Sources
Piper, Ernst: Alfred Rosenberg: Hitlers Chefideologe, München 2005.
Tyrell, Albrecht: Vom Trommler zum Führer, München 1975.
Anton Drexler (13.6.1884 Munich – 25.2.1942 Munich)
Founder of the DAP, co-author of the NSDAP party program, bearer of the Order of Blood
Anton Drexler (r.) und Rudolf Schüssler in der Geschäftsstelle der NSDAP im Sterneckerbräu, Aufnahme von 1925. | BSB, hoff-6673
Anton Drexler, the son of a railroad worker, was employed as a machinist in the main railway workshop in Munich starting in 1902. He joined the German Fatherland Party in 1917. Together with the journalist Karl Harrer, he established the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich on January 5, 1919, with a socialist, anti-semitic, and nationalist orientation and assumed the leadership of the party.
In August 1919, Drexler published the pamphlet My Political Awakening. After the DAP was renamed the Nazi Party on February 24, 1920, his ideas were also incorporated into the party's new 25-point program.
In 1921, Adolf Hitler took over the leadership of the Nazi Party, and Anton Drexler served only as honorary chairman of the Nazi Party until 1923. This also diminished his immediate influence in the party. During the party ban in 1924, he was one of the leading members of the Ethnic-Chauvinist Block in Bavaria and a member of the state parliament until 1928. Due to differences with Hitler, Drexler did not participate in the re-founding of the Nazi Party in 1925, but instead joined the National Socialist People's League.
After 1928, he was no longer politically active until he rejoined the Nazi Party after it seized power in 1933. He was awarded the 'Order of Blood' in 1934 for his role in the early history of the party. In 1937, Drexler's pamphlet My Political Awakening was reissued and exploited by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. However, Drexler no longer managed to exert any political leverage before his death in 1942.