Hitler and his God

Thule Reaches Out

Bismarck had not been able to suppress the social-democratic upsurge, feared and hated by the reactionaries. In 1912 the Socialists obtained 110 seats in parliament, more than any other party. In 1914, carried on the wave of general euphoria with which the war was greeted, the social-democrats temporarily put aside, or betrayed, their internationalist principles, but most of them, under pressure from the Communists and the 1917 events in Russia, reverted to their original ideals when the war turned sour. Since the 1918 revolution, which made Germany from a monarchy into a republic, the country was fissured into two hostile blocks and “the menace of civil war hung like a black cloud over Germany”. 78

The Thule Society, “probably the most powerful secret organization in Germany”, 79 had become aware of the potentially catastrophic gap between Right and Left, and decided to do something about it by trying to win over the workers for the nationalist ideas. In the following words of Hitler, in Mein Kampf, one hears an echo of Thule’s concerns: “The bourgeoisie has misjudged the importance of the mass and therefore of the social problem. Because of this the bourgeoisie has estranged the workers from their own Volkstum [racehood] and driven them into the arms of their Judeo-Marxist leaders. This has been an unforgivable mistake … It is decisive for the success of the Party to reach out in the first place to the large masses.” 80

Thule’s awareness of the necessity to gain the workers for the nationalist (and anti-Semitic) cause may have been prompted by politically active elements in the Reichswehr like General Arnold von Möhl and Captain Karl Mayr. “There was a personal and ideological relationship between the Reichswehr and the Thule”, 81 according to Orzechowski. This is corroborated by Joachim Köhler: “Mayr was a confident of the Order.” 82 There was, in fact, a close interaction between all rightist activists to whatever organization they belonged, be it the Germanenorden or the Reichswehr, the Pan-German League, the Free Corps, etc. In the confused and tense atmosphere of those years the Right felt that they, and with them German culture, were besieged from within by “Bolshevism”. The civil war was rarely fought out in the open, but for the most part on countless fronts by secret associations in hidden ways.

To gain the proletariat for their cause, the Thule Society founded towards the end of 1918 two front organizations. The first was named “German Socialist Party”, for which the propaganda was launched on Christmas Day. This was meant to be a political party in the classical sense of the word, “German-völkisch and socialist”, but not accessible for Jews. Its newspaper would be the Münchener Beobachter und Sportblatt – a title intended to allure the lower classes by the addition of Sportblatt, which means “sports magazine”. The president of the new party, Hans Grassinger, was a member of the Thule Kampfbund.

The Thule Society was less ambitious at the cradle of its second offspring, the “German Workers’ Party”, German initials DAP, founded on 5 January 1919. The president of the DAP, Karl Harrer, a member of Thule, conceived his party more like a lodge, a secret völkisch club where members of the working class would be introduced to the Thule ideals. Thus the DAP would be something like a proletarian annexe of the more select Thule Society. Ironically, it was the DAP which grew into the NSDAP, Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party, and which would swallow up its fledgling sister organization, the German Socialist Party.

“Brother” Karl Harrer (1890-1926), “untiring fighter for justice and truth”, was a sports journalist by profession. The evening paper for which he worked, the München-Augsburger Abendzeitung, had once published an article in favour of continuing the war by one Anton Drexler. In March 1918 Drexler had founded a “Worker’s Committee for a Just Peace” in Bremen, and had invited Harrer to one of the meetings. And so it happened that, when Harrer was entrusted with his assignment by the leadership of the Order to create an instrument “to win the workers for the völkisch politics” 83, he sought out Drexler, who was now employed as a locksmith with the German Railways in Munich.

Anton Drexler (1884-1942) certainly was no ordinary proletarian, taking into consideration his previous activities in Bremen, his writings, including My Political Awakening, and his political initiatives. He became a “guest” of the Thule – the designation of persons who had close dealings with the Order without being initiated – and founded in collaboration with Harrer “a workers’ circle” of which he was the president for Munich and Harrer the “national president”, and of which at first most of the members were recruited among Drexler’s co-workers. “The persons who were accepted as members by the executive committee were sworn to silence about the activities and membership of the group.” 84 This circle soon became the DAP. “While the political workers’ circle was clearly meant to be a creation of Thule, the German Workers’ Party, for tactical reasons, had to be presented as an initiative of Drexler’s.” 85 “The German Workers’ Party gained no great influence at first and remained mainly limited to Munich. Only when through an intervention of Destiny Adolf Hitler joined the still thinly populated ranks of the Party, in the autumn of 1919, came the turnabout which gained great historical significance for the whole German people.” 86