The enigma of Otto Strasser

"Flight from terror" is a book attributed to the dissident Nazi Otto Strasser, but probably ghost-written by somebody else. One Michael Stern is credited as co-author. "Flight from terror" covers much the same ground as Strasser's earlier book "Hitler and I", but it's better written and better edited, which leads me to suspect the hand of a ghost-writer. Thus, I would recommend this book over "Hitler and I" for those who have limited funds. For German history buffs, I recommend all Strasser's books!

Otto Strasser was a member of the Nazi party who had a fall out with Hitler, left the NSDAP and created his own organization, the Black Front. After Hitler's power-grab, Strasser had to leave Germany, always with the Gestapo on his heels. After various dramatic adventures in Austria, Czechoslovakia and France, he eventually managed to reach Canada. With the aid of American publishers, he published several books outlining his political philosophy and personal experiences with the Nazi leaders. Otto Strasser's brother Gregor remained in the Nazi party, where he headed a purported "left wing" opposed to Hitler's collaboration with the German industrialists. In 1934, Hitler had Gregor Strasser and other dissident Nazis murdered in a purge known as "the night of the long knives". This, too, is described in "Flight from terror".

I can't say I like Otto Strasser. His political positions are eclectic and contradictory. He begins the book with a description of his participation in the bloody suppression of the Bavarian soviet republic. In this conflict, Strasser supported the right-wingers. Just a few years later, he joined the Social Democratic Party and aided them against both the right-wing Kapp putsch and a Communist rising. Even later, he joined the Nazi party, interestingly during a period when the Nazis were at their lowest point in popularity. Together with Gregor Strasser, Otto headed the "left wing" of the Nazis, which attempted to win the support of workers and labour unions in northern Germany. To that end, the Strasser brothers demanded the nationalization of banks and large corporations.

However, when Otto Strasser left the NSDAP, his new movement (by his own admission) mostly recruited people from the traditional right-wing of the political spectrum, plus some "centrists" who regarded both Communism and Nazism as too extreme. And during the war, it seems that the Black Front supported the Allies! It's not clear to me whether Otto Strasser was a "left wing" Nazi who wanted a racially pure version of Stalin's Soviet Union, or some kind of traditional fascist of the Mussolini type, or perhaps a person attempting to reconcile the impossible. Hitler considered Strasser to be an abstract intellectual, and there seems to be some truth in this, although Strasser also served in various paramilitary capacities and obviously wasn't easily scared by stormtroopers or the Gestapo (at least if the book is to be believed!).

"Flight from terror" doesn't solve the enigma of Otto Strasser, but at least it's an interesting and occasionally exciting read.