German Fatherland Party
독일조국당
A short-lived far-right political party active in the German Empire during the last phase of World War I. It rejected the Reichstag Peace Resolution of July 1917, which called for a negotiated peace without annexations.
In depth
Backed by the Pan-German League, it was founded on 2 September 1917 by Heinrich Claß, Alfred von Tirpitz, Wolfgang Kapp and others, with Tirpitz as chairman and Kapp as his deputy. The first attempt at extra-parliamentary mobilisation of the right, it had more than 1.25 million members at its peak in the summer of 1918. It is considered the first attempt at cooperation between the traditional Wilhelmine right and the militant nationalists of the interwar extreme right, and it played a significant role in spreading the stab-in-the-back myth. The November Revolution effectively ended it. Anton Drexler, later founder of the German Workers’ Party that became the Nazi Party, was among its members.