ABSTRACT
In November 1923 Adolf Hitler entered Landsberg prison; he remained there until his release in December 1924. Some German right-wing politicians, including several prominent members of Hitler’s own party, had been strongly in favour of a German-Russian alliance, in continuance of Bismarck’s policy. There was an even more basic factor which in Hitler’s eyes precluded any alliance: a National-Communist Russia would be very anti-German. To establish the ideological genealogy is of importance; Hitler’s and Rosenberg’s ideas on Eastern Europe were not some startling, new, unheard-of, development, altogether without precedent; their antecedents can easily be traced for at least two generations back. While Hitler was in prison the leaderless National Socialist movement split into several factions. Some Bavarian Nazis decided to follow a more radical left-wing line, mainly in order to attract Communists; there was some vague idea of a division of labour between the extremes.
