National Socialism and the German proletariat, 1925–1935: old myths and new perspectives

Abstract

Scholarly interest in the social composition of both the membership and electorate of the National Socialist movement before the Machtiubernahme of I 9 continues unabated, though the nature and weight of argument have undergone some significant changes, particularly during the last decade. The earliest theories about the social nature of the movement, such as those adduced by contemporary observers like Theodor Geiger and in the postwar period by Seymour Lipset and Arthur Schweitzer, lacked supporting empirical evidence.' The impressionistic view that the NSDAP was a predominantly lower middle-class party (Mittelstandspartei) was widely accepted, despite the fact that in the Kampfzeit the NSDAP progressed through various discernible phases of development which, it might have reasonably appeared, had implications for its social support, as well as its ideological and propagandistic orientation and electoral priorities, as Hitler strove to foster a mass movement capable of assuming power within the legal and constitutional framework of the Weimar state. After all, it was appreciated by scholars that the Hitlerian power strategy was perennially conditioned by the expediency of tactical opportunism. Even with the growing availability of hard data for example, from the membership lists held in the Berlin Document Center and German regional archives the debate was stifled to a considerable extent by disagreements over what methodological and interpretational models to apply to the findings. A further and enduring problem has been how to relate various occupations, especially those on the lower-middle-class/working class divide, to social class categories. An issue of fundamental importance arises from the absence among scholars of an agreed class model. Indeed, the answer of some is to argue that given the whirlpool of economic, social and political upheaval in the Weimar republic, it is simply not feasible to understand the development of the NSDAP, or any other party, in class terms.2 However, the employment of sophisticated, computer-based, quantitative methods to relevant data has allowed impressive advances to be made in our knowledge of the NSDAP's following.3