Chapter 686: A tale of Otto Strasser
Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser (also German: Straßer, born on 10 September 1897 ) was a German politician and an early member of the Nazi Party. Otto Strasser, together with his brother Gregor Strasser, was a leading member of the party's left-wing faction, and broke from the party due to disputes with the dominant "Hitlerite" faction (not to be confused with the later Hitlerists). He formed the Black Front, a group intended to split the Nazi Party and take it from the grasp of Hitler. This group also functioned during his exile as a secret opposition group and returned not directly after the military coup of 1938, but only after Hitler's death during the Second Great War in 1941. The Strasser Brothers brand of National Socialism and later National Monarchism is now known as Strasserism and labeld by them to be Social Nationalism (or later Social National Monarchism) in it's core.
Born at Windsheim in Bavaria, Otto Strasser took an active part in the Forst Great War. On 2 August 1914, he joined the Bavarian Army as a volunteer. He rose through the ranks to lieutenant and was twice wounded. He returned to Germany in 1919 where he served in the Freikorps that put down the Bavarian Soviet Republic which was organized on the principles of workers' councils. At the same time, he also joined the Social Democratic Party. In 1920 he participated in the opposition to the Kapp Putsch. However, he grew increasingly alienated with his party's reformist stance, particularly when it put down a workers' uprising in the Ruhr, and he left the party later that year. In 1925, he joined the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party), in which his brother, Gregor had been a member for several years, and worked for its newspaper as a journalist, ultimately taking it over with his brother. He was focused particularly on the socialist elements of the party's programme and led the party's left faction in northern Germany together with his brother and Joseph Goebbels. His faction advocated support for strikes, nationalisation of banks and industry, and despite acknowledged differences closer ties with the Soviet Union. Some of these policies were opposed by Hitler, who thought they were too radical and too alienating from parts of the German people (that were mainly middle class and Nazi-supporting nationalist industrialists in particular), and the Strasser faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference (1926), with Joseph Goebbels joining Hitler. Humiliated, he nonetheless, along with his brother Gregor, continued as a leading Left Nazi within the Party, until expelled from the NSDAP by Hitler in 1930.
Following his expulsion, he set up his own party, the Black Front, composed of like-minded former NSDAP members, in an attempt to split the Nazi Party. His party proved unable to counter Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and Strasser spent the years of the Nazi era in exile. The Nazi Left itself was annihilated during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, in which his brother was killed, leaving Hitler as undisputed party leader and able to pacify both industrialists and the military into accepting his new National Socialist regime. In addition to the "Black Front", Strasser at this time headed the Free German Movement outside Germany which sought to enlist the aid of Germans throughout the world in bringing about the downfall of Hitler and his vision of Nazism.
Strasser fled first to Vienna Austria, then to Prague, were he would try to form a continued Strasserist Opposition, attempting to End Hitler's position as Chancelor in the government once and for all. With closer ties between Austria (Austria-Hungary) and Germany Strasser fleed over Switzerland to France out of fear from Hitler getting him arrested and killed inside of Axis Central Powers controlled territory, as Hitler had once declared him Public Enemy Number One" and a price of $500,000 was set on his head. In 1941 after the death of Hitler Strasser returned to Germany, by now a well known figure in the European National Monarchist community, who had actively worked to form Strasserist or Strasserite influenced Parties inside the Axis Central powers, encouraging many former Socialists in Austria-Hungary, Netherlands, France and later other places to rather join Strasserism and thereby left-leaning National Monarchism to change the system from inside by working together for their nation states, instead of becoming traitors of their workers, societies and nations.
Still faithful to many doctrines of National Socialism, Strasser knew how hard it was in Axis Central Powers controlled monarchistic, imperial Europe to form a political movement once again, even with Hitler and the rest of the Nazi's out of the way. Therefore he abandoned his former pro-Soviet stance in favor of the Eastern Crusade and clarified his ideology as Social Nationalism, or Social National Monarchism, emphasizing that they focused on the working class, the foots and pillar of every National Monarchist country and that supporting them, instead of opposing them like Bismark and Hitler had done in the Kulturkampf (Cultural Struggle). Bakc in Bavaria, Munich, Strasser founded the new national and socialist oriented party in 1942 the Sozialistische Nationale Reichspartei (Socialist National Reich Party, SNR SNRP), that would gain some support of former Nazi's, Socialists and even some Communists whose parties were outlawed before under Hitler and the Nazi's or the new German Empire. Advocating for Strasserite Social Nationalism/ National Socialism until his death at 27 August 1974, Otto Strasser claimed to remain a true Social Nationalist, opposing racial ideals and being in support of workers and trade unions. Like Hitler he eliminated all internal opposition in his own party (even if he did so without bloodshed) with the help of his Black Front and the Social National Reichspartei (SNR) won some seats in the 1942 German Election, especially in Bavaria, Saxony, Magdeburg, Hannover, Mecklenburg, Berlin, Merseburg, Chemnitz-Zwickau, Westfahlen and Düsseldorf, former centers of the Nazi, Socialist or Communist Parties. He was supported by Joseph Goebbels (who joined his Socialist National Reich Party) and his daily radio program the Emperor Speaks (German: Kaiseransprache) that had underlying Strasserist ideology and propaganda.
Strasser also played a major role in the German Social Union (a Trade Union/ Workers Union) and with their help he became one of the major forces in the New Kulturkampf (New Culture Struggle) in the 1950ies and the 1960ies in the German Empire. Until then other Strasserite parties had formed in Europe and the Axis Central Power controlled territories, mainly Austria Hungary (Donau National Arbeiterunion/ Danube National Worker's Union were Strasserite parties like the Austrian Social National Party in German-Austria, German-Bohemia and German-Moravia, the Hungarian Social National Arbeiter Partei/ Hungary Social National Worker's Party, the Bohemian Social Nationalists/ Czech Social Nationalists, the Slovakian National Socialists SNS, the mainly polish West Galician Social National Party, the mainly Ukrainian East Galician Social National Party, the mainly Romanian Siebenbürgen Social National Party, the Croatian Social Nationalist Party, the Bosnia and Hercegovina Social National Party and the Serbian and Montenegro Social National Party formed a Strasserite Coalition together). Other Strasserite Axis Central Powers and European Parties included the Baltic Union Party in the United Baltic Duchy, the Netherlands Union Party in the United Netherlands, the Dansk Social National Party, the Social Nationalists in Norwas, the Swedish National Social Party, the French National Popular Party (Nationale Populaire Party) that collaborated alongside the National Popular Party, the Parti Populaire Français, the Francist Movement and the Service d'ordre légionnaire (whose eastern parts later merged with parts of the Netherlands Union Party into the Popular Burgundian Union Party in the Burgundian Order, eastern France and the United Netherlands).
The Ideology of Strasserism (Strasserismus or Straßerismus) is a more radical, mass-action and worker-based form of Nazism or National Monarchism, that opposed Jews and other groups not from a racial, cultrual or religious perspective, but from an economic basis, to achieve a national rebirth. Gregor and Otto Strasser along with Ernst Röhm believed that the electoral victory of the National Socialists had just been the first step. They called for more, for a Secondary Revolution, that aimed for a second revolution to archive worker's rule and national rebirth, a special nationalist form of social revolution and saw Hitler as a betrayal of true national socialists ideals and ideas. The Strasser Brothers had been involved in the creation of the original National Socialist Program of 1920 to “break the shackles of finance capital”. Therefore Strasserism also opposed Jewish finance capitalism, that they saw in contrast to the productive capitalism.
This program was further developed in the 1925 Nationalsozialistische Briefe (National Socialists Letters) were Otto Strasser discussed class conflict, wealth redistribution and his 1930 follow-up Ministersessel oder Revolution (Cabinet Seat or Revolution) where he attacked Hitler for betraying the social aspects of National Socialism and criticized the Führerprinzip (Leader Principle). Strasser called for a guild system, a Reich cooperative chamber to lead the nation's role in economic planning, something he would partly archive during the Second great War with the establishment of the Sozialistische Nationale Reichspartei (Socialist National Reich Party, SNR or SNRP) and the German Social Union (a Trade Union/ Workers Union) a toppling of the elites in favor of the direct rule by the worker, saying Hitler's rise to power had only be a half-revolution they needed to complete. Their anti-capitalist stance opposed courting business and army leaders, but instead called to remove and replace them. This was too extreme for much of the new German Leadership in the German Empire, especially it's aristocratic and military elite. Therefore Strasser redirected his new party in 1942 in a twenty-point program, calling for a “anti-material cultural revolution”, a “Anti-capitalist social revolution” and a “anti-communist workers revolution” opposing both National Socialism as done by Hitler as well as Socialism and Communism.
One that calling for a third Social National Way that would liberate and empower the workers by a democratic, electoral revolution combined with work strikes and protests, not with brutal riots and armed revolution, as Strasser said the military, the democratic and social elements had already done so by ousting the National Socialists under Hitler in 1938. Alternations of distribution of capital and the workers machinery had to be found according to Strasserism, empowering the worker and with it the very base of power to the nation, from were the rest would only grow stronger too. Strasser re-positioned National Socialist and Social Nationalist movements all over Europe until his death, gluing together the syndicalist core of left-wing international and right-wing national socialism inside the Axis Central Powers and forming one of the biggest coalitions in the Axis Central Powers Frankfurt Parliament at the height of the tripartite Great Cold War that followed the Second Great War in the 1950ies. Strasserism even gained some influence in the United States and the Confederate States at that time, were some socialist and nationalist flirted with the idea to join their powers once again, for greater influence and political success.