The Programme of the National-Democratic Party of Germany

Posted by Bogumil

“Americans to America! Germany for the Germans!” The 1951 political programme of the National-Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD), communist East Germany’s party of ‘German nationalism’

DDR - NDPD The National-Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD) was officially founded at the behest of communist authorities on 16th July, 1948, only a few months after the official conclusion of ‘denazification’ efforts within nascent East Germany. This timing was not a coincidence. Legally-recognized political parties within the DDR were conceived as having an essentially corporatist function; each party represented the interests of a specific social group, and alongside various mass organizations they were welded directly into the organism of the state through their direct incorporation into various collaborative government structures. Following the dénouement of denazification, the dominant Socialist Unity Party, in conjunction with the Soviet Military Authority, was keen to integrate former members of the National Socialist and broader nationalist movements back into the developing East German nation as productive members of a socialist Germany. The NDPD was intended to be their political home, a means of providing a ‘safety net’ for denazification by giving ‘rehabilitated’ NSDAP members, radical-nationalists, professional soldiers, and nationalist bourgeoisie an official mechanism for representing their interests within the system (thus preventing their alienation), as well as a vehicle for ensuring their continued ‘re-education’. The NDPD was thus as much a communist propaganda tool as it was the political representation of a new ‘socialist nationalism’ – at the same time as the new Party was expending its resources on (often quite successfully) lobbying for the provision of employment rights and property reinstatement to former NSDAP, SA, and Wehrmacht members, it was attempting to inculcate in its recruits a revised form of nationalist ideology acceptable to the Marxist-Leninist tenets underpinning the DDR. The NDPD did this in large part by repurposing certain elements of National Socialist and deutschnational ideology for pro-Soviet ends, such as by redefining the word ‘National’ to give it a progressive and democratic flavor, or by redirecting traditional anti-Westernism into a more overt and aggressive anti-American direction. The following translation of the 1951 party programme of the NDPD is instructive in showing the creative way in which the Soviet-backed authorities attempted to recast German nationalist sentiment into a form that was amenable to their goals. Even the triple-oak-leaf emblem adopted by the NDPD was an attempt to overtly appeal to German nationalists: the oak tree and oak leaf have been a symbol of German nationalism for centuries.

Programme of the
National-Democratic Party of Germany NDPD_Symbol

The National-Democratic Party of Germany arose at a time of deepest national distress. America was preparing to tear Germany apart; then, on 21^st April 1948, a group of patriotic¹ Germans in Halle raised a call for the founding of a party that should be both national and democratic. On 16^th July 1948 the National-Democratic Party of Germany was founded, two days before America split the German currency unit. This marked the beginning of a series of measures which, from the introduction of a separate West German currency to the creation of a separate West German state (that American protectorate on German soil), would lead to the rearmament of West Germany and were intended to end in a German brothers’ war to the benefit and advantage of American world conquest.

This danger demanded the alliance of all patriotic Germans, with the aim of foiling America’s attack against the existence of our nation. We raised the banner of our national liberation-struggle in the name of our living rights:

Unity, Peace, Independence, and Prosperity!

In the three years which have since passed, our Party has tirelessly and without faltering carried on a policy whose principles were, are, and shall remain:

To place the interests of the Nation above everything else; to advance a national policy which is consistent from beginning to end, a policy whose yardstick and justification is the Nation, a policy that always and only commits itself to the Nation and puts it first at every moment, because it represents the safeguarding of the rights of our German Volk² just as decisively as it respects the rights of other peoples.

Therefore, the 3rd Party Congress of 18 June, 1951 in Leipzig ratifies the following with the votes of all delegates: Continue reading →

The Christian Socialist Ahlen Program

Posted by Bogumil

“The capitalist economic system has failed…” The 1947 ‘Ahlen Program’ of the center-right Christian Democratic Union

CDU_Gemeinwirtschaft The collapse of the ‘Hitler-regime’ and Germany’s total defeat over the course of the War led many Germans to seek a clean break with the past. The ‘fresh start’ which they longed for was not just conceptualized in terms of a rejection of National Socialism and militarism, but also in terms of a desire to cast aside the capitalist economic system, to use the opportunity offered by the need to rebuild a shattered nation to construct a new economic system which would be eminently fairer and less prone to cronyism and abuse. This sentiment was not just confined to those on the Left; the conservative movement (particularly those formerly associated with the Catholic Zentrum) had a long history of Christian Socialism in their ranks, and these ideas came to the fore once more during the harsh winters and troubled economic times which immediately followed the end of the War. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had been founded in June 1945 as a catch-all movement for moderate conservatives and Christians of all denominations, and Christian Socialism became particularly popular among CDU members within the British Zone of occupation, an area which encompassed the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial heartland. On 3 February, 1947, CDU members within the British Zone formalized the party’s commitment to Christian Socialist principles (while diplomatically choosing to avoid direct use of the term) by adopting the famous ‘Ahlen Program’, translated below. The Ahlen Program, which openly calls for the socialization of certain industries, the democratization of workplaces, and the forced break-up of companies above a certain size, was largely the work of local CDU leaders Johannes Albers and Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer would turn out to be more economically conservative than other members of the North-Rhine Westphalia branch, which explains why he later took both the CDU and Germany (as Chancellor) in a direction which ended up casting aside many of the more radical socialist ideals set out in this early founding document.

The Ahlen Program
CDU Zone Committee for the British Zone, Ahlen / Westphalia,
3^rd February 1947 CDU

The CDU Zone Committee for the British Occupation Zone issued the following programmatic declaration at its conference of 1-3 February, 1947, in Ahlen:

The capitalist economic system has failed to do justice to the vital state and social interests of the German people. After the terrible political, economic, and social collapse which resulted from criminal power politics, only a new order built from the ground up can follow.

The content and goal of this new social and economic order can no longer be the capitalist pursuit of profit and power, but instead must be only the welfare of our people. A cooperative economic order should provide the German people with an economic and social constitution which accords with the rights and dignity of man, which serves the spiritual and material development of our people, and which secures peace both at home and abroad.

In recognition of this, the CDU party program of March 1946 sets forth the following principles:

The Goal of All Economic Activity is to Satisfy the Needs of the People

The economy has to serve the development of the creative forces of the people and the community. The starting-point for all economic activity is the recognition of the individual. Personal freedom in the economic sphere is closely linked to freedom in the political sphere. The shaping and management of the economy must not deprive the individual of his freedom. Therefore, it is necessary to: Continue reading →

The National Committee for a Free Germany

Posted by Bogumil

The 13 July, 1943 Manifesto of the National Committee for a Free Germany, a pro-Russian national liberation front established among German POWs by Soviet authorities

DDR_NKFD_Briefmarke

Over 13-14 July, 1943, an organization known as the ‘National Committee for a Free Germany’ (Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland, NKFD) was inaugurated with the ratification of a newly-written manifesto signed by its 38 founding members. The NKFD was the initiative of German communists then in exile in the Soviet Union, KPD functionaries who were seeking to spread pro-Soviet ideals among German POWs with the hope of fostering an anti-Hitler resistance that would spread among the active Wehrmacht. While the NKFD (and its later adjunct, the League of German Officers, BDO) was the brainchild of communist agitation, the organization was not at first presented as explicitly Marxist-Leninist in orientation. Instead its aesthetic was national-patriotic, hearkening back to a pre-NS nationalism with its use of the former black-white-red standard and its veneration of old Prussian military figures and traditions. The Committee’s founding Manifesto, which I have translated below, made this conservative orientation explicit, demanding not a socialist Germany but instead a “free” Germany with a free economy, a “strong, democratic state power” in the tradition of liberal reformers like Baron vom Stein. This was during a point of the War, after all, when the Soviet government was still willing to negotiate a separate peace with Germany, even willing to commit to a return to the Reich’s 1937 borders, so long as the negotiations occurred with a non-Hitlerian government (Stalin was no doubt aware, as were the British, that there was a conservative opposition among the Wehrmacht’s officer ranks with a strong desire to overthrow the NSDAP). Despite its vigorous promotion among German POWs, however, the NKFD and BDO never became the nucleus of an organized nationalist resistance among the German armed forces. As the likelihood of a conservative revolt lessened over time, NKFD newspapers and radio broadcasts grew increasingly Marxist in orientation as a result. At the end of the War many former members of the Committee ended up in East Germany, helping to build the Volksarmee, the National Democratic Party, and the Working Community of Former Officers.

Manifesto for the National Committee for a Free Germany
to the Wehrmacht and to the German People

NKFD_Logo

First published 13 July, 1943

Events demand a prompt decision from us Germans. In this hour of extreme peril for Germany’s continued existence and future the National Committee for a “Free Germany” has been formed.

The National Committee is comprised of: workers and writers, soldiers and officers, trade unionists and politicians, men of all political and ideological tendencies who, a year before, would not have considered such an alliance possible.

The National Committee conveys the thoughts and will of millions of Germans at the front and in the homeland [Heimat], those for whom the fate of their Fatherland lies close to their hearts.

The National Committee considers itself justified and obligated in speaking on behalf of the German Volk in this hour of destiny, clearly and unsparingly, as the situation requires.

Hitler leads Germany to its downfall. Continue reading →

National Socialists Before Hitler, Part V: The German Socialist Party

Posted by Bogumil

“Our demands are more radical than those of the Bolshevists” – The 1918 programme outline of Alfred Brunner’s German Socialist Party

Deutsch_volkisch

As has been established so far in this series, the party which Hitler joined in September 1919 was not the first National Socialist party ever founded. It was not even the first National Socialist party on the soil of the German Reich. That honor instead goes to the German Socialist Party (Deutschsozialistische Partei, DSP), the brainchild of Düsseldorf engineer Alfred Brunner. Brunner, born 1871, had been in contact with the Austro-Hungarian National Socialists since the early days of 1904. Distraught by the consequences of Germany’s surrender and revolution, he finally decided to found his own völkisch-socialist party, and for this purpose drafted on 1 December 1918 the programme which I have translated below. Brunner’s programme outlined the foundations for a new German Socialist Party, one drawing influence from the land-reform ideals of Adolf Damaschke as well as from the philosophy of the National Socialists across the border. Brunner’s central emphasis in fact was on mass land nationalization, viewing this revolutionary socio-economic reform as the basis for eliminating capitalist power and for negating the ‘Jewish influence’ which he saw behind every social ill. Such was Brunner’s focus on social issues that he in fact considered himself “far-left”, as “more radical than the Bolshevists”, the guarantor of an idealistic, biologically-constituted “socialism of the deed” opposed to the Jewish, materialistic “pseudo-socialism” of the Marxists. Brunner was supported in his endeavors by the Germanic Order, a branch of the Thule Society who presented his programme at their 1918 Christmas conference, published it in their journal Allgemeine Ordens-Nachrichten, and provided both funding and a party newspaper (the Münchner Beobachter). The DSP was thus linked from the very beginning to the German Workers’ Party (DAP) of Drexler and Hitler, another group which owed its origins to Thule Society funding and support. For a time however the DSP was in fact the far more successful of the two parties. While the (NS)DAP initially struggled to expand outside Munich, the DSP by mid-1920 had 35 local groups throughout the country and close to 2000 members, including a strong base in Germany’s north where for many years the Hitler-Drexler party was unable to gain a foothold. What undid the DSP in the end was its decentralized organizational structure, combined with its culture of internal party democracy; lacking the dynamism and internal authority of the Hitler-Drexler party, the DSP soon lost ground to its rival and in 1922 finally disbanded and absorbed its resources and membership into the NSDAP.

Outline for the Founding of a
German Socialist Party
on a Jew-free and Capital-free Foundation
Drafted by Engineer Alfred Brunner on 1 December, 1918
Presented at the 1918 Christmas conference of the Germanic Order

To the German Volk!

World war, revolution, and turmoil lie behind us! We have waded through misery, blood and humiliation, and yet everything has remained the same; yes, things even threaten to be worse than they were before. Merely the form of government and the men in charge have changed, while capitalism and Jewry rear their heads higher than ever under democracy. As before, you, the German Volk, will be leeched dry, plundered and condemned to toil and worry. How did it come to this, and shall it remain this way forever? The cause of this failure lies in the fact that the struggle against these two powers has hitherto been conducted separately. Yet both are intimately connected.

Social-Democracy only engages in a mock-battle against capitalism, for its leaders are Jews and capitalists!

Yet the Jew-wise¹ struggle in vain against Jewry, because they stand firmly on the ground of the capitalist state order; hence both fronts are bound to collapse.

The change required to finally establish real freedom for the German Volk is to form a German Socialist Party.

German-Völkisch and Socialist

Lassalle, the founder of German Social-Democracy, must as a Jew have known his racial kin [Rassegenossen] well when he said: “A popular movement has to keep its distance from capitalists and Jews where they appear as guides and leaders, and must pursue its own aims.”

The new socialist party accepts German-born men only. It stands naturally upon the ground of political transformation; democracy will not at first be tampered with, but the party does however not want a Western-style democracy with a Jewish-plutocratic apex, but instead a free Peoples’ State [Volksstaat] in which both capitalism and Jewry have been vanquished.

Continue reading →