Revised Topography of the NSDAP

[R.M. Schultz]

This is my latest attempt to create a topography of political factions within (and around) the NSDAP.

On the left we find three categories: National Bolsheviks who are too far left to remain within the NSDAP or ever to have joined, National Socialists who were the genuinely socialist faction within the party, and Left Opportunists who, while being socialist in outlook, ultimately subordinated this to other motivations. Thus National Bolshevik includes Nazi defectors (e.g. Stennis and Otto Strasser), disaffected Communists and Socialists who could not embrace the lingering petite-bourgeois character of the NSDAP (e.g. Radek, Niekish and Winnig), and characters who were simply too radically anti-bourgeois to fit anywhere else (e.g. Ernst Saloman, or Captain Erhardt). The Left Opportunists usually were careerists (e.g. Hans Fritzsche) who willingly subordinated any opinions to their personal interests, though there were many (e.g. Dr. Joseph Göbbels or Julius Streicher) who subordinated their socialist ideas to their racist mania, as well as those who, for whatever reason, failed to act upon their beliefs (such as the brain-damaged Dr. Ley).

In the Center, there are three Anti-Bourgeois Categories: The Left Anti-Bourgeois are the State Socialists, who think that socialism, by eliminating the class struggle, would ultimately strengthen the nation (e.g. Spengler, and the Tatkreis). In the Center Anti-Bourgeois is something of a grab bag, including as it does out-and-out monarchists (e.g. Frick and von Epp), third way theorists (e.g. Möller van den Bruke), disaffected militarists (e.g. Doenitz or Steldte), and flaky race theorists (e.g. Dintner or Eckhardt), and disaffected militarists. The Right Anti-Bourgeois are State Capitalists who, though accepting capitalism, wish to subordinate it to the nation.

The Right Opportunists mirror their complement on the left. On the far right we find the Reactionary Capitalists who are too far right to work with Hitler. They constitute a conventional hard right faction alienated from the “Weimar System” which they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as “socialist.”

The “Y-Axis” of this chart deals with the national/race issue. No one in the NSDAP is an internationalist or anything less than a German patriot, so we begin there with Völkish. The völkish believe Germany was cheated at Versailles, is the best of all possible nations, and perhaps they believe that neither Poles, Jews, nor Czechs living within the Reich can ever really be good Germans, yet they are not obsessed with the race issue, respect other nations, nor harbor real hatreds. Anti-Semitic defines those who see Jews as constituting an economic or cultural menace, see other nations as inferior, and are not adverse to a war of conquest. Racist defines those as favoring or willing to go along with genocide. Hitler’s sole program was genocide, thus he was fundamentally neither right nor left (though he ultimately allied himself with the right) but merely a racist. The proof of this is that no one supporting genocide was ever purged!

[John W]

Not to be an ass but Baldur von Schirach is repeated.

Wondering if that was the way it was suppoed to be (as in overlapping charecteristics) or is that a mistake

Interesting chart, Herr Schultz. Just wish it was a tad bigger to make it easier to read

[R.M. Schultz]

Not to be an ass but Baldur von Schirach is repeated. Wondering if that was the way it was suppoed to be (as in overlapping charecteristics) or is that a mistake

Mistake, he should be Left-Anti-Bourgeois Racist.

Interesting chart, Herr Schultz. Just wish it was a tad bigger to make it easier to read

TRF won't allow attachments over a certain size. Give me your E-Mail address in a PM and I will send you a larger, more legible copy.

[viriato]

R.M. Schultz interesting table and a good effort to show us that the NSDAP was somehow "plurastic". However I have a problem of classifying Karl Haushofer as an anti-semite. After all his own wife was of Jewish ancestry!

[R.M. Schultz]

However I have a problem of classifying Karl Haushofer as an anti-semite. After all his own wife was of Jewish ancestry!

Thank you for your input! A correction will be made!

[Navy Vet]

Thank you for your work, I was working on a chain of command chart but gave up because it always changed and is confusing.

[R.M. Schultz]

Please find below a Topography of the NSDAP, by group rather than by individual.

[R.M. Schultz]

What's the evidence that Stauffenberg was anti-Semitic?

I have nothing directly on that. He was incontrovertibly a National Bolshevik but I don't really have much to go on about how he felt about the "race issue." Do you have something to swing it one way or the other?

Well I am skeptical of his anti-Semitism, because in 1934 he apparently got up and walked out on Julius Streicher because he was repulsed by his anti-Semitic ranting.

Ooops! I forgot about that! Let's bump Stauffenberg up to Völkish.

[Alecci]

R.M. Schultz:

Please read the following from http://www.joric.com/Conspiracy/Stauffenberg-Outlook.htm#repulsion regarding Claus Graf Stauffenberg's view on anti-semitism:

On September 16, 1934, he was required to represent his regiment at an official Party Day lecture given by Julius Streicher in Bamberg. As Streicher launched into his usual savage tirade against Jews, Stauffenberg became so insensed that he stood up in full public view amid the seated spectators and defiantly walked out of the hall down the main aisle. Two SS officers intercepted him. After a brief verbal exchange, he elbowed his way past them. (Baigent and Leigh, 144).

In addition, his brother Alexander Graf Stauffenberg was married to Melitta Schiller, who was of Jewish decent. All three Stauffenberg brothers also had a good deal of Jewish friends inside the circle of Stefan George. In spite of all this, he approved on some of the NSDAP's points on racial issues, for example to limit people serving in higher government, state, military and/or other offical posts. On those occasions however, his views were not directed against Jews in particular, but against all non-native Germans.

Regarding his left-wing associations, I have a good deal of difficulty on agreeing with that. What exactly do you base that assumption on? I would on the contrary prefer to place him somewhere on the right side of the chart. He was not a monarchist, in fact he was one of those in the conspiracy most resistant to restoring the old monarchies. On the other hand, he repeatedly sought to have the historical achievements of the nobility taken into consideration when forming a new government (had the coup d'etat been successful).

Many expressions made by Graf Stauffenberg also point in the direction that would make him anti-bourgeois, in speech as well as in writing. Graf Stauffenberg was, however, quite fond of 'pure National Socialism' which tended to combine social concerns with the national interest and to end the class struggle. He differentiated between that and on the other hand 'Hitlerism', which followed quite different dictatorial, power-hungry, corrupt and criminal courses.

In early September 1941, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke approached Hans-Christoph Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg, a cousin of Claus Graf Stauffenberg's, to inquire whether the latter would be willing to participate in conspiracy activities. Claus Graf Stauffenberg's answer to Graf Moltke, is quite illuminating:

'I spoke with Claus. He says we must win the war first. During the war one cannot do such a thing, particularly not during a war against the Bolsheviks. But afterwards, when we come home, we shall clean up that brown plague.'

I certainly mean no offense, and I sincerely hope none is taken, but if you were to study Claus Graf Stauffenberg closer, you would know better than to put him on the left side of the chart.

[R.M. Schultz]

I certainly mean no offense, and I sincerely hope none is taken, but if you were to study Claus Graf Stauffenberg closer, you would know better than to put him on the left side of the chart.

No offence is taken, in fact I have posted my charts here for just such criticism. Frankly, I know little about Stauffenberg as he comes to prominence after the period of real factional conflict in the NSDAP (that is, after the Blood Purge put a lid on the factions). The bulk of my reading on the events of the war was done in high school and so you will have to forgive me if I am relying on this for my assessment of the factional disposition of military figures.

Having said that, let me point up that, according to Jim Tuck ("The Engine of mischief : an analytical biography of Karl Radek," Greenwood Press, N.Y.C., 1988, p. 67), Stauffenberg was a self-professed National Bolshevik who hoped for a joint German-Russian victory in the war.

[Alecci]

R.M. Schultz:

Do you have any information on the sources Jim Tuck used?

I suspect that he based his statement primarily on the reports of Hans-Bernd Gisevius made to Allen W Dulles after the former escaped from Germany following the unsuccessful uprising.

Hans-Bernd Gisevius's statements of Graf Stauffenberg's politcal views are, quite much like himself from a historical viewpoint, held in low regard.

[Nina van M.]

Hey, R.M.Schultz, I'd like to ask something.
Is Paul Schulz also by accidence twice mentioned? Check him out at Anti-semitic/National Bolshevik and Anti-semitic/Right Anti-Bourgeois (State Capitalist)... The same one?
Thanks for posting and sharing this two examined tables!

Regards, von k.

PS: How credible "source" is Hans Bernd Gisevius in general, and why?

[Alecci]

R.M. Schultz & von kluge:

Communist historians have long attempted to show that the aims of Graf Stauffenberg was tied closely to those of the Soviet-sponsored Free Germany movement. They maintain in particular that Graf Stauffenberg's close friend since many years, Colonel (GS) Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, had developed communist sympathies, mainly because of his experiences on the eastern front and the fact that his brother-in-law, Major-General Otto Korfes, had helped found the German Officer's League and was active on the National Committee.

Another source that claims the politcal left-wing views of Graf Stauffenberg was Hans-Bernd Gisevius, an Abwehr agent working out of the German consulate-general in Zürich, who acted as liaison between the conspirators and the American intelligence representative in Bern, Allen W Dulles. Both the Communists' and Gisevius' views ere advanced in aid of their own respective political agendas.

von kluge:

On 12 July 1944 Gisevius returned to Berlin in order to take part in the uprising. He visited his old friend Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff, who complained that Graf Stauffenberg had taken control of the entire coup leadership. Thereafter Gisevius went to see Colonel-General (Ret.) Ludwig Beck, who told him that Graf Stauffenberg had been a great support of late and carried the whole burden of preparing the insurrection.

Beck's praise did not change Gisevius' reservations about Graf Stauffenberg, in whom Gisevius discerned an obstacle to his own ambitions. Gisevius was a very ambitious man, and Graf Stauffenberg was not likely to agree to the position Gisevius expected for himself, namely that of a 'Reich Commissar for Purges and Restoration of Public Order' and that he was to be put in charge of the entire civilian executive. Graf Stauffenberg also showed interest in the political future of a post-nazi Germany (who wouldn't?), and Gisevius saw this as a military officer meddling in politics.

Gisevius considered there to be a great difference between the old conspirator Major-General Hans Oster (former Chief of Staff of the Abwehr) and Graf Stauffenberg, whom he thought had changed sides and joined the resistance to Hitler only after the Stalingrad catastrophe. Gisevius probably knew nothing about Graf Stauffenberg's single-handed efforts to bring about Hitler's fall as early as 1942, and he seemed to have forgotten that Oster himself never made any attempt to kill Hitler.

Even after the failed uprising, after two of the Stauffenberg brothers had given their lives in an attempt to liberate the nation from the criminals, even after months of reflection, Gisevius showed no understanding of the position of a conspirator to whom name and honour had meant something and who had sacrificed both for the most thankless task in the conspiracy. Stauffenberg knew that there would be no room for the assassin in the new order.

Gisevius went underground on 20 July 1944 after the failure of the uprising. He later succeeded in escaping into Switzerland, where Dulles helped him acquire a visa. In his first report to Dulles, Gisevius stated that Graf Stauffenberg had planned to proclaim a 'workers' and peasants' regime in Germany' and to conclude a separate peace with the Soviet Union. Also according to Gisevius, Graf Stauffenberg had a contact with the National Committee Free Germany through Ambassador Alexandra Kollontay, and that they had been given assurances that the Soviet Union would grant 'a fair peace'.

The Gestapo investigated this aspect with particular energy, hoping that they would be able to confirm Reichsleiter Martin Bormann's premature verdict that the conspirators had close links to the Communists and had committed treason on concert with the National Committee Free Germany. The Gestapo findings showed the quite opposite, in fact there had been no contacts with the Committee or with any foreign power.

R.M. Schultz:

During one of the brief and rare visits to his family in Bamberg during late 1943 or early 1944, Graf Stauffenberg brought along a flyer issued by the National Committee Free Germany and commented:

'I am engaged in treason against the government. But those people are committing treason against the country.'

Hoffmann's source for that statement is an interview with Graf Stauffenberg's widow, Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg, made on 19 January 1973.

That ought to be enough said about Gisevius and the alleged 'eastern orientation' of Graf Stauffenberg.

[R.M. Schultz]

Do you have any information on the sources Jim Tuck used?

No. It was a library book and I have long since returned it. The statement that Stauffenberg was a National Bolshevik was also made in the concluding chapter of another book:

Germany's new Conservatism; its history and dilemma in the twentieth century, by Klemens von Klemperer, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1957.

I have that book at home and will check von Klemperer's sources later. It certainly does sound as though Hans-Bernd Gisevius' statements are not to be trusted without corroboration.

Is Paul Schulz also by accidence twice mentioned? Check him out at Anti-semitic/National Bolshevik and Anti-semitic/Right Anti-Bourgeois (State Capitalist)... The same one?

I don't know! I've got contradictory information on "Paul Schulz" and I think they are for two different people!

Paul Schulz #1 possibly a WWI Veteran, SS member, Gauleiter of Hesse (? - 1927), expelled from the NSDAP as a leftist after 1927 party conference.

Paul Schulz #2 ex-Reichswehr, SA member used to crush the Stennis revolt in Berlin 1930, aid de camp to G. Strasser 1930-32, staunchly anti-socialist, schemed to keep socialist faction divided by poisoning Hitler and Strasser against Röhm's homosexuality, attempted assassination during the Blood Purge, barely escaped with his life.

The idea that the Paul Schulz who was expelled from the party for being too left after the Bamburg conference could also be the violently anti-left Paul Schulz who was Strasser's aid de camp is counter-intuitive, so I have listed them as separate people — but I could be wrong!

Hey, R.M.Schultz, …Thanks for posting and sharing this two examined tables!

Glad you like them! I hope that these make some lasting contribution to understanding the factions within the NSDAP.

[Manstein]

Hanns Kerrl belongs in the anti-Semitic category, since according to Who's Who in Nazi Germany:

"Kerrl was Reich Commissioner in the Prussian Ministry of Justice from 23 March until 20 April 1933, during which period he placed a ban on any Jewish notary engaging in official business and forbade Jewish lawyers to practise in Prussia."