Wiki Wednesday: Adolf Hitler's inspection of the German Workers' Party

Corporal Adolf Hitler was ordered in September, 1919 to investigate a small group in Munich known as the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP), which had only 54 members at the time. The use of the term "workers" attracted the attention of the German Army which was now involved in crushing Marxist uprisings. The army assigned Hitler to determine the nature of the DAP and whether it could pose any threat.

On September 12, dressed in civilian clothes, Hitler went to a meeting of the DAP in the back room of a Munich beer hall, with about twenty-five people. He listened to a speech by Gottfried Feder. After the speech, Hitler got ready to leave when a man rose up and spoke in favour of the German State of Bavaria breaking away from Germany and forming a new South German nation with Austria. The enraged Hitler spoke out forcefully against the man for the next fifteen minutes uninterrupted, to the astonishment of everyone. One of the founders of the DAP, Anton Drexler, reportedly whispered: "he's got the gift of the gab. We could use him."

After Hitler's outburst ended, Drexler hurried to Hitler and gave him a forty page pamphlet entitled: "My Political Awakening." He urged Hitler to read it and also invited him to come back again, despite his behaviour.

Over the next few days, Hitler read the pamphlet, written by Drexler, and was delighted to find that it reflected political thinking much like his own - building a strong nationalist, pro-military, anti-semitic party made up of working class people.
A few days later, Hitler received an unexpected postcard saying he had been accepted as a member into the DAP. He was asked to attend an executive committee meeting, which he did. At that meeting he was joyfully welcomed as a new member although he was actually very undecided on whether to join.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes the conditions of the party:
"...aside from a few directives, there was nothing, no program, no leaflet, no printed matter at all, no membership cards, not even a miserable rubber stamp..."

Although unimpressed by the current condition of the DAP, Hitler believed it presented him with an opportunity to mould a political group after his own views. In this disorganised party, Hitler saw potential:

"This absurd little organisation with its few members seemed to me to possess the one advantage that it had not frozen into an 'organisation,' but left the individual opportunity for real personal activity. Here it was still possible to work, and the smaller the movement, the more readily it could be put into the proper form. Here, the content, the goal, and the road could still be determined..."

He spent two days thinking it over and then decided.

"... I finally came to the conviction that I had to take this step... It was the most decisive resolve of my life. From here there was and could be no turning back."

Adolf Hitler joined the committee of the German Workers' Party and thus entered politics.

Labels: memes etc.