10 Flashcards
What types of people did the Nazi Party appeal to?
‘The Nazis (NSDAP) and the Communists (KPD) gained electoral support during the Depression vears, but the Nazis were far more successful than the communists in broadening their appeal. Before 1929, the Nazis core support came from the lower-middle class, the Mittelstand. Their support among this group - white-collar workers, small shopkeepers, independent craftsmen increased after the Wal Street Crash, but their main gains were among the broader middle class and the farmers. The Nazis were very adept at exploig the widesnread discontent among farmers by promising higher prices and protection against imports. Their success with farmers is shown by the results in some rural constituencies in 1930, where they secured 68 per cent of the vote in one district in north-west Germany. The Nazis also attracted increasing support from the middle class, who were worried by the perceived threat of a communist revolution and were disillusioned with established middle-class parties such as the DVP and the DNVP The Nazis did well amongst young voters and women. In geographical terms, the Nazis were strongest in the Protestant north. east and centre of Germany but were less successful in the atholic south and west.
July 1932 Reichstag election NSDAP vs KPD vote share
NSDAP:37.3%
KPD:14.3%
1932 Presidential election and result
Hindenburg had been elected President in 1925 and his seven-year term of office ended in 1932, by which time he was 84 vears old. He was reluctant to stand for election again but was persuaded to do so. As in 1925. his main opponent on the left was Thälmann of the KPD. Hitler was reluctant to stand against such a conservative icon as Hindenburg but eventually he decided to do so. There was also another right-wing candidate, Theodor Duesterberg. In the first ballot, Hindenburg fell just short of the 50 per cent of the vote needed for outright victory. This triggered a second ballot in which Duesterberg was no longer a candidate. Hitler rented an aeroplane and flew all over Germany, presenting himself as a national saviour. Although Hindenburg won in the end, with 53 per cent of the vote, Hitler received nearly 37 per cent of the vote in the second ballot. In some rural areas, Hitler received more votes than Hindenburg. Soon after the presidential election there were state elections
in many areas, the results of which confirmed the Nazis status as the most popular party.
Working class vote in this period
The working class made up nearly half of the electorate and their votes were, therefore, crucial in the electoral battle between the Nazis and the communists. Since 1919, most working-class voters in large industrial centres, especially trade union members, had supported either the SPD or the communists, and this pattern continued through the elections of the early 1930s. The communists made gains at the expense of the SPD. but their support was largely confined to large cities. The communists were strongest in the poorest areas of cities such as Berlin, especially among the unemployed.
This does not mean, however, that the Nazis failed to attract any working-class voters. Indeed, in the 1930 election, about 27 per cent of Nazi voters were manual labourers.
Nazi success change 1930-32
Over the course of the three elections between September 1930 and July
1932, the Nazis more than doubled their electoral support. The communists also
made gains but were unable to appeal to voters beyond their traditional core supporters. the Nazi Party became the main party of protest by winning support amongst all classes and generations, and across different regions of the country.
What image did the Nazis present?
As the economic crisis in Germany deepened, society became more polarised and the political system tailed to provide governments equal to the situation.
The Nazis projected an image of decisiveness and energy, and offered the prospect of change. Their appeal was based on a number of factors
Factors of Nazi appeal
Nazi ideology
Importance of Hitler
Role of anti-semitism
Role of propaganda
Origins of Nazi ideology
Hitler and the Nazis put forward a wide-ranging but loose collection of ideas which, when assembled, might be described as an ideology. Nazi policy was first put forward in their Twenty-five Point Programme of 1920, which was still
officially the statement of their aims in 1933 even though Hitler did not agree
with many of its points. While he was in prison after the failed, Hitler started writing Mein Kampf, his most complete statement
Nazis, 1932
of his ideas and aims. His ideas were not original, nor were they coherent or consistent, as he modified his policy statements according to the audience he was addressing. The book was also not widely read before 1933.
The power of will
Hitler presented himself and the Nazi movement as being a force for change in Germany: ‘If one has realised a truth, that truth is valueless so long as there is lacking the indomitable will to turn this realisation into action’ (Hitler, 1922).
Nazi propaganda claimed that power, strength and determination to succeed were quandes personitied by Hitler. The Nazi movement, with its parades of Stormtroopers (SA, presented an image of discipline and unity that would sweep all opponents aside.
Struggle and war
Struggle, violence and war were at the heart of Nazi thinking and actions
Hitler defined his outlook in terms of struggle and claimed scientific justification for his view that struggle and conflict between races was part of the natural order of things. War, he believed, would reconstruct German society and create a new German Reich through conquest and the subjugation of other races. Nazi propaganda, therefore, glorified the military virtues of courage, loyalty and self-sacrifice, and the SA was projected as an organisation that gave German males the chance to demonstrate their manliness.
A racial community
The concept of a people’s community, or Volksgemeinschaft, was a key element in Nazi ideology. Although it was never defined very clearly, Hitler
advocated a state based on a racial community. Only Aryans could be citizens of the state: all others were to be denied the rights of citizenship and its benents, and would be treated as mere subiects of the state. Within the ‘real community of the people there would be no social classes and al Germans would have equal chances to find their own level in society. Al would work together for the good of the nation, thereby demonstrating their commitment common ‘German values, and in return would benent from access to
employment and welfare benefits
Nazism thus aimed for a cultural and social revolution in Germany. The obiective was to create a new man and a ‘new woman. individuals who would have awareness ot the importance of their race, the strength of character to work unselhishly for the common good, and the willingness to follow the leadership in the pursuit of their aims. Yet this revolutionary ideology was essentially backward-looking. When the Nazis talked of a ‘people’s community, they wanted to return to a romanticised, mythical German past before the race had become polluted with alien blood and before industrialisation had divided society along class lines. Their Volksgemeinschaft would be based on ‘blood and soil - that is, on the German peasants who they believed had retained their racial purity and their traditional values more than city dwellers.
A national socialism
The Nazis adopted the title National Socialist German Workers’ Party
(NSDAP In an attempt to gain working-class support, but at the same time to differentiate themselves from the international socialism of the Communist Party. The points laid out in the Twenty-Five Point Programme were economically radical and were similar to many of the anti-capitalist policies of the communists and the socialists. They called, for example. for the confiscation of war profits, the nationalisation of large monopoly companies and the confiscation of land from the large estates without compensation to the landowners. Hitler, however, never fully committed to these radical aims and modified his message according to the audience he was addressing. Increasingly, after 1929, Hitler sought the support of wealthy businessmen such as Hugenberg and Fritz Thyssen, and was at pains to reassure them that a Nazi government would not threaten their interests.
Hitler used the word ‘socialism’ loosely, in a way that might appeal to working-class voters. In his view, socialism and the Volksgemeinschaft were one and the same thing: To be national means to act with a boundless all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly, to be social means to build up the state and the community of the people so that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people.
Who was Fritz Thyssen?
Fritz Thyssen 1873-1951) was chairman of the United Steelworks
Company and one of the early financial backers of the Nazi Party.
He joined the Nazi Party in 1931
and acted as a link betseen the party and big business interests
By the late 1930s, however, he had become highly critical of the regime’s economic policies. He
opposed the outbreak of war and fled the country in 1939.
The Führerprinzip
Hitler set out to destroy the Weimar Republic because it was a parliamentary
democracy, a system he viewed as weak, ineffecave and allen to Germany s
traditions or strong, authoritarian government. He also Deneved that parliamentary democracy encouraged the growth of communism, in his opinion an even greater evil. He argued in a speech in April 1922:
‘Democracy is fundamentally not German: it is lewish. This lewish democracy, with its maiority decisions, has always been only a means towards the destruction of any existing Arvan leadership. Weimar democracy, established at the end of the First World War was regarded by the Nazis as being based on a betrayal, in which the November Criminals had stabbed the German army in the back. As such. it should be destroved and replaced by a dictatorship, a one-party state run on the basis of the Führerprinzip (the principle of leadership).
The Führerprinzip was the basis on which the Nazi Party had been run since 1925. Within the party, Hitler had supreme control over policy and strategy, and party members became subordinated to Hitlers will
Agressive nationalism
As a German nationalist, Hitler had three main aims:
to reverse the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles - which he described as an instrument of unlimited blackmail and shameful humiliation - and
restore to Germany those lands taken from
to establish a ‘Greater German Reich’ in which all Germans would live within the borders of the state
to secure for Germany its Lebensraum to settle its people and provide it
with the food and raw materials needed to sustain it as a great power, since
*only an adequately large space on this earth assures a nation its freedom of
This was an aggressive form of nationalism. Hitler did not merely want to restore Germany to its borders of 1914 but a so to expand the territory of the Reich. This would involve a war of conquest to secure Germanys Lebensraum in the east, which was justified by Hitler’s racial theories and his belief in the necessity of struggle.
