Although Hitler placed primary emphasis in his propaganda on the “spoken word,” one of his earliest ambitions as a party leader was to own a newspaper. He succeeded in December 1920, little more than a year after he joined the Nazi Party, by purchasing a debt-ridden newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter. It had started life in 1887 as the Münchener Beobachter, a local paper serving the Munich suburb of Haidhausen. After changing names and owners several times, the paper in 1918 came into the hands of Rudolf von Sebottendorff, who was acting for the Thule Society, a right-wing, völkisch group. Early in 1920, he changed the name to Völkischer Beobachter (VB).