The Nazi Regime in Germany
the Origin and Aims of the Nazi Party
On 5 January 1919, not two months after the conclusion of the Armistice which ended the first World War, and six months before the signing of the peace treaties at Versailles, there came into being in Germany a small political party called the German Labor Party. On 12 September 1919 Adolf Hitler became a member of this Party, and at the first public meeting held in Munich, on 24 February 1920, he announced the Party’s program. That program, which remained unaltered until the Party was dissolved in 1945, consisted of 25 points, of which the following five are of particular interest on account of the light they throw on the matters with which the Tribunal is concerned:
“Point 1. We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany, on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples.
Point 2. We demand equality of rights for the German People in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain.
Point 3. We demand land and territory for the sustenance of our people, and the colonization of our surplus population.
Point 4. Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race . . . .
Point 22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.”
Of these aims, the one which seems to have been regarded as the most important, and which figured in almost every public speech, was the removal of the “disgrace” of the Armistice, and the restrictions of the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain. In a typical speech at Munich on 13 April 1923, for example, Hitler said with regard to the Treaty of Versailles:
“The Treaty was made in order to bring 20 million Germans to their deaths, and to ruin the German Nation . . . . At its foundation our movement formulated three demands:
1. Setting aside of the Peace Treaty.