National Socialist Program

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The National Socialist Program, also referred to as the 25-point program, was developed to formulate party policies of, first, the Austrian German Workers Party (or DAP) and was copied by the Adolf Hitler's Nazi party. It is an expression of extreme ethnic nationalism and xenophobia coupled with reformist socialist demands. It was first developed in Vienna, at a German Workers Party congress and was brought to Munich by Rudolf Jung who was expelled from Czechoslovakia. (1) "Josef Pfitzner, a Sudetenland German Nazi author, wrote that "the synthesis of the two great dynamic powers of the century, of the socialist and national idea, had been perfected in the German borderlands which thus were far ahead of their motherland." (2)

Background: At this time Czeckoslovakia and Austria did not exist as seperate countries. They both existed under the Austria-Hungary Empire. These programs of the Czech and Austrian developed under the Habsburg monarchy and in one country at the time. Different German Worker parties developed in Vienna, Aussig, and Eger.

Contents

Czech Party Platform

In Eger (northwest Bohemia), Franco Stein was a member of the German National Workers' League. In 1898, he organized a German National Workers' Congress where a twenty-five point program was first promulgated.


Austrian Party Platform

Before Austria became a republic, the DNSAP (Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei), proclaimed this program in May 1918:

...the German National Socialist Workers' Party is not a party exclusively for labourers; it stands for the interests of every decent and honest enterprise. It is a liberal (freiheitlich) and strictly folkic party fighting against all reactionary efforts, clerical, feudal and capitalistic priviledges; but before all against the increasing influence of the Jewish commercial mentality which encroaches on public life....
...it demands the amalgamation of all European regions inhabited by Germans into a democratic and socialized Germany...
...it demands the introduction of plebiscites (referenda) for all important laws in the country...
...it demands the elimination of the rule of Jewish banks over our economic life and the establishment of People's Banks under democratic control...(3)

This program is the synthesis of Pan-Germanism, collectivism, egalitarianism and psuedo-liberal currents. Moreover, this program was anti-Habsburg, anti-monarchical, anti-clerical, and anti-feudal. In demanding plebiscites for all important decisions, it showed itself to be nominally democratic. The plan attacks all hierarchies; capital, clergy and hierarchic nobility. The Jews were especially singled out because they were seen as the "rising aristocracy of capital" (Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the Pan-European movement, repeatedly called them this.). As in all levelling tendencies, all "elites" and hierarchies were to be done away with.

The German Party Platform

The 25 point Program of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) (ie the Nazi Party) was proclaimed by Adolf Hitler at a large party gathering in Munich on February 25, 1920 when the group was still known as the German Workers Party. The party kept the program when it changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party in April 1920 and it remained the official party programme throughout the party's existence. It was adapted from Rudolf Jung's Austrian program by by Anton Drexler, Adolf Hitler, Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart. Unlike the Austrian program, the NDSAP program makes no claims of being "liberal" or democratic, nor does it express an opposition to "reaction" or to aristocracy.

References

  1. Leftism Revisited, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Regernery Gateway, Washington, D.C., 1990. pp 147-149.
  2. Leftism Revisited, pg 149.
  3. Liberty or Equality, von Kuhnelt-Leddihn, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1952, 1993. pg 257.

External links

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References

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