Otto Strasser
The Black Front
'The socialists are leaving the NSDAP.'
Restorationist StrasseriteOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Strasserite hall →- Role
- Theorist
- Era
- 1897–1974
- Region
- Germany
- Social band
- Restorationist
- Placement
- −56 · +88 · −90
§ Where Otto Strasser stands
3 axesStrasser rejected both Marxist class struggle and liberal capitalism. His 1932 programme, The Structure of German Socialism, called for the state to take ownership of land and large-scale industry, and in his own account of their May 1930 debate Hitler refused to nationalise firms such as Krupp, the disagreement that led to his expulsion.
Strasser opposed Hitler, not dictatorship. The Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists he founded in 1930, later known as the Black Front, envisaged an authoritarian state built on occupational estates rather than parties, and from exile he plotted to replace Hitler's regime with his own nationalist revolution rather than with parliamentary democracy.
Strasser's nationalism was ethnic and deeply traditional: his programme idealised the German peasantry and the völkisch idea of a racially defined nation, and he shared the antisemitism of the early party. In exile he courted Allied opinion with books such as Hitler and I, published in 1940, but his core vision remained hierarchical and nationalist.
How close are you to Otto Strasser?
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§ The story
HistoricalOtto Strasser (1897–1974) was a German nationalist theorist who led the anti-capitalist wing of the early Nazi movement before breaking with Hitler. The younger brother of Gregor Strasser, he served in the First World War, briefly belonged to the Social Democrats and earned a doctorate before joining the Nazi Party in 1925. With Gregor he ran the Kampfverlag publishing house in Berlin, whose newspapers pushed a 'German socialism' of nationalisation and anti-Western nationalism that increasingly clashed with Hitler's courtship of industrialists.
After a stormy debate with Hitler in May 1930, Strasser was expelled and announced that the socialists were leaving the NSDAP. He built what became the Black Front, running it from exile after 1933 in Austria and Czechoslovakia, where its clandestine radio transmitter near Prague broadcast against the regime until SS agents killed its engineer in 1935. Nazi propaganda later blamed him for the 1939 bomb attack on Hitler in Munich. He spent the war years in Canada, returned to West Germany in 1955 and died in Munich in 1974.
Notable for
- 01Founded the 'Black Front'
- 02Broke with Hitler over capitalism
- 03'Strasserism'
Key works & moments
- 1925Joins the Nazi Party and works with his brother Gregor to build its northern press.
- 1930Expelled after clashing with Hitler; announces that the socialists are leaving the NSDAP.
- 1932Publishes The Structure of German Socialism, his blueprint for a nationalised economy.
- 1935SS agents kill Rudolf Formis, engineer of the Black Front's secret radio station near Prague.
- 1941Reaches Canada, where he remains in exile through the war and beyond.
- 1955Returns to West Germany after regaining his citizenship, but his new movement fails.
§ Minds closest to Otto Strasser
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§ Also in the Strasserite hall
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§ Common questions
4 answersWhat was Otto Strasser's political ideology?
Otto Strasser championed Strasserism, an anti-capitalist national socialism opposed to Hitler's leadership: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Restorationist Strasserite. Economically he sat left of centre (−56), calling for state ownership of land and big industry. On governance he was strongly authoritarian (+88), seeking a nationalist corporate state rather than democracy, and socially he was deeply traditional (−90), committed to a racially defined nation, the peasantry and the völkisch ideas of the early Nazi movement.
Was Otto Strasser left-wing or right-wing?
Far right, with a left-leaning economic programme. Strasser called himself a socialist and wanted the state to own land and large industry, which places him left of centre economically and explains his clash with Hitler's alliance with industrialists. But his socialism was national and racial rather than Marxist: he rejected class struggle and internationalism, shared the movement's antisemitism and wanted an authoritarian state. Historians therefore place him on the radical, anti-capitalist fringe of the far right.
What is Strasserism?
Strasserism is the strand of national socialism associated with Otto and Gregor Strasser, which combined nationalism, antisemitism and authoritarian rule with demands to nationalise big business and break up concentrations of wealth. Its adherents argued that Hitler had betrayed the socialism in National Socialism by allying with industrialists and conservatives, the charge Otto made when he left the party in 1930. Hitler crushed the current, killing Gregor in 1934, but the label was later revived by some Third Position and neo-Nazi groups.
Which minds are closest to Otto Strasser?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Otto Strasser are The Brown Radical (archetype) (98% alike), Gregor Strasser (98% alike) and Ernst Röhm (96% alike). The furthest is Lysander Spooner (0% alike).