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Bamberg Conference
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Bamberg Conference
The Bamberg Conference (German: Bamberger Führertagung) included some sixty members of the leadership of the Nazi Party, and was specially convened by Adolf Hitler in Bamberg, in Upper Franconia, Germany, on Sunday 14 February 1926 during the "wilderness years" of the party.
Hitler's purposes in convening the ad hoc conference embraced at least the following:
To achieve his objectives, Hitler had to pressure the dissident northern faction to accept the leadership of Munich and to adhere without question to the Führerprinzip. His decision to convene the Bamberg Conference was something of a gamble—it could have provoked an express revolt by the northern faction or otherwise exacerbated the north-south conflict, leading to a rupture—but Hitler chose to nip a possible nascent rebellion in the bud. He correctly believed that the dissidents lacked both the heart and the stomach to press their dissent, and that their true intent was not to challenge his leadership but to "rescue" him from the "reactionary" forces of the Munich clique, who had by default come to dominate the party whilst Hitler served his 30-month jail term in Landsberg Prison for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch (during which he also completed Mein Kampf).
Soon after Hitler was banned from public speaking in Bavaria on 9 March 1925, he appointed Gregor Strasser to develop the party in the north. Strasser, a hard-working and gregarious pharmacist of forceful personality who read Homer in the original for relaxation, was an effective public speaker, had exceptional organizational talents and dramatically increased the number of Nazi cells in the north from 71 after the putsch to 262 by the end of 1925.
Strasser was more idealistic than Hitler and took the notion of "socialist" in the party name with some degree of seriousness. The Communists were a larger factor in the more industrialized north, and Strasser was sensitive to the appeal that "socialism" had to those dissatisfied workers who were tempted by the red flag. He also apparently felt that the Munich clique was ruled by lesser men, and he chafed under their leadership in Hitler's absence.
Strasser was more radical than Hitler on the issue of adherence to the "legal and constitutional" method of obtaining political power through the Weimar Constitution's electoral processes. He had been the SA leader in Lower Bavaria before the Beer Hall Putsch and was not convinced that Hitler's repudiation of force, violence and putsch as a path to political power was correct.
Most serious, perhaps, was the attitude of the northern faction to the party's Twenty-Five Point Programme, which indisputably was intellectually confused and often half-baked. Considering the circumstances in which it was written, it is hard to imagine that it could be otherwise. To Strasser and Goebbels, men with intellectual and ideological bents, the absence of intellectual rigor was a serious defect.
Strasser first convened a meeting of the party leaders of about a dozen northern Gaue in Hagen, Westphalia on 10 September 1925. The meeting failed to accomplish much, as Strasser was absent due to his mother's serious illness. Nevertheless, the delegates unanimously rejected the strategy of electoral participation, formed the National Socialist Working Association (Full name: Working Association of the Northern and Western German Gaue of the NSDAP), enacted statutes to govern the organization, established a fortnightly publication called the National Socialist Letters (Nationalsozialistische Briefe) with Goebbels as editor, and respectfully notified Hitler in writing of these developments. In no way was this an open revolt against Hitler or an attempted secession from the NSDAP; Hitler gave his approval to the formation of the Association. The members of the Working Association were by statute dedicated to work "in the comradely spirit of National Socialism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler."
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Bamberg Conference
The Bamberg Conference (German: Bamberger Führertagung) included some sixty members of the leadership of the Nazi Party, and was specially convened by Adolf Hitler in Bamberg, in Upper Franconia, Germany, on Sunday 14 February 1926 during the "wilderness years" of the party.
Hitler's purposes in convening the ad hoc conference embraced at least the following:
To achieve his objectives, Hitler had to pressure the dissident northern faction to accept the leadership of Munich and to adhere without question to the Führerprinzip. His decision to convene the Bamberg Conference was something of a gamble—it could have provoked an express revolt by the northern faction or otherwise exacerbated the north-south conflict, leading to a rupture—but Hitler chose to nip a possible nascent rebellion in the bud. He correctly believed that the dissidents lacked both the heart and the stomach to press their dissent, and that their true intent was not to challenge his leadership but to "rescue" him from the "reactionary" forces of the Munich clique, who had by default come to dominate the party whilst Hitler served his 30-month jail term in Landsberg Prison for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch (during which he also completed Mein Kampf).
Soon after Hitler was banned from public speaking in Bavaria on 9 March 1925, he appointed Gregor Strasser to develop the party in the north. Strasser, a hard-working and gregarious pharmacist of forceful personality who read Homer in the original for relaxation, was an effective public speaker, had exceptional organizational talents and dramatically increased the number of Nazi cells in the north from 71 after the putsch to 262 by the end of 1925.
Strasser was more idealistic than Hitler and took the notion of "socialist" in the party name with some degree of seriousness. The Communists were a larger factor in the more industrialized north, and Strasser was sensitive to the appeal that "socialism" had to those dissatisfied workers who were tempted by the red flag. He also apparently felt that the Munich clique was ruled by lesser men, and he chafed under their leadership in Hitler's absence.
Strasser was more radical than Hitler on the issue of adherence to the "legal and constitutional" method of obtaining political power through the Weimar Constitution's electoral processes. He had been the SA leader in Lower Bavaria before the Beer Hall Putsch and was not convinced that Hitler's repudiation of force, violence and putsch as a path to political power was correct.
Most serious, perhaps, was the attitude of the northern faction to the party's Twenty-Five Point Programme, which indisputably was intellectually confused and often half-baked. Considering the circumstances in which it was written, it is hard to imagine that it could be otherwise. To Strasser and Goebbels, men with intellectual and ideological bents, the absence of intellectual rigor was a serious defect.
Strasser first convened a meeting of the party leaders of about a dozen northern Gaue in Hagen, Westphalia on 10 September 1925. The meeting failed to accomplish much, as Strasser was absent due to his mother's serious illness. Nevertheless, the delegates unanimously rejected the strategy of electoral participation, formed the National Socialist Working Association (Full name: Working Association of the Northern and Western German Gaue of the NSDAP), enacted statutes to govern the organization, established a fortnightly publication called the National Socialist Letters (Nationalsozialistische Briefe) with Goebbels as editor, and respectfully notified Hitler in writing of these developments. In no way was this an open revolt against Hitler or an attempted secession from the NSDAP; Hitler gave his approval to the formation of the Association. The members of the Working Association were by statute dedicated to work "in the comradely spirit of National Socialism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler."