. Hitler's brand of politics was in fact largely modeled after Mussolini's as well as the leadership of the Austrian mayor Karl Lueger. Thus copying Hitler's leadership style or National Socialism is unwarranted and unlikely to be successful.
Second, it means that the masses are more important to a party's success than the elites, because there are more of the masses. Only the masses have the power to invoke fear in upper-class people by threatening to support violent revolutionary parties and organizations, which are often led and funded by hostile fifth-columnists. The Communist Party (KPD) was the only party besides Hitler's that evoked genuine fear in the elite classes of Germany.
Hitler and the NSDAP could not be ignored for the very reason that they, besides the Marxist-Communists, had the largest mass following in Germany at the time. Industrialists could not afford to anger or rebuff Hitler and the NSDAP; if they did, then Hitler's followers would quickly have swelled the ranks of the Communists or perhaps have even overthrown him, as Ernst Röhm and many SA members wished to do.
Hitler's party was the only non-Communist, nationalist party that offered the lower- and middle-classes a better standing in German society. Given Hitler's ability to keep the overwhelming majority of his followers in line and loyal meant that he alone could prevent a transitional bloodbath, which is what most of the upper-class Germans feared the most. And this is exactly what he did.
What's important to bear in mind, however, is that Hitler needed a credible threat to maintain his personal and political leverage over the upper classes and big business. Without the Communists to threaten them via mass upheaval and bloodshed, the industrialists and former nobility had little reason other than patriotism to support Hitler and the NSDAP.
Third, it means that a party needs a viable means to unite a citizenry that has every excuse not to be united. Bavarians wanted to secede from Germany and become an independent state. Big business demanded an end to the Junker estates that squandered numerous government bailouts and demanded trade tariffs that harmed German industry. The Junkers did not care whether the industrialists suffered, so long as their estates were still in their name and they could live a lavish life of luxury at the German taxpayers' expense.
To mediate such divisiveness, Hitler invoked Nordicism, which called on Germans to recognize and value their blood ties instead of their social standing (based on wealth). This unifying ideology provided Hitler with the necessary means to develop a system of merit: one could rise to the top of National Socialist society regardless of one's parents' or personal finances, because one was equal to all other Germans from the racial point-of-view.
Hitler's German racialism and anti-Semitism were the practical means for achieving classless unity among formerly divided Germans. Hitler used a similar approach later on with the Waffen-SS. He turned an exclusively German idea (the Allgemeine SS) into an international, multiethnic idea by uniting everyone who participated against Jewish-Bolshevism, the enemy of all people.
Initial Member Recruitment
Like any grassroots party, the NSDAP developed organically from amongst a handful of hardcore ideologues, the primary catalyst having been Adolf Hitler. But the NSDAP did not spring up on its own; it instead arose from out of a party that already had a platform, leadership core, and small committed following. This was the German Workers' Party led by Anton Drexler.
Hitler was actually appointed by the Army to spy on the German Workers' Party. The Army was interested in two things: locating nationalists for its own designs and rooting out Communists who threatened to turn Germany into a subservient satellite of Moscow. Hitler's speaking skills and interest in politics led the Army to select him for this covert task. He took a liking to Drexler and many of his ideas, so he finally signed up and was issued a membership card with his name and membership number on it, a tradition that Hitler maintained.
While Hitler began his political career as the propagandist for the Workers' party, he was quick to identify the party's main problems: it appealed to too few and had no outreach venue other than speaking engagements, which were often drab. He therefore focused on developing his own talents, which surpassed Drexler's, and forming his own designs for the Workers' party; hence the birth of the NSDAP.
Hitler was quick to capitalize on Drexler's connections to wealthy Thule Society members. He did not join the Thule Society but requested their patronage. They alone significantly enhanced the potential for what was now his party to appeal to upper-class Germans, who, in turn, also helped fund the party. After he quit the Army, Hitler threw himself into the development of the NSDAP with unmatched determination.
While Drexler and his core focused entirely on winning over German workers, Hitler had eyes for larger audiences and outreach. His relationships with White Russian émigrés, wealthy Thule Society members, and especially Gottfried Feder (an economist) and Dietrich Eckart (a philosopher and writer) proved invaluable in his acquisition of the bankrupt Völkischer Beobachter (VB). Feder together with two other early NSDAP members owned 30,000 shares of the VB. Dietrich Eckart was able to obtain a loan for RM 60,000 from the sympathetic General Ritter von Epp to acquire the VB. The rest of the RM 120,000 price tag came from an industrialist named Dr. Gottfried Grandel, who was won over by Hitler's personal appeal to him. Eckart likely helped out too, along with Dr. Gutberlet (who pledged RM 5,000).
Hitler's early supporters came from a wide range of classes, nationalities, and ethnic backgrounds. Numerous wealthy White Russian émigrés, who had Thule Society contacts, formed an alliance with the NSDAP and allegedly raised "vast sums of money" for Hitleri.e. according to an official 1923 file note. There was Henry Ford, who was anti-Jewish and wished to spread his message to receptive nations. Benito Mussolini's personal agents were known to have established contact with NSDAP members in Germany, likely in order to arrange the transfer of financial gifts from the Duce. The Russian Grand Duchess Victoria, who was pro-monarchy and anti-Bolshevik, gave Hitler money.
Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell Corporation offered Hitler vast amounts of money in 1931, '32, and '33 in exchange for a guarantee that he would regain his expropriated oil interests from the Bolsheviks at some future point in time. The amount was likely between 30 and 55 million pounds sterling. Deterding was so pro-German that he ended up marrying a National Socialist woman and even moved to Germany.
Deterding, like many other members of German elites, realized that only an assertive foreign policy could secure Germany's economic survival in a world in which France and England had a monopoly over one-quarter of the globe and were determined to crush Germany's global competitiveness. The Germans had tried everything else, including complying with the Versailles reparations, which was de facto theft. This "treaty" was in fact designed with one goal in mind: the permanent crippling of German industrial competition.
Ernst Röhm was a fervent German nationalist who channeled Army funds to the NSDAP via various front organizations. The Thule Society, which was pan-Germanic and nationalist, not only contributed members to the NSDAP but helped it raise a lot of money. The two German jewelers Josef Füss and Herr Gahr supported Hitler. A certain Mr. Pöschl, a small businessman, gave to Hitler early on. Quirin Diestl was another early supporter who gave small funds. Oscar Koerner, a toy shop owner, likewise gave money to the NSDAP. Dr. Friedrich Krohn, a dentist, gave as much as he could. Adolf Müller helped the NSDAP keep the VB going by endlessly extending credit to Hitler. Frau Hoffmann, the widow of a headmaster, contributed regularly. Numerous friends of General Ludendorff, a Thule Society member, provided the NSDAP with funding.
A significant number of prominent foreigners and German nationals living or working in Austria, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden, and America gave Hitler money, much of it via Winifred Wagner, Kurt Lüdecke, and Hungarian nationalists like Gömbös.
The German Free Corps members gave Hitler money, and so did many Stahlhelm members. Several right-wing German business interests, such as Emil Kirdorf of the covert Ruhrlade group, gave Hitler money, along with many business interests that usually supported Alfred Hugenberg (a man who tried to use Hitler for his own ends). There was also General Ritter von Epp, who helped Dietrich Eckart and the NSDAP purchase the VB; Dr. Emil Gansser, who had connections to wealthy Protestants; Admiral Schröder, a former naval commander; Baron Sebottendorf, who had connections to J. F. Lehmann (a Thule member, financier and publisher for the German Navy) and sympathetic naval officers; Herr Schaffer, who acquired weapons for Hitler's SA; Kurt Lüdecke, and through him two Jewish arms dealers who were either (1) not privy to who Lüdecke was or (2) had no reason to fear Hitler (this was the early 1920s after all); possibly the Duke of Anhalt and Count Fugger; Ernst Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate with numerous American connections and some wealth of his own; the wealthy Frau Quandt, who married Josef Goebbels and who had elite connections; Fritz Thyssen, who later denied that he gave substantial sums to Hitler and Göring, in 1929 and off and on throughout the 1930s, both of whom he liked very much; and so forth.
No Warburgs. No Rothschilds. No Rockefellers. While the Rockefellers indirectly came into Hitler's financial sphere by way of Standard Oil technical investments, and the Warburgs via I. G. Farben and J. H. Stein later on, neither gave Hitler any financial support before 1933. And neither directly supported or paid Hitler at any point in time. The Sidney Warburg story is pure fabrication.
Fritz Thyssen and some of Hugenberg's heavy industrial connections, not James Warburg, gave Hitler substantial monetary gifts in 1929 (at least RM 1,250,000) and Deterding and several German coal companies took care of Hitler in the early 1930s.
While Hitler spent a vast amount of these funds on campaigning, he was by no means rolling in untraceable money. All of his funding was carefully accounted for and most of it came from VB advertising; party dues, insurance, and speaking fees; Gregor Strasser's left-wing faction, which received RM 10,000 per month in 1931; the good will of VB publisher Adolf Müller; and the financial frugality of party treasurer Franz Schwarz, whose meticulous party financial records were destroyed. The Americans interrogated him so brutally that he died in 1946 in Anglo captivity. His records denoting even Hitler's anonymous donors never turned up anywhere. The American occupiers are suspected of having destroyed them.
As for Goebbels' remark on 17 January 1932 that the finances of the party "suddenly improved," this was not exactly true. The truth is that the party's credit line suddenly improved, and this was thanks to the maneuverings of Franz von Papen and Baron Kurt von Schröder with his syndicate of investors, including a number of prominent heavy industrialists, the Hamburg-America Steamship Line, the Stein Bank of Cologne, Commerz und Privat Bank, the Gelsenkirchen Mine Company, Deutsche Bank, Reichskredit-Gesellschaft Bank, Allianz Insurance, members of the potash industry, the Brabag Coal Company, Deutsches Erdöl, and a number of other brown coal industrialists.
While Hitler tolerated fifth-column banks like M. M. Warburg and the Temple Bank (a special account created for the Temple Society by the Reichsbank to fund Ha'avara emigration), he eventually restricted and regulated their business opportunities and forced them to assist with financing Jewish emigration. Hitler's goal was to increasingly inhibit and thereby financially squeeze the foreign banks until they were unable to exist any longer and had to relocate outside of Germanythe same policy he employed to encourage Jewish emigration and business closures. One such example was the Germanization (i.e. German takeover) of two Jewish ironworks plants in the Rhön region in 1937.
Most potential recruits and financial supporters heard about Hitler and the NSDAP via word of mouth. Nothing was as effective as this. When men like Scheubner-Richter, Schacht, Borsig, Kirdorf, and Thyssen recommended the NSDAP and personally endorsed Hitler, wealthy and other upper- and middle-class Germans were willing to seriously consider Hitler and his party. Hitler was invited to speak to heavy industrialists in 1927 by word of mouth in fact. He even wrote a secret pamphlet intended only for this industrial-capitalist audience, which they then passed around to others.
Besides active word of mouth campaigning, the NSDAP also placed posters everywhere they could, promoted speaking engagements and other party activities and viewpoints in their VB, sold various odds and ends to raise small funds (e.g. various items like soap with NSDAP packaging), and sent wealthier members abroad to raise funds from German expats and foreign sympathizers. Kurt Lüdecke excelled at this form of campaigning.
In the very beginning, Hitler and the NSDAP targeted veterans, farmers, workers, young men, noblemen and women, small businessmen and women, and pensioners. These were the social classes who were initially the most receptive, due to the economy and prevailing anti-monarchism, but later on Hitler's support base included wealthy elites, heavy industrialists, fascist and monarchist foreigners, landed Junkers, veterans' organizations, the German Army and Navy, and even Montagu Norman.
"Our Last Hope"
Norman was a prominent English banker and personal friend of Hjalmar Schacht who, according to both his private secretary Ernest Skinner and Émile Moreau, despised Jews, the French, and Roman Catholics. He unabashedly refused to assist France's treasury with anything and proved willing and able to arrange financing for the NSDAP by way of his connections to Bruno von Schröder (Schroder Bank), Kurt von Schröder (Stein Bank), and the Bank of England (F. C. Tiarks and M. Norman himself).
Norman had strong sympathy for the Germans which dated back to his days as a student in Dresden, and naturally offered to financially assist and thereby stabilize the new government that his friend Schacht had openly supported since 1931. Since Hitler was hostile to France (he saw the French as foreign enemy number one), friendly to Britain (which he did not feel was a threat), and discriminatory towards Jews, the three things that Norman found favorable, he recommended that Kurt von Schröder extend credit to Hitler's party, which now controlled the government.
Schacht was Hitler's de facto lifeline in this respect, a nationalist German banker who had his own designs for German recovery, but who was also personally impressed with Hitler's speeches and mass appeal, which no other politician possessed.
As for Hitler's initial support, many farmers were blighted by financial obligations to relentless moneylenders, and most, including landed Junkers, felt threatened by Communist expropriation and insufficient protective agricultural tariffs. The veterans were receptive because they felt betrayed by the ruling class, especially the liberal-democrats of the SPD, and because they had a difficult time finding work. Workers, who were mostly young men, were receptive because they felt they were being exploited by the business class, but primarily because they were the most negatively affected by the inflation and unemployment. Pensioners on fixed incomes were receptive to Hitler's socialist stance. Noblemen and women were interested in Hitler because he opposed Freemasonry and expropriation of their landed estates, and because he hinted at restoration of the monarchy. Additionally, all of these groups generally opposed Marxist-Communism because they were not interested in a revolutionary bloodbath, but economic and social security as well as justice and prosperity for the German nation.
"Death to lies"
Hitler's main opposition in the formative years came from the Communists, who denounced him as a tool of capitalism and the former nobility; the heavy industrialists, who distrusted his socialism and the SA (they feared the SA was nothing but a Communistic horde); and the left-wing faction within his own party, who questioned Hitler's financial sources and pro-business stance.
When someone requested to join the NSDAP, one paid one's initial annual dues and was then given a membership card and asked to perform some service or task for the party. This could be anything from putting up posters before speaking engagements to spreading the word by simply talking about the NSDAP or handing out flyers on street corners and at beer halls. After the Hitler-Strasser break, he or she was asked to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
Vetting was likely performed by those members doing the actual talking and recruiting in the streets, as there was no known formal vetting procedure. As long as a person paid his annual dues and served the party loyally, he or she was trusted. Those who wished to break with the party were actually told to leave by Hitler himself at a rally that took place after the Strasser and Stennes affairs. We'll revisit this topic later on.
Along these lines, Kurt Lüdecke, Otto Wagener and Ernst Röhm played leading roles in arming, training, and drilling SA men. Their personal fundraising; their secret dealings with the German Army (Reichswehr), which had many prominent sympathizers of the NSDAP and SA; and Lüdecke's connections to black market Jewish arms dealers proved imperative to building a credible paramilitary threat to the status quo.
The government in Berlin tended to ignore SA violence against Communists because it opposed a Communist takeover. Also, Hitler's party supported German national unity at all costs, so Hitler and his SA were worth tolerating to prevent Bavarian secession.
Hitler's real bargaining base was his SA and the masses. Without both, he could afford to be ignored by the elites, government, and industry; however with both he was a true threat, like the Communists.
Lüdecke, Wagener, and Röhm all led, at one point or another, regular drilling and paramilitary basic training at a large hall funded by party members and various supporters. Marching in formation and drills also took place in the forests and countryside when possible, but mostly it occurred in the party's own rented hall or on a wealthy sympathizer's private estate. Fortunately for unemployed and poor members, the party paid for everyone's uniforms.
When SA and SS ranks were introduced, the requirements were loyalty and leadership aptitude. The SS consisted of men handpicked by Hitler himself. Thus, he vetted them personally. As a matter of fact, Hitler usually personally appointed leaders to their positions even in the SA. He recalled Röhm from Bolivia, for instance, to reorganize and lead the SA.
Hitler tended to choose people who he felt would resist falling prey to groupthink. Historians have tended to characterize this as Hitler's "divide and rule" tendency, but in-depth study of the party's early development suggests instead that Hitler chose people who would (a) not challenge or question his leadership, and (b) not fall prey to the "yes man" problem. This appointment procedure did two things: it prevented serious intraparty division by subordinating all to Hitler himself, while at the same time supported intraparty challenges, which prevented groupthink. Leaders could disagree and even challenge one another's authority without destroying the party.
Hitler based promotion solely on performance, not status. This tendency increased later on during the war especially after Hitler established the NSFO (National Socialist Commanding Officer Corps). This NS-high command likely would have replaced the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). Hitler wanted select NSFO officers to undergo a 4- to 18-hour course in political-ideological instruction. He himself appointed the head of the NSFO, Hermann Reinecke, in December 1944.
The NSDAP expanded into cities and states outside of Munich (Bavaria), where it had its Brown House headquarters, by appointing certain members to run party operations and perform party services in their own states, cities, towns, and villages.
The most well-known example of an NSDAP member-cum-leader who acquired almost enough personal power, financial backing and mass following to challenge Hitler himself was Gregor Strasser. Hitler was able to prevent a crisis from developing with his gifts for clever maneuvering and personal appeal, but such risks are inherent to any party that becomes as large as the NSDAP. And they are risks that must be taken if a party wishes to develop and grow.
Talented, committed and qualified speakers and leaders were appointed to run operations in every location possible. But Berlin NSDAP members also traveled around giving speeches and lectures and soliciting financial support. All speaking engagements required admittance fees. Hitler himself was constantly traveling and meeting with workers and elites alike to recruit new members and bolster his finances.
At the end of 1920, the NSDAP had about 3,000 members. Membership then grew from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928. In August 1931 the NSDAP created its own intelligence and security sector. Heinrich Himmler established the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and Reinhard Heydrich was appointed head of the organization, which was kept separate from the SS (Schutzstaffel). By the time of the Strasser crisis, the SA was some 400,000 members strong and the party itself had grown to 2 million by 1933. In 1932, it was large enough to achieve control of 37% of the Reichstag.
Here are the election results from 1920 to 1933:
Political Parties in the Reichstag June
1920 May
1924 Dec.
1924 May
1928 Sep.
1930 July
1932 Nov.
1932 Mar.
1933
Communist Party (KPD) 4 62 45 54 77 89 100 81
Social Democratic Party (SPD) 102 100 131 153 143 133 121 120
Catholic Center Party (BVP) 65 81 88 78 87 97 90 93
Nationalist Party (DNVP) 71 95 103 73 41 37 52 52
National Socialist Party (NSDAP) - - - 12 107 230 196 288
Other Parties 98 92 73 121 122 22 35 23
One can see that the NSDAP lost most of its former 230 seats in July 1932 to the even more radical-revolutionary Communist Party (KPD) in November 1932, not to conservative Catholics or social-democrats. The conservative nationalists (DNVP) only received a boost of 15 seats. These results, contrary to most historiography, do not reflect the demise of the NSDAP, but the masses' disaffection with any party that was not willing to promise sweeping social and economic change for the majority, even if change meant bloodshed. Hitler and the NSDAP were not viewed as extreme enough, so they lost seats to the KPD!
"Our German Railroad"
This alarmed men like Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen so much so that they were finally willing to give Hitler the opportunity to become chancellor. He actually should have received the chancellorship in July 1932 when his party had the most seats in the Reichstag, but industrialists and noblemen surrounding General Schleicher, Franz von Papen, and President Hindenburg opposed his appointment to the chancellorship. So much for James Warburg's and the Rothschilds' "magical funding."
Hitler faced so much resistance at this stage that he, like everyone else, had to resort to blackmail to receive his due appointment. Hitler arranged a private meeting with President Hindenburg's son Oskar, during which he is suspected to have threatened to expose his father's role in the repeated taxpayer bailouts of the Junkers' mismanaged, bankrupted estates. Since blackmail and intrigue had been used to cheat Hitler of his due appointment, he decided that he could also play such a game.
Hindenburg appointed him chancellor shortly thereafter, which most historians claim was at the behest of von Papen. We see that von Papen's desire to prevent a Communist majority by giving Hitler the chancellorship was only partly why Hindenburg appointed him. Hitler won, but not because he received covert funding. Franz von Papen continued to intrigue against Hitler and urged industrialists to withdraw their financial support of the NSDAP! The goal of this so-called "cabinet of barons" was to give Hitler just enough power to satisfy him personally without actually allowing him to attain a majority strong enough to overthrow the status quo, but just strong enough to prevent a Communist majority.
Given this context of stalemate, the speed of the NSDAP's growth in just 6 years and its subsequent attainment of absolute power were only possible with an authoritarian leader in a crooked political situation in which blackmail, corruption and political sleight-of-hand was the order of the day.
are united and loyal.""]
"The Reich will never be destroyed if you [Hindenburg and Hitler
What had started as a democratic-style workers' party with a simple executive committee to which Hitler was appointed in the early 1900s became an authoritarian-style organization with its own uniforms, offices, training facilities, insurance company, sales items, newspaper, propaganda machine, army (the SA), and security service (SS and SD).
This was nothing short of impressive and most of the credit for its success goes to those leaders and members like Hitler, Hess, Gansser, Eckart, Funk, Schwarz, Feder, Keppler, Himmler, Rosenberg, Goebbels, the Strassers (before 1932), Scheubner-Richter, Hanfstaengl, Lüdecke, Göring, and Röhm, all of whom literally devoted their lives to the party.
NSDAP events took place as often as they could be afforded. The newspaper was of course always availableit was a dailyso the public and members always knew what was going on from day-to-day. Hitler gave speeches and met with important wealthy persons almost non-stop after his release from prison. He was keen enough to purchase vehicles, which were rare in those days. Speedy travel was vital to defeating rival parties like the Communists who still had to walk to their various speaking engagements and meetings.
The NSDAPs doors, so to speak, were always open to receive new recruits. Interested persons either signed up at simple on-site recruitment centers or they mailed their applications to the party's headquarters in Munich.
The need for bodyguards arose when Hitler started regularly giving speeches. The Communists had caught on to this Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP and therefore sought to intimidate it or shut it down. The SA originally served as the party's guards, but this role was quickly taken over by the SS (Saal-Schutz), which served as an assembly hall guard as well as Hitler's personal bodyguard. Himmler started its transformation into an elite paramilitary force, renaming it the Schutzstaffel, in 1929.
"Workers of head and hand vote for front-soldier Hitler"
This Allgemeine-SS later expanded into the National Socialist Armed Forces (Waffen-SS), which eventually grew so large and powerful that it rivaled the state's official armed forces. Hitler's intent was to `national socialize' the state armed forces, which opposed him more and more as the war progressed. The intrastate schism between military and social elites on the one side and NS-populists on the other remained intact even under Hitler's skillful leadership and absolute power. He only fully realized the extent of this social chasm in July 1944 when several of his generals attempted to murder him with a suitcase bomb. This in fact occurred shortly after Hitler ordered the creation of the NSFO, mentioned earlier.
Most early members of the NSDAP gave an incredible amount of their personal fortune and time to the party. Countless young men defied their conservative parents by joining the NSDAP as their only hope for future employment and social security. Young women were attracted to Hitler personally, but also to NS fanfare and its commitment to uphold family values.
The lifeblood of the party was its youth, and numerous parents had their children join either the Jugenbund der NSDAP or Jungsturm Adolf Hitler, both of which were formed in 1922the creation of at least one of these youth divisions was announced in the VB. In 1923, the organization had some 1,000 members. The Jugenbund, originally based in Bavaria, expanded into a nationwide organization in 1924 and was subsequently renamed the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung.
In 1925, after the NSDAP was reorganized upon Hitler's release from prison, membership grew to over 5,000. In July 1926, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung was again reorganized by Kurt Gruber, a law student from Saxony, and officially renamed the Hitler Jugend Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend, (better known as the Hitler Youth). This organization promoted sports, political education and preparatory paramilitary training for later membership in the SA or SS once a child was old enough. Children were given performance booklets in which their HJ accomplishments were recorded. By 1930, the HJ had enlisted over 25,000 boys over age 14. The Deutsches Jungvolk, a junior branch for boys aged 10 to 14, was also formed. Girls between the ages of 10 and 18 joined a similar organization, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), or League of German Girls. In 1930, HJ membership was about 25,000. By the end of 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, membership was 107,956. By the end of 1933, the HJ had 2,300,000 members.
Uniforms were an integral part of the NSDAP from the beginning. This was the result of Hitler's personal influence on the DAP, which did not have or require uniforms. NSDAP members often met in beer halls or at the party's headquarters for daily or weekly drill and training, and were expected to put on their uniforms after the drill leader arrived. All drills and training took place in uniform, and all NSDAP members who attended either Hitler's speeches or major party events were in uniform.
"Then as now, we remain comrades. The German Labor Front"
The SA performed considerable community and charitable work. This included organizing soup kitchens, toy and food drives, home handy work, combating crime, patrolling the streets against Communists and other violent groups, and any other form of service or assistance individual party members were willing and able to provide to community members. Patrolling the streets often led to violent conflict involving injury and death on both sides. As a result, Chancellor Brüning banned the SA, SS and HJ, which all went underground until the ban was lifted after Brüning was ousted. The new Chancellor, Kurt von Schleicher, lifted the ban<br/<br/(Message over 64 KB, truncated)
Here are two parts one is dedicated to exposing the truth on the Jewish lie of Hitler's birth. And the other part is dedicated to exposing the Jewish lies of the funding of Hitler and the Party.
The Jews have a lie for every situation.
The big Jewish lies making a big coming back among the kosher approved, created and backed false fronters today:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/229
Are of Hitler being a Rothschild and Funding Rothschild and other Jewish bankers funding them, both are lies. As we can see:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/237
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/243
The Jewish Rothschilds and collective Race where behind creating and funding Communism its collective take over. The Jews where using Communism to take Germany over with and bring it under their control as they where doing everywhere. Hitler and his government ended the Jewish attempts to take Germany from within and aided other Nations in stopping the Jewish take over, even by military force such as in Spain.
The Third Reich was such an unexpected rise and threat to Jewry the Jew started the second war:
http://gblt.webs.com/Adolf_Hitler_Man_Of_Peace.htm
To destroy his Nation and National Socialist System and invented the big lie of the holocaust:
http://www.onethirdoftheholocaust.com/
http://www.zundelsite.org/
To attempt to discredit and defame National Socialism and Adolf Hitler. Of which the jews are so in fear of just as Vampires fear the sunlight. As its the only system and people to successfully oppose Jewry in a thousand years.
THE MYTH OF HITLER'S 'JEWISH' GRANDFATHER
by Martin Kerr
[note: Martin Kerr is a lifelong activist, a father, and a writer and editor on National Socialist themes. He wrote this standard refutation, which has well stood the test of time, in 1982.]
Hitler was right: The more enormous and preposterous a lie is, the quicker it captures the public imagination and is believed, and the harder it is to dispel.
". . . Since the great masses of people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they fall more easily victim to a big lie than to a little one -- since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.
"Such a falsehood will never enter their heads, and they will not be able to believe in the possibility in others of such monstrous ef¬frontery and infamous misrepresentation; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of the claims as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick. . . ." Mein Kampf(1)
It is one of the cruel ironies of history -- though perhaps not an unexpected one -- that having exposed and denounced the technique of the Big Lie to the world, Adolf Hitler himself became the subject of a whole slew of falsehoods and calumnies.
It is not our purpose here to investigate all of the Big Lies which have been propagated about Adolf Hitler, National Socialism and the Third Reich, but rather to focus on one of the most long-lived and pernicious of these lies: That Hitler was of partially Jewish ancestry.
There are a number of variations of the "Hitler was part Jewish" myth, which generally have two things in common: Most are based on the accusa¬tion that Hitler's paternal grandfather was a Jew, and all are thoroughly discredited by the available documentary evidence. That this charge is still repeated today is a testament to the enduring and burning hatred which Adolf Hitler's enemies still harbor for him, even now, decades after his death. At the same time, it is a classic example of the contempt for the truth which many anti-Hitler System historians display when discussing the National Socialist era in Europe .
In point of fact, the Hitler family, including Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather, is one of unimpeachable Aryan lineage. Through the records of births, deaths and marriages kept by the Roman Catholic church, it is possible to trace Hitler's forebears back hundreds of years.
The family, which lived since time immemorial in Upper Austria, was of solid German peasant stock, and Hitler's immediate ancestors were all either small farmers or craftsmen. (The notable exception to this, of course, was Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, who was a commissioned official in the Austrian customs service.) The spelling and pronunciation of the family name as "Hitler" is a fairly recent development. Older versions include "Huettler" and "Hiedler," the former being the original family name from which the other forms were derived.
The sole irregularity in Hitler's ancestry was the illegitimacy of his father. Because he was born out of wedlock, Alois Hitler bore the maiden name of his mother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, for a good portion of his life. Even after his mother finally married [his father], Johann Georg Hiedler, Alois retained the name Schicklgruber. Not until he was 39 years old did he reclaim his proper family name, which he spelled and pronounced in the manner which the world has come to know: Hitler!(3)
Yet this illegitimacy in itself is not significant or even unusual. As the anti-NS historian Bradley F. Smith notes in his well-researched and generally impartial book Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth (1967):
Although illegitimacy was frowned upon by the authorities, especially the Catholic Church, it was common in the Austrian countryside. In some districts, 40 percent of births were illegitimate. The figure for Lower Austria as late as 1903 was still 24 percent. An illegitimate child in a peasant household, therefore, was not an unusual phenomenon .... "(4)
Unusual or not, the illegitimacy of Alois has served as a crucial factual base for those who seek to spread the falsehood that Hitler had a Jewish grandfather.
Early Smears
As anyone who has firsthand experience in the racialist movement knows, it is common practice for the Jews themselves to attempt on occasion to discredit up-and-coming anti-Jewish personalities by spreading spurious rumors that this or that leader is really a Jew, or a homosexual, or a communist, or a government agent. Indeed, with slanders of this sort even some individuals within the racialist movement will attempt to undercut their political rivals.
Adolf Hitler was the target of such underhanded, contemptible opposition from within the Movement at least as early as July of 1921. A clique of NSDAP members who evidently felt that Hitler was not suited to lead the Party began a whisper campaign that he was of Jewish ancestry.
As is always the case in stories concerning Hitler's allegedly Jewish ancestors, these conspirators had absolutely no documentary evidence for their claims, and relied instead on false innuendo, unfounded suspicions and ill will. Their efforts culminated in the circulation of a leaflet by NSDAP member Ernst Ehrensperger, which read in part:
"Hitler believes the time has come to introduce disunity and dissension into our ranks at the behest of his shady backers, and thus promote the interests of Jewry and its henchmen .... And how is he conducting this struggle? Like a real Jew."(5)
Although this may have been the first effort to smear the Leader in this manner, it certainly wasn't the last. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, those hostile to Hitler propagated a number of variations of this tale, induding versions that were often mutually contradictory. The London Daily Mirror futilely tried to add some substance to this lie in October 1933 by publishing a photograph of a tombstone of a Polish Jew who had borne the same name as the Leader. Two Jewish newspapers, Forward in the United States and Haynt in Poland, quickly took it upon themselves to spread this particular story further, the implication being that the deceased Jew were Hitler's grandfather!
However, since this specific Jew was born in 1832, he was only five years older than Hitler's father, which meant that he couldn't have been the man who sired the illegitimate Alois [Ed.--i.e., unless the Jew in Poland sired the Fuehrer's father in Austria at age five.]
Thus the first "Jewish grandfather" story was laid to rest.(6)
The infamous anti-National Socialist propagandist Konrad Heiden, himself part-Jewish, also suggested in his venomous biographies of Hitler, published in 1932 and 1936, that the Leader was of Jewish descent.
Although these books were highly regarded in circles hostile to the Movement, this one lie was correctly deemed too unlikely to be taken seriously and was generally dismissed.(7)
Hans Frank's Big Lie Disproved
Strangely enough, the most persistent version of the myth was not widely publicized until 1956, long after the Leader's death, with the publication of Franz Jetzinger's Hitlers Jugend: Phantasien, Luegen-und die Wahrheit (Hitler's Youth: Fantasies, Lies and the Truth). Whereas previous attempts to stigmatize Hitler by accusing him of being part-Jewish simply took the form of wild rumors which were as devoid of documentation as they were detached from reality, Jetzinger at least made some effort to back up his case.
Bradley Smith summarizes Jetzinger's charges:
In the German edition of his book, Hitlers Jugend (pp. 28-35), and especially in the later English abridgement, Hitler's Youth (pp. 19-30), Jetzinger argues, with increasing enthusiasm, that Alois Hitler's father was really a Jew from Graz by the name of Frankenberger ....
Jetzinger's only source for these surprising contentions is Im Angesicht des Galgens (In the Face of the Gallows), written by Hans Frank, former Nazi lawyer and Governor General of Poland, while awaiting execution at Nuremberg.
In a narrative studded with demonstrable errors (that were exposed in part by Jetzinger's own research) Frank states that towards the end of 1930 he went to Austria on Hitler's orders to investigate a threat of exposure of an alleged Jewish ancestor of the Fuehrer.
In Graz, Frank claims that he learned Alois' mother had been employed by the Jewish family Frankenberger, that she had become pregnant while in their employ, and that the family paid her support money in later years on the assumption that the child's father was the young Frankenberger .... Frank's narrative is vague and lacks confirming evidence. He claims letters were extant to support his story, but neither he nor anyone else has ever been able to produce them.(8)
Although it most assuredly was not his purpose in once again raising the "Jewish grandfather" allegation, Jetzinger performed in this way a valuable service to our Movement, for his accusation spurred other researchers on to determine once and for all the truth or falsity of the myth.
What these researchers found, of course, was that Hans Frank was lying.
The German historian and biographer of Adolf Hitler, Werner Maser, who is somewhat less hysterical in his opposition to National Socialism and its founder than other anti-NS writers, discovered that:
"... None of the Frankenbergers known to have lived in Graz [Ed.--capital of Upper Austria, whence, BTW, Arnold Schwarzenegger] could have been the father of Alois Schicklgruber, nor does there appear to be any trace of a German Jew bearing this name or any variant thereof in the nineteenth century.
"Indeed, from the end of the fifteenth century until a decade after Maria Anna Schicklgruber's death, no Jews were residents of Graz. Under the terms of the treaty concluded on March 19, 1496 between Emperor Maximilian I and the Styrian towns, all Jews were to be expelled from the province by January 6, 1497
".... Not until 1781, in the reign of Joseph II, were they allowed to re-enter the Duchy of Styria and then only. for a few weeks at a time, ... when they were admitted to the annual fairs in Graz, Klagenfurt, Laibach and Linz against the payment of a fixed sum.
"But as early as September 9, 1783 the rights of the Jews were again curtailed, a measure that was reinforced by further discriminatory regulations in 1797, 1823 and 1828. This situation remained unchanged until the beginning of the 1860s ....(9)
In other words, it is simply impossible that in 1836 Adolf Hitler's paternal grandmother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, could have become pregnant by a Jew in Graz named Frankenberger, prior to giving birth to Alois Schicklgruber/Hitler, Adolfs father, in 1837.
Picture
Graz City Hall. We are told one "Frankenberger" impregnated Hitler's
grandmother in Graz by 1837, although no Jews were in Graz before 1860. . . .
Of course, the truth has seldom acted as a constraint on the more rabid anti-Hitler writers, such as Jetzinger. When, in 1956, the German magazine Der Spiegel published the results of an investigation which were the same as Maser's findings, Jetzinger was apparently unfazed. Smith notes:
"In the English abridgement of his work, Jetzinger dismissed the Spiegel story, not by presenting new evidence, but by restating with increased emphasis that he believed Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather was Jewish."(10)
It is impossible to ascertain today why Hans Frank told this unfounded and outrageous false¬hood. It is clear from the confused state of his biography(11) that he suffered a mental collapse from the strain of his imprisonment and the Nuremberg kangaroo-court proceedings. One can only assume that the "Jewish grandfather" story he related was the product of this psychological debility.
..
It is less clear why Jetzinger so uncritically accepted Frank's story, especially after it was factually refuted by other anti-National Socialist historians. And it is absolutely astounding that still other historians continue to this day to parrot such nonsense in the face of a wealth of solid evidence disproving it.
Anti-Hitler Writers Ignore the Evidence
For example, the System historian Robert Waite, in a book published in 1977 (some 21 years after the Spiegel investigation), relates Hans Frank's assertion that Hitler's paternal grandfather was Jewish, saying:
"Despite Frank's reputation as the 'Butcher of Poland,' there would seem to be reason for believing his story. He wrote his memoirs as a condemned man who had converted to Catholicism. He wrote, in part, to expiate his sins. He had no apparent reason to misrepresent Hitler or to invent the story."
Waite's work, by the way, is entitled The Psychopathic God Adolf Hitler, the title indicating the level of historical objectivity which the author maintains throughout the book.
Others, while repeating Frank's long-disproved charges, have been less enthusiastic about an unqualified acceptance of them. Joachim Fest, in his biography of the Leader, concedes that Frank's story is "exceedingly dubious" and that "recent research has further shaken the credibility of his statement, so that the whole notion can scarcely stand investigation."13
Having said this, however, Fest proceeds to speculate that Hitler himself may have believed Frank's tall tale and that "Frank's findings [sic] forced Hitler to doubt his own descent."(14) It should come as no surprise that Fest produces zero evidence to back up this peculiar notion.
Perhaps the most widely-read recent biography of the Leader is John Toland's Adolf Hitler (1976). Ignoring the investigations into Frank's story by Der Spiegel, Bradley and Maser--all of which were available to him--and spurning any personal research into the matter, Toland says that Alois Hitler's father was probably a man from the neighborhood. There is a slight possibility that Hitler's grandfather was a wealthy Jew named Frankenberger or Frankenreither; that Maria Anna had been a domestic in this Jewish household in Graz and the young son had gotten her pregnant. (15)
He goes on to cite Jetzinger as one source for this story, remarking that Jetzinger's book is "generally accurate." It should be noted that Toland [Ed.--1912-2004] may have a personal psychological motive for wishing to believe the discredited "Jewish grandfather" tale: He himself is a race-mixer with a Japanese wife and thus may be overly eager to project his own lack of racial integrity onto others.
Yet for all their scholarly dishonesty, Waite, Fest and Toland (each of whom is at least nominally Aryan) do not begin to approach the absurd claim made by the Jewish psychologist Walter Langer.
In The Mind of Adolf Hitler (1972), he presents what is perhaps the most brazen and insulting version of the "Jewish grandfather" lie. In this "psychohistorical" analysis of Hitler's personality, Langer relates an account of Hitler's ancestry which maintains that his paternal grandfather was actually a member of the Rothschild family living in Vienna. He does not offer a single piece of evidence or documentation to substantiate this remarkable claim, but instead lists "several factors which seem to favor its possibility," including:
". . .the intelligence and behavior of Alois [Hitler's father], as well as that of his two sons [Adolf and Alois, Jr.], is completely out of keeping with that usually found in Austrian peasant families .. . . Such ambitiousness and extraordinary political Intuition are more in keeping with the Rothschild tradition."
In other words, Hitler was too intelligent and capable to have been descended from humble Aryan peasant stock and therefore must have been part Jewish.
What incredible arrogance!
We noted earlier that the very first people to spread the canard that the Leader was Jewish were Hitler's opponents within the Movement. Thus it is sad but un- surprising that his present-day racialist critics have tried to breathe new life into this falsehood. "Direct Action," a Canadian racialist newsletter with National Bolshevik leanings, repeated the Hans Frank accusation as recently as December 1980.(17) It further charged that S5 leader Reinhard Heydrich was also one-quarter Jewish, and declared that one of the real reasons that the traitor Gregor Strasser was executed at the time of the Roehm putsch was that he had "proof" of all this.' (18) The newsletter does not explain why Hans Frank was not executed by the SS, too, if he was also in possession of this elusive "evidence."
Lies Die Hard ...
Lies die hard-especially, when they are deliberately propagated by scoundrels disguised as scholars or by those who have a political axe to grind. And yet, sometimes real events lend an aura of credibility to that which is false.
The unfortunate attraction that National Socialism exerts over certain unstable, self-hating Jews and part-Jews is well-known throughout the Movement.
This is particularly true of the grotesque, distorted parody of true National Socialism which has been labeled "Hollywood Nazism." Since the revival of the Movement in the early 1960s [Ed.--by George Lincoln Rockwell, 1918-1967, Cmdr, USN], there have been a number of Jews who have so strongly identified with the Movement that they have concealed their racial ancestry and joined our ranks. In at least three cases(19), these sick individuals have risen to positions of media prominence before having their backgrounds exposed.
In the most notable of these instances, Frank Collin/Cohn, founder of the splinter group which calls itself the National Socialist Party of America, was widely presented to the public by the media as the classic example of a "Nazi" leader who was secretly a Jew. (20)
This and similar cases only serve to reinforce the popular misconception that Hitler himself was of Jewish descent.
Insult or Compliment?
These tales are spread, of course, in the hope that they will somehow discredit Adolf Hitler, his Idea and his Movement. National Socialists take such accusations as an insult-and rightly so.
Still, in a way, they are an unintended compliment. In the case of great men, it is quite common for Jews and others to besmirch their Aryan pedigree or reputation, or claim Aryan accomplishments as their own. Christopher Columbus was also Jewish, they would have us believe, and likewise Shakespeare was a homosexual, Beethoven a Negro and Thomas Jefferson a race-mixer. When the Jews and their lackeys raise such preposterous allegations against the Leader we may wax indignant outwardly, but inwardly we should smile.
We should smile because we know that such accusations are totally false, and can be so proven. But we should also smile because we know, as National Socialists, that Adolf Hitler's memory belong not only to his few faithful disciples today but ultimately to the entire Aryan race.
"Gentlemen!
Never forget this: Your names will long be forgotten even before your bodies have rotted away in the earth. But the name Adolf Hitler will still be a light in the darkness.
You cannot murder him by drowning his memory in your slop-buckets and you cannot strangle him with your filthy, ink-stained fingers. His name exists forever in hundreds of thousands of souls. You are far too insignificant to even touch him.
He loved Germany, he fretted over Germany. When he fought for honor and respect it was for German honor, for respect for Germany and when there was nothing left, he gave Germany his life.
What have you given so far? Which one of you would give his life for Germany? The only things you care about are riches, power and never-ending luxury items. When you think of Germany, you think of indulging your senses without responsibility, without cares?
Trust me on this: The Fuehrer's utter unselfishness in word and deed alone guarantees his immortality. The fact that the bitter fight for Germany's greatness wasn't crowned by success, as with Cromwell's in Britain, has a lot to do with the mentality of the people involved.
On the one hand the Englishman's character is essentially unfair, ruled by jealousy, self-importance, and a lack of consideration. But he never forgets he is an Englishman, loyal to his people and to his crown. On the other hand, the German with his need for recognition is never first and foremost a German.
Therefore it doesn't matter to you, you insignificant beings, if you destroy the entire nation. Your only guiding thought will always be: me first, me second, me third.
In your worthlessness, you will never think of the welfare of the nation - and with that pitiful philosophy you wish to prevent the immortality of a giant?
Paula Hitler, Berchtesgaden , May, 1st. 1957
FOOTNOTES
I. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 231-232.
2. For a good discussion of the Hitler family, and especially Adolf Hitler's immediate antecedents, see Bradley F. Smith, Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth, chapters one and two, passim, Hoover Institution Publications, Stanford, California, 1967.
3. Ibid, p. 29.
4. Ibid, p. 20.
5. Werner Maser, Hitler: Legend, Myth and Reality, pp. 9¬10, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., English translation, New York, 1971.
6. Ibid, p. 10.
7. Ibid, p. 12.
8. Smith, p. 157.
9. Maser, p. 13. See also p. 351, f. 46. 10. Smith, p. 159.
11. Smith, p. 158.
12. Robert G. L. Waite, The Psychopathic God Adolf Hitler, pp. 126-127, Basic Books: Inc., Publishers, New York,1977.
13. Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, p. 15, Harcourt Brace Jovano¬vich, Inc., English translation by Richard and Clara Winston, New York, 1973.
14. Ibid.
I5. John Toland, Adolf Hitler, pp. 3-4, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1976.
16. Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler. The Secret Wartime Report, p. 113, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1972.
17. "What Strasser Knew," Direct Action, number 26, pp. 10-11, Toronto, Canada, December 1980.
I8. Ibid,p. 11.
19. Frank Collin/Cohn (discussed here), Daniel Burros (of the American Nazi Party, the National Renaissance Party and the Ku Klux Klan) and Robert Burros (of the National Renaissance Party -no relation to Daniel Burros). There have been others, but these were the most prominent.
20. "Immigration Records Prove Frank Collin is Jewish," WHITE POWER, number 86, pp. 4-5, George Lincoln Rockwell Party, Inc., Arlington, Va., July-August 1978.
My note on the next information piece, Hitler was a member of the Thule society as evidenced:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoSNewsletter/message/172
Link to 1933 Copy of Mein Kampf:
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/IC6BTp2CepQ00bJbom7CxqF9SYHcYBP9ds1NV0_DS7EgEntAgtXv1serykQRYLuNQ4tnybKuVBbziluGK2TqPXlbPXuGRyl_5Pg/MEIN%20KAMPF%20-%20ADOLF%20HITLER%20%5B1933%5D.pdf
Demystification of the Birth & Funding of the NSDAP, Part 1 and 2
Veronica Kuzniar Clark
What exactly did the NSDAP represent and who were its founding members? Why and how did Adolf Hitler transform the party from an unimpressive proletarian workers' party to a full-fledged political machine that obtained absolute power in Germany? Perhaps more importantly, how was it funded? We answer these questions in this introduction.
But first, we begin with an examination of the early stages of the NSDAP and its recruiting process. One must understand how this process unfolded if one is to understand the NSDAP's position on Judaism and Freemasonry as well as the prevailing social and political order of the day. Naturally, we also reveal what some of the other important aspects of its early development were, which necessitates a fair amount of myth-busting about Hitler, including who actually gave him money.
Triumvirate: Leadership, Development, and Unity
Adolf Hitler, contrary to his own self-myths and the myths of others, was never poorat least, not until he had drained his savings and entitlements gallivanting in Vienna. Many historians have written that Hitler simply lived day-by-day wasting both his money and time, but in so doing they overlook Hitler's experience and "life education" that later played such an important role in the development and direction of National Socialism as well as the Second World War. The development and direction of both can be traced to Hitler's experiences during those "lost" years.
Hitler, like so many other young German men and women of his day, fell from middle-class status into that of the "wretched proletariat." This was something that young Hitler refused to accept. He was deeply embittered by his Vienna experiences, which offered false promises of prosperity and hope for young people with enough willpower and talent. The prevailing dissonance of the time and place in which he grew up inculcated in him a burning desire to change these circumstances, which is precisely what he did after 1933.
Hitler was so resentful of the class-ridden society that was Vienna, and Austria and Europe generally, that one of his key aims throughout both the peace and war years was cultivating a system of merit. One's birth station was not what mattered. What mattered were one's talent, loyalty, dependability, and fortitude, notably in the face of adversity and uncertainty.
Hitler was able to overcome most embedded class barriers in two distinct ways:
1. He recruited both men and women from all social classes and accordingly tailored his speeches and disposition to each, depending on his/her social standing.
2. He supplanted economic valuation with racial valuation.
Let's look at the first point. Hitler needed the broadest spectrum of German society he could get, so this meant that he needed to appeal to men, women, young, old, wealthy, poor, unemployed and employed alike. Women were amongst Hitler's most devoted and fervent supporters in the early years. So were low-wage earners, small businessmen, and foreign nobles, such as White Russian émigrés who wished to see the return of the Russian monarchy.
They provided Hitler with a physical audience, elite and business connections, and monetary support, most of which ended up being granted in the form of IOU credit.
Hitler needed industrialists as much as he needed the workers, elites, and disenfranchised foreigners. Since his goal was to raise the station of all Germans, he had to win them all together, which required a strategy of multi-class appeal. When he met and spoke with counts, duchesses, and other members of the former aristocracy, he addressed them in an appropriate manner. His etiquette, speech, and personal manners proved impeccable in such company.
When he met or spoke with industrialists, such as Fritz Thyssen, he tailored his behavior and manner to match that of the hopes and fears of industrial Germany. At the same time he was careful to scale back his socialistic language in such company, so that the industrialists would not misidentify him as a Marxist-Communist. He had to convince them that he would crush Marxist-Communism and uphold their industrial powerbase in the face of the growing mass of disenchanted, underpaid workers who felt they were being cheated and exploited by German industry.
Whenever things got economically tough, the workers suffered wage and benefit cuts. They blamed the industrialists, but Hitler saw that the industrialists were also suffering: many went bankrupt during the inflation as well as during the Great Depression. The crippling Versailles reparations forced most German industrialists and exporters into an untenable economic position, which in turn harmed German workers. This meant that Hitler had to at least hint at future German rearmament, which was covertly occurring anyway.
On the other hand, Hitler had to promise the workers, his single largest and most important support base in almost every respect in the formative years, that he would not allow the state or industry to exploit them or continue treating them as automatons. We can see that balancing the wants and needs of these three core sectors of class-ridden Germany was far from simple. But Hitler did it, and nearly bloodlessly.
Now to the second point: Hitler had to come up with a unifying ideology for Germanic peoples. This task seems simple in retrospect, because Germany was a homogenous society by today's standards. However, back then this was not how the German situation was seen. Germany may have been racially homogenous, but class antagonisms were so deep-seated that few if any German elites and nobles were interested in sharing political or social power with lower-class and middle-class Germans.
The Junkers (estates Lords) treated their farmhands (serfs) as second- or third-class citizens and ordered them to pack up and get out if they dared to vote against their landlord employers. Most of the Junkers refused to set aside the feudal lifestyle, which helped fuel growing mass discontent for monarchy and aristocracy. This only served the interests of republicans and Freemasons, both of whom wished to see the end of monarchy for good. We will discuss their motivations later. For now it is enough to say that their motives were far from benevolent.
German class divisions trumped any sort of racial or ethnic solidarity. Not surprisingly, one finds that the desire to unite all Germans as racial comrades was found almost entirely amongst the lower- and middle-classes, and even many middle-class Germans did everything they could to cling to their bourgeois station, even if it meant keeping the lower-classes downtrodden. As one can see, Hitler's goal was anything but simple.
How, then, did Hitler unite Germans? And how successful was he? Hitler united Germans by invoking an ideological concept similar to Italy's Romanita, as espoused by Benito Mussolini. Hitler's concept was Nordicism: the basic, simplified premise of which was that all Germanic peoples were united by their Nordic racial component, and because they were united by this common "race soul" or blood component, why should they fight or be divided?
While such a unifying idea sounds both feasible and reasonable, many resisted nonetheless. The Junkers, former nobility, and many other business elites in Germany saw Hitler as nothing other than a lowly former corporal who had no clout given his petit bourgeois (lower middle-class) upbringing.
Hitler was only partially successful in uniting all Germans as Volksgenossen. His lack of complete success in this regard, an unattainable goal to be sure, later proved to be his undoing. Elites amongst the officer corps did immeasurable damage to Hitler and his war effort, but the story of their treachery and sabotage is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Might Hitler have been more successful had he been more racially inclusive early on? Not necessarily. Mussolini, unlike Hitler, was not racially exclusive at any point and expended a great deal of effort and time attempting to recruit non-Italians to the Italian fascist cause. He was largely unsuccessful, especially in Ethiopiathis in spite of the fact that he had Ethiopians trained as pilots (before the Tuskegee Airmen even came into being) and promised them higher status within a Fascist Italian Empire.
We may deduce from this example that Hitler having merely extended his hand openly in the beginning to non-Germans would not have guaranteed National Socialism's political or military success. Mussolini did so, and his tolerant hand was rejected. Indeed the U.S. and Britain did not win the Second World War due to non-white conscription, but because they supported and funded the Soviet war machine and were willing to bomb Germany indiscriminately.
This brings us back to our main point, which is that unifying a body of people, regardless of whether it is homogenous or diverse, is no easy task. Hitler was only able to convince the lower- and middle-classes that racial value must supersede economic (class) value. Most of the German elites were never won over to his Nordicism.
So, what does all of this mean? First, it means that a party that wishes to succeed must appeal to women and men both, citizens of all ages, and all social classes. A sensible and serious leader and party cannot afford to leave any group out. Naturally this all depends on the individual nation and citizenry in question, as Hitler's brand of politics and leadership were formed with a specific time, culture, people, and place in mind. It was not intended for export, but for adaptation in multiple contexts. Hitler's brand of politics was in fact largely modeled after Mussolini's as well as the leadership of the Austrian mayor Karl Lueger. Thus copying Hitler's leadership style or National Socialism is unwarranted and unlikely to be successful.
Second, it means that the masses are more important to a party's success than the elites, because there are more of the masses. Only the masses have the power to invoke fear in upper-class people by threatening to support violent revolutionary parties and organizations, which are often led and funded by hostile fifth-columnists. The Communist Party (KPD) was the only party besides Hitler's that evoked genuine fear in the elite classes of Germany.
Hitler and the NSDAP could not be ignored for the very reason that they, besides the Marxist-Communists, had the largest mass following in Germany at the time. Industrialists could not afford to anger or rebuff Hitler and the NSDAP; if they did, then Hitler's followers would quickly have swelled the ranks of the Communists or perhaps have even overthrown him, as Ernst Röhm and many SA members wished to do.
Hitler's party was the only non-Communist, nationalist party that offered the lower- and middle-classes a better standing in German society. Given Hitler's ability to keep the overwhelming majority of his followers in line and loyal meant that he alone could prevent a transitional bloodbath, which is what most of the upper-class Germans feared the most. And this is exactly what he did.
What's important to bear in mind, however, is that Hitler needed a credible threat to maintain his personal and political leverage over the upper classes and big business. Without the Communists to threaten them via mass upheaval and bloodshed, the industrialists and former nobility had little reason other than patriotism to support Hitler and the NSDAP.
Third, it means that a party needs a viable means to unite a citizenry that has every excuse not to be united. Bavarians wanted to secede from Germany and become an independent state. Big business demanded an end to the Junker estates that squandered numerous government bailouts and demanded trade tariffs that harmed German industry. The Junkers did not care whether the industrialists suffered, so long as their estates were still in their name and they could live a lavish life of luxury at the German taxpayers' expense.
To mediate such divisiveness, Hitler invoked Nordicism, which called on Germans to recognize and value their blood ties instead of their social standing (based on wealth). This unifying ideology provided Hitler with the necessary means to develop a system of merit: one could rise to the top of National Socialist society regardless of one's parents' or personal finances, because one was equal to all other Germans from the racial point-of-view.
Hitler's German racialism and anti-Semitism were the practical means for achieving classless unity among formerly divided Germans. Hitler used a similar approach later on with the Waffen-SS. He turned an exclusively German idea (the Allgemeine SS) into an international, multiethnic idea by uniting everyone who participated against Jewish-Bolshevism, the enemy of all people.
Initial Member Recruitment
Like any grassroots party, the NSDAP developed organically from amongst a handful of hardcore ideologues, the primary catalyst having been Adolf Hitler. But the NSDAP did not spring up on its own; it instead arose from out of a party that already had a platform, leadership core, and small committed following. This was the German Workers' Party led by Anton Drexler.
Hitler was actually appointed by the Army to spy on the German Workers' Party. The Army was interested in two things: locating nationalists for its own designs and rooting out Communists who threatened to turn Germany into a subservient satellite of Moscow. Hitler's speaking skills and interest in politics led the Army to select him for this covert task. He took a liking to Drexler and many of his ideas, so he finally signed up and was issued a membership card with his name and membership number on it, a tradition that Hitler maintained.
While Hitler began his political career as the propagandist for the Workers' party, he was quick to identify the party's main problems: it appealed to too few and had no outreach venue other than speaking engagements, which were often drab. He therefore focused on developing his own talents, which surpassed Drexler's, and forming his own designs for the Workers' party; hence the birth of the NSDAP.
Hitler was quick to capitalize on Drexler's connections to wealthy Thule Society members. He did not join the Thule Society but requested their patronage. They alone significantly enhanced the potential for what was now his party to appeal to upper-class Germans, who, in turn, also helped fund the party. After he quit the Army, Hitler threw himself into the development of the NSDAP with unmatched determination.
While Drexler and his core focused entirely on winning over German workers, Hitler had eyes for larger audiences and outreach. His relationships with White Russian émigrés, wealthy Thule Society members, and especially Gottfried Feder (an economist) and Dietrich Eckart (a philosopher and writer) proved invaluable in his acquisition of the bankrupt Völkischer Beobachter (VB). Feder together with two other early NSDAP members owned 30,000 shares of the VB. Dietrich Eckart was able to obtain a loan for RM 60,000 from the sympathetic General Ritter von Epp to acquire the VB. The rest of the RM 120,000 price tag came from an industrialist named Dr. Gottfried Grandel, who was won over by Hitler's personal appeal to him. Eckart likely helped out too, along with Dr. Gutberlet (who pledged RM 5,000).
Hitler's early supporters came from a wide range of classes, nationalities, and ethnic backgrounds. Numerous wealthy White Russian émigrés, who had Thule Society contacts, formed an alliance with the NSDAP and allegedly raised "vast sums of money" for Hitleri.e. according to an official 1923 file note. There was Henry Ford, who was anti-Jewish and wished to spread his message to receptive nations. Benito Mussolini's personal agents were known to have established contact with NSDAP members in Germany, likely in order to arrange the transfer of financial gifts from the Duce. The Russian Grand Duchess Victoria, who was pro-monarchy and anti-Bolshevik, gave Hitler money.
Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell Corporation offered Hitler vast amounts of money in 1931, '32, and '33 in exchange for a guarantee that he would regain his expropriated oil interests from the Bolsheviks at some future point in time. The amount was likely between 30 and 55 million pounds sterling. Deterding was so pro-German that he ended up marrying a National Socialist woman and even moved to Germany.
Deterding, like many other members of German elites, realized that only an assertive foreign policy could secure Germany's economic survival in a world in which France and England had a monopoly over one-quarter of the globe and were determined to crush Germany's global competitiveness. The Germans had tried everything else, including complying with the Versailles reparations, which was de facto theft. This "treaty" was in fact designed with one goal in mind: the permanent crippling of German industrial competition.
Ernst Röhm was a fervent German nationalist who channeled Army funds to the NSDAP via various front organizations. The Thule Society, which was pan-Germanic and nationalist, not only contributed members to the NSDAP but helped it raise a lot of money. The two German jewelers Josef Füss and Herr Gahr supported Hitler. A certain Mr. Pöschl, a small businessman, gave to Hitler early on. Quirin Diestl was another early supporter who gave small funds. Oscar Koerner, a toy shop owner, likewise gave money to the NSDAP. Dr. Friedrich Krohn, a dentist, gave as much as he could. Adolf Müller helped the NSDAP keep the VB going by endlessly extending credit to Hitler. Frau Hoffmann, the widow of a headmaster, contributed regularly. Numerous friends of General Ludendorff, a Thule Society member, provided the NSDAP with funding.
A significant number of prominent foreigners and German nationals living or working in Austria, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden, and America gave Hitler money, much of it via Winifred Wagner, Kurt Lüdecke, and Hungarian nationalists like Gömbös.
The German Free Corps members gave Hitler money, and so did many Stahlhelm members. Several right-wing German business interests, such as Emil Kirdorf of the covert Ruhrlade group, gave Hitler money, along with many business interests that usually supported Alfred Hugenberg (a man who tried to use Hitler for his own ends). There was also General Ritter von Epp, who helped Dietrich Eckart and the NSDAP purchase the VB; Dr. Emil Gansser, who had connections to wealthy Protestants; Admiral Schröder, a former naval commander; Baron Sebottendorf, who had connections to J. F. Lehmann (a Thule member, financier and publisher for the German Navy) and sympathetic naval officers; Herr Schaffer, who acquired weapons for Hitler's SA; Kurt Lüdecke, and through him two Jewish arms dealers who were either (1) not privy to who Lüdecke was or (2) had no reason to fear Hitler (this was the early 1920s after all); possibly the Duke of Anhalt and Count Fugger; Ernst Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate with numerous American connections and some wealth of his own; the wealthy Frau Quandt, who married Josef Goebbels and who had elite connections; Fritz Thyssen, who later denied that he gave substantial sums to Hitler and Göring, in 1929 and off and on throughout the 1930s, both of whom he liked very much; and so forth.
No Warburgs. No Rothschilds. No Rockefellers. While the Rockefellers indirectly came into Hitler's financial sphere by way of Standard Oil technical investments, and the Warburgs via I. G. Farben and J. H. Stein later on, neither gave Hitler any financial support before 1933. And neither directly supported or paid Hitler at any point in time. The Sidney Warburg story is pure fabrication.
Fritz Thyssen and some of Hugenberg's heavy industrial connections, not James Warburg, gave Hitler substantial monetary gifts in 1929 (at least RM 1,250,000) and Deterding and several German coal companies took care of Hitler in the early 1930s.
While Hitler spent a vast amount of these funds on campaigning, he was by no means rolling in untraceable money. All of his funding was carefully accounted for and most of it came from VB advertising; party dues, insurance, and speaking fees; Gregor Strasser's left-wing faction, which received RM 10,000 per month in 1931; the good will of VB publisher Adolf Müller; and the financial frugality of party treasurer Franz Schwarz, whose meticulous party financial records were destroyed. The Americans interrogated him so brutally that he died in 1946 in Anglo captivity. His records denoting even Hitler's anonymous donors never turned up anywhere. The American occupiers are suspected of having destroyed them.
As for Goebbels' remark on 17 January 1932 that the finances of the party "suddenly improved," this was not exactly true. The truth is that the party's credit line suddenly improved, and this was thanks to the maneuverings of Franz von Papen and Baron Kurt von Schröder with his syndicate of investors, including a number of prominent heavy industrialists, the Hamburg-America Steamship Line, the Stein Bank of Cologne, Commerz und Privat Bank, the Gelsenkirchen Mine Company, Deutsche Bank, Reichskredit-Gesellschaft Bank, Allianz Insurance, members of the potash industry, the Brabag Coal Company, Deutsches Erdöl, and a number of other brown coal industrialists.
While Hitler tolerated fifth-column banks like M. M. Warburg and the Temple Bank (a special account created for the Temple Society by the Reichsbank to fund Ha'avara emigration), he eventually restricted and regulated their business opportunities and forced them to assist with financing Jewish emigration. Hitler's goal was to increasingly inhibit and thereby financially squeeze the foreign banks until they were unable to exist any longer and had to relocate outside of Germanythe same policy he employed to encourage Jewish emigration and business closures. One such example was the Germanization (i.e. German takeover) of two Jewish ironworks plants in the Rhön region in 1937.
Most potential recruits and financial supporters heard about Hitler and the NSDAP via word of mouth. Nothing was as effective as this. When men like Scheubner-Richter, Schacht, Borsig, Kirdorf, and Thyssen recommended the NSDAP and personally endorsed Hitler, wealthy and other upper- and middle-class Germans were willing to seriously consider Hitler and his party. Hitler was invited to speak to heavy industrialists in 1927 by word of mouth in fact. He even wrote a secret pamphlet intended only for this industrial-capitalist audience, which they then passed around to others.
Besides active word of mouth campaigning, the NSDAP also placed posters everywhere they could, promoted speaking engagements and other party activities and viewpoints in their VB, sold various odds and ends to raise small funds (e.g. various items like soap with NSDAP packaging), and sent wealthier members abroad to raise funds from German expats and foreign sympathizers. Kurt Lüdecke excelled at this form of campaigning.
In the very beginning, Hitler and the NSDAP targeted veterans, farmers, workers, young men, noblemen and women, small businessmen and women, and pensioners. These were the social classes who were initially the most receptive, due to the economy and prevailing anti-monarchism, but later on Hitler's support base included wealthy elites, heavy industrialists, fascist and monarchist foreigners, landed Junkers, veterans' organizations, the German Army and Navy, and even Montagu Norman.
"Our Last Hope"
Norman was a prominent English banker and personal friend of Hjalmar Schacht who, according to both his private secretary Ernest Skinner and Émile Moreau, despised Jews, the French, and Roman Catholics. He unabashedly refused to assist France's treasury with anything and proved willing and able to arrange financing for the NSDAP by way of his connections to Bruno von Schröder (Schroder Bank), Kurt von Schröder (Stein Bank), and the Bank of England (F. C. Tiarks and M. Norman himself).
Norman had strong sympathy for the Germans which dated back to his days as a student in Dresden, and naturally offered to financially assist and thereby stabilize the new government that his friend Schacht had openly supported since 1931. Since Hitler was hostile to France (he saw the French as foreign enemy number one), friendly to Britain (which he did not feel was a threat), and discriminatory towards Jews, the three things that Norman found favorable, he recommended that Kurt von Schröder extend credit to Hitler's party, which now controlled the government.
Schacht was Hitler's de facto lifeline in this respect, a nationalist German banker who had his own designs for German recovery, but who was also personally impressed with Hitler's speeches and mass appeal, which no other politician possessed.
As for Hitler's initial support, many farmers were blighted by financial obligations to relentless moneylenders, and most, including landed Junkers, felt threatened by Communist expropriation and insufficient protective agricultural tariffs. The veterans were receptive because they felt betrayed by the ruling class, especially the liberal-democrats of the SPD, and because they had a difficult time finding work. Workers, who were mostly young men, were receptive because they felt they were being exploited by the business class, but primarily because they were the most negatively affected by the inflation and unemployment. Pensioners on fixed incomes were receptive to Hitler's socialist stance. Noblemen and women were interested in Hitler because he opposed Freemasonry and expropriation of their landed estates, and because he hinted at restoration of the monarchy. Additionally, all of these groups generally opposed Marxist-Communism because they were not interested in a revolutionary bloodbath, but economic and social security as well as justice and prosperity for the German nation.
"Death to lies"
Hitler's main opposition in the formative years came from the Communists, who denounced him as a tool of capitalism and the former nobility; the heavy industrialists, who distrusted his socialism and the SA (they feared the SA was nothing but a Communistic horde); and the left-wing faction within his own party, who questioned Hitler's financial sources and pro-business stance.
When someone requested to join the NSDAP, one paid one's initial annual dues and was then given a membership card and asked to perform some service or task for the party. This could be anything from putting up posters before speaking engagements to spreading the word by simply talking about the NSDAP or handing out flyers on street corners and at beer halls. After the Hitler-Strasser break, he or she was asked to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
Vetting was likely performed by those members doing the actual talking and recruiting in the streets, as there was no known formal vetting procedure. As long as a person paid his annual dues and served the party loyally, he or she was trusted. Those who wished to break with the party were actually told to leave by Hitler himself at a rally that took place after the Strasser and Stennes affairs. We'll revisit this topic later on.
Along these lines, Kurt Lüdecke, Otto Wagener and Ernst Röhm played leading roles in arming, training, and drilling SA men. Their personal fundraising; their secret dealings with the German Army (Reichswehr), which had many prominent sympathizers of the NSDAP and SA; and Lüdecke's connections to black market Jewish arms dealers proved imperative to building a credible paramilitary threat to the status quo.
The government in Berlin tended to ignore SA violence against Communists because it opposed a Communist takeover. Also, Hitler's party supported German national unity at all costs, so Hitler and his SA were worth tolerating to prevent Bavarian secession.
Hitler's real bargaining base was his SA and the masses. Without both, he could afford to be ignored by the elites, government, and industry; however with both he was a true threat, like the Communists.
Lüdecke, Wagener, and Röhm all led, at one point or another, regular drilling and paramilitary basic training at a large hall funded by party members and various supporters. Marching in formation and drills also took place in the forests and countryside when possible, but mostly it occurred in the party's own rented hall or on a wealthy sympathizer's private estate. Fortunately for unemployed and poor members, the party paid for everyone's uniforms.
When SA and SS ranks were introduced, the requirements were loyalty and leadership aptitude. The SS consisted of men handpicked by Hitler himself. Thus, he vetted them personally. As a matter of fact, Hitler usually personally appointed leaders to their positions even in the SA. He recalled Röhm from Bolivia, for instance, to reorganize and lead the SA.
Hitler tended to choose people who he felt would resist falling prey to groupthink. Historians have tended to characterize this as Hitler's "divide and rule" tendency, but in-depth study of the party's early development suggests instead that Hitler chose people who would (a) not challenge or question his leadership, and (b) not fall prey to the "yes man" problem. This appointment procedure did two things: it prevented serious intraparty division by subordinating all to Hitler himself, while at the same time supported intraparty challenges, which prevented groupthink. Leaders could disagree and even challenge one another's authority without destroying the party.
Hitler based promotion solely on performance, not status. This tendency increased later on during the war especially after Hitler established the NSFO (National Socialist Commanding Officer Corps). This NS-high command likely would have replaced the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). Hitler wanted select NSFO officers to undergo a 4- to 18-hour course in political-ideological instruction. He himself appointed the head of the NSFO, Hermann Reinecke, in December 1944.
The NSDAP expanded into cities and states outside of Munich (Bavaria), where it had its Brown House headquarters, by appointing certain members to run party operations and perform party services in their own states, cities, towns, and villages.
The most well-known example of an NSDAP member-cum-leader who acquired almost enough personal power, financial backing and mass following to challenge Hitler himself was Gregor Strasser. Hitler was able to prevent a crisis from developing with his gifts for clever maneuvering and personal appeal, but such risks are inherent to any party that becomes as large as the NSDAP. And they are risks that must be taken if a party wishes to develop and grow.
Talented, committed and qualified speakers and leaders were appointed to run operations in every location possible. But Berlin NSDAP members also traveled around giving speeches and lectures and soliciting financial support. All speaking engagements required admittance fees. Hitler himself was constantly traveling and meeting with workers and elites alike to recruit new members and bolster his finances.
At the end of 1920, the NSDAP had about 3,000 members. Membership then grew from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928. In August 1931 the NSDAP created its own intelligence and security sector. Heinrich Himmler established the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and Reinhard Heydrich was appointed head of the organization, which was kept separate from the SS (Schutzstaffel). By the time of the Strasser crisis, the SA was some 400,000 members strong and the party itself had grown to 2 million by 1933. In 1932, it was large enough to achieve control of 37% of the Reichstag.
Here are the election results from 1920 to 1933:
Political Parties in the Reichstag June
1920 May
1924 Dec.
1924 May
1928 Sep.
1930 July
1932 Nov.
1932 Mar.
1933
Communist Party (KPD) 4 62 45 54 77 89 100 81
Social Democratic Party (SPD) 102 100 131 153 143 133 121 120
Catholic Center Party (BVP) 65 81 88 78 87 97 90 93
Nationalist Party (DNVP) 71 95 103 73 41 37 52 52
National Socialist Party (NSDAP) - - - 12 107 230 196 288
Other Parties 98 92 73 121 122 22 35 23
One can see that the NSDAP lost most of its former 230 seats in July 1932 to the even more radical-revolutionary Communist Party (KPD) in November 1932, not to conservative Catholics or social-democrats. The conservative nationalists (DNVP) only received a boost of 15 seats. These results, contrary to most historiography, do not reflect the demise of the NSDAP, but the masses' disaffection with any party that was not willing to promise sweeping social and economic change for the majority, even if change meant bloodshed. Hitler and the NSDAP were not viewed as extreme enough, so they lost seats to the KPD!
"Our German Railroad"
This alarmed men like Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen so much so that they were finally willing to give Hitler the opportunity to become chancellor. He actually should have received the chancellorship in July 1932 when his party had the most seats in the Reichstag, but industrialists and noblemen surrounding General Schleicher, Franz von Papen, and President Hindenburg opposed his appointment to the chancellorship. So much for James Warburg's and the Rothschilds' "magical funding."
Hitler faced so much resistance at this stage that he, like everyone else, had to resort to blackmail to receive his due appointment. Hitler arranged a private meeting with President Hindenburg's son Oskar, during which he is suspected to have threatened to expose his father's role in the repeated taxpayer bailouts of the Junkers' mismanaged, bankrupted estates. Since blackmail and intrigue had been used to cheat Hitler of his due appointment, he decided that he could also play such a game.
Hindenburg appointed him chancellor shortly thereafter, which most historians claim was at the behest of von Papen. We see that von Papen's desire to prevent a Communist majority by giving Hitler the chancellorship was only partly why Hindenburg appointed him. Hitler won, but not because he received covert funding. Franz von Papen continued to intrigue against Hitler and urged industrialists to withdraw their financial support of the NSDAP! The goal of this so-called "cabinet of barons" was to give Hitler just enough power to satisfy him personally without actually allowing him to attain a majority strong enough to overthrow the status quo, but just strong enough to prevent a Communist majority.
Given this context of stalemate, the speed of the NSDAP's growth in just 6 years and its subsequent attainment of absolute power were only possible with an authoritarian leader in a crooked political situation in which blackmail, corruption and political sleight-of-hand was the order of the day.
are united and loyal.""]
"The Reich will never be destroyed if you [Hindenburg and Hitler
What had started as a democratic-style workers' party with a simple executive committee to which Hitler was appointed in the early 1900s became an authoritarian-style organization with its own uniforms, offices, training facilities, insurance company, sales items, newspaper, propaganda machine, army (the SA), and security service (SS and SD).
This was nothing short of impressive and most of the credit for its success goes to those leaders and members like Hitler, Hess, Gansser, Eckart, Funk, Schwarz, Feder, Keppler, Himmler, Rosenberg, Goebbels, the Strassers (before 1932), Scheubner-Richter, Hanfstaengl, Lüdecke, Göring, and Röhm, all of whom literally devoted their lives to the party.
NSDAP events took place as often as they could be afforded. The newspaper was of course always availableit was a dailyso the public and members always knew what was going on from day-to-day. Hitler gave speeches and met with important wealthy persons almost non-stop after his release from prison. He was keen enough to purchase vehicles, which were rare in those days. Speedy travel was vital to defeating rival parties like the Communists who still had to walk to their various speaking engagements and meetings.
The NSDAPs doors, so to speak, were always open to receive new recruits. Interested persons either signed up at simple on-site recruitment centers or they mailed their applications to the party's headquarters in Munich.
The need for bodyguards arose when Hitler started regularly giving speeches. The Communists had caught on to this Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP and therefore sought to intimidate it or shut it down. The SA originally served as the party's guards, but this role was quickly taken over by the SS (Saal-Schutz), which served as an assembly hall guard as well as Hitler's personal bodyguard. Himmler started its transformation into an elite paramilitary force, renaming it the Schutzstaffel, in 1929.
"Workers of head and hand vote for front-soldier Hitler"
This Allgemeine-SS later expanded into the National Socialist Armed Forces (Waffen-SS), which eventually grew so large and powerful that it rivaled the state's official armed forces. Hitler's intent was to `national socialize' the state armed forces, which opposed him more and more as the war progressed. The intrastate schism between military and social elites on the one side and NS-populists on the other remained intact even under Hitler's skillful leadership and absolute power. He only fully realized the extent of this social chasm in July 1944 when several of his generals attempted to murder him with a suitcase bomb. This in fact occurred shortly after Hitler ordered the creation of the NSFO, mentioned earlier.
Most early members of the NSDAP gave an incredible amount of their personal fortune and time to the party. Countless young men defied their conservative parents by joining the NSDAP as their only hope for future employment and social security. Young women were attracted to Hitler personally, but also to NS fanfare and its commitment to uphold family values.
The lifeblood of the party was its youth, and numerous parents had their children join either the Jugenbund der NSDAP or Jungsturm Adolf Hitler, both of which were formed in 1922the creation of at least one of these youth divisions was announced in the VB. In 1923, the organization had some 1,000 members. The Jugenbund, originally based in Bavaria, expanded into a nationwide organization in 1924 and was subsequently renamed the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung.
In 1925, after the NSDAP was reorganized upon Hitler's release from prison, membership grew to over 5,000. In July 1926, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung was again reorganized by Kurt Gruber, a law student from Saxony, and officially renamed the Hitler Jugend Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend, (better known as the Hitler Youth). This organization promoted sports, political education and preparatory paramilitary training for later membership in the SA or SS once a child was old enough. Children were given performance booklets in which their HJ accomplishments were recorded. By 1930, the HJ had enlisted over 25,000 boys over age 14. The Deutsches Jungvolk, a junior branch for boys aged 10 to 14, was also formed. Girls between the ages of 10 and 18 joined a similar organization, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), or League of German Girls. In 1930, HJ membership was about 25,000. By the end of 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, membership was 107,956. By the end of 1933, the HJ had 2,300,000 members.
Uniforms were an integral part of the NSDAP from the beginning. This was the result of Hitler's personal influence on the DAP, which did not have or require uniforms. NSDAP members often met in beer halls or at the party's headquarters for daily or weekly drill and training, and were expected to put on their uniforms after the drill leader arrived. All drills and training took place in uniform, and all NSDAP members who attended either Hitler's speeches or major party events were in uniform.
"Then as now, we remain comrades. The German Labor Front"
The SA performed considerable community and charitable work. This included organizing soup kitchens, toy and food drives, home handy work, combating crime, patrolling the streets against Communists and other violent groups, and any other form of service or assistance individual party members were willing and able to provide to community members. Patrolling the streets often led to violent conflict involving injury and death on both sides. As a result, Chancellor Brüning banned the SA, SS and HJ, which all went underground until the ban was lifted after Brüning was ousted. The new Chancellor, Kurt von Schleicher, lifted the ban<br/<br/(Message over 64 KB, truncated)
