“We National Socialists are socialists, real, national, German socialists!” A 1925 article by Gregor Strasser on the meaning of Fatherland and National Socialism

The following article by Gregor Strasser was first published on 4 September, 1925, roughly six months after the NSDAP’s refounding following Hitler’s release from Landsberg Prison. I am not sure in what publication it first appeared. Possibly it was in the Nationalsozialistische Briefe, of which Gregor was chief editor for several years and which was founded at roughly the same time this article was originally printed. Regardless of which platform the article first appeared in, it was considered significant enough to be reprinted in subsequent collections of Gregor’s writings – it shows up both in his 1928 booklet, Freiheit und Brot (‘Freedom and Bread’), and in his ‘collected works’ from 1932, Kampf um Deutschland (‘Struggle for Germany’). It is fairly typical of Gregor’s early writing in that it is heavy on sentiment and emotion but light on actual, concrete policy propositions. This was a deficiency which Gregor was apparently aware of and sought to address later on in his career, as in the early ’30s he began working quite closely with economic experts, business figures, and state officials in an attempt to develop workable programs for resolving the unemployment and housing crises (see his famous ‘Work and Bread!’ speech for one example of this). Despite its propagandist tone the article still makes for an interesting read from a number of angles. It is overtly anti-capitalist, espouses a commitment to radical economic restructuring and to concepts of social justice (the ‘community of bread’), and additionally includes a brief recollection from the author’s time as a junior officer in WWI. Like many in the national-revolutionary camp Gregor makes it clear – both in this piece and many others – that his experiences in the Great War are what led him to an awareness of the plight of the German worker, and are what turned him from an ordinary German nationalist into a National Socialist, the belief system of which he attempts to convey within this article.

National Socialism:
“What does ‘Fatherland’ mean?”
Gregor Strasser

With the Dawes Plan, the intention of Jewish-influenced, American-English capital to use Germany’s national economy as a gigantic profit-extraction operation, to transform German industry into a colossal workshop for Wall Street capital, and to make an industrious Volk of 60 million people into an enormous army of defenseless wage-slaves, will be fully realized within the next few years.

In light of this development we must now and forever set our goals clearly, unambiguously, and openly.

Only in this way will our ideas gain an attractive power with respect to the yearning of a deceived, betrayed Volk.

We National Socialists are socialists, real, national, German socialists! We reject the vulgarization of this concept, the watering-down of the word from “socialism” into “social” – a word which, like no other, has become a hypocritical smokescreen behind which the all-too-visible inadequacy of the capitalist economic system is concealed, or which is, at best, the totally inadequate consolation for the kinds of honest men who believe that they can cure the festering wounds on the body of the economy and the Volk by placing a compassionate sticking-plaster over them. No, we are socialists, and we do not shy away from taking upon ourselves the stigma of this word, a word which Marxism has so terribly distorted. Continue reading →