The National Socialist Working Association, sometimes translated as the National Socialist Working Community () was a short-lived group of about a dozen Nazi Party brought together under the leadership of Gregor Strasser in September 1925. Its full name was the (Working Association of the North and West German of the NSDAP). Aligned with the Strasserist wing of the Party, it unsuccessfully sought to steer the Party leadership in that direction by updating the Party program of 1920. Party Chairman Adolf Hitler perceived the Association as a threat to his leadership, so its activities were curtailed shortly after the Bamberg Conference of 14 February 1926 presided over by him, and it was formally dissolved on 1 October of that year.
Background After the failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, the Nazi Party was outlawed and Adolf Hitler, being found guilty of treason, was jailed in Landsberg prison. After his release in December 1924, Hitler re-founded the Party on 27 February 1925 in Munich. At that time, it largely was centered in the state of Bavaria in southern Germany. Hitler realized that if his movement were to become the national force that he envisioned, it would have to expand into the rest of the country, in particular, into both Prussia and Berlin, the national capital. Banned from public speaking in most of Germany, on 11 March 1925 Hitler charged Gregor Strasser, then the of (Lower Bavaria), with setting up Party organizations throughout northern Germany. As a Reichstag Deputy, Strasser possessed two advantages: first, he had a parliamentary rail pass and could travel throughout the country while incurring no cost to the Party and, secondly, he enjoyed parliamentary immunity and could not be banned from speaking or sued for slander during his speechmaking. An effective public speaker and a skilled organizer, he traveled widely throughout Germany delivering speeches and establishing local Party organizations. He often personally selected the local () and regional () Party administrators, subject to Hitler’s approval. The rapid development of the party structure in northern Germany in the following months was mainly the work of Strasser. Many of the local organizations in the north had to be created from scratch, and by the end of 1925 they numbered 262, as opposed to only 71 at the time of the 1923 .
Formation
The Working Association was Strasser's attempt to consolidate the then still young and divergent Party organizations in northern and western Germany. The in these regions were more interested in appealing to the working class masses in the large industrial cities of northern Germany through a greater emphasis on social aims, than were the members of the Party leadership based in the more rural area of Bavaria. Consequently, their ideological approach was more attuned to the "socialist" or "anti-capitalist" element of National Socialism.
In addition, there were longstanding personal animosities between the northerners and many of the leaders of the Party in Bavaria. These dated from the time of the Party's dissolution when the two groups belonged to different Nazi front organizations. Strasser and northerners who had been in the National Socialist Freedom Movement had an intense hostility towards some Party leaders at the Munich headquarters who had belonged to the rival Greater German People's Community, in particular, Hermann Esser, Julius Streicher and Philipp Bouhler. The Working Association organizers sought to curb what they perceived as the growing power and influence of these Munich leaders whom they felt to be too bureaucratic and controlling.
Discussions about forming a consortium of sorts, at first referred to as a "Westblock," to counterbalance the Munich leadership began in Elberfeld on 20 August 1925 between Strasser, Joseph Goebbels, then the Business Manager () of Rhineland-North, and other northern Party leaders. Strasser then took the initiative to call a meeting at Hagen in Westphalia for 10 September 1925. Though Strasser himself was absent due to his mother's serious illness, the meeting took place as scheduled with around 25 northern leaders present. The attendees formally established the "Working Association of the North and West German of the NSDAP." Strasser was elected Director of the Working Association and Goebbels became the Business Manager. Elberfeld, the seat of Rhineland-North, served as the organization's headquarters. A journalistic organ named the National Socialist Letters (, or ) was established, which appeared twice a month from 1 October 1925, and was published by Strasser and edited by Goebbels. Organizational statutes were adopted which were careful to state that the Working Association existed "with the express approval of Adolf Hitler."
Most of the actions taken at this first meeting were purely organizational in nature, such as arranging for the sharing of political and organizational resources, including propaganda materials and speakers, and working on coordinated joint political statements. The only policy decision taken was related to the question of electoral participation, and the representatives at Hagen unanimously agreed to reject participation in all elections, sending a letter to this effect to Hitler. This was aimed at pushing the Party toward obtaining power not by parliamentary means, but by mobilizing the urban masses into paralyzing the nation's economic and social systems through strikes, street terror and other activist tactics.
Members The Working Association was composed of eleven , nearly all representing sections of Prussia (with the exception of the Free City of Hamburg).
Working Association of the North and West German of the NSDAP -Berlin (later, Berlin) Ernst Schlange Hamburg Josef Klant Hanover (later, Southern Hanover-Brunswick) Bernhard Rust Hanover-South (later, Southern Hanover-Brunswick) Ludolf Haase Hesse-Nassau Walter Schultz Lüneburg-Stade (later, Gau Eastern Hanover Otto Telschow Pomerania Theodor Vahlen Rhineland-North (later, Düsseldorf; Essen) Karl Kaufmann Rhineland-South (later, Köln-Aachen; Moselland) Robert Ley Schleswig-Holstein Hinrich Lohse Westphalia (later, Westphalia-North; Westphalia-South) Franz Pfeffer von Salomon
Other prominent Nazis who were part of the Working Association included Helmuth Brückner, Friedrich Hildebrandt, Heinrich Haake, Hanns Kerrl, Erich Koch, and Wilhelm Stich.
Aims and actions Policy proposals Following the Hagen meeting, the Working Association advocated consolidation of the in the Rhineland and Ruhr areas into one large encompassing all of Germany's industrial heartland. In October, it issued a call for the dismissal of Esser, then the Party's Propaganda Leader.
The Working Association also urged support for a proposed referendum on the expropriation without compensation of the former royal and princely ruling houses of Germany. This was the same position taken by the two leading left-wing parties, the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. This stance angered Hitler who feared that it would imperil the substantial financial support that he was deriving from many of the former nobles and from conservative business donors who favored his opposition to Communists, Socialists and trade unionists.
In foreign policy, many Working Association members, including Strasser, Goebbels, Kaufmann and Rust held National Bolshevik ideas then common to many young right-wing German intellectuals. They saw in the Soviet Union a successful socialist national state and some, including Rust, even advocated an alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union. They also admired the activism of the German Communist Party in attracting and mobilizing working class support. Of course, these views were incompatible with the anti-Communist and policies advocated by Hitler in .
The National Socialist Program consisting of 25 points had been proclaimed by Hitler in February 1920. Strasser felt that it was due for an update and began working on revisions to it in November 1925. His draft program called for the nationalization of all land, which would then be leased out. All estates over would be broken into smaller peasant holdings. Fifty-one percent of "vital" and forty-nine percent of "non-vital" industrial production would be publicly owned but management would remain in private hands. Politically, it called for strengthening the office of the Reich President while the would be replaced by a corporatist "Chamber of Estates," representing occupational sectors and public institutions such as churches and universities. Germany's federal structure would be abolished and the President, elected to a seven-year term by the legislature, would appoint national and provincial executives and administrators. While proposing new ideas in the areas of the economy and government structure, it retained many of the nationalist, and anti-semitic underpinnings of the original program. It called for the restoration of Germany's 1914 borders and the return of its former colonies. In addition, it advocated the expulsion of those Jews who had entered Germany since 1 August 1914 and the revocation of citizenship from all others.
Subsequent meetings The second meeting of the Working Association took place in Hanover on 22 November 1925, where Strasser presented his draft document for consideration. The meeting did not result in the uniformly favorable response to the proposals that Strasser had hoped for, however. The , all being equals, jealously guarded their right to independent action, and there were genuine differences of opinion among them with regard to ideological issues. The members recommended that additional comments be submitted in writing and the draft would be reviewed at the next meeting in late January. Critiques which survive show that some attacked it as too radical from a socialist viewpoint and not radical enough in its aspects.
Strasser's failure to keep Hitler informed of developments was a tactical error, for the Munich leadership was becoming increasingly suspicious of the activities of the Working Association. Around Christmas, Gottfried Feder, a leading Party theoretician and a co-author of the 1920 Party program was given a copy of the draft program by a local Party official and he subsequently informed Hitler. When Strasser learned of this, he belatedly sent Hitler a copy on 8 January 1926 with the explanation that he was merely gathering views from colleagues for a possible revision.
The third meeting of the Working Association took place on 24 January 1926 at the Hanover home of Rust. It became contentious when Feder arrived as Hitler's representative. Goebbels demanded that he be ejected, shouting: "We don't want any stool pigeons!" However, a vote was taken and Feder was allowed to participate. On the issue of expropriation, the proposal was weakened to say only that, if the expropriation of the nobles were to pass, then the property of all Jews who had entered Germany since August 1914 should likewise be confiscated. The draft program was again vigorously debated and there was even less agreement than previously, with not only Feder but Haase, Ley and Pfeffer voicing concerns on various points. In the end, the Strasser draft was not approved and further work on a new proposal was delegated to a small group.
The Bamberg Conference