The NSDAP in Hanover and Lower Saxony 1921-26

Abstract

After the national-socialist accession to power, many branches of the movement composed accounts of their development. For Hanover, the relevant documents of the local NSDAP were compiled by the two co-founders, Bruno enzel and Gustav Seifert: their historical accounts, early correspondence with headquarters at Munich, and information relating to other NS groups in the region, are now held in the West German National Archives at Koblenz (file NS 26/141). These documents are concerned mainly with the period from the foundation of an NSDAP group in the city of Hanover to the Putsch in November 1923; for the Gau Hanover between January 1925 and the autumn of I926, material exists in the Lower Saxon Archives in Hanover itself, which also has a copy of a history of the movement in the city of Hanover (file 3Io G/I). These sources together cast an interesting light on the national-socialist movement in North Germany in its formative years. A strong impression is left that its activities were so little controlled in real terms from party headquarters in Munich that it almost seems as though two separate organisations existed. In this gap lay the seeds of the difficulties experienced by Hitler in bending the northerners to his will in 1925-26, when efforts were being made by some in that area to produce a more detailed, and more radical, programme for the party.l This does not, of course, imply that Hitler had not been recognized as leader in Hanover in 1921-25, but rather that the control and supervision exercised from the South was looser than it might have been, especially in the period before the Putsch. It would seem that Hitler was more intent upon building firm bases in the South, especially in Munich, than