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The Kampfverlag (oficial name: Kampfverlag GmbH; "Struggle-Publisher") was a German publishing house that existed from 1926 to 1930. The publishing house gained particular importance as the journalistic mouthpiece of the wing of the NSDAP around the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser.
The beginnings of Kampfverlag go back to the year 1925: At that time, the pharmacist Gregor Strasser, who had been running a drugstore in Landshut since 1920 and had been a member of the Landtag of Bavaria and the Reichstag since 1924, decided to pursue his civil profession - which he had been doing for years had severely neglected his political engagement - to finally give up in favor of a job as a full-time politician. Together with his brother Otto and the Pomeranian Gauleiter Theodor Vahlen, who had joined the NSDAP in the course of 1925, Strasser decided to set up a National Socialist publishing house that would support the expansion of the party to areas outside of Bavaria, especially northern Germany, should give journalistic support. In contrast to the actual in-house publishing house of the NSDAP, the Franz-Eher-Verlag, the new publishing house was to put a clearer accent on socialist positions and address the urban working class in particular.
The Strasser brothers took the first step on the way to their own publishing house with the publication of the Nationalsozialistischen Briefe starting in the autumn of 1925. The Kampfverlag was founded on 1 March 1926. The publishing house was based near Berlin. The name was influenced by the Nazi idea of the conflict between the "movement" on the one hand and the existing state on the other for political power. In the years that followed, the publisher bought a number of existing newspapers in quick succession and brought them onto the Strasserist line. In addition to the Strasser brothers, Hans Hinkel held a one-third stake in the publishing house and temporarily acted as editor. [1] According to Otto Strasser, the publishing house had eleven weekly newspapers in its program in 1926 and later three daily newspapers. A total of eight newspapers and magazines were published by the publishing house. [2] In addition, there were individual book publications as well as countless brochures, leaflets, advertising leaflets and other comparable media for political advertising work. The brothers brought the tendency of their publications to the formula in which they proclaimed the mouthpiece of a socialism that was "equally hostile to Western capitalism and Eastern Bolshevism".
The costs for founding the publishing house were covered by loans and guarantees, which the founders took out from friends of political sympathy: The industrialist Bruck contributed a loan of 4,000 RM to found the Kampfverlag. Among other things, the profits made from the sale of the Strasser's drugstore served as a guarantee. Since the drugstore had been acquired from Strasser's wife Else's dowry, she was de jure a co-owner of the publishing house. After working for almost two years, Kampfverlag was in the green from 1928. Since the drugstore had been acquired from Strasser's wife Else's dowry, she was de jure a co-owner of the publishing house. After working for almost two years, Kampfverlag was in the green from 1928. While Gregor Strasser took on the duties of editor and – following his childhood dream of becoming a journalist – contributed numerous articles, Otto Strasser was the editor-in-chief of the Strassersche Zeitungen. Other employees of the Kampfverlags newspapers included Hans Hinkel, Walther Darré and the draftsman Hans Schweitzer.
Within the NSDAP, the journalistic activities of the Kampfverlag and in particular the extensive independence that the Strasser brothers developed in this way from the Munich party leadership, led to various conflicts: On the one hand, there were tensions with Max Amann and the leadership of the Eher-Verlag, who were displeased with the loss of their monopoly over the Nazi press and journalism. More importantly, however, the publisher's activity deepened the rift between Gregor Strasser and his one-time follower Joseph Goebbels, which had begun in 1925 and developed into an outspoken personal enmity by the early 1930s. Goebbels was particularly angry that the Strasser brothers opposed his claim to control all Nazi publications published in Berlin as Gauleiter of Berlin and that they competed with his house newspaper, Der Angriff.
In the background, the relative independence of Kampfverlag led to ever new conflicts between the Strasser brothers and Hitler, which reached their culmination point in the spring of 1930: while Gregor Strasser was ready to switch to Hitler's line and henceforth concentrated on his work as Reichsorganisationsleiter, i.e. as head of the party apparatus the NSDAP, Otto Strasser preferred to turn his back on the Hitler movement and go his own way by founding the Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists. On 4 July 1930, depending on the reading, he left the party or was expelled from it. Previously he had on 21 and 22 May 1930 rejected an offer to buy Kampfverlag for 120,000 RM. Instead, Kampfverlag was wound up during the summer of 1930 and closed on 1 October 1930.
Otto Strasser saved a newspaper from the bankruptcy of the Kampfverlag to his new publishing house Der Nationale Sozialist, which he published from then on as a political weekly under the title Die Deutsche Revolution. In the summer of 1931, Strasserverlag was renamed Die Schwarze Front, based on the name of the political group around Otto Strasser, which published a newspaper of the same name from 6 September 1931. Until he emigrated in the spring of 1933, he used this newspaper primarily as a platform for violent attacks on Hitler and the NSDAP in domestic political struggles. After Strasser's flight from Germany in the spring of 1933, this organ, which he now published from Prague under the title Die Deutsche Revolution aus Prag, formed the cornerstone and main mouthpiece of his private war against the Nazi state from exile.
Gottfried Feder was a German civil engineer, a self-taught economist, and one of the early key members of the Nazi Party and its economic theoretician. It was one of his lectures, delivered in 1919, that drew Adolf Hitler into the party.
Max Amann was a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party, a German politician, businessman and art collector, including of looted art. He was the first business manager of the Nazi Party and later became the head of Eher Verlag, the official Nazi Party publishing house. He was also the Reichsleiter for the press. After the war ended, Amann was arrested by U.S. military occupation authorities. A denazification court deemed him a Hauptschuldiger. Amann was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp, stripped of his property, pension rights, and virtually all of his fortune.
Gregor Strasser was a German politician and early leader of the Nazi Party. Along with his younger brother Otto, he was a leading member of the party's left-wing faction, which brought them into conflict with the dominant faction led by Adolf Hitler, resulting in his murder in 1934. The brothers' strand of the Nazi ideology is known as Strasserism.
Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser 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.
Strasserism is a strand of Nazism which adheres to revolutionary nationalism and economic antisemitism. It calls for a more radical, mass-action and worker-based movement than what was advocated by the leadership of the Nazi Party. Strasserism derived its name from Gregor and Otto Strasser, two brothers initially associated with this position. Otto Strasser originally led a faction within the Nazi Party, but was expelled from the party in 1930 and created the Black Front as a rival organization. He fled Germany in 1933 and returned after World War II. Strasserism allegedly had a considerable degree of support among the SA, which led to Strasserists being purged by Adolf Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, with Gregor Strasser being murdered. In the 1980s, Strasserism again began to play an active role in politics after it found support among some leading members of the National Front party in the UK.
Hermann Esser was an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). A journalist, Esser was the editor of the Nazi paper, Völkischer Beobachter, a Propaganda Leader, and a Vice President of the Reichstag. In the early days of the party, he was a de facto deputy of Adolf Hitler. As one of Hitler's earliest followers and friends, he held influential positions in the party during the Weimar Republic, but increasingly lost influence during the Nazi era.
Erich Koch was a Gauleiter of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in East Prussia from 1 October 1928 until 1945. Between 1941 and 1945 he was Chief of Civil Administration of Bezirk Bialystok. During this period, he was also the Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine from September 1941 until August 1944 and in Reichskommissariat Ostland from September 1944. After the Second World War, Koch stood trial in Poland and was convicted in 1959 of war crimes and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison and Koch died of natural causes in his cell at the Barczewo prison on 12 November 1986.
The Bamberg Conference included some sixty members of the leadership of the Nazi Party, and was specially convened by Adolf Hitler in Bamberg, in Upper Franconia, Germany on Sunday 14 February 1926 during the "wilderness years" of the party.
The Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists, more commonly known as the Black Front, was a political group formed by Otto Strasser in 1930 after he resigned from the Nazi Party (NSDAP) to avoid being expelled.
Hans Nieland was a politician of the German Nazi-Party (NSDAP) and Lord Mayor of Dresden from 1940 until 1945.
Johann Heinrich "Hans" Hinkel was a journalist, Nazi Party official and politician in Nazi Germany. He mainly worked in the Reich Chamber of Culture and the Reich Ministry of Propaganda. He was involved in executing the policy of excluding Jews from German cultural life, and headed the Ministry's film division. He was also an SS-Gruppenführer, and was imprisoned in Poland for several years after the end of the Second World War.
Rudolf Jordan was the Gauleiter in Halle-Merseburg and Magdeburg-Anhalt in the time of the Third Reich. After the war, he was sentenced to 25 years in a Soviet Union labour camp. He was released from the camp in October 1955, and died in Munich in 1988.
Wilhelm Friedrich Loeper was a German Nazi politician. He served as the Gauleiter in the Gau of Magdeburg-Anhalt and was the Reichsstatthalter of the Free States of Anhalt and Brunswick
Franz Eher Nachfolger GmbH was the central publishing house of the Nazi Party and one of the largest book and periodical firms during the Nazi Germany. It was acquired by the party on 17 December 1920 for 115,000 Papiermark.
Der Angriff was the official newspaper of the Berlin Gau of the Nazi Party. Founded in 1927, the last edition of the newspaper was published on 24 April 1945.
Helmuth Brückner was Gauleiter of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in Silesia from 1925 until 1934, when he fell out of political favor.
Ernst Schlange was a German Nazi Party official and politician who served as Gauleiter of Gross-Berlin and later of Gau Brandenburg. He was also a lawyer and a member of the Prussian Landtag. Severely wounded in World War I, he became active in various anti-Semitic, far right political groups and eventually joined the National Socialist German Worker's Party. He was opposed to the Party's more extreme tactics for gaining power and was a close ally of the Strasser brothers. After their fall from power, Schlange lost his leadership posts by the mid-1930s. He died in Soviet captivity after the end of World War II.
Axel Herbert Ewald Ripke was a German journalist and politician of the German Fatherland Party and the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Among other things, he was one of the first Gauleiters of the NSDAP and an early mentor of Joseph Goebbels.
Ludolf Haase was a Nazi Party official who served as Gauleiter in Southern Hanover from 1925 to 1928.
The National Socialist Working Association, sometimes translated as the National Socialist Working Community was a short-lived group of about a dozen Nazi Party Gauleiter brought together under the leadership of Gregor Strasser in September 1925. Its full name was the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der nord- und westdeutschen Gaue der NSDAP. Aligned with the Strasserist wing of the Party, it unsuccessfully sought to steer the Party leadership in that direction by updating the Party program of 1920. Party Chairman Adolf Hitler perceived the Association as a threat to his leadership, so its activities were curtailed shortly after the Bamberg Conference of 14 February 1926 presided over by him, and it was formally dissolved on 1 October of that year.
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