6. Continued Defeats, Financial Ruin, and Schleicher's Strategy. Timothy Ryback discusses how the Nazi party continued its decline, suffering losses in Thuringia and facing severe financial ruin, estimated to be 90 million Reichsmarks in debt. A desperate push for a majority in the small state of Lippe in January failed, though Hitler publicly declared it a triumph. Simultaneously, Chancellor Schleicher, the political mastermind, actively negotiated with Gregor Strasser. Schleicher aimed to break apart the NSDAP by detaching Strasser's socialist faction from Hitler's hardliners (Goebbels and Göring), thereby creating a stable, centrist coalition. Strasser was acting to save the National Socialist Movement through compromise, not to betray Hitler.
1933
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