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Old October 23rd, 2016 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
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Default Otto Strasser and the Jews

Otto Strasser and the Jews


Otto Strasser is one of the more controversial figures in the history of the NSDAP. On the one side he was an Altkampfer ('Old Fighter') and an early, as well as important, member of the party along with his more eminent brother: Gregor.

The Strasser brothers were important figures in the left-wing of the NSDAP and are also important in the early political career of Joseph Goebbels. (1)

However on the other side of the coin Strasser attempted to destroy the NSDAP by trying to engineer a split between its socialist and nationalist wings in the early 1930s. To do this Strasser formed the 'Black Front', but as Schoenbaum notes: this was a damp squib and failed to have even a limited impact on the NSDAP. (2)

The only thing the 'Black Front' succeeded in becoming was a boogeyman on which the NSDAP could initially blame such events as Johann Georg Elser's failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 8th November 1939. (3)

Similarly after the beginning of the Second World War; Strasser became the principle 'expert witness' for the Western Allies on Adolf Hitler and senior figures within the NSDAP. (4)

In the postwar intellectual landscape; Strasser's claims were often used as reliable information in biographies of Hitler such as that written by John Toland. He is also the principal source for the myth that Hitler was a homosexual. (5) How reliable a source he is easily demonstrated by pointing out that he also claimed that Rudolf Hess was a homosexual. (6)

As Ian Kershaw, the noted biographer of Hitler, has written: Strasser is a 'biased and often unreliable source' (7) whose claims should be viewed as fabrications and enemy propaganda. (8)

Despite this however Strasser has always had his admirers and more than once Strasser's dissident views have caused splits in nationalist movements. (9) Therefore in the context of the rise of modern populist nationalist it is important to understand whether he was so opposed to Hitler this it impacted the anti-Semitic views which we know he espoused as an early member of the NSDAP.

To begin with Strasser's friend and biographer Douglas Reed explicitly denied in 1940 that Strasser had any anti-jewish feelings. (10) He also claimed that Strasser had 'jewish friends' as well as a 'jewish collaborator' (presumably Konrad Heiden). (11)

However this is somewhat contradicted however by Reed's immediate qualification of these points in that Strasser's views on the subject of the jews are said to result from 'conviction not prejudice'. (12) Reed also claims that Strasser was 'above personal or generalized antipathies' because he was a devout Christian. (13)

These qualifications, along with Reed's stressing that Strasser's work 'unlike that of most anti-Nazi organizations' was not funded by jewish money, (14) suggest that his views on the jews were not as strong as formerly or might be perceived by his audience as being pro-jewish.

This is immediately obvious when reading Strasser's 'Germany Tomorrow' where he stresses that he has always expressed his deep disapproval of 'the shameless and inhuman anti-Jewish campaign' in Germany and that as early as 1928 he had written: 'Antisemitism is dead. Long live the idea of the People!' (15)

Strasser argues that 'all human beings have equal rights' (16) and that although jews are racially alien to Europe: their rights cannot be infringed because they are human. (17)

Thus we can already see that Strasser's defense of his ideas is largely an appeal to humanity rather than an qualified and pointed argument. After all criminals are also human: does that mean that they shouldn't have their rights infringed because of that?

Clearly not, but this is in essence the argument that Strasser is using.

Further Strasser asserts in the notoriously inaccurate anti-Hitler diatribe 'Hitler and I' that Hitler's comments on the jews in 'Mein Kampf' were influenced by Julius Streicher's 'anti-Semitic ravings'. (18) He also nonsensically claims that Field Marshall Erich Ludendorff, Albrecht von Graefe and Streicher's 'pornographic diatribes against the Jews' resulted from their 'diseased sexuality'. (19)

When we turn to Strasser's only policy prescriptions on the jewish question then we quickly see these ideas replicated. He claims that jews are a 'national minority' (viz. Lenin and Stalin's formulation of the religious and ethnic minority question in the 1920s) (20) and therefore they are both loyal to, (21) and a positive influence on, Germany. (22)

Strasser further proposes that a 'State Department of National Minorities' be created with a jew as the presiding officer, because jews are the largest minority in Germany. (23) The fact that this would be grossly unfair to, and likely result in problems for, other 'national minorities' (such as gypsies) doesn't appear to have occurred to him.

Weirdly Strasser also proposes that jews be given the opportunity to leave to a projected future Zionist state or be content to reside in Germany as a 'national minority'. (24) His support for Zionism - although Reed later claimed Strasser was an anti-Zionist (25) - isn't that surprising since it was common among European nationalists at the time, (26) but what is somewhat amusing is that he is essentially proposing the same 'oppression' of the jews as what he terms the 'Hitler system'.

That said Reed suggests on numerous occasions that Strasser held factual views about the jews that would be considered anti-Semitic today. For example he states that Strasser believed the Bavarian Soviet Republic to be a jewish government controlled from Moscow, (27) that predominantly socialist rule in Berlin lead to an enormous increase in jewish influence and unchecked licence and libertinism in the city, (28) that the jews were the new (Soviet) tyrants in Russia (29) and that jews had in the main gone to university rather than fight for Germany in the First World War. (30)

These clearly suggest that Strasser held what we would colloquially call anti-Semitic beliefs today, but his criticism of jews - while actually anti-Semitic (i.e. based on jews as a racial and/or national group) – is very mild indeed for the time.

Reed probably discerned the truth of the matter when he suggested that Strasser simply wanted to control 'immoderate jewish influence' and proposed 'some jewish assimilation' into the German population. (31)

Thus while Strasser was certainly anti-Semitic; if you put him in the context of his own time then he was in the middle-ground on the jewish question. Perhaps the best comparison to his views would be those of Hilaire Belloc in his 1922 book 'The Jews'. Where he argues that the facts of jewish power and involvement in the USSR are incontrovertible. Then it doesn't necessarily follow that one need blame all the jewish people for it so long as they acknowledge these facts and 'clean house' so-to-speak.

We can disagree with this view (and this author strongly does so), but it never-the-less places Strasser in the middle ground on the jewish question at the time, but makes him an anti-Semite if viewed from the perspective of today.


References


(1) Ian Kershaw, 1998, 'Hitler', Vol. I, 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, p. 310
(2) David Schoenbaum, 1966, 'Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933-1939', 1st Edition, Anchor: New York, p. 74
(3) Ian Kershaw, 2000, 'Hitler', Vol. II, 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, p. 271
(4) Kershaw, 'Hitler', Vol. I., Op. Cit., p. 352
(5) Lothar Machtan, 2001, 'The Hidden Hitler', 1st Edition, Perseus Press: Oxford, p. 161
(6) Ibid, p. 143
(7) Kershaw, 'Hitler', Vol. I., Op. Cit., p. 241
(8) Ibid, p. 352
(9) For example Joseph Pearce, 2013, 'Race with the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love', 1st Edition, Saint Benedict Press: Charlotte, pp. 153-163
(10) Douglas Reed, 1942, [1940], 'Nemesis?: The Story of Otto Strasser', 1st Edition, The Right Book Club: London, p. 116
(11) Ibid.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Douglas Reed, 1953, 'The Prisoner of Ottawa: Otto Strasser', 1st Edition, Jonathan Cape: London, p. 67
(14) Reed, 'Nemesis', Op. Cit., p. 77
(15) Otto Strasser, 1940, 'Germany Tomorrow', 1st Edition, Jonathan Cape: London, p. 74
(16) Ibid.
(17) Ibid, p. 75
(18) Otto Strasser, 1940, 'Hitler and I', 1st Edition, Jonathan Cape: London, p. 68
(19) Ibid, p. 67
(20) Strasser, 'Germany', Op. Cit., p. 75
(21) Ibid, p. 76
(22) Ibid, p. 77
(23) Ibid, pp. 77-78
(24) Ibid, p. 77
(25) Reed, 'Prisoner', Op. Cit., p. 68
(26) Strasser, 'Germany', Op. Cit. p. 76
(27) Reed, 'Nemesis', pp. 21-22
(28) Ibid, p. 102
(29) Ibid, p. 106
(30) Ibid, p. 26
(31) Ibid, p. 116

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This was originally published at the following address: http://bit.ly/2eIdfSP
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