Radical Socialist Nazis

[R.M. Schultz]

I am doing research on factional disputes within the NSDAP. There was a viable left wing of the Nazi Party (centered around Gregor Strasser in P-Zero and Ernst Röhm in the SA) that was purged in the Night of the Long Knives. These genuine socialists (variously called “Beefsteak Nazis” or “Radicalinskis”) favored a non-Marxist, conservative, socialism (as propounded by Arthur Möller van den Bruck in “Germany’s Third Empire” or Oswald Spengler in “Preußentum und sozialismus”) and I am interested in finding out as much as I can about them.

What books are available about this?

[Gwynn Compton]

From memory Kershaw's Hitler biography contains information about this particular factional dispute, but nothing of the depth that I think you're looking for.

Gwynn

[White Leopard]

You might try and find this book:

The Revolution of Nihilism, by Hermann Rausching.

Rausching was the mayor of Danzig. Bacially, he was a conservative socialist. At first he thought the Nazis were fellow socialists. He later fled (about the time of the '34 purge) and denounced them forcefully.

The book may not give enough detail about Strasser/Roehm for you. But it's worth a try.

[R.M. Schultz]

Thank you for your replies.

I have not read anything by Kershaw, however I have heard him interviewed and he is definitely of the “Hitler = Nazism” interpretation of history. This viewpoint (most extensively expounded in Joseph Nyomarkay’s “Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party,” University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1967) holds that there were no real, substantive factions within the NSDAP, that the Nazi movement was charismatic in nature, totally in thrall to the personality of the Führer. Thus, the Northwest Working Group, the Kampf Verlag, the Munich Circle, the Strasser/Goebbels rivalry, and the diffidence of zu Reventlow’s group are all understood as the petty jockeying of followers seeking personal influence, not the working out of actual political differences through alliance, compromise, and confrontation. Virtually all popular histories follow this interpretation, insofar as they identify the NSDAP and Third Reich with the person of Hitler.

I have both of Rauschning’s books had have not had time to read them yet. Rauschning was definitely a factional opponent of Hitler though my impressions from secondary sources is not that he was a Socialist, but rather that his Christian morality forced the break with Hitler ( see John S. Conway, “Hermann Rauschning as Historian and Opponent of Nazism,” Canadian Journal of History 8, 1973, pp. 67 - 78.). There is also evidence that personal enmity between Rauschning and Albert Forster (a Hitler loyalist and homosexual) might have entered into this as well. Of course I plan to read Rauschning as there can be no substitute for primary sources.

[Heraklit]

The British journalist Douglas Reed, who was a correspondent for the London Times in Berlin during the final days of the Weimar Republic and the early stages of the National Socialist regime, might be able to furnish you some peripheral insights concerning your topic.

As a British Army combat veteran of the 1914-1918 war in Europe, Reed seemed to possess a visceral animus toward the Germans, particularly the National Socialists. However at times he seemed to favor Gregor Strasser during the NSDAP factional disputes, particularly those which arose after die Machtergreifung.

The following works by Douglas Reed might provide you with some interesting but seldom discussed details:

Nemesis? The Story of Otto Strasser and the Black Front
London: Jonathan Cape, 1940

The Prisoner of Ottawa: Otto Strasser
London: Jonathan Cape, 1953.

Memoir of Otto Strasser
translated by Douglas Reed from German into English as
History in My Time
London: Jonathan Cape, 1941.

Another somewhat interesting contemporary work by Reed is
The Burning of the Reichstag
New York: Covici Friede, 1934.
In this fascinating work Reed offers a fairly balanced account of the event which he witnessed.

Another writer you might find of interest is Andreas Kittler. In his Hermann Görings Carinhall (Berg: Druffel-Verlag, 1997), he offers a somewhat concise but nonetheless convincing explanation of the cogent reasons for the elimination of Ernst Röhm in 1934.

[R.M. Schultz]

Thank you for the lead on Reed’s The Burning of the Reichstag, that one is new to me.

Otto Strasser, a Nazi so radically socialist that he ended up calling himself a “National Bolshevik,” is indeed a primary source for this kind of thing. The books you mentioned by Reed were written in close association with Strasser though they do not primarily deal with intra-party conflicts. Nemesis is primarily a warning to the West about Hitler, Prisoner of Ottawa is a plea for ending Strasser’s exile, and History in My Time is primarily a statement of Strasser’s political program.

Closer to being memoirs of the period are Strasser’s own books:

The Gangsters Around Hitler, Allen, London, 1942. (Pure gossip!)

Hitler and I, Johnathan Cape, Ltd., London, 1940.

Flight From Terror, (with Michael Stern) Robert M. McBride & Co., New York City, 1943.

The only biography in English of Otto’s more important brother, Gregor, is Peter D. Stachura’s “Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism,” George Allen & Unwin, London, January 1983 which denies that either of the Strasser’s were genuine Socialists — because they were not feminists! He misses the whole point that the Strasser’s were (in the words of the Tat Kreis’ Hans Zeher) “Politically to the right, economically to the left.”

[White Leopard]

You might also take a look at I Knew Hitler by Kurt Ludecke, although this book will give you more of a personal picture of Strasser rather than a comprehensive view of his politics. Ludecke was a sort of roving ambassador for the Party in the 1920's and early 1930's. He was often away from Germany on what might be termed "sales trips" for the Party and Hitler. His testimony is fragmented and partial, but interesting.

[R.M. Schultz]

In point of fact I am reading Lüdecke’s book right now! Lüdecke is long (more than 600 pages), long-winded, self-aggrandizing, and much of his story just doesn’t add-up (as for instance why exactly he was sent to a psychiatric ward in 1915) but he certainly was a first hand witness. Lothar Machtan (“The Hidden Hitler,” Basic Books, N.Y.C., ad 2001) thinks Lüdecke was a charlatan, but he has his own axe to grind that definitely biases his opinion.

By way of analysis of Lüdecke I have only been able to find a listing for by Roland V. Jr Layton, “Kurt Lüdecke and I Knew Hitler: An Evaluation,” in Central European History 12, 1979, p. 372 - 386. The Chicago Public Library (where I do most of my research) lists this as being in their collections, but the binder with it is missing. Since they think they have it, they won’t get it for me on inter-library loan. If anyone has this I would gladly pay copying and mailing charges to get hold of it.

[Heraklit]

In the introduction to his latest revision of Hitler's War (London: Focal Point Publications, 2002), David Irving, while describing various records and documents discovered in postwar Germany, writes that: "In February 1939 Hitler endorsed the refusal of his embassy in Washington to pay Danegeld to Kurt Lüdecke, a former Nazi who had invited the Party publishing house or some other Reich agency to buy up all rights to his scurrilous memoirs to prevent their publication."

Irving is generally not shy about debunking frauds, but he makes no reference to Lüdecke's veracity, unless one considers it to be implied by the word scurrilous.

[White Leopard]

Ludecke was some sort of rascal alright. But I find him amusing. He was someone who lived by his wits. But he had some curious lapses in this regard. He was a globe trotter; one of the few early nazis who had experience beyond the borders of Germany or Bavaria. He was seldom in Germany during the Kampfzeigt and often found himself in preposterous situations.

There are many examples in his book which are unintensionally funny. The greatest of these being his attempts to convert Americans to Nazism in the 1920's. He might as well have been selling ice to the Eskimos!