Program of the German Workers’ Party (1920) On January 5, 1919, locksmith Anton Drexler and sports journalist Karl Harrer founded the German Workers’ Party [Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or DAP] in Munich. Harrer served as Reich party chairman and Drexler as chair of the Munich regional group. The administrative activities of the DAP were supposed to repose in an executive committee. In his role as an informant for the “Information Department” of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group Commando No. 4, Hitler visited a DAP meeting on September 12, 1919. He then joined the party’s executive committee in the second half of the month. At first, Hitler promoted the party and was active as a speaker. Together with Drexler, who took over as chairman after Harrer left the DAP on January 5, 1920, Hitler drafted the party program. Its economic-political sections, particularly the formulation “breaking the interest slavery” [Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft], can be traced back to the engineer Gottfried Feder. There also are significant similarities with the 1918 draft program “for the foundation of a German socialist party” by engineer Alfred Brunner. On the whole, the twenty-five points demonstrate the NSDAP’s melding of nationalist and socialist ideas into a völkisch rhetoric intended to appeal to masses of Germans. Hitler read the twenty-five-point program to a crowd of about 2,000 in Munich’s Hofbräuhaus on February 24, 1920.
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page 1 of 2 The Program of the German Workers’ Party is designed to be of limited duration. The leaders have no intention, once the aims announced in it have been achieved, of establishing fresh ones, merely in order to increase, artificially, the discontent of the masses and so ensure the continued existence of the Party. 1. We demand the union of all Germans in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national self-determination. 2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and the revocation of the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain. 3. We demand land and territory (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our surplus population. 4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation. 5. Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens. 6. The right to vote on the State’s government and legislation shall be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens. We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of filling posts merely in accordance with party considerations, and without reference to character or abilities. 7. We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich. 8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Reich forthwith. 9. All citizens shall have equal rights and duties. 10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the general interest, but must proceed within the framework of the community and be for the general good. We demand therefore: 11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work. The breaking of the slavery of interest 12. In view of the enormous sacrifices of life and property demanded of a nation by any war, personal enrichment from war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore the ruthless confiscation of all war profits. 13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts). 14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises. 15. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age. 16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that the utmost consideration shall be shown to all small traders in the placing of State and municipal orders. 17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation; the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
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