National Socialist German Workers' Party
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The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) is the most powerful and the only legal political party in the Greater Germanic Reich.
The party serves as a totalitarian dictatorship led by the Führer Adolf Hitler, with party chancellor Martin Bormann being the second in command and a close adviser. The NSDAP has been in power since 1933, when Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor after the NSDAP won a majority in the Reichstag elections after forming an alliance with independent and conservative parties.
Factions of the NSDAP
The NSDAP is divided into various informal political factions. These factions mainly stem from a national disagreement on who will succeed Adolf Hitler and political policies:
Control
The Control faction supports Parteikanzlei Martin Bormann's vision of a partified society. Only the most educated and dedicated National Socialists would be allowed to join the Party and mould the State's structure; those who merely pay dues and pay lip service to the Führer are excised. A radical Vanguardist fringe wants to take this further by restricting Party membership to a quasi-aristocratic elite raised from the Hitler Youth.
The Control faction's leader, Martin Bormann, is one of the four candidates to succeed Hitler as Führer of Germany. If Bormann loses the power struggle to Albert Speer, the Control faction, now led by Gerhard Klopfer, acts as Speer's main opposition within the Party.
Orthodox Reactionaries
Originally formed around Joseph Goebbels and now led by Artur Axmann, the Orthodox Reactionaries believe that German society has regressed and must be systematically corrected by returning to the 1940s, when hardline Hitlerism was the rule and reform was unthinkable.
Under Führer Speer, the Orthodox Reactionaries received some popular support from those alienated by Speer's reforms and wanted to restore hardline Hitlerism.
New Guard
The New Guard faction consists of devout Nazis within the Wehrmacht, usually veterans of World War II and the West Russian War or hawkish members of government, who plot to depose the Old Guard in the High Command and establish Nazism's primacy in the Wehrmacht. Led by Ferdinand Schörner, they rarely involve themselves in Party politics but believe that peace has made the Reich and the average German flabby and weak, unable to defend the Fatherland, so they need some discipline.
Speerites
The 'core' Speerite faction are followers of Reichsminister of Economics Albert Speer, a candidate for Hitler's successor, who has advocated for change at every level of the Reich, including the rejuvenation of the Party and expansion of individual and economic freedoms. Ideologically, they do not have many differences with more 'orthodox' Nazis, for the purpose of Speer's ideology is to save the Reich from itself, undo the failures that brought it close to ruin, and preserve Hitler's dream.
Institutional Reformists
Led by President of the Reichstag Theodor Oberländer, the Institutional Reformists are those Nazis who possess idiosyncratic views on reform, which clashes with the wider Reformist current. Oberländer is a law unto himself, with radical proposals like empowering the Reichstag Committees, expanding intra-Party democracy and relaxing racial theory and attitudes towards Eastern Europe.
After Albert Speer becomes Führer, this clade gathers those who are too distant from the Speerites but are left behind by Klopfer and the Reactionary opposition. If Speer's government collapses, they sweep into power as the Reichstag grants emergency powers to its President, effectively making Oberländer the true ruler of Germany.
Technocrats
First formed around Albert Speer during his tenure as Minister for Armaments, the Technocrats are civil servants and state functionaries who desire to downplay Party control in favour of a clade of hardline Nazi experts, who would calibrate every single component of the political machine, creating a State that is National Socialist to its bones. They have no formal leader, with the most influential members being Hans Kehrl and Rudolf Wolters. Originally dismissed as Speer's Kindergarten, the Technocrats take a leading role in Reich politics if their benefactor becomes Führer.
Party Reformists
Members of the reformist movement who hail from within the NSDAP itself, they are a weak faction initially but quickly grow in influence if Albert Speer becomes Führer and puts many members in leadership positions. Its leader Rudolf Jordan consequently seizes the opportunity to advance a program which further expands their powers placing Party men at every initiative, committee and executive body and renovates existing institutions, so they could foil intransigent members of the internal opposition. The vestigial Sturmabteilung shall be revived and transformed into a dependable power base which the Party Speerites can rely on.
Social Revolutionaries
The Social Revolutionaries believe that the NSDAP should be a vehicle to completely remake social and economic life, creating a fully corporatist economy and rolling Party and society into one, renewing or destroying old and decrepit institutions to build a new, vital national community. Originally embraced by the early NSDAP, the original Social Revolutionary tendency mostly died out after 1934 and only lives among a few old Gauleiters, among whom August Eigruber is recognised as the figurehead.
A new Social Revolutionary wing, allies of Albert Speer, has the youngest membership of any clade, consisting of right-wing students or young veterans of the West Russian War who grew up in what they called the Lost Decades of the 1950s, with war raging in the east and economic malaise at home. Rather than Hitler himself, they blame the institutions of the NSDAP, which are corrupt and overflown with fake National Socialists. Their solution is a Second National Socialist Revolution. The old institutions will be washed out or torn down and there will be no more compromises with businessmen, noblemen or bureaucrats.
Inner Circle
Members of the Inner Circle make up the internal opposition to Nazism, who came into prominence in the crises of the 1950s and seeks to turn Germany into a relatively democratic nation by slowly killing off the NSDAP, providing space for a new regime without the need for revolution. Under Führer Albert Speer, four prominent members of this group (Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Helmut Schmidt, Ludwig Erhard and Henning von Tresckow) will be appointed to his cabinet, becoming known as the Gang of Four. As their contradictions grow, the Gang will come into conflict with Speer, who wants to preserve the status quo against their wishes by 1972. If they are successful, the Gang will turn Speer into their puppet and ensure Nazism's slow death through the return of democracy to Germany. If Speer consolidates power, he sidelines the Gang by appointing co-ministers loyal to him to their portfolios. If Oberländer takes over from Speer, he will empower his own allies to revert the Gang's reforms.