Ben Wilson

He's got to appeal to all these industrial workers who had kind of been seduced by Marxism, by communism.

So he's really emphasizing the socialism in national socialism.

Public ownership of production, expropriation of nobles, cooperation with Russia.

And so it starts to get a little uncomfortable because this doesn't totally jive with exactly the way that Hitler is pitching things.

Again, it's kind of, there are socialist ideas inherent to national socialism.

It is after all national socialism.

But how to balance that and whether it was on balance a left-wing or right-wing movement is what was at stake.

Additionally, the socialism is meant only for Germans.

Internationalism was really the issue in that, look, from Hitler's standpoint, he

If you want to have some social programs and some things that help out German workers, that's great.

But the important thing is it's a nationalist movement.

It's only about German workers.

What Strasser starts to hit on is international class consciousness and cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Hey, you know, they've got some similar ideas to us.

Okay.

So this is coming to a head.

Strasser has done a great job organizing.

He has built up this tremendous organization in northern Germany.

But it appears that he's starting to go kind of native, start to do his own thing and stray from the party line.

So Hitler travels to Bamberg and crushes the dissenters.