Hans Oehler

Who was Hans Oehler?

Hans Oehler was a Swiss journalist and a sympathizer of Nazism.

Initially a journalist, Oehler turned his attention towards producing pro-German material. Later he was one of the founders of the Schweizerische Monatshefte für Politik und Kultur in 1921. This very quickly became the mouthpiece for the Popular League for the Independence of Switzerland, a group he had participated around the same time which opposed the League of Nations. He briefly met Adolf Hitler when Hitler visited Switzerland in 1923 and became an sympathizer of both Fascist Italy and Othmar Spann.

Although the Popular League proved to be short-lived, Oehler continued to publish SM as an outlet for his political ideas until, in 1932, he joined the New Front. 1934 he had to resign as an editor of SM because of his pro-nazism mindset. With the launch of the National Front in 1934 Oehler took charge of editing the new party's paper Nationale Front, as well as being appointed foreign affairs spokesman. Ousted from SM by the Front he founded a new paper, Nationale Hefte and by 1938 had split from the Front altogether.