“From the journal of a German Socialist worker”: selected chapters from Anton Drexler’s 1919 political testament
In the autumn of 1918 Karl Harrer, a sports journalist for the right-leaning newspaper Münchner-Augsburger Abendzeitung, was charged by the Thule Society with forming a völkisch ‘Thule Workers’ Ring’ among the proletariat – part of a wider plan to win workers for nationalism and undermine the socialist forces then dominant within Bavarian politics. Attending a public meeting at Munich’s Wagner Hall on 2 October, Harrer was struck by a speech given by a laborer named Anton Drexler (then-head of the Munich branch of the Free Workers’ Committee for a Just Peace) calling upon bourgeois and workers to “unite!” Although Drexler’s speech was greeted with hostility by the crowd, Harrer saw in it opportunity; he approached Drexler with the offer to assist in forming a ‘Political Workers’ Circle’ to help spread their shared ideas among Drexler’s laborer contacts. Drexler, who had attempted in vain to do this himself in the past (both as a prior, dissatisfied Fatherland Party member, and via his own Free Committee), was intrigued by the offer, and so the Political Workers’ Circle was formed. By 5 January 1919 the Circle had evolved into the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP), an independent political organization with its own written Guidelines as its conceptual basis. To help propagandize for the new Party and to provide greater intellectual weight to its fairly sparse and unsatisfactory Guidelines, Drexler published a political pamphlet sometime between May and September 1919. Drexler’s My Political Awakening: From the Journal of a German Socialist Worker is, like Hitler’s later Mein Kampf, a mixture of personal biography and ideological worldview, providing an introduction both to Drexler as a person and to the substance of his National Socialist philosophy. Several selected chapters of Drexler’s brochure are provided below as an example, translated by myself from an original 1920 2nd edition. Although this series is called ‘National Socialists Before Hitler’, and Hitler joined the DAP on 19 October 1919, the content of the 1920 edition does still technically qualify as being “before Hitler”. Unlike the later 1923 3rd edition, which was substantially rewritten, the 2nd edition’s text is identical to that of the 1919 original, apart from the addition of a second foreword and the rather telling removal of Drexler’s original dedication to Harrer as “the founder of the German Workers’ Party”. The pamphlet’s strong focus on workers’ issues and on the inadequacies of mainstream (Marxist) socialism are very typical of early National Socialist writing, as is Drexler’s positioning of himself as a dissident voice within the broader socialist workers’ movement.
My Political Awakening:
From the Journal of a German Socialist Worker
(Selected Chapters)
Written in 1919 by Railway Toolmaker Anton Drexler,
Founder & 2nd Chairman of the German Workers’ Party (Bavaria)
Foreword to the First Edition
I must begin by saying that the ideas I have laid down here are purely political as well as trade-unionist in nature, and that with this document I am not presenting myself to the public as a fellow combatant in the World War; I was busy instead with my battleground on the home front. Many a workmate has told me, “it’s a pity about me that I’m in the wrong place, that I could accomplish a lot more in the circle of the socialist working-class.” Sometimes a feeling comes over me as though these people were right, as if I really have to incorporate my socialist mindset entirely into Social-Democracy. And only with severe internal struggles have I remained loyal to my National Socialism,1 for which I am now grateful to Fate. To portray the storms that surged around me on my lonesome island in the midst of the workers’ sea, to communicate the experiences that I have been able to gain in political matters to the working-classes and to every productive worker – that is the purpose of this document. No excuses should be made to my colleagues, I haven’t the slightest reason to make them, but I want to make it understandable to them that my political opinion, which is so isolated among workers, has arisen only from concern over the existence of the German worker.
Neither pettiness, nor ambition, nor the idealism of the money-purse have brought me to my political position. As a “neutral” standing outside the fence of the political parties – that is, without having previously absorbed a party catechism myself – I have studied domestic political life and activity, and not without also dedicating my primary focus to matters of foreign-policy.
Allowing themselves to be enveloped in the ‘internationalism’ of the workers’ leaders and pacifists of enemy countries – this myopia on the part of the German workers’ leaders and other party men in their assessment of enemy war aims has led Germany and the German working class to where it is today.
As the only Munich worker who was not deceived by the intentions of England and America and who therefore publicly advocated for the attainment of a ‘just peace’, I not only have the right but also feel I have the obligation within myself to apprise the public of my experiences and impressions since my ‘political awakening’, all the more so as I also became acquainted with the ‘secret powers’ that made it possible for our governments, as well as many party leaders to – for the most part unconsciously – work directly for the interests of our destroyers.
I. Interest in Politics
In order to make clear to the reader the development of my political thinking and feeling, I must go back a little. I hope I do not bore him.
I did not concern myself with politics before the War (until say 1910) beyond the normal degree that is customary among thinking workers. Because I was put out of work at age 18 in Berlin by trade unionist terror and almost stumbled onto the unseemly pavement of the big city (as a result of my unemployment I had to make do by playing the zither in a coffeehouse at night), I had a certain resentment against all organizations; for that “if you do not want to be my brother, then…” attitude has left a bad impression in me towards the concept of collegiality.
Under these circumstances it would also be understandable if I had studied few trade unionist newspapers until my 25th birthday. Yes, in reading the daily papers I was interested in scarcely more than staircase and streetcar accidents, in the death and wedding announcements. In a word: I was like most German workers. I had no interest in political world affairs and hence logically no experience.
From the age of 25 I came into a different social environment; I also got to know foreigners. And as happens quite often in these circles, people occupied themselves with discussions about the military capabilities of different countries. There was in particular a friendly, dignified Frenchman, with whom I later became good friends, who already in 1911 was reporting on his countrymen’s artillery armaments and was already always saying: France is preparing itself for war with Germany. Since I was just as good a German as my friend was a Frenchman, my interest grew in events outside our national borders. In a short time I was in general only interested in the title pages and the daily papers’ latest dispatches, and presently I also realized what chauvinism is and recognized by degrees that the Frenchman had not just been ‘blowing smoke’ [‘aufgeschnitten’]. Eventually the incessant compliments and ‘servitude’ towards England aroused my suspicions, and day by day I saw more and more how the political horizon over Germany darkened. Bethmann-Hollweg’s proposed neutrality treaty with England in 1911 confirmed to me that Germany did not feel secure.2 In the meantime, I had developed a perspective on the general world political situation such that I was not even surprised by the English rejection of the offer. When in 1912 the Wehrbeitrag3 was introduced as the German answer to the English rebuff, I realized where we stood. The masses likewise felt that something was in the air. One could already hear in the establishments frequented by the ‘Volk’: “It can’t go on this way, a war must come, otherwise one will gobble up the other.” And it was workers in particular who made these remarks. What I think about these utterances today will be discussed later.
XII. World Freemasonry, Workers, and Jews
[At a public meeting towards the end of the Great War…] In the course of the evening a Herr Professor Jaffee (the famous peace talks leader from Switzerland) also came forward as speaker. He, who later became Finance Minister and a candidate of the USPD, recommended the election of Auer instead of Eisner and said, among much deliberate or unintentional nonsense: “The German Volk have to choose between war and peace. War, if we want to retain the House of Hohenzollern; peace, if we demand the abdication of Wilhelm II and the Crown Prince.” He displayed an unlimited confidence in Wilson, who would provide the German Volk with a just peace. Did Herr Jaffee speak as a German or as an internationalist? Did he pursue German interests or the ‘Jewish ideal’ (the pursuit of a capitalist world republic) with these assertions, which have now turned out to be a swindle? Today I am of the conviction that he too belongs to those who consciously and unconsciously became the gravediggers of Germany.4
The expression “gravedigger” originates from a man who himself stands under great suspicion of having been in the forge where pick and spade were sharpened for this grisly business.5
On November 3, 1918, Eisner delivered in the overcrowded Löwenbräukeller, as he himself said: “not an election speech, because I do not believe that it will yet come to an election”, but a political “enlightenment (?) speech”. He (Eisner) said he certainly knew that when the German Volk takes its destiny into its own hands it receives a peace of rights and justice. Wilson and the Entente were fighting only against Prussian militarism and the autocracy in Germany, not against the German Volk. If the Entente wanted to dictate a forced peace [Gewaltfrieden] against us, he (Eisner) would be the last to tolerate it. In such a circumstance even he would grab a rifle and prefer to die afield rather than perish in poverty and misery. If that were the case, yes, then he too (Eisner) would be for national defense.
Recognizing the danger in such words, one man let out a concerned cry for his Fatherland and his Volk from his deeply-moved German breast. That cry was simply: “Wait and see.” Many in the closely-packed hall shot electrified out of their chairs and began looking for the presumptuous fellow, perhaps seeking to lynch him. Eisner, who was well aware what this “waiting” would mean for his cause, shouted out to the heckler with a liveliness such as nobody had so far witnessed in him that evening: “There is nothing now to wait for, now is the time to act.” Under the proclamation “when the hour has come, then I call upon the Volk” Eisner ‘acted’ and made history four days later. He liberated the proletariat from their “monarchical shackles”, broke the backbone of the frontline forces and the home front, and delivered over the entire German Volk to the extermination and enslavement of international capitalism.
How could Eisner, the great friend of the people [Volksfreund] as he called himself, the wise and prophetic leader of the proletariat, miscalculate so? How could he, pursuing a utopian idea (the hope of a proletarian world revolution) and not realizing that he was playing into the hands of the capitalist world republic, wreck a country of 70 million people for the sake of a brief period of self-rule? Should he and his Jewish comrades not have been aware of this? Did they, too, embrace the pan-Jewish [alljüdisch] Masonic ideal of “the abolition of all temporal and spiritual thrones” in order to make Mammon-princes and money-barons into the sole rulers of the world? Was Eisner also indebted to international Freemasonry on the great world stage? But enough questions, the answer is “Yes.” Whether Eisner and all those so-called workers’ leaders have promoted the establishment of a purely materialistic world order through abuse of the ‘socialist idea’ consciously or unconsciously, out of pure ‘idealism’ or out of fastidiousness and personal ambition, we are in any event faced with the sorry fact that “workers and all who produce” will in short order be exposed to the most ruthless exploitation by international capitalism.
There is mounting evidence also that ‘sacred Bolshevism’ and the Spartacist liberation of the slaves are being organized and nourished by international capital.
Regardless of whether the worker is caught in the net of the majority-party,6 the USPD, or the KPD, he is always led solely by a global political central office, and that means: “the capitalist, or in other words golden, international.”
It is also interesting to examine ‘Bolshevism’ in Russia based on these connections. It means nothing other than the “eradication of the middle-class” – who are denoted with the catchword ‘bourgeois’ – by the lowest strata of society. But gradually the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ has become a dictatorship over the proletariat. Trotskyism, which ruthlessly slaughtered the Russian petite-bourgeoisie and middle-classes – while the real big capitalists in most cases escaped – was followed by Leninism. At the end of April 1919 the Russian Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet passed a resolution in which Lenin demanded: “The bourgeois officials in the factories are guaranteed a high salary. Increased discipline for the working people, introduction of piece-work and the Taylor system. Wages to be adjusted according to factory performance.”7
Already in March 1919 Lenin had called upon the ‘intellectuals’ and on big business to return and assist in the building of ‘socialist’ Russia, while Trotsky and his accomplices neither are nor were proletarians. Has it ever been the case that a real worker has stood at the head of a council-dictatorship? Have Jews (who are very rarely manual workers) not consistently held the leading positions in the various Soviet republics? Were they not all Jews, those who encouraged the non-Jewish proletariat (there is no Jewish proletariat in Germany) to engage in a terrible bloodshed – socialist against socialist, Christian against Christian, bourgeois against bourgeois? Why did they not call upon their own religious- and racial-comrades to defend the threatened freedom? Where were all the loudmouths who had claimed they would defend the cause of the proletariat “to the last breath”? They had crept away into cupboards and other hiding places, but not within the hut of the proletariat, no; instead of all places they had hidden themselves away in the finest houses of the filthy rich, while the honest worker was bleeding to death for a pipe dream that these people had put into his head.
Do you still not see, poor deceived worker, that your supposed greatest friends are in fact your mortal enemies? That the international capitalists and their henchmen are indifferent as to whether the sea of blood becomes an ocean, whether the mountain of corpses becomes a mountain-range? That they are the ones who keep the class-, culture-, and socialist-struggles perpetually alive in order to hinder the alliance of all producers [Schaffenden], who alone could wrest global domination from international capitalism? The worker should have at last realized this, that the Revolution was not made from below, but from above; that it was made not for his liberation, but for his enslavement; that with it all world events only boil down to the erection of the “Dictatorship of Gold” over labor. 300 Rathenaus desired to rule over all productive mankind.
XIII. Exploiter and Exploited
Destruction of the middle-classes through the worker. That is the goal of the ‘golden international’, which stands in intimate fellowship with Jewry.
If you still do not understand that, worker, if you still remain under the spell of your party rhetoric, then there is no longer any salvation for you. You must now rouse yourself to accomplish an act of liberation; if you are in agreement, you are strong. You must find the bridge to the bourgeoisie, because workers and soldiers, burghers and peasants all have only one common enemy, the capitalist Jews and their hangers-on. There is a rallying cry that brings you all together, and that is: “Socialism and communism in the spirit of Christ, the most outstanding character in world history.”
Only Christian socialism will give you the strength to emerge victorious in the struggle against materialist-Talmudic world-hegemony. We all have to come to the realization: “So long as there are people who pursue politics for the purpose of personal ambition and to seek out vast fortunes (that is, materialistic politics), then ideologues and idealists, scoundrels [Lumpen] and criminals will all be abused again and again by the super-materialists standing above everything.” In relation to this, a poem about our modern parliamentarians by our bold Munich poet Dietrich Eckart may be quoted:
How pitiful all that is,
The whole haze of lies and deceit!
It nods to one and waves to one
And everyone thinks: “You scoundrel, you!”
And everyone thinks: “You shiftless loafer!”
And feels: “Others think this, too.”
Engaging them all one after the other
Salomon clasps their hands
And leaves them immensely pleased –
Dear Fatherland, may you be at peace.
Nothing is more justified as this satirical poem, nothing is more topical than the anti-Semitism which speaks from this poem, and every day and every hour these sentiments are reinforced in us through practical experience. Every non-Jew has the moral obligation to be an opponent of the Jews [Judengegner] so long as he is aware of just one decision passed by the Central Association of the ‘German Citizens of the Jewish Faith’ in their General Assembly at the end of February 1911: “Our representatives should organize themselves within the political parties and seek to gain such influence over their political parties that they only nominate those candidates who fully guarantee to provide for parliamentary activity against anti-Semitism.” By “anti-Semites” we understand them to mean all those who recognize the corrosive Jewish influence on our national life [Volksleben], all those who fight against it, and all those who resist against the economic strangulation of Jewry! According to this Jewish definition of the term “anti-Semite”, is there anything else wiser and more noble than an “anti-Semite”? And then there is the devotion of the socialist worker to his Jewish leaders! He believes in these people, who in many cases live according to a moral law and religious creed (although they usually pretend to be freethinkers) in which it is written:
“All Gentiles are to be ruined!”
“God has given the Jews power over the possessions and blood of all nations.”
–Seph. Jp. 92 1. 25. Jalk. Schim. etc.8
They may yet be honest advocates of socialism, recognizing that the Talmud and its disciples are the mortal enemies of true socialism.
German worker, what say you about the remarks of the Jew Montefiore (who together with Cremieux founded the Alliance Israélite) which he made at the ‘Sanhedrin’, the international High Council of Jewry at Krakow, in 1849? “What nonsense you babble! As long as we do not have the press in our hands, everything that we do is in vain; we have to have influence over the newspapers of the entire world in order to deceive and to sedate the masses [die Völker].”9
Does the worker now grasp why the Jews played themselves up as the benefactors of labor with their founding of socialist newspapers? But of course the idea is still incomprehensible to the average worker that the Jews have misused and defiled socialism, that they have stupefied the workers themselves through their press, which today is 90% Jewish-funded. Perhaps the worker will understand better if I allow a distinguished modern scholar to speak via his paper ‘The United Front of the Money Powers’. Professor Dr. E. Jung writes: “This in itself so unnatural alliance of supra-national money-power with the seducers of the working-class perhaps finds its most astonishing expression in the present-day cooperation of the Berliner Tageblatt, the Frankfurter Zeitung, and the Vorwärts against a total German victory; that alliance of the German workers’ representatives with the Western plutocratic powers which, according to social-democratic testimony, represent the harshest capitalism in the world.”10
Thus poor, hounded worker, everywhere that you look – betrayal, betrayal of yourself, betrayal of your homeland and the entire German Volk. With you the Revolution was made, not to give you freedom, but to provide sole power to money.
With you the Revolution has been made into an unprecedented movement for wages which has brought you nothing, but which has filled the pockets of those who have exploited you until now and has destroyed Germany’s competitive position and reduced millions of German workers to emigrants. In this way you are intended to become the cultural fertilizer for Western big business [westliche Großkapital].
XVI. The International
The reader will now understand why even the most honest socialist leaders are powerless. And indeed, that is because they do not have leadership in their hands. It actually helps here that there has been no reformation, no rebuilding, and also no “shake-up of root and branch”, as the [social-democratic] party convention had promised. At this point it all must be thoroughly dismantled and new ground for a new foundation must be secured. Temple [i.e. Jewish] ‘socialism’ was built on mud; we must establish it anew on solid rock at a height that is unreachable by false priests and Pharisees, for we know that they will never travel upon a steep and stony path which can only be traversed through the sweat of one’s brow, for they are averse to any self-sacrifice and have no ‘head for heights’. Only with the firm determination to tear ourselves free from the present leadership is it possible to make true socialism a reality. And true socialism will also bring ‘all producers’ to the International, will bring salvation to a hate-filled and tormented humanity. Why could the Proletarian International not become a reality? Only because it was, after all, never intended sincerely, because the proletariat was only the means to control the whole world with Jewish money and the Jewish press. If the Proletarian International had been cultivated with sincerity then the dauntless workers’ leaders in these difficult days for Volk and homeland, who for years had preached the concept of the International, who since 9 November had been crying out nothing else other than “The world revolution is marching,” – they should now have encouraged those workers who had been made into internationalists to position themselves upon the Rhine (without weapons) and to call out to the comrades on the other side: “Well, brothers, make complete your betrayal and break through this wall of workers, then we will know that the International is lost forever.”
Not the slightest attempt towards this was made, and that is because a feeling for the German comrades had actually arisen within the French working-class, as we know today from foreign, non-capitalist newspapers. Not only the French, but also the Irish, Egyptians, and Indians had demanded their “right of self-determination”; they were waiting only on the steadfastness of the German people. All the leaders of the International had to do to eliminate the ‘German danger’ forever was to drug the German working-class with ‘internationalism’. The consciously false theories and hopes that they planted in the working-class and that they never actually wanted to realize have thrust 65 million people into the abyss. All other peoples already languished in the clutches of world capitalism under their capitalist democracies; it was only in Germany, where there was a common understanding between middle-class and labor, that the capitalist world republic was threatened with its greatest risk of destruction through the German Revolution. Thanks to their magnificent organization they were able to shape Germany at their discretion; they have succeeded masterfully. But capitalist internationalism does not yet have the most outrageous dictated peace in world history completely entrenched. Already radical socialists are beginning to recognize the betrayal. Once they have been fully enlightened about everything then they will, in league with all of Germandom, speak a language that will ring harshly in the ears of the ‘Israeli Volk’ (along with their puppets). “Out of Germany, out of all parties, out of all countries! Off to your homeland Palestine,” or, “World-tyrant, you will be crushed.”
My ideas do not originate from newspapers or pamphlets, but have emerged from my own experience and from exhaustive study of academic works. But in order to prevent any misunderstandings (since I know the worker’s soul well), I am not interested in seeking out or taking on any position, because I cannot mix business and politics. I am content if the warnings laid out in this document are heeded, are trusted, and the necessary conclusions are drawn from them. Working humanity, open your eyes and act on what you have witnessed, otherwise it will go on happening to you forever, and you will remain what you have always been hitherto – ‘cheap goods’ for super-capitalists and their accomplices and parasites.
Translator’s Notes
1. Drexler writes this as National-Sozialismus rather than Nationalsozialismus, the latter of which later became the standard spelling within the NSDAP as National Socialism developed into a more coherent popular ideology. The difference between the two is crucial. The separation of the two terms by hyphen makes it much clearer that Drexler is talking about a national form of socialism, particularly as he is directly contrasting it with Social-Democracy; the inference is that there is some form of relationship between the two. The Sudeten and Austrian National Socialists similarly separated the two terms, as did certain members of the Hitlerian party – usually the economic ‘radicals’ such as Otto Strasser or Count Reventlow.
2. A reference to Anglo-German negotiations which occurred under Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg’s Chancellorship from 1911-12. Germany was hoping to secure a state of détente with Great Britain. The terms would involve Germany accepting Britain’s naval superiority and reducing its own naval expansion, in return for which the UK would not interfere in Germany’s colonial expansion and would stay neutral in the event of Germany becoming involved in a continental war in which it was not the aggressor. The talks were unsuccessful in large part due to disagreements over exactly how Germany would scale back its naval construction.
3. The Wehrbeitrag (‘military contribution’) was introduced by Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and approved by the Bundesrat (upper house) in 1913. It was an imperial tax intended as a one-off toll on higher wealth and income in order to finance the expansion of the armed forces and military infrastructure.
4. Edgar Jaffee (sometimes spelled Jaffé) was a prominent economics professor who served as Minister of Finance under Eisner’s revolutionary government from 1918-1919. Drexler is mistaken about Jaffee being Swiss; he in fact came from a Hamburg Jewish merchant family, and had considerable wealth due to his involvement in his family’s cotton business before becoming an academic (he was married to Baroness Else von Richthofen). ‘Auer’ refers to Erhard Auer, a Majority Social-Democrat and reformist-socialist who was regarded as Kurt Eisner’s more moderate rival. Despite this rivalry Auer served as Minister of the Interior in the government of Eisner’s ‘Free State of Bavaria’.
5. In the 1923 3rd edition of My Political Awakening Drexler clarifies that he is referring to German-National politician Karl Helfferich here. Helfferich had served as Vice Chancellor and Minister of the Interior under Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, and was Secretary of the Treasury during the War. It is interesting that Drexler regards him as one of Germany’s “gravediggers”, despite also acknowledging Helfferich as the originator of the phrase “gravediggers of Germany.” After the War Helfferich became one of the Reichstag’s most bitter and vocal nationalist opponents of the Weimar Republic; his anti-Semitic polemics and denunciations of Walther Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger saw him leveled with blame for their assassinations in 1921 and 1922.
6. In April 1917 the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) split over the party’s support for the war, with the anti-war faction forming the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the larger, pro-war faction becoming known as the Majority Social-Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD). The split had deeper ideological ramifications beyond just socialist support for the war effort – MSPD members tended more towards a reformist, state-oriented party supportive of certain liberal institutions (such as parliament), while the USPD retained a more overtly radical, class-struggle orientation and favored replacement of parliament with a revolutionary council-system. The KPD is, of course, the Communist Party of Germany.
7. Drexler here is referring to Lenin’s report ‘The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government’, first published in Pravda on 28 April 1918. Lenin’s report was approved by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and presented to the Soviet government (the “Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet”, as Drexler puts it) for ratification. Drexler is paraphrasing segments of Lenin’s report rather than making an exact quotation, but his summation of Lenin’s points here is not inaccurate, in my opinion.
8. These are references to Rabbinic or Talmudic sources – I could not discover what ‘Seph. Jp.’ refers to, but ‘Jalk. Schim.’ is an abbreviation of Yalkut Shimoni (or ‘Jalkut Shimoni’), a compliation of commentaries on Jewish scripture which dates back to the medieval era. The Yalkut Shimoni is not yet available in an English translation, and the only German translation is still a work-in-progress and only available in print, so I was not able to check the veracity of Drexler’s quotations. In looking into them I found that these quotes still frequently show up on anti-Semitic websites or in anti-Semitic publications; they have an enduring life of their own, regardless of how accurate they might or might not be.
9. Moses Montefiore was a British-Jewish banker and philanthropist who worked as an international advocate for Jewish rights. His French-Jewish friend Adolphe Crémieux was a prominent national politician and activist for French Jews. The Alliance Israélite Universelle was founded by Crémieux to advocate for Jews on the world stage, growing directly out of the combined work of the two men.
10. Erich Jung was a völkisch lawyer and legal philosopher who, by way of the Pan-Germans and the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, ended up a member of the NSDAP. The Berliner Tageblatt and Frankfurter Zeitung were two of the most highly-circulated bourgeois, left-liberal newspapers. The Vorwärts was the central party newspaper of the Social-Democrats.
