National Socialist Program

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The National Socialist Program, also known as the 25-point Program or the 25-point Plan (

Hofbräuhaus and within the program was written "The leaders of the Party swear to go straight forward, if necessary to sacrifice their lives in securing fulfilment of the foregoing points" and declared the program unalterable.[1] The National Socialist Program originated at a DAP congress in Vienna, then was taken to Munich, by the civil engineer and theorist Rudolf Jung, who having explicitly supported Hitler had been expelled from Czechoslovakia because of his political agitation.[2]

The historian

idee fixe of Gottfried Feder, one of the party's founding members and Hitler provided the militancy of the stance against the Treaty of Versailles and the insistence that the points could not be changed and were to be the permanent foundation of the party. Bracher characterizes the points as being "phrased like slogans; they lent themselves to the concise sensational dissemination of the 'anti' position on which the party thrived. ... Ideologically speaking, [the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..."[3]

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the 25-point program "remained the party's official statement of goals, though in later years many points were ignored".[4]

German Party program

In Munich, on 24 February 1920, Hitler publicly proclaimed the 25-point Program of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party, referred to in English as the Nazi Party), when the Nazis were still known as the DAP (

National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in February 1920 and it remained the Party's official program.[6] The 25-point Program was a German adaptation — by Anton Drexler, Adolf Hitler, Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart — of Rudolf Jung's Austro–Bohemian program. Unlike the Austrians, the Germans did not claim to be either liberal or democratic and opposed neither political reaction nor the aristocracy, yet advocated democratic institutions (i.e. the German central parliament) and voting rights solely for Germans — implying that a Nazi government would retain popular suffrage
.

The Austrian monarchist

working-class political party.[8]

In the course of pursuing public office, the agrarian failures of the 1920s prompted Hitler to explain further the "true" meaning of Point 17 (land reform, legal land expropriation for public utility, abolishment of the land value tax and proscription of land speculation), in the hope of winning the farmers' votes in the May 1928 elections. Hitler disguised the implicit contradictions of Point 17 of the National Socialist Program by explaining that "gratuitous expropriation concerns only the creation of legal opportunities, to expropriate, if necessary, land which has been illegally acquired or is not administered from the viewpoint of the national welfare. This is directed primarily against the Jewish land-speculation companies".[9]

Throughout the 1920s, other members of the NSDAP, seeking ideologic consistency, sought either to change or to replace the National Socialist Program. In 1923, the economist Gottfried Feder proposed a 39-point program retaining some original policies and introducing new policies.[10] Hitler suppressed every instance of programmatic change by refusing to broach the matters after 1925, because the National Socialist Program was “inviolable”, hence immutable.[11]

Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that to Hitler, the program was "little more than an effective, persuasive propaganda weapon for mobilizing and manipulating the masses. Once it had brought him to power, it became pure decoration: 'unalterable,' yet unrealized in its demands for nationalization and expropriation, land reform and 'breaking the shackles of finance capital.' Yet it nonetheless fulfilled its role as backdrop and pseudo-theory, against which the future dictator could unfold his rhetorical and dramatic talents."[12]

The 25-point Program of the NSDAP

  1. We demand the union of all Germans to form the
    right to self-determination
    enjoyed by the nations.
  2. We demand equality of rights for the
    peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain
    .
  3. We demand land and territory (
    colonies
    ) for the sustenance of our people and colonization for our surplus population.
  4. None but members of the nation may be citizens of the state. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation.
  5. Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest and must be regarded as being subject to foreign laws.
  6. The right of voting on the state's government and legislation is to be enjoyed by the citizen of the state alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, shall be granted to citizens of the state alone. We oppose the corrupting custom of parliament of filling posts merely with a view to party considerations, and without reference to character or capability.
  7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to nourish the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) must be excluded from the Reich.
  8. All immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be required immediately to leave the Reich.
  9. All citizens of the state shall be equal as regards rights and obligations.
  10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. The activity of individual may not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the framework of the whole for the benefit for the general good. We demand therefore:
  11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
  12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice of life and property that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment due to a war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. Therefore, we demand ruthless confiscation of all war profits.
  13. We demand nationalization of all businesses which have been up to the present formed into companies (trusts).
  14. We demand that the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.
  15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
  16. We demand the creation of a healthy
    contracts
    with the State, county or municipality.
  17. We demand a
    land rent and prevention of all speculation
    in land.
  18. We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
  19. We demand substitution of a German
    Roman Law
    serving a materialistic world-order.
  20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national
    gifted children
    of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
  21. The state is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing
    child-labor
    , by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
  22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
  23. We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that:
    a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race;
    b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the state to be published. They may not be printed in the German language;
    c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications or any influence on them and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate
    prosecution
    of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
  24. We demand
    Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity
    without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework:
    THE COMMON INTEREST OVER INDIVIDUAL INTEREST[13]
  25. For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. The forming of state and profession chambers for the execution of the laws made by the Reich within the various states of the confederation. The leaders of the Party promise, if necessary by sacrificing their own lives, to support by the execution of the points set forth above without consideration.

See also

References

  1. ^ Gottfried Feder, The Program of The Party of Hitler, Ostara Publications, p. 27
  2. ISBN 0-89526-537-0
    .
  3. ISBN 0-14-013724-6
  4. ^ "Nazi Party Platform — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". www.ushmm.org. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
  5. ISBN 0-385-03724-4
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6
    .
  7. ISBN 0-931888-51-4
    .
  8. ISBN 0-300-06533-7
    .
  9. ^ "The Avalon Project : Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV - Document No. 1708-PS". Archived from the original on 18 July 2009.
  10. ISBN 0-19-503492-9
    .
  11. ^ In February 1926, at the Bamberg Conference, the dissident NSDAP faction endeavoured to change the Program. Still, Hitler declared change intolerable, lest it be an insult to the memory of Nazi brethren killed at the Feldherrnhalle during the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Three months later, at the NSDAP’s annual general meeting, the National Socialist Program was declared immutable.
  12. ISBN 0-14-013724-6
  13. ISBN 9780520276833

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