Anton Drexler
Anton Drexler ( born June 13, 1884 in Munich, † February 24, 1942 ibid ) was co-founder of the German Workers' Party (DAP ).
Background and employment
Drexler was the son of a railway worker. From 1902 to 1923 he worked as a toolmaker.
Weimar Republic
Political preludes
1917 Drexler initially joined at the newly founded German Fatherland Party. Together with 27 colleagues in the former Royal Bavarian State Railways Central Workshops in Munich he founded on March 7, 1918 Free Workers Committee for a good peace, order, as he wrote, " to strengthen the will to win of Bavaria, especially the working class ."
Also in 1918 he founded together with other the nationalist right-wing political circles work. 1918 brought Drexler in a leaflet entitled " Political Awakening" his anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic political attitude expressed, culminating in the sentence that Bolshevism " Jewish fraud " is.
On 2 October 1918, the first meeting of Drexler's Free Workers Committee was held. Participants of this event was also the sports journalist Karl Harrer, a member of the Munich Thule Society.
Party's founding
Drexler founded together with Karl Harrer on 5 January 1919, the German Workers 'Party ( DAP), the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( NSDAP) was renamed in February 1920. In January 1919 Drexler published the article The failure of the proletarian International and the failure of the brotherhood idea. Its also in 1919 published pamphlet My political awakening, in which he advocated a nationalist ethnic community, was subtitled From the diary of a German socialist worker - and was the first National Socialist manifesto. Adolf Hitler also said to have any reception mindsets contained therein.
Party activity
On 24 February 1920, the DAP was renamed the NSDAP in Munich Hofbräuhaus. In a later transcript Alfred Rosenberg expressed his suspicion expressed that there picked twenty-five points of the new party program alongside Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler had also been drawn up by Gottfried Feder.
Anton Drexler initially took over the second chair of the new party and was in the years 1920/21 as the successor to Harrer's first chairman. He kept held this position until he was replaced in 1921 by Hitler. Drexler had negotiated during Hitler's absence with other right-wing parties because of a closer union walking or an association. Hitler thereupon declared on July 11, his party outlet. Three days later, he called in a detailed letter to party chairman with dictatorial powers as a condition of his return. In fact, the party committee submitted its demands.
On July 25, Drexler appeared at the Munich police and warned in vain against Hitler. On July 29, was Hitler's election with 553 of 554 votes for new leader of the NSDAP. Drexler resigned the office of honorary chairman, a position he held from 1921 to 1923.
On the day of the Hitler coup he was picked up from home, but when Hitler expounded his intention to him, he did not participate in it. However, he was then briefly detained. Following the temporary resolution of the Nazi Party from 1923, he was involved in the Nationalist block and was from 1924 to 1928 in the Bavarian Parliament.
National Social People's League
In 1925 he founded the National Social People's Federation. With the founding of the NSDAP in 1925, he played no role.
From Hitler, he was characterized in Mein Kampf as follows: " Mr. Drexler was a simple laborer, as a speaker also of little importance, but otherwise not a soldier. He had not served in the army, was also during the war, not a soldier, so that he, who was his very nature weak and uncertain, the only school was missing, it was ready to bring, from uncertain and effeminate natures to make men ( ... ) not capable of the most brutal ruthlessness to remove the resistors, who liked to make the ascent of the new idea in the way. "
National Socialism
After the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 Anton Drexler joined again the Nazi Party. In 1934 he received due to his role as a founding member of the Party of the Blood Order of the NSDAP. However, he could not win more political significance to his death.