Ben Wilson

So he had developed this 25-point program, which is the 25 principal things that the party is trying to accomplish.

And at Bamberg, he declares, look, 25-point program is invulnerable.

It's never going to be updated.

It's never going to be changed.

Foreign policy is going to orient eastward toward conquest, not towards alliance with the Bolsheviks.

So this is really important to unify the party and bring everyone together.

Now it is difficult because a lot of the intelligentsia of the smartest and most impressive members of the party were sort of oriented in a Strasser right direction.

They weren't necessarily followers of his cause he didn't have the same personal magnetism of Hitler and he hadn't accomplished what Hitler had, but they liked some of these ideas.

In fact, after this meeting.

When he says, hey, you know, anyone who doesn't agree with the 25-point program is out of the party.

Strasser's got to go.

He's on the outs, you know, whatever.

After this meeting, Joseph Goebbels, who becomes one of his biggest supporters, writes, quote, probably one of the greatest disappointments of my life.

I no longer believe fully in Hitler.

Okay, so Goebbels, he had kind of been attracted to Strasser's internationalism and to some of these ideas.

And so he is super disappointed by this meeting.

But Hitler senses that and Goebbels is at this point very important to the party.

And so he acts.

He sends a Mercedes to bring Goebbels to Munich, gives him a personal tour and has private conversations with him and arranged for him to speak publicly in a context where Goebbels himself could reject Strasser's draft and align himself with Hitler.

And so Hitler sees, oh, Goebbels is straying.