Anton Drexler

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1884–1942 ○ Natural causes

Railway toolmaker who founded the German Workers’ Party, forerunner of the Nazi Party, and lost its chair to Hitler in 1921

In July 1921 Hitler tendered his resignation and demanded to replace Drexler as party chairman with dictatorial powers; Drexler gave way and was moved to the purely symbolic position of honorary president.

Born in Munich, he worked as a machine-fitter and then a railway toolmaker. During the First World War he joined the far-right German Fatherland Party, and in 1918 formed the Political Workers’ Circle with Karl Harrer of the Thule Society. In January 1919 he and Harrer founded the German Workers’ Party, at whose meeting that September he noticed Hitler’s oratory and invited him to join; the party was renamed the Nazi Party in 1920. When Hitler threatened to quit in July 1921 unless given dictatorial powers, Drexler surrendered the chairmanship and was moved to the symbolic post of honorary president. After the party was banned in 1923 he sat in the Bavarian Landtag for the Völkisch Bloc. He rejoined the Nazi Party in 1933 and died in Munich in 1942.