Otto Strasser

Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser (also , see ß; 10 September 1897 – 27 August 1974) was a German politician and an early member of the Nazi Party. Otto Strasser, together with his brother Gregor Strasser, was a leading member of the party's more radical wing, whose ideology became known as Strasserism, and broke from the party due to disputes with the dominant Hitlerite faction. He formed the Black Front, a group intended to split the Nazi Party and take it from the grasp of Hitler. During his exile and World War II, this group also functioned as a secret opposition group.

Biography

Early life and World War I

Born at Bad Windsheim, Strasser was the son of a Catholic judicial officer who lived in the Upper Bavarian market town of Geisenfeld. Strasser took an active part in World War I (1914–1918). On 2 August 1914, he joined the Bavarian Army as a volunteer. He rose through the ranks to lieutenant and was twice wounded.

Freikorps and SPD (1919–1920)

He returned to Germany in 1919, where he served in the Freikorps that in May 1919 put down the Bavarian Soviet Republic, which was organized on the principles of workers' councils. About this time, he joined the Social Democratic Party.

In 1920, he participated in the opposition to the Kapp Putsch. Still, he grew increasingly alienated from his party's reformist stance, particularly when it put down a workers' uprising in the Ruhr, and he left the party later that year.

Nazi Party (1925–1930)

In 1925, he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), in which his brother, Gregor, had been a member for several years and worked for its newspaper as a journalist, ultimately taking it over with his brother. He focused particularly on the socialist elements of the party's program and led the party's faction in northern Germany together with his brother and Joseph Goebbels. His faction advocated support for ideologically Nazi unions, profit-sharing and – despite acknowledged differences – closer ties with the Soviet Union.

Despite disagreements with Hitler, the Strassers did not represent a radical wing opposed to the party mainstream. Gottfried Feder was more radical and held great favour at the time. The Strassers were extremely influential within the party, but the Strasserist programme was defeated at the Bamberg Conference of 1926. Otto Strasser, along with Gregor, continued as a leading Left Nazi within the party until he seceded from the NSDAP in 1930 following an aggressive attack led by Joseph Goebbels at a General Assembly on June 30, resulting in his expulsion from the meeting.

Nazi dissident in Germany (1930–1933)

On 1 July, Strasser telegraphed Hitler requesting an explanation for Goebbels' actions. None would come. Strasser then seceded from the National Socialists and set up his own party, the Black Front, composed of like-minded former NSDAP members, to split the Nazi Party. His party proved unable to counter Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and Strasser spent the years of the Nazi era in exile. The Strasserists were annihilated during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, during which Gregor Strasser was killed. This left Hitler as the undisputed party leader and was able to pacify the industrialists and military elite by ridding the party of the influence of people like Gregor Strasser and Ernst Röhm.

Exile (1933–1955)

In addition to the Black Front, Strasser at this time headed the Free German Movement outside Germany; this group (founded in 1941) sought to enlist the aid of Germans throughout the world in bringing about the downfall of Hitler and his vision of Nazism.

Strasser fled first to Austria, then to Czechoslovakia (Prague), Switzerland, and France. In 1940, he went to Bermuda by way of Portugal, leaving a wife and two children behind in Switzerland. In 1941, he emigrated to Canada, where he became the famed "Prisoner of Ottawa". Goebbels denounced Strasser as the Nazis' " Public Enemy Number One" and a price of $500,000 was set on his head. He settled for a time in Montreal. In 1942, he lived for a time in Clarence, Nova Scotia, on a farm owned by a German-Czech, Adolph Schmidt, then moved to nearby Paradise, where he lived for more than a decade in a rented apartment above a general store. As an influential and uncondemned former Nazi Party member still faithful to many doctrines of Nazism, he was initially prevented from returning to West Germany after the war, first by the Allied powers and then by the West German government.

During his exile, he wrote articles on Nazi Germany and its leadership for several British, American, and Canadian newspapers, including the ''New Statesman'', and a series for the ''Montreal Gazette'', which was ghostwritten by then-''Gazette'' reporter and later politician Donald C. MacDonald.

In 1950, East Germany invited Strasser to become a member of the National Front. Still, he declined, hoping that he would be permitted to return to Bavaria, which had been under US occupation until 1949. In his view, West Germany constituted an American colony and East Germany a Russian colony.

Return to Germany and later career (1955–1974)

Strasser eventually gained West German citizenship, returned to Germany on 16 March 1955, and settled in Munich.

He attempted to create a new "nationalist and socialist"-oriented party in 1956, the German Social Union (), but his organization was unable to attract meaningful support. Strasser continued to advocate for his vision of Nazism until he died in Munich in 1974.

Stance on Nazi anti-Semitism

Otto Strasser claimed to have dissented from Nazi racial policies. During his life, he claimed to have actively opposed such policies within the Nazi movement, for example, by organizing the removal of Julius Streicher from the German Peoples Freedom Party.
Strasser, Otto. ''Germany Tomorrow''. Jonathan Cape LTD, 1940, pp. 73–78.

Publications

* Dissertation Würzburg.
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* Michael Geismeier is a pseudonym of Otto Strasser.
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* Other versions: ''Hitler et moi'', and ''Hitler und Ich''. Asmus-Bücher, Band 9. Johannes-Asmus-Verlag, Konstanz 1948, 263 pages. Also 1940, Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company.
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* Strasser, Otto; Alexandrov, Victor (1968). ''Le front noir contre Hitler'' (in French). Verviers (Belgium): Gérard et Cie, Bibliothèque Marabout n° 327, p. 305.
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See also

* '' The European'' magazine

References

External links

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Straßer, Otto
in '' Neue Deutsche Biographie''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Strasser, Otto
1897 births
1974 deaths
People from Neustadt (Aisch)-Bad Windsheim
Nazi Party officials
Pan-European nationalism
Politicians from the Kingdom of Bavaria
German anti-capitalists
German fascists
German Roman Catholics
German expatriates in Canada
German nationalists
German Army personnel of World War I
20th-century Freikorps personnel
Strasserism
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni