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The NSDAP/AO was the Foreign Organization of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). AO is the abbreviation of the German compound word Auslands-Organisation (English: Foreign Organization). Although it would be correctly written in one word, the Nazis chose an obsolete spelling with a hyphen.

The party members who lived outside the German Reich were pooled in this special NSDAP department. On May 1, 1931 the new organizational unit was founded on the initiative of Reich Organization Leader (German: Reichsorganisationsleiter) Gregor Strasser and its management was assigned to Dr. Hans Nieland. But Nieland resigned from office already on May 8, 1933, because he had become head of the Hamburg police authorities in the meantime and later on a member of the Hamburg provincial government. Hereupon Ernst Wilhelm Bohle was appointed director of the "AO", that served as 43rd Gau of the NSDAP.

In 1928 the first party members joined forces abroad in Paraguay and in Brazil. Similar associations came into being in Switzerland and in the United States in 1930. These groups had been officially accepted by NSDAP only after the foundation of the Auslands-Organisation: On August 7, 1931 Local Group Buenos Aires, shortly afterwards National Committee Paraguay (August 20, 1931) and Local Group Rio de Janeiro (October 5, 1931). From 1932 until its prohibition in 1934 there existed a national committee in the Union of South Africa, which enjoyed great popularity (see German Namibians) and maintained numerous offices in former German South-West Africa (today Namibia). NSDAP Local Groups (German: Ortsgruppen) comprised 25 party comrades (German: Parteigenossen) at least, so called Stützpunkte (English: bases) had 5 members or more. Furthermore, big Local Groups could be partitioned into Blocs (German: Blöcke).

Ideological training and uniform orientation of all party comrades on the interests of the German nation were the principal tasks of NSDAP/AO. Only Imperial Germans (German: Reichsdeutsche) with a German passport could become members of the AO. Persons of German descent, so called ethnic Germans (German: Volksdeutsche), who possessed the nationality of the country in which they lived, were refused access to the Nazi Party.

In Sweden

NSDAP/AO had a Landesgruppe Schweden. During the first years of the Second World War it was led by W. Stengel, but the leadership was later taken over by the German diplomat Heinz Gossmann. There were several ortsgruppe in different parts of Sweden, such as Göteborg, Borås, etc..^[1]

See also

• NSDAP/AO (1972)

References

Bibliography

• Balke, Ralf: Hakenkreuz im Heiligen Land : die NSDAP-Landesgruppe Palästina. - Erfurt : Sutton, 2001. - 221 p. : ill. - ISBN 3-89702-304-0
• Ehrich, Emil: Die Auslands-Organisation der NSDAP. - Berlin : Junker u. Dünnhaupt, 1937. - 32 p. - (Schriften der Deutschen Hochschule für Politik : 2, Der organisatorische Aufbau des Dritten Reiches ; 13)
• Farías, Víctor: Los nazis en Chile. - Barcelona : Seix Barral, 2000. - 586 p. : ill., ports. - ISBN 84-322-0849-3
• Gaudig, Olaf: Der Widerschein des Nazismus : das Bild des Nationalsozialismus in der deutschsprachigen Presse Argentiniens, Brasiliens und Chiles 1932 - 1945. - Berlin ; Mannheim : Wissenschaftlicher Verl., 1997. - 538 p. - ISBN 3-932089-01-4. - (Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral) - Berlin, Freie Univ., 1994/95). - EUR 57,00
• Jong, Louis de: The German fifth column in the Second World War / translated from the Dutch by C.M. Geyl. - Rev. ed. - London : Routledge, 1956. - 308 p. : maps. - (Translation of: De duitse vijfde colonne in de tweede wereldoorlog)
• Lachmann, Günter: Der Nationalsozialismus in der Schweiz 1931 - 1945 : ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP. - Berlin-Dahlem : Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft, 1962. - 107 p. - (Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral) - F.U. Berlin, Dec. 18, 1962)
• McKale, Donald M.: The swastika outside Germany. - Kent, Ohio : Kent State Univ. Press, 1977. - xvi, 288 p. - ISBN 0-87338-209-9
• Moraes, Luís Edmundo de Souza: "Konflikt und Anerkennung: Die Ortsgruppen der NSDAP in Blumenau und Rio de Janeiro." Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2005. 296 p. - ISBN 3-936411-63-8 (Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral) - Berlin, Technische Universität/Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, 2002)
• Müller, Jürgen: Nationalsozialismus in Lateinamerika : die Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP in Argentinien, Brasilien, Chile und Mexiko, 1931 - 1945. - Stuttgart : Akademischer Verlag Heinz, 1997. - 566 p. : ill. - (Historamericana ; 3). - ISBN 3-88099-672-5. - (Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral) - Heidelberg, 1994/95). - EUR 34,50
• National Socialism. Basic principles, their application by the Nazi Party's foreign organization, and the use of Germans abroad for Nazi aims / Prepared in the Special Unit of the Division of European Affairs by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens, Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland. - Washington : United States of America, Department of State, 1943. - pp. vi. 510.

External links

NSDAP/AO official website NSDAP/AO (RNE) in Russia

• Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, 90th day, Monday, 25 March 1946, testimony of Ernst Wilhelm Bohle (search for "bohle")
• 6. Reichstagung der Auslandsdeutschen in Stuttgart vom 28. August bis 4. September (1938) Film of a the 6th Congress of the NSDAP/AO in Stuttgart, 1938