Nazi Party

a clockwise Nazi swastika

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), better known as the NSDAP or the Nazi Party was a political party that was led to power in Germany by Adolf Hitler in 1933. The term Nazi is a short form of the German word (NA)tionalso(ZI)alist (National Socialist) - the ideology of the NSDAP (generally considered to be a variant of fascism under a misleading name). The NSDAP set up the Third Reich after seizing control of the German government in 1933.

This article deals with the Nazi Party For more information, see the Nazism main article.

The NSDAP was the main political force in Nazi Germany from the fall of the Weimar Republic in 1933 until the end of World War II in 1945, when it was declared illegal and its leaders were arrested and convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. More than 40 million people were murdered or killed in battle by the Nazis (including 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Nazi eagle swastika symbol

Party history

In the beginning of 1918, a party called the Freier Ausschuss für einen deutschen Arbeiterfrieden (Free Committee for a German Workers' Peace) was created in Bremen, Germany. (6) Anton Drexler, locksmith and self-styled poet, formed a branch of this league on March 7, 1918, in Munich. In 1919, Drexler with Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart and Karl Harrer, changed its name to the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party, abbreviated DAP). This party is the formal forerunner of the NSDAP, and became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany after its defeat in World War I. In order to investigate the DAP, German army intelligence sent Adolf Hitler as a young corporal to monitor party activities. However, he was impressed by what he saw, and he joined as Member Number 555 (although Hitler later claimed to be "Party Member number 7" to make it look like he was a founder). He in fact was the 7th member of the DAP's central committee. At this early stage, Hitler brought up the idea of renaming the party, and he proposed the name "Social Revolutionary Party" (4). However, Rudolf Jung insisted that the party should follow the pattern of Austria's Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei. As a consequence, the DAP was shortly renamed the NSDAP. When the NSDAP was refounded after being banned following the abortive Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler took Party membership number 1. The evolution of the party within the Weimar Republic is exhibited in the Weimar Timeline.

Gottfried Feder served as their economic theoritician and Rudolf Jung supplied the young party with a ready-made ideology that he carried with him from Czechoslovakia. It was a 25-point program. Hitler added his ideas about foreign policy and Julius Streicher added his more virulent anti-semitic views.

After the failure of their coup attempt in Bavaria, the Nazis competed poorly in elections for the remainder of the 1920s. In the election of 1930, however, the Nazis, propelled by Germany's economic problems in the incipient Great Depression, increased their vote dramatically, becoming the second largest party in the Reichstag. The NSDAP improved its position in the years thereafter, despite a brief ban in 1932 of the SA (the party's private army), and in the elections of 1932 the party reached a total of 13.75 million votes and became the largest voting bloc in the Reichstag. The Nazis never won an electoral majority on their own, but Hitler was appointed Chancellor of a coalition government by President Paul von Hindenburg in January 1933. His coalition partners were various other right-wing parties, and his vice-chancellor was the conservative Franz von Papen. On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building caught fire. This Reichstag fire was promptly blamed on the Communists, and was used as an excuse by the Nazis to ban the Communist Party of Germany and arrest its leaders. Furthermore, Hitler convinced the aging President Paul von Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolishing most of the human rights provided for by the 1919 constitution of the Weimar Republic.

New elections were called soon thereafter, and, with the help of S.A. strong arming, the Nazis and their right-wing allies gained a majority. They used this majority to pass the Enabling Act, which gave Hitler the right to rule by decree and suspended many civil liberties. With the Communists banned, the Enabling Act met with very little opposition. The only left-wing party remaining in the Reichstag, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, tried unsuccessfully to prevent the Act from being passed. As punishment for their dissent, the Social Democrats became the second party banned by the Nazis. On July 5, 1933, all other parties (except the Nazi Party itself) were banned and dissolved. On July 14, 1933, the Nazis also banned the forming of any new parties. Thus, Germany became a one-party state under the NSDAP. This was part of the Gleichschaltung.

The makeup of the Nazi party consisted mainly of the lower middle classes both rural and urban. 7 percent belonged to the upper class, 7 percent were peasants, 35 percent workers and 51 percent were what can be described as middle class. The largest single occupational group was elementary school teachers. For any Nazi members that had military ambitions, they entered the Waffen SS, since they were forbidden in the Wehrmacht. In order to join the Wehrmacht, National Socialist members had to surrender their party card⊃1.

The Nazi anthem was called Horst Wessel Lied.

Nazi Party Structure

The Nazi Party included several paramilitary groups, such as the SA, the SS, and the Gestapo, all of which were integrated into the Nazi government after 1933.

For more information see: Organizations of the Third Reich

Nazi Party symbols

Nazi Flags: The Nazi party used a clockwise swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). Black, white, and red were in fact the colors of the old North German Confederation flag (invented by Otto von Bismarck, based on the Prussian colors black and white). In 1871, with the foundation of the German Reich, the flag of the North German Confederation became the German Reichsflagge (Reich's flag). Black, white, and red became the colors of the nationalists through the following history (e.g. WWI and Weimarer Republik).
Swastika
The Roman Eagle

Other early members

Hermann Esser, editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, Nazi party organ.

Sayings, mottos and slogans

"Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" "Hail to Victory". Common Nazi chant at rallies.
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!" "One people, one empire, one leader!".
"Deutschland Erwache" "Germany, Awake!" (Coined by Dietrich Eckart, this was the title to one of their songs and put on all their banners.) (5)
"The Jews are Our Misfortune!"
"Down with the Catholics!"
"Long Live Our Glorious leader!"
"Today Germany, Tomorrow the World!"
"Your Fatherland Is Called Germany! Love It Above All! Action Not Words!".
"Germany's Enemies are Your Enemies. Hate Them With Your Whole Heart!".
"He who Abuses Germany, Abuses You and Your Dead. Strike Your Fist Against Him!".
"The German Always Before the Foreigner and Jew!"
"Certainly the Jew is Also a Man, But the Flea is Also an Animal".
"Believe in the Future! Only then Can You Be a Victor!" (3)

Election statistics

date	votes in millions	share
May 20, 1928	0.81	2.6%
September 14, 1930	6.41	18.3%
July 31, 1932	13.75	37.3%
November 6, 1932	11.74	33.1%
March 5, 1933	17.28	43.9%

References

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer (1960). Gramercy. (ISBN 0517102943)
Reappraisals of Fascism, ed. by Henry A. Turner, New Viewpoints, NY, 1975. pg 99 and Leftism Revisited, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Regenery Gateway, Washington, D.C., 1990, pg 163.
Hitler and Nazism, Louis Leo Snyder, pg 21. Leftism Revisited, Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, pg 162.
Hitler and Nazism, Louis L. Snyder, Franklin Watts, Inc., NY, 1961. pp 23, 69, 80-81. (The author was in Germany and witnessed the mass meetings.)
Liberty or Equality, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, pg 259. Ref. Konrad Heiden, "Les débuts du national-socialisme", Revue d'Allemagne, VII, No. 71 (Sept. 15, 1933), p 821. Also confirmed by Dr. Hans Fabricius, Geschichte der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung (2nd ed.; Berlin; Spaeth, 1937), p 15.
Where Ghosts Walked, Munich's Road to the Third Reich, David C. Large, W.W. Norton & Co., NY, 1997. pg 165.
Konrad Heiden Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus; die Karriere einer Idee, pg 19 as quoted in Liberty or Equality, pg 258; Nazism and the Third Reich, Henry A. Turner, Quadrangle Books, NY, 1972, pg 8.

External links