STRASSER, GREGOR; AND STRASSER, OTTO

born May 31, 1892, Geisenfeld, Ger. died June 30, 1934, Berlin born Sept. 10, 1897, Windsheim, Ger. died Aug. 27, 1974, Munich brothers who occupied leading positions in the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party during its formative period. Their leftist leanings and opposition to Adolf Hitler caused their downfall shortly before Hitler's accession to power. The brothers were born into a Bavarian middle-class family. Gregor joined the fledgling Nazi Party in 1920, and in 1923 he participated in Hitler's Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch; during Hitler's subsequent imprisonment, he came to head the outlawed party. Gregor was an effective public speaker and gifted organizer, and after Hitler's release he took over the party organization in northern Germany, was elected to the Reichstag (federal lower house), and soon built a mass movement with the help of his brother Otto and the young Joseph Goebbels. The Strasser brothers appealed to the lower-middle classes and the proletariat by advocating a socialism couched in nationalist and racist terminology; the Nazi gains at the polls after 1928 were partly due to their efforts. Otto, however, became disillusioned with Hitler when he began to realize that the National Socialist German Workers' Party, as it was evolving under Hitler's leaderhip, was becoming neither socialist nor a party of the workers. After Hitler began forming alliances with Germany's industrial magnates in return for their financial support, Otto left the party (1930) and organized the Schwarze Front (Black Front). Gregor, on the other hand, remained with Hitler and, by the early 1930s, was head of the Nazi political organization and second only to Hitler in power and popularity. As leader of the party's left wing, however, he opposed Hitler's courting of big business as well as his anti-Semitism and instead favoured radical social reforms along socialist lines. He finally resigned his party offices in 1932. Hitler was able to avert large-scale losses in membership after Strasser's defection, and, after Hitler's accession to the chancellorship, the brothers lost almost all their influence. Gregor was murdered on Hitler's orders during the Rhm purge of 1934. Otto managed to escape and went into exile. He finally settled in Canada. Returning to Germany in 1955, he failed in an attempt to reenter politics.