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The Pre-1920 Origins of the National Socialist German Workers' Party

1994; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/002200949402900304

1461-7250

Jay Hatheway,

Communism, Protests, Social Movements

Historians of modem Europe have traditionally accepted the proposition that the establishment of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was a response to the conditions within Germany at the end of the first world war. Upon further investigation, however, it is now abundantly clear that the original founders of the Party were politically active during the early phases of the war, and that the founding of the NSDAP in February 1920 was the direct result of a political dialogue over German war goals that was initiated in 1915 by the industrialist Alfred Hugenberg, and that by 1918 came to include representatives of the military, labour, and the volkish movement. This article is an investigation of these events and seeks to demonstrate that the origins of the Party are properly understood within the context of a failed attempt by the conservative German military-industrial complex to enlist the support of labour for the war effort and thereby put an end to real or suspected socialist anti-war agitation. The failure of the conservatives to develop a broad base of support among the workers proved disappointing to right-wing labour, but rather than give up the conservative pro-war agenda, they turned instead to the volkish movement for support and an ideology. It was in this capacity that the Thule Society, one of the many volkish organizations that dotted the German landscape at the end of the first world war, became useful to the founders of the early NSDAP, and provided them with a platform and a message that they had previously lacked. Thus, rather than being a spontaneous reaction to the much decried 'stab-in-the-back' or to the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the origins of the NSDAP can be traced to the attempts by both the German military and industrial leadership to manipulate labour in support of the war effort that had been