University presentation

1. NaziActivism
Charlotte Moore

2. “Since the inception of the Nazi
Party, social scientists have
attempted to define its nature in
terms of its membership. Scholars
have described the party variously
as a class movement, a regional
movement, an anti-urban revolt
against modernity, a generational
revolt, even as a collection of
losers, cut-throats and criminals.”
Paul Madden

3. Who voted
for the Nazi
party?
Around 40% of members of the
NSDAP seem to have been of
working-class origins; similarly
40% of the Nazi votes came
from from workers in July
1932.

4. The problems
and issues
Cannot be claimed to be 100% accurate.
Issues with defining white collar worker and
blue collar worker.
Imprecise terminology within source data
meaning results inevitably have a degree of
imprecision.
Data lacks extra information required for
contemporary social class analysis.
Regression analysis works only if strong
statistical assumptions are met by the data.
No guarantee for a total elimination of bias.

5. The voting behaviour of unemployed -
unemployed worker (Arbeiter) & employee
(Angestellte):1932J = July 1932 Reichstag election;
1932N = November 1932; 1933 = March 1933
Who voted for the
NSDAP?
Brustein and Mai explains that
many of the Nazi party's promises
would meet the needs of the
working class, such as guarantee
of job creation, autarky and the
extension of social and economic
security.

6. NSDAP share amongst those eligible to vote:Arbeiter = worker;
Nicht-Arbeiter = non-worker
Bullock, Bracher and
Knauerhase believed the
standard person who voted
for the nazi was young, male,
protestant and a member of
the middle class.
Who voted for the
NSDAP?

7. "We Workers Have
Awakened. We're
Voting National
Socialist."
July 1932 election poster shows
the German worker, enlightened
through Nation Socialism towering
over his opponents.

8. Hitler gained widespread
support across Germany

9. Secondary
Brustein, William. The logic of evil: the social origins of the Nazi Party. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Brustein, William. And J.W. Falter. “The Sociology of Nazism: An Interest-Based Account.” Rationality and Society 6, no. 3 (1994): 369-
399.
Childers, Thomas. The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Facism in Germany, 1919-1933. North Carolina: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1983.
Falter, Jürgen. “The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions.” Central European History 23, no.
2-3 (June 1990): 225.
Falter, Jurgen W. and Reinhard Zintl. “The Economic Crisis of the 1930s and the Nazi Vote.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19, no. 1
(1988): 55.
Fischer, Conan. The Rise of the Nazis. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Geary, Dick. “Nazis and Workers before 1933.” American Journal of Politics and History 48, no. 1 (2002): 40-51.
Heilbronner, Oded. Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside: A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany. Michigan:
University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Kater, Michael H. Weimar: From enlightenment to the present. New haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.
King, Gary, Ori Rosen, Martin Tanner, and Alexander F. Wagner. “Ordinary Economic Voting Behaviour in the Extraordinary Election of
Adolf Hitler.” The Journal of Economic History 68, no. 4 (December 2008): 951-996.
Madden, Paul. “Some Social Characteristics of Early Nazi Party Members, 1919-23.” Central European History 15, no. 01 (March 1982): 34.
Madden, Paul, Detlef, Mühlberger. The Nazi Party: The Autonomy of a People’s Party, 1919-1933. Switzerland: Peter Lang Publishing,
2007.
Mühlberger, Detlef. Hitler’s Followers: Studies in the Sociology of the Nazi Movement. London: Routledge, 1991.
Mühlberger, Detlef. Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920-1933: Vol. 2: Nazi Ideology and Propaganda. Oxford: Peter Lang
Publishing, 2005.
Mühlberger, Detlef. The Social Bases of Nazism, 1919-1933. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
O’Lesskar, Karl. “Who Voted for Hitler? A New Look at the Class Basis of Naziism.” American Journal of Sociology 74, no. 1 (1968): 63-
69.
Stachura, Peter D. “The NSDAP and the Working Class, 1925-1933,” in Towards the Holocaust: Fascism and Anti-Semitism in Weimar
Germany, ed. Michael Dobkowski, 131-154. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983.
Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. Nazism in central Germany: The Brownshirts in ‘red’ Saxony. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999.
Szejnmann, Clause-Christian W. “The Rise of the Nazi Party in the Working-Class Milieu of Saxony” in The Rise of National Socialism
and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany, Conan Fischer. New York: Berghahn Books, 1996.
Primary
The Betrayal of the German Worker, VB, No. 224, 28 September 1926.
The Immediate Programme for Creating Employment. Issue 23 of the ‘National Socialist Library Series’, VB, No. 49, 18 February 1932.