The National Socialist Program

The National Socialist Program, also referred to as the 25-point program or 25-point plan was developed to formulate the party policies of, first, the Austrian German Workers Party (or DAP) and was copied later by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party. It is an amalgamation of demands that would be typically associated with various different (and antagonistic) political trends. It was first developed in Vienna, at a German Workers Party congress, and was brought to Munich by Rudolf Jung, who was expelled from Czechoslovakia. Josef Pfitzner, a Sudetenland German Nazi author, wrote that "the synthesis of the two great dynamic powers of the century, of the national and social idea, had been perfected in the German borderlands [i.e. Sudetenland] which thus were far ahead of their motherland." The National Socialist program also contained a number of points that supported democracy and even called for wider democratic rights. These, like much of the program, lost their importance as the Party evolved, and were ignored by the Nazis after they rose to power.

Background: At the time this program was written, Czechoslovakia and Austria did not exist as separate countries. They both existed under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The programs of the Sudetenland and Austrian National Socialists developed under the Habsburg monarchy and in one single country at the time. Different German Worker parties developed in Vienna, Aussig, and Eger. Hitler and the other leaders that would later play a major role in Nazi Germany were not involved in the creation of the original National Socialist programs, a fact which explains the differences between these programs and the actions of the German Nazi Party.