take a definite stand. Otto Strasser and his followers obstinately held to their old principles. They advocated aggressive “catastrophe tactics,” preached crude anticapitalism, came out for extensive nationalization of industry and an alliance with the Soviet Union, and flouted the party line by supporting local strike movements. This last activity, of course, was bound to strain the party’s new and highly profitable entente with industry. In addition their habit of rashly discussing programs caused trouble, for Hitler liked to skirt such questions and keep his options open.
As early as January, 1930, the Fuhrer had asked Otto Strasser to turn over the publishing house to him. Cunningly mixing flattery with threats and attempts at bribery, Hitler promised the refractory comrade the post of press chief at Munich headquarters and offered to pay some 80,000 marks for the publishing organization. He appealed to Strasser as an old soldier and a National Socialist of many years standing. But Strasser, who regarded himself as the repository of true National Socialism, had rejected all such bids. The final showdown came on the night of May 21, 1930, in what was then Hitler’s Berlin headquarters, the Hotel Sanssouci on Linkstrasse. Max Amann was present, as well as Rudolf Hess and Otto Strasser’s brother Gregor, when the two sides fell into a heated debate that was to go on for seven hours and to expose the full extent of their differences.
In that grandiloquent manner of the self-educated which was later to drive his entourage to distraction, Hitler began by sounding off on the subject of art (there are no revolutionary breaks in art; there is only “eternal art,” and whatever deserves the name is art of the Greco-Nordic type; anything else is fraud). He then expatiated on the role of personality, the problems of race, the global economy, Italian Fascism, and finally turned to socialism, which was the “Pilate’s question”—that is, the question of the nature of truth. That question, to be sure, had been present from the start. Now Hitler took Strasser to task for placing “the idea” above the Fuhrer and wanting “to give every party comrade the right to decide the nature of the idea, even to decide whether or not the Fuhrer is true to the so-called idea.” That, he cried angrily, was the worst kind of democracy, for which there was no place in their movement. “With us the Fuhrer and the idea are one and the same, and every party comrade has to do what the Fuhrer commands, for he embodies the idea and he alone knows its ultimate goal.” He was not going to allow the whole party organization, which was built up on the discipline of the members, “to be destroyed by a few megalomaniac scriveners.”
Hitler’s incapacity to see human relationships in anything but hierarchic terms had seldom shown itself so clearly as in the course of this dispute. Compulsively, he answered every objection, every consideration, by referring back to the question of power: Who was to give the orders and who was the subordinate? Everything was mercilessly reduced to the contrast between master and servants; all that existed was the raw, unshaped mass and the great personality for which that mass was an instrument, material for manipulation. To satisfy the legitimate needs of this mass for protection and welfare was, to his mind, socialism. When Strasser came out with the charge that Hitler was trying to throttle the party’s revolutionary socialism in the interests of his new connections with bourgeois reaction, Hitler replied heatedly. “I am a socialist of an entirely different type from, for instance, the high and mighty Count Reventlow [an aristocratic party member], I started out as a plain workman. To this day I can’t bear to have my chauffeur eat less well than myself. But what you mean by socialism is simply crude Marxism. You see, the great mass of the workers don’t want anything but bread and circuses. They have no understanding for any kind of ideals and. we will never be able to count on winning over the workers to any considerable degree. We want an elite of the new master class who will not be motivated by any morality of pity, but who will realize clearly that they are entitled to rule because of their superior race and who will ruthlessly maintain and secure this rule over the broad masses…. Your whole system is a desk product that has nothing to do with real life.”
He turned to his publisher: “Herr Amann, would you stand for it if your stenographers suddenly wanted to interfere with your work? The employer who bears the responsibility for production also provides the workers with their livelihood. Our biggest employers in particular are not so much concerned about amassing money, about luxurious living, and so on. What is most important to them is the responsibility and the power. Because of their capability they have worked their way to the top, and because of their selectness, which again only proves their superior race, they have a right to lead.”
After more excited discussion Strasser posed what to him was the key question: If the Nazis took power, would the means of production remain unchanged? Hitler replied: “But of course. Do you think I am so mad as to destroy the economy? The state would intervene only if the employers were not acting in the interests of the nation. But for that there would be no need for expropriation or the workers having any voice in the decisions.” Actually, he said, only one system existed: “Responsibility toward superiors, authority toward inferiors.” So it had been for thousands of years, and no other way was possible.
Obviously, there was no humanitarian impulse or desire for a new form of society in Hitler’s version of socialism. He himself declared that his socialism had “nothing at all to do with a mechanical construction of economic life”; rather, it was the complementary concept to the word “nationalism.” Socialism meant the responsibility of the whole for the individual, whereas “nationalism” was the devotion of the individual to the whole; thus the two elements could be combined in National Socialism. This prestidigitation allowed all interest groups to have their way and reduced the ideas to mere counters: capitalism found its true and ultimate fulfillment in Hitler’s socialism, whereas socialism was only attainable under the capitalistic economic system. This ideology took a leftist label chiefly for tactical reasons. It demanded, within the party and within the state, a powerful system of rule that would exercise unchallenged leadership over the “great mass of the anonymous.” And whatever premises the party may have started with, by 1930 Hitler’s party was “socialist” only to take advantage of the emotional value of the word, and a “workers’ party” in order to lure the most energetic social force. As with Hitler’s protestations of belief in tradition, in conservative values, or in Christianity, the socialist slogans were merely movable ideological props to serve as camouflage and confuse the enemy. They could be changed or rearranged, depending on the situation. The leaders, at any rate, were totally cynical about the principles of the program—as one enthusiastic young convert learned from a talk with Goebbels. When the young man remarked that Feder’s call for smashing the enslaving system of interest payment did contain an element of socialism, Goebbels replied that what ought to be smashed was anyone who listened to such twaddle.
Nevertheless, Otto Strasser’s reasoned attack on the inconsistencies of his position hit Hitler hard. Sulkily, he returned to Munich, and as was his way kept silent for weeks about the whole matter, so that Strasser was left in uncertainty. In fact, Hitler did not strike back until Strasser published a pamphlet entitled “Cushioned Ministerial Seats or Revolution,” in which he renewed the controversy and accused the party leader of betraying the socialist heart of their common cause. At this point, Hitler sent a letter to his Berlin gauleiter ordering Strasser and his followers to be expelled from the party.
For months as responsible leader of the National Socialist Party I have been watching attempts to introduce strife, confusion and insubordination into the ranks of the movement. Under the mask of desiring to fight for socialism a policy has been advocated which corresponds totally to the policy of our Jewish-liberal-Marxist opponents. These cliques call for the very things our enemies desire…. I now consider it necessary to ruthlessly throw these destructive elements out of the party, every single one of them.
On June 30 Goebbels called a membership meeting of the gau, to assemble at the Hasenheide in Berlin. “Those who do not fit in will be kicked out!” he thundered. Otto Strasser and his followers, who had come to argue their point of view, were forcibly ejected from the hall by the SA. The Strasser group thenceforth talked of “purebred Stalinism” and deliberate “persecution of socialists” on the part of the leadership; however, the Strassers and their followers were put more and more on the defensive. On July 1 Gregor Strasser resigned his editorship of the Kampfverlag newspapers and disassociated himself from his brother’s views. Von Reventlow and other prominent members of the party’s left wing also abandoned the rebels. Some of them probably did so for economic reasons, since they owed a post, a living, a deputy seat to Hitler. But most of them acted out of that “almost perverse personal loyalty” that Hitler evoked and which persisted despite countless acts of disloyalty on his
