Gottfried Feder’s influence on the early NSDAP’s ideas on economic and state policies and Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Abstract

Gottfried Feder was one of the most influential radical right-wing activists in Bavaria during the first years after the First World War. His slogan “Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft” (“Breaking the Slavery of Interest”) became widespread within the right-wing and anti-Semitic movement in Germany and was at the core of its anti-capitialist agitation. By 1925 Feder had published several articles, booklets and books in which he called for an abolition of interest on war bonds as a first step towards the general abolition of interest. Furthermore, he developed a scheme for a future German state founded on national and social principles. But as Feder was ambivalent in his stance towards the National-Socialist Party and to Hitler he never managed to turn his ideological influence into political agency. While Hitler praised Feder and his economic theses considerably in Mein Kampf, a deeper reading of the text shows that Hitler did not depend on Feder’s ideas as much as is commonly believed.