World War I

Dinter took part in World War I as an Oberleutnant in an Alsatian Infantry Regiment Number 136, and was quickly promoted to Hauptmann of the reserve and awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. In 1915, he fell ill with cholera, and in 1916 he spent a great deal of time in field hospitals having suffered serious wounds, after which he had to be discharged from the military. During his stay in the field hospitals, Dinter became familiar with German nationalist and mystic Houston Stewart Chamberlain's writings and quickly became a follower of the völkisch movement.

Bestselling völkisch writer

In 1919 Dinter established himself as a writer in Weimar, after his 1917 anti-Semitic bestseller Die Sünde wider das Blut ("The Sin Against the Blood") came out, which was to sell more than 260,000 copies by 1934, and which vividly set forth in writing the stereotypes of the racial-völkisch perceptions of his time. Heartened as Dinter was by the great success, this novel became the first instalment in a trilogy later given the name "Die Sünden der Zeit" ("The Sins of the Time"). A short summary of the content of these books can be found in Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003), The Holy Reich, pp. 30–31.

Völkisch movement and the NSDAP

Dinter's thinking in the years after the war became steadily more radical and more racist. In 1919, he had already taken part in founding the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and was in its leadership until it was banned in 1922. Thereafter he became a founding member of the Deutsch-Völkische Freiheitspartei ("German- Peoples Freedom Party") and forged closer ties with Adolf Hitler. Dinter was elected in February 1924 to the Thuringian Landtag as a representative of the electoral alliance Völkisch-Sozialer Block ("Peoples Social Bloc"), becoming leader of its Landtag faction. However, in a dispute with other party members, he was removed as leader in July. He drew ever nearer the Nazi Party's position, and Hitler, while still in Landsberg Prison in December 1924, appointed Dinter the Nazi Party State Leader of Thuringia. Thuringia was the only German State that had not banned the Nazi Party after the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923.^[1] At the same time, Dinter became publisher of the newspaper Der Nationalsozialist, which appeared in Weimar. He fell out with his former associates from the VSB, leading to his expulsion from that party in December 1924. In February 1925, after Hitler had been released early from prison, the Nazi Party was re-founded after having been disbanded after the débâcle in Munich. For his "loyalty" to the Party, Dinter received the single-digit membership number "5", when re-enrolled in April 1925. On 6 April 1925 Hitler officially appointed him Landesleiter, later redesignated Gauleiter, of Thuringia.^[2]

Deutsche Volkskirche

It soon began to stand out quite clearly that Dinter's goals were not so much political as overridingly religious. In 1927 he founded the Geistchristliche Religionsgemeinschaft ("Spiritual Christian Religion Community"), which in 1934 was given the new name "Deutsche Volkskirche" (German People's Church). Its goal was to "de-Judaicize" Christian teaching. The Old Testament was dismissed as Jewish. Dinter's special course promptly led to conflict with Hitler. Dinter's views that Nazism should lead a religious reformation were increasingly unpopular in the Party, and jeopardized the religious neutrality that Hitler cultivated.^[3] On 30 September 1927, Hitler removed Dinter as Gauleiter and replaced him with Fritz Sauckel. Dinter was deeply shocked but increased his opposition, and started attacking Hitler in his magazine Das Geistchristentum. At a membership meeting on 2 August 1928, Dinter called for establishing a Party Senate to advise Hitler on all major policy issues. Hitler forcefully opposed the resolution, claiming sole leadership authority. Amid a chorus of boos, the proposal was unanimously defeated. Dinter still persisted, refusing to accede to Hitler's sole authority and continued his written attacks. This led to his formal expulsion from the Party on 11 October 1928.^[4] Even in the years that followed, the polemics against Hitler continued. In 1932, he even became the NSDAP's electoral rival, along with his "Dinterbund".

Later life

After the Nazis gained power in 1933, Dinter attempted to re-join the NSDAP in April. He was rebuffed and the Gestapo intensified its surveillance of him throughout the 1930s and even arrested him for a short while. Heinrich Himmler banned Dinter's "Deutsche Volkskirche" in 1937. Two years later the Reichsschrifttumskammer, Nazi Germany's official writers' association, expelled Dinter, effectively banning him from publishing anything, as one had to be a member to do so. In 1942, he was brought before a Special Court (Sondergericht) in Freiburg im Breisgau to be tried for violating the ban on public writing. In 1945, he was sentenced by a Denazification court in Offenburg to a fine of 1000 Reichsmark for his anti-Semitic writings which the court ruled helped provide the intellectual basis for the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.^[5]

Dinter died in 1948 in Offenburg, Baden, at the age of 71.