Really existing Strasserism?

 

More Nazi than thou? A criticism of Strasserism (the real one) and the "Strasserite meme", arguing that Strasserism, real or imagined, doesn´t constitute a threat and is hardly even a thing. Especially not on the left. 

A problematic article in many ways, but I can´t help linking to it. From the same guy who gave us "Louis Althusser was a pedophile".

Ending the Strasserism meme 

The man who knew Hitler

"Hitler and I" is an interesting but also somewhat confusing book. The author, Otto Strasser, was a member of the Nazi Party until 1930, when he left and set up a competing organization, the Black Front. Otto's brother Gregor Strasser was the leader of a purported "left wing" of the Nazi Party. In 1934, Gregor was murdered during the killing spree known as "the night of the long knives", when Hitler purged all dissident Nazis. Otto Strasser had already fled from Germany.

What makes the book confusing is the political program of Otto Strasser. It was either extremely eclectic and confused, or...the author is hiding something. On some issues, Strasser was more "left wing" than Hitler. He called for the nationalization of banks, large corporations and landed estates. While this was nominally also Hitler's program, it was clear from a relatively early point that Hitler had no intention of actually carrying it out, preferring instead to ally himself with the German industrialists. When still a member of the Nazi Party, Otto Strasser (together with his brother Gregor) wanted the Nazis to support strikes called by the labour unions, which at least temporarily would have allied them with the Social Democrats or even the Communists.

However, on many other issues, Otto Strasser sounds more "right wing". In this book, he calls for a federal Germany along the lines of Switzerland, a united Europe with free trade across borders, a small citizens' militia, and corporatism of the Italian fascist type. The author also condemns Hitler's "paganism" in favour of Christianity. Strasser also writes that the recruits to his Black Front came from right-wing conservative groups such as the Stahlhelm. He also attempts to portray General Ludendorff as something of an ally.

So what is it? Was Otto Strasser a "real" national socialist, who wanted to create a racially pure, Aryan socialist state in Germany? Or was he rather a more "benign" fascist of the Mussolini or Dolfuss stripe? No idea. I did note, however, that "Hitler and I" was written during World War Two, when Strasser supported the Western Allies! He even calls for a Western alliance against both Hitler and Stalin (the book was published when the non-agression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union was still in force). Perhaps he deliberately slants his program in a manner that could be more acceptable to Western circles?

"Hitler and I" deals with many other issues besides Strasser's differences with Hitler. The author attempts to give a personal portrait of Hitler the man. Naturally, it's negative. Hitler is portrayed as cowardly, robotic and easily broken by setbacks. He was a puritanical tee-totaller and vegetarian, something the bon vivant Strasser found suspicious. However, Hitler also had a perverted streak, although the exact details are never spelled out. Sado-masochism? As for "Mein Kampf", nobody took that book seriously, and for a long time not even the Nazi leadership read it.

Or so Strasser says. Frankly, this is somewhat difficult to take seriously. How on earth did Hitler manage to build a mass movement and take power in Germany? Other parts of the book sound more truthful, as when Strasser paints Hitler as a ruthless Machiavellian, charismatic speaker and man of action, quite uninterested in the intellectual theories of Strasser. As for "socialism" or "capitalism", Hitler couldn't care less either way, as long as there was strict hierarchy with the Nazis (and presumably himself) on top. Also, Hitler had an uncanny ability to build alliances with big capitalists and landlords already at an early stage, and managed to buy over several supporters of the Strasser brothers, including Joseph Goebbels. Even less surprising is Hitler's pathological anti-Semitism, which seems to have been the real axis of his worldview. Strasser also points out that Hitler wanted an Anglo-German alliance of some kind, and warns the British against taking the bait.

The book also contains interesting details about the activities of the Black Front and Otto Strasser's dramatic escape from Germany shortly after Hitler's Machtübernahme. He fled to Austria and then to Czechoslovakia, always with the Gestapo on his heels. A chapter on the "night of the long knives" is also quite interesting.

"Hitler and I" isn't a bad book, but it could have needed better editing, and I constantly feel that the author is hiding something, whatever that might be. Still, I give it four stars.

An uninteresting history

"History in my time" by Otto Strasser isn't particularly interesting. The first chapter, detailing the author's escape from France during the Nazi German invasion, is dramatic and somewhat interesting. The rest of the book consists of short sketches dealing with German history from World War I to Hitler. It says very little and since the book lack notes, it could even be somewhat confusing to those ill versed in German history.

The author was a dissident Nazi, expelled from the NSDAP by Hitler himself, and hence forced to flee for his life when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. Otto Strasser's brother Gregor was another Nazi dissident, murdered at Hitler's orders in 1934 during the "night of the long knives". However, this particular book says relatively little about this. A more interesting work by Otto Strasser is "Hitler and I", reviewed by me elsewhere.

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.

Fascism with a human face?

Otto Strasser was a dissident Nazi who eventually left the NSDAP and formed the Black Front, a competing organization. When Hitler grabbed power in Germany in 1933, Strasser was forced to flee for his life, and eventually settled in North America. Several books by this intractable thinker have been published in English. Of these, "Flight from terror" and "Germany Tomorrow" are the most interesting and well written.

"Germany Tomorrow" contains Strasser's proposals for a peace agreement between Germany and the Allies, and his thoughts about the future of both Germany, Europe and the world. The book was published in 1940, i.e. before the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union and the entry of the United States into the war. Strasser in effect proposes an alliance between Germany, Britain and France to fight the Soviet Union and "liberate" the Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasus. Strasser even says that Europe needs these areas as internal colonies.

At the same time, Strasser believed that Germany should make major concessions to its European adversaries: the independence of Austria, reparations to Czechoslovakia and Poland, the re-establishment of the Maginot Line, and the ceding of Heligoland to Britain. He does want to keep the Polish corridor and East Prussia, but proposes that Poland in return gets effective control of the Baltic republics. A German federation, the internal partition of Prussia and a volunteer army rather than a conscript army are other proposals to appease the Western powers. Jews should be permitted to leave for Palestine or get minority rights within a new Germany.

Small wonder Hitler considered Strasser a traitor and wanted him dead!

Strasser's proposals for the internal re-organization of Germany are somewhat disingenuous. Despite his calls for a German federation, it's pretty obvious that the "federation" would really be centralized, with state-owned banks and companies, a national insurance system and a state monopoly on foreign trade. The German president would be elected for life, and thus really act as a king or emperor, and he would also appoint the state presidents. It's equally obvious that New Germany wouldn't be particularly democratic. In Strasser's scheme, all political parties are abolished in favour of a corporatist system based on estates, in which the two largest estates (workers and peasants) are underrepresented. For symbolic reasons, Strasser wanted Ratisbon (Regensburg), the erstwhile capital of the Holy Roman Empire, to become the new federal capital. Naturally, the new nation should be based on Christianity, which the author regards as somehow quintessentially Western. However, Strasser was also something of a bon vivant, for which Hitler sharply rebuked him, so presumably his Christianity would be of the more beer-swilling type. (But then, I suppose both G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis liked good food and drink!)

More interesting, perhaps, are Strasser's economic proposals, which are similar to those of Distributism, albeit perhaps more collectivist. All land should be held in common and administered by local councils, which parcel out the land to individual farmers based on a system similar to usufruct. The land can be inherited but not sold. Also, townspeople should move out to the countryside and become peasants (a back-to-the-land movement). Various guilds and cooperatives are also part of the new economic system, which Strasser actually calls "socialism" and "planned economy".

Strasser further advocates a European Federation. There is some tension between his peace proposals and the idea of a European Federation, since the peace proposals presuppose that Britain and France remain strong military powers, while the European Federation would rather have a joint army, while the individual nations would only keep militia units. (At least I think that's what the author has in mind.) There is also some tension between the notion of German autarky, the idea of European autarky with free trade within Europe, and various colonial schemes proposed by the author, both in Africa and at least implicitly on territories wrested or "liberated" from the Soviet Union. "Germany Tomorrow" also contains a number of appendices, in which Otto Strasser pays frequent tributes to his brother, the "left wing" Nazi Gregor Strasser, who was murdered on Hitler's orders in 1934.

When I read "Flight from terror" and "Hitler and I", Strasser's political program struck me as extremely eclectic. However, this book reveals Strasser to have been eclectic in word only. If the rhetoric about federation, socialism and "people's state" is stripped away, it's obvious that Strasser simply proposed another version of the fascist program, a kind of paternalistic, conservative and seemingly benign fascism. Perhaps a fascism with a human face? In reality, I suspect that a Strasserite New Germany would eventually have resembled Mussolini's Italy or Franco's Spain. Or is it really Austro-Fascism in Lesser German disguise? As for the human face, the European Federation would presumably have started another world war against the USSR and continued the exploitation of the Third World.

I'm sure Britain and France would have loved somebody like Otto Strasser as president for life of Germany. In the event, they were stuck with Hitler, and eventually had to fight Nazi Germany to the death...alongside Roosevelt and Stalin.

Which, in the final analysis, might have been the lesser evil.