German Freedom Party (1937)
The German Freedom Party was an opposition party founded in early 1937 in exile in Paris against the rule of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP .
The DFP was founded in Paris in 1937 by Otto Klepper and Carl Spiecker , who had previously been active in parliament in the Center Party . On February 17, 1937, the first leaflet signed by the "Reichsleitung of the German Freedom Party" was published in a Paris daily newspaper. Although founded in exile, the group saw itself as an internal German resistance and rejected any reference to emigration . The DFP was a loose association of bourgeois democratic forces that consisted of only a relatively small number of exiles. The group tried to create the appearance of a much larger opposition through strict secrecy and anonymity and for this purpose issued the German freedom letters to strengthen the resistance against National Socialism . The declared aim was to end the rule of the NSDAP and to prevent a European war. After the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, this purpose became obsolete and the production of the letters of freedom was discontinued. The magazine Das Echt Deutschland , which was mainly published from London by Hans Albert Kluthe , initially continued to appear before it was also discontinued in 1940. From 1941 the DFP no longer appeared.
literature
- Beatrix Bouvier : The German Freedom Party (DFP): a contribution to the history of the opposition to National Socialism . Frankfurt am Main, 1972.
Individual evidence
- ↑ German political emigration 1933–1945 . Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
- ^ Vanessa Conze: Das Europa der Deutschen: Ideas of Europe in Germany between imperial tradition and western orientation (1920-1970) . Oldenbourg Verlag, 2005, p. 239 ff.