Otto Strasser

Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser (also German: Straßer, see ß; 10 September 1897 – 27 August 1974) was a German politician and an early member of the Nazi Party. Otto Strasser, together with his brother Gregor Strasser, was a leading member of the party's more radical wing, whose ideology became known as Strasserism, and broke from the party due to disputes with the dominant Hitlerite faction. He formed the Black Front, a group intended to split the Nazi Party and take it from the grasp of Hitler. During his exile and World War II, this group also functioned as a secret opposition group.

Historian Hans Mommsen has commented that Otto Strasser was "in most respects" the intellectual superior of his brother Gregor.

Born at Bad Windsheim, Strasser was the son of a Catholic judicial officer who lived in the Upper Bavarian market town of Geisenfeld. Strasser took an active part in World War I (1914–1918). On 2 August 1914, he joined the Bavarian Army as a volunteer. He rose through the ranks to lieutenant and was twice wounded.

Strasser returned to Germany in 1919, where he served in the Freikorps that in May 1919 put down the Bavarian Soviet Republic, which was organized on the principles of workers' councils. About this time, he joined the Social Democratic Party.^{[citation needed]}

In 1920, he participated in the opposition to the Kapp Putsch. Still, he grew increasingly alienated from his party's reformist stance, particularly when it put down a workers' uprising in the Ruhr, and he left the party later that year.

In 1925, he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), in which his brother, Gregor, had been a member for several years and worked for its newspaper as a journalist, ultimately taking it over with his brother. He focused particularly on the socialist elements of the party's program and led the party's faction in northern Germany together with his brother and Joseph Goebbels. His faction advocated support for ideologically Nazi unions, profit-sharing and – despite acknowledged differences – closer ties with the Soviet Union.

Despite disagreements with Hitler, the Strassers did not represent a radical wing opposed to the party mainstream. Gottfried Feder was more radical and held great favour at the time. The Strassers were extremely influential within the party, but the Strasserist programme was defeated at the Bamberg Conference of 1926. Otto Strasser, along with Gregor, continued as a leaning Left Nazi within the party until he seceded from the NSDAP in 1930 following an aggressive attack led by Joseph Goebbels at a General Assembly on June 30, resulting in his expulsion from the meeting.

On 1 July, Strasser telegraphed Hitler requesting an explanation for Goebbels' actions. None would come. Strasser then seceded from the Nazi Party to form the Action Group of Revolutionary National Socialists, which later transformed into the Black Front, composed of like-minded former NSDAP membership. His party proved unable to counter Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and Strasser spent the years of the Nazi era in exile. The Strasserists were annihilated during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, during which Gregor Strasser was killed. This left Hitler as the undisputed party leader and was able to pacify the industrialists and military elite by ridding the party of the influence of people like Gregor Strasser and Ernst Röhm.