On 8 and 9 November 1923 the NSDAP held a party in Munich to attempt to launch a putsch, inspired on Mussolini’s March On Rome a year earlier. On the morning of 9 November they held a march to rally support. However a confrontation with soldiers followed and ended in a firefight, which killed 4 soldiers and 16 party members. Later, on 1 April 1924 Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in jail. In the end he was only imprisoned for about 8 months, during which he wrote his famous book Mein Kampf (My Struggle).[1]
In this book he set out one important goal, namely the unification of all German speaking people into one empire, the Third Reich. The first one was the Holy Roman Empire and the second one was created after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and disbanded after WWI.
The other goals set was to create Lebensraum for all Germans, and to make sure only the Aryan race lives inside the Reich. Which basically means that all other races, mainly the Jews and Slavic peoples like Czechs, Poles and Russians would have no place there.
Directly after the putch the NSDAP was banned. In April 1924 various members created the Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei (NSFP) to continue with their nationalistic ideology. Fronted by former General Erich Ludendorff, during the May 1924 elections, the NSDAP gained 6.5% of the votes which counts for 32 seats in the Reichstag. Later in the year, on 7 December, the party only got 3% of the votes, or 14 seats.
On 27 February 1925, the NSDAP was reformed after the ban expired in January. The NSFP was then reabsorbed into the NSDAP.
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