14 Facts About Otto Strasser

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.

Otto Strasser formed the Black Front, a group intended to split the Nazi Party and take it from the grasp of Hitler.

Otto Strasser rose through the ranks to lieutenant and was twice wounded.

Otto Strasser returned to Germany in 1919, where he served in the Freikorps that in May 1919 put down the Bavarian Soviet Republic, which was organized on the principles of workers' councils.

Otto Strasser focused particularly on the socialist elements of the party's program and led the party's faction in northern Germany together with his brother and Joseph Goebbels.

Otto Strasser then seceded from the National Socialists and set up his own party, the Black Front, composed of like-minded former NSDAP members, to split the Nazi Party.

Otto Strasser's party proved unable to counter Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and Strasser spent the years of the Nazi era in exile.

Otto Strasser fled first to Austria, then to Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and France.

In 1950, East Germany invited Otto Strasser to become a member of the National Front.

Otto Strasser eventually gained West German citizenship, returned to Germany on 16 March 1955, and settled in Munich.

Otto Strasser attempted to create a new "nationalist and socialist"-oriented party in 1956, the German Social Union, but his organization was unable to attract meaningful support.

Otto Strasser continued to advocate for his vision of Nazism until he died in Munich in 1974.

Otto Strasser claimed to have dissented from Nazi racial policies.