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The father of true 'National Socialism' was T.G. Masaryk, and none other.
In about 1887 he delivered a crushing attack on Marxist Socialism, his main arguments being that it was wrong because it was international and anti-Christian. He inspired, by these arguments, Klovacs, a young Czech labour leader and Socialist member of the Vienna Parliament, who about 1892 seceded with the Czech workers from the Socialist Party in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire because the leadership of that party was 'Jewish, international and German'. In 1897 Klovacs founded the first National Socialist Party in the world. T.G. Masaryk had a few years earlier founded his Realist Party, of which he was the only member in the Vienna Parliament. This united with Klovacs's party and Masaryk became president of this first National Socialist Party until his death, with Edouard Benesh as his second in command.
About 1903 the Sudeten Germans took up Masaryk's idea and founded a second, German National Socialist Party in the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Jungand Knirsch, both members of the Vienna Parliament. In 1907 the Austrians followed suit, with a third, Austrian National Socialist Party. From these Czech, Sudeten German and Austrian models, the Bavarians in their turn took over the idea in 1917, when Harrer and Anton Drexler formed the Bavarian National Socialist Party, the fourth in the line of direct descent.
The guiding principle of all these parties was Masaryk's original one: Christian and national socialism, as opposed to anti Christian and international, or super-national, Marxist socialism.
Hitler, the destroyer of the idea, intercepted the process in 1919 when, at the bidding of Roehm, he attended a meeting of the little Bavarian party, subsequently gaining control of it by purchase. He changed the whole idea and outlook of the party under the influence of Italian Fascism, which had a quite different history and other antecedents, and was inspired by Communism.
Hitler turned the National Socialist movement into 'Hitlerism'; in its original form it was something entirely different. Nor was Hitler, as he claimed in Mein Kampf, the party's 'seventh member'. Apart from the other, earlier parties, the Bavarian one already had several hundred members when this Mephisto was sent to report on it and became the seventh member of its executive committee, in charge of publicity.
Thus national socialism, as Otto Strasser continued in search of it, was quite unlike what Hitler later made of it, but in 1923 Strasser could not foresee that. He later explained what he sought in his book, The Structure of German Socialism, published in 1930. It joins up with original and genuine national, Christian socialism, and was then, and remains today, fully consistent with all his words and deeds; although he has changed the name to Solidarism, he has not sensibly changed the content, which is summarized later in this book. It is a political theory deriving directly from Masaryk's idea, as developed by Strasser's own life and experience.
In 1923 he could not know what this newcomer Hitler would do with national socialism. Nobody knew, for the thing had not been put to the test. Then something happened to make him wonder if he had been right in his distrust of the new man, Hitler, and to awaken in him the hope that the party led by this Hitler might, after all, lead to the Christian, national socialism which he sought.