Von den Schützengräben zur NSDAP. Kriegskultur und Politisierung der nationalsozialistischen Reichstagsabgeordneten

Abstract

Abstract What was the main reason for German people to join the Nazi Party? In the historical literature, the First World War has been often depicted as a major explanation: the conflict is supposed to have created a »war culture« that would have led to the political mobilization of many Nazis. An analysis of the national-socialist members of the Reichstag between 1919 and 1933 does not contradict this hypothesis. Indeed, 80 percent of NSDAP MP‘s were war veterans. Nevertheless, in other parties too, an enormous proportion of delegates were veterans. Actually other particularities can be identified among Nazi members of the Parliament. The combination of these factors with the war experience can provide a more thorough and realistic picture. Therefore the NSDAP had not the monopoly on war experience, but the one on youth and war experience. The Nazi MP‘s were ten years younger than the other fractions of the Parliament. Moreover, a higher part of them were career soldiers, and soldiers‘ sons. They were also more attached to the countryside, by birth, profession, their fathers‘ professions or the subjects they decided to study. All these criteria lead to question the usual excessive focus on war experience. The Nazi political commitment was much more complex.