Gregor Strasser

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Gregor Strasser (1928), photo from the Federal Archives

Gregor Strasser , different spelling also Strasser , (born May 31, 1892 in Geisenfeld , † June 30, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German politician . As a war veteran and paramilitary, he joined the NSDAP in 1921 , took an active part in the unsuccessful Hitler coup in 1923 and rose to become a leading politician of the movement when the party was re-established in 1925. Despite the ideological and political differences with Adolf Hitler that became apparent early on , he was first appointed Reich Propaganda Leader and in 1928 Reich Organizational Leader. In this position, which corresponded to the task of a general secretary , he achieved a position of power that threatened Hitler. The conflict escalated in 1932 in the Strasser crisis , in which Strasser lost the power struggle against Joseph Goebbels . Despite his voluntary retreat and the assurance that he no longer wanted to be politically active, he was murdered in the so-called Röhm Putsch in 1934 in the course of eliminating alleged or actual opponents of Hitler.

Life

Origin and education

Gregor Strasser's birth certificate from 1892.

Gregor Strasser was born in 1892 as the eldest of five children of the Bavarian lawyer and civil servant Peter Strasser (1855–1928) and his wife Pauline Strobel (1873–1943). Gregor's siblings include the Benedictine monk Bernhard Strasser (actually Paul, 1895–1981) and the journalist and newspaper publisher Otto Strasser (1897–1974), who accompanied his brother's political career for several years. Strasser's sister Olga (* 1899) and the youngest brother Anton "Toni" (1906–1943), who became a notary and perished in Russia during World War II , played no political role.

Strasser spent his childhood in the Upper Bavarian market town of Geisenfeld and in Windsheim in Central Franconia . After his high school , which he completed in Burghausen in 1908, he made from 1910 to 1914 in the Marien Pharmacy in Frontenhausen an apprenticeship as a druggist . In 1914 he began studying pharmacy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich .

Participation in the First World War and activity in paramilitary groups in the post-war period

After the beginning of the First World War in the summer of 1914, Strasser interrupted his studies and volunteered for the Bavarian Army . He was assigned to the 1st foot artillery regiment "vacant Bothmer" , with which he was continuously deployed on the Western Front until 1918 (including at Vimy , Lens , Verdun , on the Lys and on the Somme ). In January 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve. He was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross (May 1917 and August 1918) and received the Bavarian Military Merit Order in October 1917 . At the end of the war he left the army with the rank of first lieutenant in the reserve.

Strasser himself later claimed that he had belonged to the Epp Freikorps in 1919 and that he had taken part in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . He also claims to have participated in the Kapp Putsch in 1920 . His brother Otto Strasser, who was five years his junior, is also said to have belonged to the Freikorps, but was demonstrably leader of a workers militia loyal to the government during the Kapp Putsch. In 2013, Armin Nolzen pointed out in his NDB article about Gregor Strasser that there is no reliable evidence of the brothers' membership in the Freikorps beyond their later self-portrayals. Up until mid-1922 Strasser's direct political activity cannot be proven.

In contrast, it is documented that Strasser joined the Landshut local branch of the German Officers' Union as a veteran in January 1921 and soon afterwards took over the leadership of the paramilitary association of nationally- minded soldiers (VNS). From this association, which gained hardly any importance elsewhere, the "Storm Battalion Lower Bavaria", led by Strasser, emerged in Landshut. The battalion temporarily included up to 2,000 men, including the young Heinrich Himmler , who temporarily acted as Strasser's adjutant.

Completion of vocational training and starting a family

After his return home at the end of 1918, Strasser resumed his studies at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen, which had been interrupted by the war . In January 1919 he passed the pharmaceutical state examination with the rating "very good". This was followed by a two-year internship as a pharmacy assistant in Simbach am Inn and Traunstein. In January 1921 he finally took over a medicinal drugstore in Landshut.

Also in 1920, Strasser married Else Vollmuth (1893–1982), the daughter of the wealthy wood goods manufacturer Lorenz Vollmuth . The twins Günter and Helmut were born on December 7, 1920 and died in Russia on July 30, 1941 and May 27, 1942, respectively. The claim that later frequently appeared in literature that Adolf Hitler was the boys 'godfather was exposed by the Strasser biographer Heinrich Egner as a legend brought about by Strasser's brother Otto (actual godfathers were the boys' two grandfathers).

Joined the NSDAP (1922)

In the specialist literature, the statement going back to Gregor Strasser himself or his brother Otto circulated for decades that Strasser - depending on the version - had already come into contact with Adolf Hitler in 1920 or 1921 and already joined the NSDAP in one of these years have. The later research of Peter D. Stachura and Heinrich Egner, however, showed that the claims that Strasser participated in the founding of the NSDAP local group in Landshut (where he actually did not settle until January 1921) were part of the assertion that he had already acted as the party's local group leader in Landshut in the spring of 1921 and that he led the NSDAP district in Lower Bavaria in the fall of 1921 are legends. Using contemporary lists of members of the Landshut local group as well as contemporary contributions for the Völkischer Beobachter written by Strasser, Stachura and Egner were able to work out that Strasser actually only joined the NSDAP in September 1922 - probably on September 29, 1922 - by joining the party's local group registered as a member in Landshut. The trigger for his decision to join the party was a visit to an NSDAP meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on September 28, 1922, during which he heard Hitler talk about the subject of the "policy of annihilating our middle class". For Strasser, who, according to his wife's later testimony, returned from Munich “enthusiastic about the personality and idea of ​​Hitler”, this Hitler speech was a kind of political awakening experience.

At the general assembly of the NSDAP local group Landshut on October 31, 1922, Strasser was elected deputy to the Landshut local group leader. By December 1922 at the latest, Strasser appeared publicly as a party speaker and in the spring of 1923 he inspired the founding of local NSDAP groups in Pfeffenhausen, Wörth and Dingolfing.

In January 1923, Strasser also took over the management of Landshut SA - which he probably joined in September 1922 - which he led during a march at the 1st NSDAP party congress at the end of January 1923 on the Marsfeld in Munich. On the occasion of the organizational restructuring of the SA in February 1923, the SA units of Regensburg, Passau, Freising, Deggendorf, Vilshofen, Vilsbiburg and Landshut were renamed "Brigade Landshut" (also called "Storm Battalion Landshut.") By order of the then SA chief of staff Hermann Göring "Or" Sturmbataillon Niederbayern ") and placed under Strasser's command. On the occasion of the march of the patriotic associations on the Oberwiesenfeld on May 1, 1923, Strasser and Hermann Kriebel tried to persuade Hitler to risk a putsch, but at that moment he shied away.

In November 1923, Strasser and his SA battalion took part in the unsuccessful Hitler coup , but only played a marginal role: Strasser and his unit arrived in Munich on the morning of November 9, 1923, where they were given the task of guarding the strategically important Wittelsbach Bridge . After the failure of the march to the Feldherrnhalle, in which Strasser's battalion did not take part, the men returned to Landshut that evening. Strasser was then interrogated by the police, but otherwise remained unmolested for the time being. He was not arrested until February 2, 1924 - not because of his involvement in the putsch, but because he had tried in the meantime to recruit a sergeant from the Landshut police as a courier for the NSDAP, which was banned in November 1923. He was then imprisoned for a short time in the Landsberg Fortress.

Activity during the ban of the NSDAP (1924/1925)

In January 1924 Strasser took part in the founding of the “ Völkischer Block ”, a substitute organization for the NSDAP, which was then banned. Following his imprisonment on February 2, 1924 for violating the ban on activities for the NSDAP, after the Völkische Bloc had nominated him as a candidate for the upcoming state elections, due to a provision, the prisoners' protection after their appointment as state candidate for "security granted freedom of choice, released on February 26, 1924 after three weeks in prison. The legal proceedings initiated against him ended with the fact that he was found guilty of aiding and abetting high treason on May 12, 1924 by the Munich People's Court I and sentenced to a minimum of fifteen months in prison with a four-year probation period.

Already on April 6, 1924, Strasser had been elected to the Bavarian state parliament for the "Völkisch Block" (VBl.) . When the twenty-three-member parliamentary group of the Völkisch bloc was constituted in the state parliament, he was appointed deputy chairman of the parliamentary group. The MAN civil servant Alexander Glaser became chairman of the parliamentary group . Together with him and the regional librarian Rudolf Buttmann , the parliamentary group's secretary, Strasser formed the leadership of this party in the state parliament. Among other things, the three men visited Hitler on July 5, 1924 as a representative of the most important replacement organization of the banned NSDAP in the Landsberg Fortress. They also conducted negotiations about the bloc's participation in the government in Bavaria, which, however, turned out negatively. On July 9, 1924, Strasser gave the first ever speech by a National Socialist in a German parliament when he replied to the government declaration of the newly appointed Prime Minister Heinrich Held in the Bavarian state parliament , in which he announced a rigorous fundamental opposition to the Weimar “system”. On August 26, 1924, Strasser also succeeded Ernst Pöhner as head of the national bloc.

At that time, Strasser expressed his attitude to parliamentarism and the reasons for which the actually anti-parliamentary Nazi movement should participate in parliamentary elections and - to a limited extent - work in parliaments in a public statement to supporters of National Socialism, which he wrote in the courier published for Niederbayern as follows: The movement has “three powerful arms”, namely the organization, the defense organization and the parliamentary group. The latter as the currently strongest arm has the task of “lifting the shield” “under which the arm of the organization can develop strongly and powerfully” until “the arm of the national defense organization” can strike the decisive blow. So in 1924 he still expected the Volkish movement to come to power by force.

At a conference in Weimar from August 15 to 17, 1924, the merger of the (formally nonexistent) NSDAP and DVFP was decided to form the so-called National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSFB). The leadership of this new organization was taken over by a three-man committee consisting of Strasser, Erich Ludendorff and Albrecht von Graefe, which was called Reichsführererschaft.

The Völkische Block, led by Strasser, was in constant competition in 1924 and in contrast to the Großdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft (GVG), the most important rescue organization for the banned NSDAP alongside the Völkisch Block. Between Strasser and the dominant figures of the GVG, Hermann Esser and Julius Streicher , an intimate enmity developed at this time: Strasser not only rejected the political line of both men, he also detested them as persons. While the exclusion of Streichers from the national parliamentary group in the Bavarian state parliament, which Strasser was largely responsible for, succeeded, efforts on his part to push both out of the national movement were not crowned with success. (In September 1928, Strasser and Streicher both appeared as the main speakers at a rally in Uffenheim , Franconia , and in June 1930 (instead of Hitler and von Epp) at a Whitsun Gau meeting in Ipsheim .)

On October 26, 1924, the Völkische Block, led by Strasser, decided to join the NSFB in order to create a suitable organization for the upcoming election campaign for the Reichstag election scheduled for December. The bloc thus accepted the leadership of the NSFB. The newly formed was called the "Völkischer Block, National Socialist Freedom Movement Greater Germany, State Association of Bavaria". The GVG refused to take the same step, which led Strasser to publicly condemn Esser and Streicher.

On December 7, 1924, Strasser won a seat in the third Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a candidate for the list connection “ German National Freedom Party / National Socialist Freedom Movement ” . Strasser was a member of the Berlin parliament for a little over eight years, until the spring of 1933, with his mandate being confirmed in four subsequent Reichstag elections (1928, 1930 and two elections in 1932). Shortly after his election to the Reichstag, he resigned his mandate for the Bavarian state parliament.

Work in the newly founded NSDAP

Strasser (right next to Hitler) as a participant in the party congress on the occasion of the re-establishment of the NSDAP in spring 1925. Right next to Strasser: Heinrich Himmler . Left of Hitler: Franz Xaver Schwarz , Walter Buch and Alfred Rosenberg .

After the re-establishment of the NSDAP by Hitler on February 26, 1925 in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller , Strasser joined the new NSDAP as one of the first members ( membership number 9). Parallel to the re-establishment of the NSDAP, the now superfluous placeholder organization of the Völkisch Block was liquidated in the spring of 1925: The Reich leadership of the Völkisch Block dissolved in February. On March 15, 1925, at a conference of delegates in his home district of Lower Bavaria, Strasser succeeded in convincing the Lower Bavaria District Association of the Völkisch Block with 32 local groups to join the NSDAP and make him district leader of the NSDAP in Lower Bavaria. In April 1925 he was given the newly created designation of a Gauleiter: Strasser was the first Gauleiter of the Gau Niederbayern / Oberpfalz to lead this Gau - or the independent Gau Niederbayern created on October 1, 1928 by the division of the Großgau - until March 1, 1929. With his ever more intensifying political activity, Strasser's gradual withdrawal from his learned profession as a druggist / pharmacist went hand in hand: in 1927 he finally gave up it. He sold his drugstore in Landshut on March 1st of this year to an employee and thus also made the change to a professional politician.

Together with his brother Otto, Strasser developed an independent ideological profile in the second half of the 1920s towards the völkisch-national Munich party wing. The brothers advocated - initially still together with Joseph Goebbels  - a "left", i. H. Anti-capitalist , social revolutionary course of the NSDAP, with which the workers should be won over to the party. Strasser therefore partly supported strikes by the social democratic unions, called for the nationalization of industry and banks and, despite adhering to strict anti-Bolshevism, advocated cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union. A point of contention with the party leadership was the support of a motion by the SPD and KPD for a referendum on the expropriation of the royal houses without compensation in January 1925. While Strasser's wing supported this request, Hitler pleaded for compensation for the princes. In this dispute, Goebbels was still on Strasser's side and, according to Otto Strasser's later statements, even called for Hitler's exclusion from the party. A similar dispute arose with Strasser supporters in May 1929 after the state elections in Saxony over the question of whether the NSDAP should seek a coalition with the workers' parties SPD and KPD or join forces with the bourgeois right-wing parties. After this incident, the party leadership under Hitler and now Goebbels intensified the wing fight and in 1930 numerous supporters of the anti-bourgeois camp were disempowered or removed from the party. In January 1929, Strasser was expelled from the meeting room of the Reichstag for statements about the Jewish Reich Finance Minister Rudolf Hilferding .

Strasser's party wing was particularly strong around Berlin and in north-west Germany and geared towards the target group of urban workers.

Bamberg leaders' conference (1926) and ongoing conflict with Joseph Goebbels

At a leadership meeting of the NSDAP, which took place on February 14, 1926 in Bamberg , Hitler succeeded in rejecting the demands of the “ national Bolshevik ” wing of the party and asserting his claim to unrestricted leadership within the NSDAP.

This conference marks the beginning of the alienation between Strasser and Joseph Goebbels, who had previously worked for the party as a close follower of Strasser in the Rhineland and Westphalia. According to the judgment of the Goebbels biographer Ralf Georg Reuth , Hitler achieved an important success in Bamberg in his efforts to break Goebbels, the “ideological head” and “brilliant propagandist” of the Strasser camp, “out of the Strasser phalanx” in order to become the social revolutionary To divide and weaken party wings in this way. Goebbels admitted in his diaries that “since the Bamberg meeting he had made a clear move away from the Strasserkreis” “to the head of the party himself [d. H. to Hitler]. "

This constellation resulted in increasing competition and ever sharper enmity between Goebbels and Strasser, especially after Goebbels' appointment as Gauleiter of Berlin in autumn 1926. Goebbels planned to compete with the Kampfverlag press published by Strasser and spread rumors according to which Gregor Strasser and his brother Otto were of Jewish origin about their mother. In a statement to the party leadership, Strasser accused Goebbels directly of spreading these and other gross lies about him. In the early summer of 1927 the relationship was completely shattered and both men were convinced that they had been betrayed and betrayed in a bad way by the other. Although an open conflict was avoided by a word of power from Hitler, the “irreconcilable hostility” (Hans Mommsen) continued to smolder until Strasser's departure from the leadership of the NSDAP at the end of 1932. In 1932 Strasser came to the conclusion that Goebbels was a “Satan in human form”, while Goebbels' hatred of Strasser  runs through his diaries from 1928 to 1933 - according to the words of the writer René Schickele - “like a red thread”.

In the early 1930s, disputes over the control of party propaganda were decisive for the opposition of the two men: As Kissenkoetter has shown, Strasser also retained decisive influence on Nazi propaganda as head of the Reich organization, even after Goebbels had become head of Reich propaganda: Strasser moved in 1932 took over the political-ideological control of the Nazi press and was still in charge of the Nazi Reich Propaganda Conference in October 1932. Reuth pointed out that it was "above all" the fact that Strasser, and not Goebbels, "was the first representative of the movement to address the public via Reichsrundfunk" that contributed to Goebbels' annoyance at the head of the Reich organization. Goebbels, for his part, played a decisive role in the smashing of Strasser's private press empire by influencing Hitler, who in 1930 forced Strasser to give up the "Kampf Verlag" that Strasser had previously run independently of the party: given the choice to transfer his publishing house to the party or to leave it, Gregor Strasser left the Kampfverlag. His brother Otto, who was not ready to give in, instead left the NSDAP and founded his own fighting organization, the Black Front, which took over the publishing house.

Northwest Working Group

On March 11, 1925, Hitler commissioned Strasser to set up a party organization of the NSDAP in northern Germany. The rapid establishment of the party structures of the NSDAP in northern Germany that followed in the following years was mainly the work of Strasser.

After the first Gauleiter of the Gaues Rheinland-Nord, Axel Ripke , was overthrown in July 1925 and a group of younger party functionaries established a kind of collegial leadership of the Gau, Strasser continued this development by forming the working group of the North and West German Gaue of NSDAP , an amalgamation of the north and west German districts of the NSDAP, brought into being. The AG was officially founded on October 9, 1925. Strasser became the head of the working group and Joseph Goebbels became the managing director. The office of the Großgau Ruhr in Elberfeld served as the organizational center (office) of the working group. The journalistic organ of the working group were the National Socialist Letters , which appear twice a month and which were published by Strasser from October 1925 and edited by Goebbels. The working group finally comprised eleven districts (Rhineland-North, Rhineland-South, Westphalia, Hanover, Hanover-South, Hessen-Nassau, Lüneburg-Stade, Schleswig-Holstein, Greater Hamburg, Greater Berlin and Pomerania).

With the management of the working group, Strasser took over his first (still semi-official) national party office. Although the AG was organizationally and legally not anchored in the NSDAP as a whole or in its statutes, Udo Kissenkötter rates the view, which has long been very widespread in the literature, that Strasser practically founded another party with the AG, as wrong: The formation of the AG is a lot Strasser attempted to consolidate the Nazi groups that were still young and strongly divergent in north-west Germany at the time. In autumn 1925, Hitler also recognized that it was thanks to Strasser that large areas of Germany outside Bavaria had been opened up for National Socialism in the preceding months.

The dissolution of the working group finally took place after the NSDAP had organizationally strengthened itself in northern Germany, in a noiseless form due to the provisions of the "Guidelines for the Gau and local groups of the NSDAP" issued on July 1, 1926 by the Munich party leadership.

The Kampfverlag

On March 1, 1926, after a long period of preparation, Strasser and his brother Otto founded the so-called “ Kampfverlag ”, a company located near Berlin, which was supposed to serve to publicize the brothers' political and ideological ideas.

The publishing house, which arose from the acquisition of some existing newspapers, supplied the northern German area with National Socialist newspapers and printed matter. Because of his numerous other obligations, Strasser was only able to carry out his official functions as head of the publishing house and newspaper editor in a nominal way, while his brother Otto, who contributed his entire workforce to the company, did the main work.

The most important periodicals in the publishing program were the two weekly newspapers Berliner Arbeiterzeitung and Der nationale Sozialist . By converting the latter into a daily newspaper and conquering other papers as head newspapers, the Strasser brothers built up a “National Socialist newspaper empire”, “whose internal party effect was placed on the same level by the contemporary press as that of the Hugenberg Group within the DNVP The share capital to finance the founding of the publishing house was initially raised by the two Strasser brothers alone, whereby Gregor Strasser financed his share through a loan he had received from the industrialist Fritz vom Bruck by pledging his Landshut business . In 1927, Hans Hinkel and his wife, as well as Strasser's wife, who repaid her husband's loan from her private funds (which means Strasser's share in the publishing house became her property), joined the publishing house as partners. The financial situation of the publishing house remained precarious for a long time: It was not until mid-1927 that it began to support itself. Until 1929 the weekly newspaper circulation did not exceed 25,000. Due to the large influx of NSDAP members in 1929/1930, the total circulation of the three daily newspapers in the first half of 1930 was around 100,000 and that of the three weekly newspapers up to 15,000. The program was rounded off by party publications in the form of books and countless propaganda brochures.

Since the Kampfverlag soon developed into a competitor of the official party publisher of the NSDAP in Munich, the Franz-Eher-Verlag , and remained independent of the party press, it attracted the displeasure of the head of the Eher Verlag, Max Amann . In addition, he deepened the tensions between the Strasser brothers and Goebbels, who, as the Berlin Gauleiter, claimed complete control over party publications in his area of ​​responsibility, so that the independent publications of the Kampfverlag were a thorn in his side.

After Hitler ultimately demanded the dissolution of the Kampfverlag or its transfer and integration into the existing party publishing house in 1930, Strasser finally resigned from the publisher's position on June 30, 1930 and soon left the company entirely.

Reich Propaganda Leader (1926–1928) and Reich Organizational Leader (1928–1932) of the NSDAP

On September 16, 1926, Strasser was officially appointed Reich Propaganda Leader of the NSDAP . In April of the same year Hitler had vacated this post for him by removing his intimate enemy Hermann Esser from the party's Reich leadership. After he was at the Nazi party rally from 3./4. July 1926, on which he acted as “Chairman of the Organization and Propaganda”, his appointment to the post of propaganda leader was decided internally by Hitler and then officially carried out in September.

At the latest when Strasser moved into the party headquarters of the NSDAP in Munich in September 1926, Strasser de facto assumed the position of the party's second man after Hitler. As a propaganda leader he was able to quickly achieve an efficiency of the NSDAP propaganda recognized by outsiders through systematic organization of the available possibilities, so that "the Reich propaganda leadership in the years 1926 to 1928", in the words of his biographer Kissenkötter, "practically as an organizational leader" the party acted.

Strasser (behind Hitler) at the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg in 1927.

As a result, at the beginning of 1928, when the development of the NSDAP into a mass organization began to emerge and the need for a central leading authority to manage the party apparatus became apparent, Hitler appointed Strasser as head of the Reich organization of the party, which he remained until December 1932. In this position he was de facto promoted to General Secretary of the NSDAP, even though Hitler refrained from giving him this designation until the very end.

In the years from 1928 onwards, Strasser reorganized the entire internal structure of the NSDAP: He succeeded in standardizing the organizational structure by enforcing the consolidation of the local groups in Gaue in 1928 , which were based on the Reich constituencies . In 1929 he founded the "Organization Department II" under his confidante Konstantin Hierl , which prepared programmatic questions for a later takeover of government. In this way he had created an instrument for pursuing his programmatic goals and was able to react to the constellation changed by the election success of the NSDAP in the Reichstag election in 1930 . In his study on the history of the NSDAP, Dietrich Orlow ascribes an important part to the “organizational genius / acumen” ( organizational genius / organizational acumen ) of Strasser in the great election victory that the party won in the summer of 1932 . Orlow argues that the party would not be without the sophisticated system developed by Strasser for conducting the election campaign by three completely different means (on the political level with political cadres; on the streets through the use of paramilitary terrorist groups; in the commercial sector through the involvement of numerous professional organizations ) could have become the largest party in the country.

The number of party members grew from approx. 27,000 (1925) to over 800,000 (1931). Strasser succeeded in particular in developing the NSDAP into a strong political force in northern and western Germany, which ultimately even had a larger membership base than Hitler's party section in the south.

In the summer of 1932, Strasser finally set up Reich and state inspections in the party. The Reich Inspectors I for Northern Germany and II for Southern Germany had extensive powers, including personal powers. With this, Strasser created a vertical steering and command structure. The Reich organization management in turn had weekly and monthly newspapers such as the National Socialist Landpost , Das Arbeitertum or the NS-Frauenwarte , which were published by Strasser and made him popular among the people. With these resources, Strasser succeeded in 1932 in spreading his immediate economic program and in implementing it in the party.

Strasser's most important employees in the Reich organizational leadership included Reich Inspectors I and II -  Paul Schulz (Strasser's deputy) and (his later successor) Robert Ley  - as well as Reich Organization Leader II and later Reich Labor Leader Konstantin Hierl, with whom he had been in contact since 1925 via the Tannenberg Association . Also important were the Silesian Kurt Daluege , who at Strasser's instigation had organized the establishment of the Berlin SA in March 1926 , and the lawyer Alexander Glaser , from 1931 Strasser's chief of staff, who was also shot in the Röhm affair . Then there were the dentist Hellmuth Elberecht and the former General Staff member Hermann Cordemann , who served as Strasser's intermediaries for important government politicians such as Heinrich Brüning and Kurt von Schleicher .

The success of the measures taken by Strasser as head of the Reich organization to expand and reorganize the NSDAP prompted Kisenkötter to judge that it was “at least doubtful” “whether the NSDAP could have become a unified mass movement without Strasser's organizational talent.” Heinrich Egner agreed that it was at least questionable "whether the NSDAP would have become the strongest party in Germany in 1932 without Strasser."

In 1932 Strasser had reached the height of his power: as a man at the top of the actual head office of the party leadership, he had a greater reputation, authority and power within the party than any other party leader except Hitler. Outside the party - especially among leading government politicians such as Heinrich Brüning and Kurt von Schleicher - Strasser was widely regarded as the most capable and trustworthy personality from the leadership circle of the NSDAP at the beginning of the 1930s. In the words of his biographer Kissenkötter, Strasser had not only become “ministerial” for many in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s, “from bourgeois-conservative politicians to a number of trade union representatives”, but “for many he had become a possible figure of integration who showed a 'third way' to save Germany from the emergency of 1932. "

Before the Reich presidential election in 1932 , it was generally assumed that Hitler would be appointed Chancellor of the Reich as a possible election winner Strasser. Only after the re-election of Hindenburg did Hitler make the decision to strive for chancellorship himself. He rejected coalitions as a hindrance and in August 1932 unsuccessfully demanded that Hindenburg be appointed Reich Chancellor. Strasser, on the other hand, saw the way to power more in coalitions that were supposed to enable parliamentary majorities. He feared that the formation of a minority cabinet would make oneself too dependent on the Reich President and his camarilla .

Life-threatening accident (1931)

On January 7, 1931, Strasser suffered a skiing accident in Oberstaufen. His injuries were so severe - he broke a vertebra - that, according to Stachura, his life was temporarily "hanging by a thread" ("his life hanging precariously in the balance"). He was only able to leave the hospital after three months, but his health was still severely impaired: He was persecuted by severe pain and had to always carry a walking stick with him.

Udo Kissenkötter points out the possibility that the health consequences of this accident and possibly also his diabetes, among other factors, could affect Strasser's work and productivity in the period between his return to his offices in April 1931 and his resignation from the party leadership in December 1932 could have affected. Thus, the accident of 1931 or its effects on Strasser's health, according to Kissenkötter, could have been one of the reasons why Strasser was unable to stand up in the struggle for power and direction that was being fought out within the leadership of the NSDAP during these months, and particularly to assert during its escalation in December 1932.

Contacts with industrialists

Despite his reputation as a representative of the left within the NSDAP, Strasser had had good contacts with business circles since the early 1930s, and he accommodated their ideas of taming the NSDAP through involvement in government. The German Führerbriefe , a private correspondence under the influence of the industrialist Paul Silverberg , praised Strasser in May 1932 because he stood for a "transition of the NSDAP from the opposition to the governmental position". In order to prove his party's ability to govern, Strasser announced the NSDAP's new "economic development program" on October 20, 1932 in the Berlin Sports Palace . In it, the shrill anti-capitalist tones and the demands for Germany's self-sufficiency were significantly reduced, as had been made, among other things, in his own “immediate economic program” of July 1932. Instead of tax increases for the rich, he now called for tax cuts, instead of price controls he wanted to fight deflation by releasing prices. Although he continued to advocate agricultural protectionism and priority for German products, he also emphasized that this should not hinder exports. To overcome mass unemployment, he proposed to abandon the link between the Reichsmark and gold , to nationalize the banks and to enable public employment measures through massive public borrowing . In the same year, in an interview with the American journalist Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker, he was extremely business-friendly:

“We recognize private property . We recognize the private initiative. We recognize our debts and our obligation to pay them. We are against the nationalization of industry. We are against the nationalization of trade. We are against a planned economy in the Soviet sense . "

Strasser received financial grants from various industrialists. In the spring of 1931, lobbyist August Heinrichsbauer organized a monthly payment of 10,000 Reichsmarks from entrepreneurs in the Ruhr mining industry . Paul Silverberg also financed Strasser through the “Bank for German Industrial Bonds”. At the request of Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher , Strasser is also said to have received donations from the Cologne iron industrialist Otto Wolff , who was generally opposed to the National Socialists . These donations are usually cited as evidence of the widespread view that big industry contributed to the rise of the NSDAP through its donations. The British historian Peter Stachura advocates the thesis that Strasser was not interested in asserting “left” positions within the NSDAP at that time; On the contrary, he was an opportunist who thought in terms of real politics and wanted to open up new recruiting fields for the NSDAP as broadly as possible and thereby secure a domestic power for himself.

Conflict with Hitler and resignation from the party leadership

Gregor Strasser among the leadership of the NSDAP at a meeting in Berchtesgaden in the summer of 1932.

The programmatic and personal rivalry with Adolf Hitler intensified dramatically when Hitler, through his unconditional insistence on his chancellorship, had temporarily maneuvered himself into a political dead end and Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, Gregor Strasser, appointed Vice Chancellor and the office of Prussian Prime Minister offered. He hoped with Strasser to split the NSDAP and to pull its left wing to his side. Later estimates by contemporary witnesses said that of the 196 National Socialist members of the Reichstag, around 60 to 100 would have left with Strasser if Strasser and Hitler had broken openly.

The project failed because Strasser could not bring himself to break with the ailing Hitler. In addition, Hitler had learned early on from the English journalist Sefton Delmer about Schleicher's negotiations with Strasser. At a leadership meeting in December 1932, he was able to swear in the leading figures of the party once again. Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels in particular urged Hitler to stick to his line and not to compromise in favor of Strasser. On December 8, 1932, Strasser suddenly resigned from all party offices in recognition of his defeat, but remained a party member. Fearing a split, Hitler was careful to avoid the impression of an open power struggle and publicly regretted Strasser's withdrawal. Strasser also retained his mandate in the Reichstag for the time being because his parliamentary immunity prevented the execution of several court judgments in connection with libel trials. A vacation trip to Italy in the critical phase of December 1932, which for the historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler represents “resounding proof of his political mediocrity”, further weakened Strasser's position in the party. Nevertheless, in January 1933, Schleicher secretly introduced Strasser to President von Hindenburg as a potential vice-chancellor, and the head of state got a favorable impression of Strasser. After the state election in Lippe on January 15, which resulted in electoral success for the NSDAP and which seemed to confirm Hitler's course, he was finally marginalized. After the National Socialist " seizure of power " Strasser withdrew from politics and into private life.

With Hitler's approval, Strasser took over a management position at the Schering Kahlbaum company in Berlin in May 1933, mediated by Albert Pietzsch and Hans Reupke , after he had given written assurance that he would abstain from any political activity in the future. In June 1933 he was accepted into the board of directors of Schering. At the same time, he has been head of the Association of the Medicines Industry since then. In 1934 he also became first chairman of the Reich Student Council of the Pharmaceutical Industry.

assassination

In the first half of 1934 it initially seemed as if Strasser would be reinstated in Hitler's favor. On February 1, 1934, Strasser received the NSDAP's golden party badge . At a personal meeting with Strasser on June 13, 1934, Hitler even offered him the office of Minister of Economics as the successor to the less successful Kurt Schmitt . Strasser made a commitment, however, dependent on the condition that Goering and Goebbels would be removed from the Reich Cabinet. Hitler was not ready for that. After Stachura's judgment, Strasser had come too close to his goals with this development for his political opponents to sit back and relax. They had now decided to take "drastic preventive measures" ( drastic preventive action ).

As early as the spring of 1934, Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels, in their then newly published books Building a Nation (Göring) and Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei (Goebbels), had sparked the public mood against Strasser and directed sharp journalistic attacks against their old rival, whom they called “ Traitors ”to Hitler and the Nazi movement. Goering in particular stubbornly pursued him: as early as 1933, when Strasser was planning a trip abroad, he had informed Strasser that he would have him arrested at the border in this case. Göring's intentions to kill Strasser are first vouched for in August 1933, when he commissioned the chief of the criminal police, Arthur Nebe, to stage Strasser's death in a car or hunting "accident". After Nebe withdrew from this request, Göring tried in January 1934 to encourage the then Gestapo chief Diels to take over the illegal removal of Strasser.

At noon on June 30, 1934, Strasser was arrested by officers of the Secret State Police in his Berlin home. He was first taken to an office at the headquarters of the Schering-Kahlbaum concern and there handed over to an SS command, which escorted him to the Secret State Police Office on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse . The arrest took place in the context of the Röhm affair , a political cleansing operation in the course of which Hitler and other National Socialist leaders arrested and in some cases murdered their actual or alleged rivals in their own ranks as well as other undesirable people. The arrest came as a surprise to Strasser - at first he thought Hitler was bringing him in to call him back to the party leadership. In contrast, however, is a statement by Strasser's former colleague Paul Schulz from 1951, in which he states that Strasser had often said to him after January 1933: "Hitler will have us killed, we will not die of natural causes."

At the Gestapo headquarters, Strasser was taken to the house prison, where he initially remained in a large collecting room with numerous other prisoners. In the further course of the afternoon he was moved to a single cell (cell 16) in the cell wing adjoining the collecting room. It was here that several SS members came to see him and shot him through the sliding window of the cell door. According to sources, the SS Brigadefuhrer Theodor Eicke , commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, is said to have boasted of the murder. Strasser's body was first transferred to the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the Charité in Hannoversche Strasse and kept locked up in a cell; the pathologists were expressly forbidden to dissect or inspect the body. After July 3, 1934, the body was cremated in the Wedding crematorium.

Whose instigation and for what motive Strasser was murdered is not certain with certainty. It is often assumed that Hitler himself had his former head of the Reich organization killed in revenge for his “betrayal” of December 1932 or “as a possible competition”. Other authors, such as B. Joachim Fest , on the other hand, emphasize that numerous sources indicate "that Göring, Himmler and Heydrich were the actual driving force and the number of victims increasing force" in the murder. With regard to Strasser, Fest refers in this connection to a testimony from Alfred Rosenberg, according to which there was “no order” from Hitler to kill him and an investigation into this act had even been initiated. Even Hans Mommsen believes that the liquidation of the SA leadership was a good opportunity on 30 June 1934, Goering and Himmler to their former rivals finally get rid Strasser. Goering himself openly stated on June 30th that he had "expanded his task" by not only eliminating the SA in Berlin, but also striking a blow against certain "dissatisfied figures from yesterday".

In his Reichstag speech of July 13, 1934, in which he commented on the events of June 30, 1934, Hitler only briefly addressed Strasser by stating that Strasser had been implicated in a conspiracy against the state by others. He did not express public regret about his death on this or any other occasion.

In July 1934 Heinrich Himmler personally presented Strasser's brother Anton - a former SS member - with an urn containing the alleged ashes of Strasser. The urn remained in the possession of Strasser's widow for several decades and was finally lowered into the ground next to Strasser's parents and his brother Otto († 1974) in May 1975 at her instigation in the Strasser's family grave at the Dinkelsbühl cemetery.

The payment of Strasser's life insurance - which the insurance company only refused on the grounds that, according to official information, Strasser had died by suicide - only took place through the intervention of Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick . From May 1, 1936, at the instigation of Himmler, Strasser's widow also received a monthly pension of 500 Reichsmarks for herself and her sons.

Long-term effect

According to the opinion of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Thuringia, Strasser's and his younger brother Otto's “ national revolutionary ” political theories, like the ideas of Ernst Röhm, have a considerable influence on the ideas of no less contemporary neo- National Socialists (neo-Nazis) . There has long been a strong Strasserist tendency in the NPD , whose ostensible social criticism and socialist rhetoric, following the example of the Strasser brothers, has met with resonance, especially in eastern Germany . For “ Free Comradeships ” and “ Autonomous Nationalists ”, Gregor and Otto Strasser's theoretical views on “revolutionary National Socialism” as well as the aesthetics of self-presentation, especially Otto Strasser's, play a major role.

Archival material

Fonts

  • The Hitler booklet. An outline of the life and work of the leader of the National Socialist freedom movement Adolf Hitler. Kampf-Verlag, Berlin 1928.
  • Selected speeches and writings by a National Socialist. 2 volumes. Kampf-Verlag, Berlin 1928;
    • Volume 1: Freedom and Bread.
    • Volume 2: hammer and sword.
  • 58 years of the Young Plan! A source-based consideration of the content, nature and consequences of the Young Plan. Kampf-Verlag, Berlin 1929.
  • with Gottfried Feder : Speeches in the Reichstag October 1930 according to the official shorthand (= The National Socialist Reichstag faction . Speeches, motions and interpellations in individual issues . H 1, ZDB -ID 572093-x ). Lützow-Verlag, Berlin 1930.
  • The struggle for freedom. Reichstag speech of October 17, 1930 , Rather, Munich 1931.
  • The last defensive battle of the system. 3 current articles , Eher, Munich 1931.
  • Work and bread! Reichstag speech on May 10, 1932 , (= combat pamphlet. Brochure series of the Reich Propaganda Management of the NSDAP. 12, ZDB -ID 2468560-4 ) Rather, Munich 1932.
  • The state idea of ​​National Socialism. Radio speech , Rather, Munich 1932.
  • The economic development program of the NSDAP. A speech. Held in front of 15,000 Nazi company cell members on October 20, 1932 in the Berlin Sports Palace , Berlin 1932.
  • Battle for Germany. Speeches and essays by a National Socialist , Eher, Munich 1932.

literature

Secondary literature (lexicon article):

Secondary literature (monographs):

  • Gabriele Goderbauer : Gregor Straßer and the beginnings of the NSDAP in Bavaria, especially in Lower Bavaria and Landshut , (= Master's thesis at the LMU Munich) Munich 1986.
  • Udo Kissenkoetter : Gregor Straßer and the NSDAP (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 37). Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-421-01881-2 (At the same time: Düsseldorf, Universität, Dissertation, 1975).
  • Peter D. Stachura : Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism. Allen & Unwin, London a. a. 1983, ISBN 0-04-943027-0 .
  • Ulrich Wörtz: Program and leadership principle. The problem of the Strasser circle in the NSDAP. A historical-political study on the relationship between a factual program and personal leadership in a totalitarian movement , Erlangen / Nuremberg 1966.

Secondary literature (articles):

  • Gabriele Goderbauer-Marchner : "Gregor Strasser and the beginnings of the NSDAP in Landshut", in: Georg Spitzlberger: World famous and distinguished. Landshut 1204–2004, contributions to 800 years of city history , 2004, pp. 461–474.
  • Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Straßer - Nazi party organizer or Weimar politician? In: Ronald Smelser , Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches (= WB-Forum. 37). Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1989, ISBN 3-534-80036-2 , pp. 273-285.
  • Reinhard Kühnl: On the program of the National Socialist Left. The Strasser program from 1925/26 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 14 (1966), pp. 317–333, ifz-muenchen.de (PDF).
  • Peter D. Stachura : "The Strasser Case": Gregor Strasser, Hitler and National Socialism 1930–1932. In: Peter D. Stachura (Ed.): The shaping of the Nazi state. Croom Helm u. a., London a. a. 1978, ISBN 0-85664-471-4 , pp. 88-130.
  • Robert Wistrich : Straßer, Georg (1892–1934). In: Robert Wistrich: Who was who in the Third Reich. Supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and science. Revised, expanded and illustrated German edition. Harnack, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-88966-004-5 , p. 262 f.

Web links

Commons : Gregor Strasser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Stachura: Strasser, p. 12f.
  2. ↑ a b Armin Nolzen :  Strasser, Gregor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , p. 478 f. ( Digitized version ).
  3. ↑ Heinrich Egner: The pharmacy was out of necessity a drugstore. Gregor Strasser was surprised by the birth of his twins at a Gremeß . In: Landshuter Zeitung , October 21, 2004.
  4. ^ Peter Stachura: Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism , pp. 20f; Heinrich Egner: turning point in the lives of Gregor and Else Straßer. It was only when Gregor Straßer listened to Hitler a second time that the spark jumped over . In: Landshuter Zeitung , December 10, 2004. Since new additions to local NSDAP groups were not reported individually but in batches to Munich, Strasser's entry in the central membership directory of the party leadership and the allocation of a membership number were only made in October 1922. See also Gregor Strasser against Streicher . In: Vossische Zeitung of February 5, 1933 ( digitized version ). In this press release by Strasser of February 1933, in which he protested against attacks by Julius Streicher on his person, he said that he had worked in the party since December 1921.
  5. ^ Egner: Local SA leaders as soon as they join the party. Step was a little-known ultra-nationalist soldiers' association . In: Landshuter Zeitung , December 27, 2004.
  6. ↑ Stachura: Strasser . P. 24.
  7. ↑ Stachura: Strasser . P. 25.
  8. ↑ Woertz: programmatic and leadership principle . P. 38.
  9. ↑ a b Egner: top of the faction agreed with Hitler. In: Landshuter Zeitung of March 16, 2005.
  10. ^ Robert Probst: The NSDAP in the Bavarian Parliament 1924-1933 , 1998, p. 38.
  11. ^ Negotiations of the Bavarian State Parliament Stenographic Reports No. 1 to 34, 1st meeting on June 3, 1924 to the 34th meeting on January 23, 1925 , Volume I, pp. 81–91 (meeting of July 9, 1924). ( Digitized version )
  12. ↑ Longerich: Hitler , p. 143 and end note 678 ( digitized version ).
  13. ↑ Stachura: Strasser , p. 37; David Jablonsky: The Nazi Party Dissolution. Hitler and the Verbotszeit 1923-25 , 2013, pp. 103, 108, 135, 140 and 142.
  14. ^ Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia: The völkisch awakening in Neustadt an der Aisch 1922–1933. Verlag Philipp Schmidt, 2016 (= Streiflichter from home history. Special volume 4); ISBN 978-3-87707-990-4 , pp. 82 and 94.
  15. ^ Probst: The NSDAP in the Bavarian State Parliament 1924-1933 , 1998, p. 43f.
  16. ↑ Kissenkötter: Strasser , 1978, p. 17.
  17. ↑ Egner: The Landshut time of the road is coming to an end ", in: Landshuter Zeitung of September 17, 2005.
  18. ↑ a b Dietmar Gottfried: Nazis against Hitler . In: Telepolis , September 23, 2012; Accessed April 13, 2017.
  19. ^ Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia: The völkisch awakening in Neustadt an der Aisch 1922–1933. Verlag Philipp Schmidt, 2016 (= Streiflichter from home history. Special volume 4); ISBN 978-3-87707-990-4 , p. 84, note 212.
  20. ^ Mommsen: Die verspielte Freiheit , 1989, p. 350.
  21. ^ Jochen von Lang: The party. With Hitler to power and into decline , 1989, p. 162.
  22. ^ Ralf Georg Reuth: Goebbels. Eine Biographie, 2013, p. 248. In June 1932, Strasser's speech on the topic of The State Idea of ​​National Socialism was broadcast on the radio. See also Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia: The völkisch awakening in Neustadt an der Aisch 1922–1933. Verlag Philipp Schmidt, 2016 (= Streiflichter from the local history. Special volume 4), ISBN 978-3-87707-990-4 , p. 124 (on this the Neustädter advertisement sheet of June 14, 1932: “It is the first time that the Broadcasting is released to a National Socialist ").
  23. ↑ Kershaw: Hitler, Vol. I, p. 344 ( digitized version ).
  24. ↑ Udo Kissenkötter: Strasser, p. 28. ( digitized version ).
  25. ↑ cushion Kötter: Strasser, P. 29 ( digitized ).
  26. ↑ Klaus Mües-Baron: Heinrich Himmler. Rise of the Reichsführer SS (1910–1933) , 2011, p. 228.
  27. ^ Christian Rohrer: National Socialist Power in East Prussia , 2006, p. 72.
  28. ↑ Reinhard Kühnl : The National Socialist Left 1925–1930 , 1966, p. 50.
  29. ^ Kühnl: The National Socialist Left , pp. 48, 51 and 213; Patrick Moreau : National Socialism from the left: the “Combat Community of Revolutionary National Socialists” and the “Black Front” Otto Strasser 1930–1935 , 1985 p. 48f.
  30. ↑ pillow Koetter: Strasser, S. 44f .; Egner: The Landshut time of the street people is coming to an end , in: Landshuter Zeitung of September 17, 2005.
  31. ↑ cushion Kötter: Strasser , p 31 and 33rd
  32. ↑ pillow Koetter: Strasser , p. 32
  33. ↑ Pillow kittens. Strasser, p. 77; Egner: From the low point to the second man in the party, in: Landshuter Zeitung of August 13, 2005.
  34. ↑ Udo pillow Koetter: Gregor Strasser - Nazi Party organizer or Weimar politicians . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches. WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 277 f.
  35. ^ Dietrich Orlow: The Nazi Party 1919-1945. A Complete History. Digitized .
  36. ↑ Udo pillow Koetter: Gregor Strasser - Nazi Party organizer or Weimar politicians . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches. WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 279.
  37. ↑ Udo pillow Koetter: Gregor Strasser - Nazi Party organizer or Weimar politicians . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches. WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 280.
  38. ↑ cushion Kötter: Strasser, S. 81st
  39. ↑ Kissenkätter: "Party Organizer" p. 282.
  40. ↑ Udo pillow Koetter: Gregor Strasser and the Nazi Party. Stuttgart 1978, p. 142 f.
  41. ↑ Udo pillow Koetter: Gregor Strasser - Nazi Party organizer or Weimar politicians . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches. WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 282.
  42. ↑ Stachura: Strasser, 2015, p. 85; Kissenkoetter: Strasser, p. 177.
  43. ↑ pillow Koetter: Strasser, S. 177th
  44. ^ Avraham Barkai : The economic system of National Socialism. Ideology, theory, politics. 1933-1945 (= Fischer 4401). Extended new edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-596-24401-3 , p. 41 ff.
  45. ↑ Reinhard Neebe: Big Industry, State and NSDAP 1930-1933. Paul Silverberg and the Reich Association of German Industry in the Crisis of the Weimar Republic (= Critical Studies on History , Volume 45). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-35703-6 (also: Marburg, University, dissertation, 1980), digital version (PDF; 6.6 MB) (PDF)
  46. ^ August Heinrichsbauer : Heavy Industry and Politics. West-Verlag, Essen / Kettwig 1948, p. 40.
  47. ^ Neebe, p. 166.
  48. ^ Henry Ashby Turner , jr .: The big business and the rise of Hitler. Siedler, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-88680-143-8 , p. 316 f.
  49. ↑ Peter D. Stachura: "The Strasser Case": Gregor Strasser, Hitler and National Socialism 1930-1932. In: Peter D. Stachura (Ed.): The shaping of the Nazi state. 1978, pp. 88-130, here pp. 89, 99, 105 ff.
  50. ^ Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Strasser and the NSDAP. DVA, Stuttgart 1978, p. 174. Based on estimates in memoirs by Otto Strasser: Exil. Self-published, Munich 1958, p. 65 and Franz von Papen: The truth is one alley. List, Munich 1952, p. 244. According to a communication from Gauleiter Kaufmann to Kissenkoetter, on 7/8 December 1932, the majority of the Gauleiter were ready to sign a list of names in favor of Strasser in order to strengthen his position against Hitler.
  51. ↑ Kreshaw: Hitler, 1998, p 496th
  52. ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society. Volume 4: From the beginning of the First World War to the founding of the two German states 1914–1949. CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-32264-6 , p. 534.
  53. ^ A b Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Strasser and the NSDAP. DVA, Stuttgart 1978, p. 192 f.
  54. ^ A b Peter Stachura: Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism . Allen & Unwin, London 1983, p. 123.
  55. ^ Armin Nolzen : "Gregor Strasser", in: Neue Deutsche Biographie , p. 479; Heinrich Egner: "Himmler hands over an urn with the number 16. Farewell forever: Gestapo men lead Gregor Strasser out of the house", in: Landshuter Zeitung of February 16, 2006.
  56. ^ Karl Martin Graß : Edgar Jung, Papenkreis and Röhmkrise 1933–34 , 1966, Appendix, p. 47.
  57. ^ Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Straßer and the NSDAP (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 37), DVA, Stuttgart 1978, p. 194f.
  58. ↑ Paul Schulz's affidavit of July 21, 1951, printed by Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Strasser and the NSDAP. 1978, p. 204.
  59. ^ Rainer Orth: "The official seat of the opposition" ?. Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor in the years 1933–1934 , Cologne a. a. 2016, p. 932, citing testimonies from other inmates of the house prison and former employees of the secret state police as well as an inmate of the Lichtenburg concentration camp, against whom Eicke is said to have boasted of this murder. Ders .: The Gregor Strasser case. In: Rainer Orth: The SD man Johannes Schmidt. The murderer of Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher? Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2012, pp. 95 ff; also Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Straßer and the NSDAP (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 37), Stuttgart 1978, p. 194f .; Stachura: Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism , p. 123.
  60. ↑ Karin Mahlich: “Das Krematorium Wedding, Rechtsstrasse 37”, in: Helmut Engel (Ed.): Wedding (= Geschichtslandschaft Berlin , Vol. 3). Berlin 1990, p. 181; Gunther Geserick / Ingo Wirth / Klaus Vendura: “The Night of Long Knives”, in: Dies .: Zeitzeug Tod. Spectacular forensic medicine cases . Leipzig 2001, especially Fig. 37 with a facsimile of Strasser's entry in the morgue's entry register.
  61. ^ Karl Dietrich Bracher: The dissolution of the Weimar Republic , 1978, p. 602; Jochen von Lang: The party. With Hitler to power and into downfall , 1989, p. 157.
  62. ^ Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Straßer - Nazi party organizer or Weimar politician . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches. WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 283.
  63. ↑ Joachim C. Fest: Hitler. A biography. 1973, p. 1108.
  64. ↑ Hans Mommsen: Rise and Fall of the Republic of Weimar. 1918–1933 , 3rd edition, Ullstein, Munich 2001, p. 514.
  65. ↑ Dirk Blasius : Carl Schmitt. Prussian State Council in Hitler's Reich, 2001, p. 113.
  66. ^ Peter Stachura: Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism . Allen & Unwin, London 1983, p. 123.
  67. ↑ Egner: Himmler hands over an urn with the number 16 . In: Landshuter Zeitung of February 16, 2006.
  68. ↑ Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Straßer and the NSDAP (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 37), Stuttgart 1978, p. 194 f.
  69. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report 2003 of the Free State of Thuringia (II. Right-wing extremism) (PDF) p. 21.
personal data
SURNAME Strasser, Gregor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strasser, Gregor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Geisenfeld
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1934
Place of death Berlin