National Bolshevism

Flag of the National Bolshevik Party.

National Bolshevism, whose political supporters are pejoratively known as Nazbols, is a radical syncretic political movement which seeks to combine Communism and Fascism, Nazism, and/or some other kind of ultranationalism into one ideology. Although Communism and National Socialism bear many similarities to begin with, they are not fully identical. The former is defined around the concept of class warfare, while the latter is defined around the concept of racial warfare. National Bolshevism seeks to erase those distinctions, and prioritize class warfare and racism/ultranationalism equally.

Many different forms of National Bolshevism have existed over the years, which are discussed below.

1917–19: The early days

“Laufenbergism–Wolffheimism”

Lauffenberg, one of the ideological originators of National Bolshevism.

The earliest known form of National Bolshevism can be traced to the Hamburg branch of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), under the leadership of Heinrich Laufenberg (1872–1932) and Fritz Wolffheim (1888–1942).

In October 1919 Laufenberg and Wolffheim reached out to Karl Radek, a diplomatic official of the newly-established Soviet Russia, to discuss the possibility of a "National Bolshevik" movement. Their vision for such a movement consisted of overthrowing the Weimar Republic and installing a totalitarian regime which mixed Leninism with German nationalism. This new regime would then fight a rematch of World War I against the Western Allies, except this time Russia would be helping them. Wolffheim even went as far as suggesting that the KPD form an alliance with the ultranationalist Freikorps in order to bring about the revolution.

Although the idea was initially supported by both Radek and some zealous members of the Spartacus League (led by high-ranking German Communists including Rosa Luxemburg), who reportedly comprised the early National Bolshevik movement, it was ultimately denounced by Lenin himself, and consequently failed to gain traction.. [1] Not long afterward, Laufenberg and Wolffheim were both expelled from the KPD following a leadership struggle with Wilhelm Pieck, who would later become the first leader of East Germany. The Laufenberg–Wolffheim faction of the German Communists, splitting with the internationalist Lenin, formed the German Communist Worker's Party (KAPD), which gained the support of more than half of KPD members as well as nearly all Communists in Berlin.

1920–34: The movement grows

During the 1920s and early 1930s, numerous National Bolshevik movements arose both in Germany and among the Russian émigré community outside Germany. The most prominent syncretic activists in Germany were Hermann Ernst Niekisch (1889-1967), Karl Otto Paetel (1906–1975), Gregor Strasser (1892–1934), and Otto Strasser (1897–1974); while the most prominent syncretic activists among the Russian émigré community were Alexander Kazembek (1902–1977) and Nikolai Ustryalov (1890–1937).

Smenovekhovtsy

The first major National Bolshevik movement among the Russian émigré community was the Smenovekhovtsy, led by Nikolai Ustryalov. Originally a liberal activist, Ustryalov shifted dramatically to the right following the Bolshevik Revolution and joined the anti-Communist White Army. But he quickly became disillusioned with the White movement's inability to create a united anti-Bolshevik front, and eventually concluded that Bolshevism was the best hope for Russian nationalists due to its ability to unite the country.

In 1920 Ustryalov switched sides and began writing pro-Bolshevik propaganda from a nationalist, non-Marxist perspective. However Lenin saw Ustryalov's ideas as unacceptable, and declared him a counter-revolutionary. Now having made enemies out of both sides of the Russian Civil War, Ustryalov went into exile, settling in Harbin, China. From there, he established the Smenovekhovtsy, an international movement advocating cooperation with the Soviet regime on the grounds that it would eventually devolve into bourgeois nationalism. Most of the Smenovekhovtsy's leadership had been liberals or Mensheviks prior to the Revolution, and the group received funding from the Soviet government.

Ustryalov returned to the Soviet Union in 1935, settling in Moscow. There he was largely shunned by his peers, who saw him as a traitor to the Bolshevik cause despite his longtime support. He was eventually sent to a gulag, and executed in 1937 during the Great Purge. Many other Smenovekhovtsy leaders would meet a similar fate.

Fischerism (aka, Laufenbergism-Wolffheimism, Round 2)

The revolutionary German nationalist Freikorps paramilitary forces fought the French military in the Ruhr; among them was Albert Leo Schlageter, an ultranationalist associated with the Nazi Party who was captured and executed for sabotaging and exploding a railway within the vicinity of Düsseldorf. Schlageter subsequently became a martyr for Nazis, particularly due to his young age when executed.

Radek's speech attempted to inspire the groundwork for a red–brown front of Communists and German ultranationalists which would initiate a paramilitary-led revolution.

Among the KPD, Ruth Fischer, resentful of less aggressive elements in the Social Democrats and factions of the Communists, favored joint action with German ultranationalists, who she viewed as more revolutionary. Karl Radek, a fellow KPD member who agreed with Fischer's strategy, called for a united front of Communists and "Revolutionary Nationalists" against "Western imperialism," delivered a Moscow diatribe to the Comintern during June 1923 which became known as the Schlageter Speech:

“	The German Communist Party must openly declare to the nationalist petty bourgeois masses: Whoever is working in the service of the profiteers, the speculators, and the iron and coal magnates to enslave the German people will meet the resistance of the German Communist Party which will oppose violence with violence... We believe that the great majority of the nationalist-minded masses belong not in the camp of the capitalists but in that of the workers. We want to find the road to these masses, and we will do so. We will do everything in our power to make men like Schlageter... not spill their eager, unselfish blood for the coal and iron barons, but in the cause of the great toiling German people, which is a member of the family of peoples fighting for emancipation.	”
—Radek in his "Schlageter Speech"

Ultranationalists subsequently extolled the Schlageter Speech, with völkisch activist Ernst von Reventlow publishing articles in Rote Fahne, a KPD paper, in addition to gaining the praise of Joseph Goebbels. The Social Democrats soon seized upon Radek's speech as evidence of "collusion of the Communist and fascist leaders." Fischer, leader of the KPD in Berlin, admitted as well that the manifesto was a proposition for a united front with ultranationalists. However, Radek himself stubbornly insisted otherwise, pointing to his specific denunciations of Nazis previously as the "class opponent" of the workers.

According to author Jean-Claude Favez, the Schlageter Speech represented:

“	...the extreme nationalism of the German Communist Party as well as its attempt to use any opportunities that benefited social revolution by holding the hands of paramilitary organizations and nationalists whose hatred pushed them to seek any support in the interest of their oppressed country.	”
—A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, p. 59

Fischer's violent antisemitism furthered Communist appeals to Nazis.

Radek's demagoguery continued in his fanatical ultranationalist appeal, with his Schlageter Speech calling for "hundreds of Schlageters" to join in direct collaboration with Communists, believing German nationalists should come to the conclusion that the country "can only be be freed from the bonds of slavery with the working class, not against it." Fischer made similar remarks, telling ultranationalists that "liberation" will be achieved via "the German proletariat of which you form a part, and with which you must align yourselves." Fischer also appealed to the antisemitism among German ultranationalists in a virulent speech:

“	You cry against Jewish capital, gentlemen? Whoever condemns Jewish capital, gentlemen, is already engaged in class struggle, even though he does not realize it. You are against Jewish capital and want to eliminate the stock manipulators. This is right. Trample the Jewish capitalists under foot, hang them on the lamp posts and stomp them out. But what do you want to do with the big capitalists, the Klöckners, Stinnes...	”
—Ruth Fischer, antisemitic KPD member

Between July and August 1923, the Communist Party of Germany held meetings and public debates with Nazis. Such resulted mass gatherings were publicized by public broadcasts which beared both a Nazi swastika and a Communist red star. According to Fischer's later memoirs, small groups were organized by Communists where socialists and nationalists met to express shared sentiment on establishing a unified German front against the French. Communist speakers asserted, "The time is not far off when the Völkische and the Communists will be united." However, the ultranationalistic appeals of the KPD failed to garner significant party traction, as the Nazis tended to continue winning over German nationalists.

Mladorossi

The Mladorossi was founded in 1923 by Alexander Kazembek, a Russian noble who had settled in Munich and later Paris following the Bolshevik Revolution. Initially an anti-communist and monarchist group, by the late 1920s it had embraced Marxism and begun advocating a hybrid system combining Tsarist autocracy and Soviet-style communism. The group was also strongly sympathetic to Italian Fascism and saw Benito Mussolini's method of governing as a model for a potential "Soviet Tsar" to follow. Kazembek even met with Mussolini on several occasions. The Mladorossi initially embraced the Nazis as well, but it later rejected Nazism as "satanic" due to Adolf Hitler's rabid Russophobia.

At its height, the Mladorossi was supported by several members of the House of Romanov, including Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (1891–1942) (who is best known as one of the assassins of Grigori Rasputin) and Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (1876–1938), the man who would've become Tsar had the monarchy been restored at that time. However the group's reputation was irreparably damaged in 1937 when Kazembek was spotted in a Parisian café speaking with several Soviet diplomats. He subsequently resigned as leader of the Mladorossi. Years later he returned to the Soviet Union permanently, and was even officially rehabilitated by the Soviet Communist Party in 1957. While it has never been confirmed whether Kazembek was Soviet agent, his actions following the Paris meeting make it likely that he was.

Following Kazembek's resignation, the Mladorossi quickly fell apart. It was forced underground in 1939 after being banned by the French government. Many of its members fought for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France, but there is no evidence of it continuing its original activities after 1944.

Niekischism

The first major National Bolshevik movement in Germany was established by Ernst Niekisch. Originally a social democrat, Niekisch shifted to the extreme left during the closing days of World War I. He was a high-ranking participant in the 1918-19 communist uprising in Bavaria, and served time in prison for his seditious activity. After the failed uprising Niekisch rejoined the Social Democratic Party (SPD). A fierce opponent of the Treaty of Versailles, he attempted to use his influence to push the SPD in a more nationalist direction. For this activity he was expelled from the party in 1926, upon which he joined the Old Social Democratic Party of Saxony, a splinter group founded by former minister-president of Saxony Wilhelm Buck (1869–1945). He again tried to push his party in a more nationalist direction, and this time he succeeded.

In 1926, Niekisch launched his own journal, Widerstand, while he and his followers adopted the name "National Bolsheviks". They saw the Soviet Union, particularly under Joseph Stalin, as being a continuation of both Russian nationalism and Prussian nationalism, even going as far as proclaiming the Soviet Union the true successor to the Kingdom of Prussia (and by extension the German Empire). They advocated the establishment of a totalitarian state along the lines prescribed in Der Arbeiter, a 1932 publication by Niekisch's close friend Ernst Jünger (1895–1998); they also advocated a Russo-German alliance against what Niekisch deemed the "decadent West."

Although an ultranationalist, an antisemite, and a supporter of totalitarianism, Niekisch rejected Nazism. In his opinion, Hitler was both too capitalist and Russophobic, and also a power-hungry demagogue who exploited the German people's grievances for personal gain. For his public criticisms of Nazism, the Widerstand paper was banned in 1934. He nonetheless continued his anti-Nazi activity, even going as far as meeting with Benito Mussolini in 1935 to discuss the possibility of Fascist Italy backing a National Bolshevik resistance movement against the Nazi regime (note that Germany and Italy were still enemies at that time). In 1937 he was arrested by the Gestapo and later sentenced to life imprisonment for "literary high treason." He was later released during the final days of World War II, because he had gone blind.

After the war Niekisch rejected nationalism entirely, and re-embraced orthodox Marxism. He settled in East Germany, but fled to the West after the failed 1953 workers' uprising, which he supported. He spent the remainder of his days in West Berlin, dying there in 1967.

Paetelism

The second major National Bolshevik movement in Germany was established by Karl Otto Paetel. A prominent leader of the Deutsche Freischar, a branch of the German Youth Movement (which can be considered a German equivalent to the Boy Scouts), throughout the 1920s Paetel recruited fellow members into a "national revolutionary" clique which sought to reconcile the ideologies of the KPD and the Nazis into a "third way" force which would compete with both. By 1930 this clique had evolved into a full-blown political organization known as the Group of Social-Revolutionary Nationalists.

In 1930 Paetel became co-editor of Ernst Junger's journal Die Kommenden. Three years later, he published his most well-known work, The National Bolshevist Manifesto, which has served as an inspiration for later National Bolshevik movements. However, his political career beyond that was short-lived. In 1935 he was forced to flee Germany after the Nazis began suppressing the Social-Revolutionary Nationalists. He was subsequently stripped of his German citizenship and sentenced to death in absentia. During the late 1930s he resided in France, continuing to write for pro-National Bolshevik journals and having his writings smuggled into Germany in hopes of co-opting elements of German society, including the Hitler Youth. When World War II began he was interned in a French prisoner-of-war camp as an enemy alien, but was later released. He managed to escape France just before the Nazi occupation began, resettling in Portugal. In 1941 he moved permanently to the United States; he would never return to Germany. Retired from politics, he dedicated the rest of his life to academic research on radical movements and social change.

Strasserism

The third major and by far the most well-known variant of National Bolshevism to emerge in pre-war Germany was Strasserism, a movement led by Gregor and Otto Strasser, with Hermann Ehrhardt and Walther Stennes playing significant roles as well. Strasserism was also the only variant to emerge directly from a political party which actually held power (in this case the Nazis), as well as the only pre-war variant which continued to have a significant following past 1945.

The Strasser brothers started their political careers as members of the Freikorps, which neo-Marxist revisionist scholars brand as "counterrevolutionary" and "far-right." While "enlisted," Gregor established and commanded the Sturmbataillon Niederbayern ("Storm Battalion Lower Bavaria"); among the people he commanded was none other than a young Heinrich Himmler. In March 1920, Gregor participated in the Kapp Putsch, an attempted coup which very nearly succeeded in overthrowing the Weimar Republic a whole thirteen years before Adolf Hitler came to power. At this point Otto had broken with his brother, refusing to back the coup and even participating in anti-coup demonstrations.

In 1922, with the Freikorps having mostly dissolved, Gregor Strasser joined the Nazi Party, rapidly rising in the ranks and within a year becoming regional head of the SA in Bavaria. He participated in the Beer Hall Putsch, for which he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison and a small fine. However, he only served a few weeks before being released on the grounds of parliamentary immunity, having been elected to the Bavarian Landtag for the Nazi-associated Völkischer Block. In 1925, having been released from prison, Adolf Hitler re-established the Nazi Party. Gregor Strasser immediately joined the newly-reformed party, and was soon followed by his brother Otto, who since the Kapp Putsch had become more radical. Within two years, Gregor had been appointed the first Gauleiter of Bavaria, as well as the party's Reichspropagandaleiter, a predecessor office to the Propagandaministerium office held by Joseph Goebbels. Several individuals who would later hold high-ranking positions in the Nazi regime also rose in the ranks under his supervision, including both Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. By 1929, Strasser was in charge of the party's organizational activities, making him perhaps the second-most powerful figure in the party behind Hitler himself.

Meanwhile Otto Strasser, a committed socialist, was dissatisfied with the Nazi Party platform. He believed that the party focused too much on ultranationalism and not enough on socialism. He appealed to his brother to use his influence to move the party to the left on economics, as well as incorporate Marxist talking points into its rhetoric. Gregor agreed to help Otto, and together they established the Berliner Arbeiterzeitung ("Berlin Workers Newspaper"), which advocated turning the Nazis into a National Bolshevik movement. Among the ideas promoted in this newspaper and other written works published by Otto were:

• Abolishing large estates
• Antisemitism from an economic standpoint as opposed to a racial one
• Central planning
• Class warfare
• Decentralization of party leadership
• Guild socialist economics
• Income redistribution
• A pro-Soviet foreign policy

The brothers, with the help of Joseph Goebbels, also attempted to revise the Nazi party platform to include such ideas, but they were fiercely rejected by Hitler.

Otto Strasser continued to promote National Bolshevik ideas, and in 1930 he was forced to resign from the Nazi Party. From there he founded a splinter group called the Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists, which was more commonly known as the Black Front. Although this party never had more than a few thousand members in the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler saw them as a serious threat due to the continued presence of Strasserist sympathizers in the upper levels of Nazi party leadership. This led to increasingly strained relations between Hitler and Gregor Strasser, and despite the latter's efforts to distance himself from his brother he was forced to resign his party offices in December 1932, just weeks before the Nazis came to power. Three months later Gregor quit politics altogether, resigning his seat in the Reichstag and returning to his pre-political profession as a chemist. However, that wasn't enough for Hitler, and both Strasser brothers were targeted in the Night of the Long Knives. Gregor was killed, but Otto had fled the country beforehand.

1935–91: The World War II and the Cold War years

During the 1930s, nearly all existing National Bolshevik movements collapsed due to rapidly increasing tensions between Communism and Fascism/Nazism. The only significant National Bolshevik movement to survive this period was Strasserism, as Otto Strasser managed to escape Germany before the Night of the Long Knives and thus avoid the fate of his brother. He eventually settled in Canada, and he spent his exile writing articles on the Nazi regime and its leadership for several American, British, and Canadian newspapers. But he vowed to return to Germany and resume his National Bolshevik activism should Adolf Hitler fall from power.

During the Cold War, National Bolshevism was reduced to being a fringe idea among neo-Nazi movements and ideologues such as Francis Parker Yockey, whose writings inspired the rise of Willis Carto, a prominent racist attempted to infiltrate white supremacy into the American political mainstream through organizations disguised as right-wing fronts.

Strasserism: Round 2

Meanwhile, Otto Strasser returned to Germany in 1950. He was invited by the East German government, but instead opted to settle in the West, presumably because he believed he would have more freedom to promote his ideas there. After all, those ideas were a form of Nazism which was anti-Hitler, and Strasser may have assumed that his opposition to Adolf Hitler would be enough for the West German government to leave him alone. This (possible) assumption turned out to be correct, but his efforts to revive National Bolshevism in Germany were still largely unsuccessful.

1992–present: Resurgence

National Bolshevism has made a comeback in the post-Cold War era. In the 1990s and 2000s, multiple National Bolshevik movements arose in Russia. And in the 2010s, National Bolshevik ideas became common among the alt-right.

Limonovism

The first major post-Cold War National Bolshevik movement was established by Eduard Limonov (1943–2020). At the time an aspiring postmodernist poet, Limonov fled the Soviet Union in 1974 to avoid political persecution. From 1974 to 1980 he resided in New York City, during which he affiliated himself with followers of punk subculture and Trotskyist movements such as the Socialist Workers Party. He also wrote the first of several novels, titled It's Me, Eddie. The manuscript was finished in 1976, but wasn't published until 1979 due to multiple publishing companies rejecting it over its implicitly pro-Soviet tones. The novel subsequently became a bestseller in France, and after 1991 Russia.

By 1980 Limonov had become disillusioned with the United States, which he saw as "a damned outhouse bereft of spirit or purpose on the outskirts of civilization," and he resettled in Paris that year. Throughout the 1980s he was active in French literary circles, and in 1987 he obtained French citizenship. In 1991 he returned to Russia, and shortly afterward entered politics.

Limonov began his political career as a zealous supporter of Serbia in the Yugoslav wars. During the opening phases of the Bosnian War, he fought on the Serbian side as a foreign volunteer, and on at least one occasion did so side by side with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić. Footage of his wartime activities can be seen in Paweł Pawlikowski's 1992 documentary Serbian Epics. The footage purportedly includes Limonov firing his weapon at civilian targets, although during his lifetime Limonov accused Pawlikowski of doctoring what was actually footage of him doing target practice. Limonov also fought as a foreign volunteer in Croatia in 1993.

Back in Russia, Limonov developed a brief friendship with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. From July to December 1992 Limonov served as Minister of Security in Zhirinovsky's shadow cabinet. But by 1993 Limonov had become disillusioned with Zhirinovsky, whom he saw as too moderate. Later that year he founded the National Bolshevik Party, the first National Bolshevik movement to incorporate the term into its name. His deputy was Aleksandr Dugin, a former Communist who had split with party leader Gennady Zyuganov, presumably because of the latter's reluctance to include more ultranationalist content in the party's platform, which Dugin had helped draft. The National Bolshevik Party, unlike previous National Bolshevik movements, explicitly sought to merge Stalinism with Nazism, right down to its flag being visually similar to the Nazi flag, with the hammer and sickle replacing the swastika. However the party often had difficulty balancing its extremist elements, to the point where many third party observers were and still are unwilling to acknowledge it as a true syncretic movement. Russian media has consistently labeled it as far-left, while Western academics have consistently labeled it as neo-fascist.

Over time, the party became increasingly associated with youth counterculture, probably due to Limonov's pre-1991 background. The party also attracted a significant number of artists, punk musicians, and rock bands. By 1998 Dugin had had enough of what he believed was the party's insincerity. He and Limonov had a falling out, and the former resigned his party offices to form his own movement. The two remained bitter enemies until Limonov's death in 2020, with Dugin accusing Limonov of being a double agent who sought to bring a color revolution to Russia, and Limonov accusing Dugin of being a subversive who tried to hijack the party and turn it into a purely fascist one.

After Dugin and his followers broke away, the party began to decline. In 2001, Limonov was sentenced to a prison term for conspiring to start an uprising among Kazakhstan's ethnic Russian population; he was released in 2003. While in prison he rejected totalitarianism, and after his release he changed the party's platform to focus on opposition to Vladimir Putin from a far left perspective. This in turn led to further defections to Dugin's camp. In 2007 the party was banned by the Russian Supreme Court for engaging in extremist activity. At the time of the ban, the party had more than 56,000 members. Limonov refounded the party as "The Other Russia" in 2010, but it was never formally recognized as a political party by the Russian government, even after Limonov became more supportive of Putin following the outbreak of the Ukraine War. Limonov died in 2020, having largely lost control of the movement he started.

Duginism/Fourth Political Theory

Dugin in the 2010s.

After Dugin broke with Limonov, he established his own variant of National Bolshevism. Many foreign analysts refer to his ideology as "Eurasianism," but that term has also been used to describe movements that have nothing to do with National Bolshevism, and for that reason use of the term to describe his ideology on this site should be avoided. Dugin himself refers to his ideology as "The Fourth Political Theory" in the 2009 manifesto of the same name.

Unlike Limonov's variant of National Bolshevism, "The Fourth Political Theory" expands beyond Marxist-Fascist synthesis and incorporates both geopolitics and the existentialist philosophies of Martin Heidegger, specifically the concept of Dasein. A core tenet of Dugin's philosophy is the geopolitical strategy laid out in his 1997 manifesto Foundations of Geopolitics, which can be seen as a counter to Zbigniew Brzezinski's manifesto The Grand Chessboard. Dugin's preferred geostrategy includes but is not limited to (1) a Russo-Iranian alliance; (2) removing Germany, Japan, and Turkey from the American sphere of influence and then forming alliances with the former two; (3) encouraging expansionist foreign policies by China, Germany, and Turkey; (4) containing the United States, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia to the point where they cannot project their influence outside their borders, and if necessary destabilizing them from within; and (5) promoting anti-American ideologies on a worldwide scale (especially National Bolshevism of both the Duginist and Niekischist variants; non-Wahhabi Islamism; Arab nationalism; Arab socialism; Japanese ultranationalism; and Maoism).

The main promoter of Dugin's ideas is the Eurasia Party, which Dugin founded in 2002. The party's platform can be viewed here. Dugin's ideas are also popular among the Russian military establishment, as well as some factions of the alt-right.

Quasi-Nazbol movements

In addition to the above movements, there are others which can be described as "Quasi-Nazbol" due to their strong sympathies with the other end of the political spectrum. These movements include the following:

Reconciliation: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

For a more detailed treatment, see Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

The Socialist Reich Party

Following the defeat of the Third Reich there was a resurgence of National Bolshevik thought among former Nazis, who would no longer have to worry about facing political persecution at the hands of Adolf Hitler and his loyalists. One such former Nazi was Otto-Ernst Remer (1912–1997), a former Wehrmacht major general who played a vital role in defeating the July 20 plot, an attempted coup against the Nazi regime which nearly resulted in Hitler's assassination. In 1949 Remer, together with fellow former Nazis Fritz Doris (1910–1995) and Gerhard Krueger (1908–1994) co-founded the Socialist Reich Party, which claimed to be the legitimate successor to the Nazi Party.

The Socialist Reich Party refused to recognize the legitimacy of the West German government, deeming it a puppet of the United States. However it stopped short of condemning the East German government, or the Eastern bloc in general. This is because from the party's perspective the United States was the greater evil in the Cold War, as it was the Western Allies who had spearheaded Germany's post-war division. The party received funding from the Soviet government during the early 1950s, while Otto-Ernst Remer even went as far as calling for West Germans to collaborate with Soviet forces in the event of a Soviet-American war. Despite this the party failed to gain much traction, at its peak consisting of just 10,000 members and holding just two seats in the Bundestag. In 1952 it was banned by the West German government, and its members went their separate ways.

See also

• Communism and Nazism
• National Globalism
• Prussian Landtag referendum
• Berlin transport strike