National Socialist Economic Policy

Gottfried Feder born on January 27th, 1883, in Wurzburg, Germany and died on September 24th, 1941, in Murnau. He was a German political activist who was the principal economic theoretician of the initial phase of German National Socialism. Feder, a civil engineer, gained notoriety in 1919 for his book 'Manifesto for Breaking the Thralldom of Interest, and his speech before a German Workers' Party meeting at Munich in September of that year provided the immediate inspiration for Adolf Hitler's entry into politics. Feder's socialist and anti-capitalist ideas subsequently found expression in Adolf Hitler's 25-point program for the National Socialist German Workers' Party (N.S.D.A.P.) in March 1920, as well as in Feder's own book, 'German State on the National Socialist Foundation', considered by Hitler to be "The catechism of the National Socialist movement." Between 1924 and 1936 Feder sat in the German Reichstag and served as chairman of the N.S.D.A.P. economic council in 1931, state secretary of the German Ministry of Economics in 1933, and state housing commissioner in 1934. With the general accommodation of National Socialist policy to the existing economic system. However, Feder's role in party affairs drastically diminished, and by 1936, he had been relegated to virtual obscurity.