WHO WERE THE NAZIS?
THE NAZI MACHINE

Although the NSDAP came to power through elite intrigue its mass support gave it crucial bargaining power in its dealings with this group. Although the combined vote of the SPD and KPD was greater than that of the NSDAP in every free election except one (July 1932), the popularity of Nazism was undeniable for by July 1932:

with a voting strength of 13,700,000 electors, a party membership of over a million and a private army of 400,000 SA and SS, Hitler was the most powerful political leader in Germany, knocking on the doors of the Chancellery at the head of the most powerful political party Germany had ever seen.

How was this achieved? One area to consider is propaganda.

THE GRAND LIE: THE ROLE OF PROPAGANDA

The Nazis took an absolutely cynical approach to propaganda which, "though crude and violent in form, utterly unscrupulous in substance, and quite indifferent to truth, was managed with an agility and sophistication..." Göbbels, the master of this art declared "Propaganda has only one aim, to win the masses. And any means that serve this end are good." Hitler similarly described propaganda as:

a means to an end... propaganda is no more than a weapon... its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect... The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small.

In particular, Hitler placed great emphasis on the use of the grand lie:

in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility, because the broad masses of a nation... more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their head to fabricate colossal untruths and they would not believe hat others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously... The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down.

There were two opposite trends in Nazi propaganda which at first sight appeared to be mutually exclusive, but in fact were complementary. On the one hand there was the attempt to divert attention away from social reality and any rational thought. The highest point of this pseudo-religion was the Nazi slogan: "Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler".

On the other hand, there was the reverse approach - "the differentiation of target groups" using carefully judged appeals, which despite all protestations to the contrary, addressed economic interest and class. All sorts of promises were made to a range of groups. The army would throw off the shackles of Versailles, students would have their educational efforts rewarded by well-paid jobs, the young would see a dynamic new party in action while the old would witness a return to traditional values. Unmarried women would find a husband and be accorded high status, while men were told women would be put in their place - Kirche, Küche, Kinder - at church, in the kitchen and with the children. Civil servants jobs would be secured yet taxpayers would pay less through reduction of state officialdom. Farmers would be able to charge higher prices, while consumers would get cheap food. These disparate groups each had a Nazi section dedicated to cultivating their support, from the Hitler Youth to the Nazi Physicians' League, National Socialist (NS) Society of German Jurists, NS Students' League, NS Teachers' League and so on.

WOOING THE WORKERS

Great efforts were made towards winning the working class. It is even claimed that "contrary to previous assumptions, the working class rather than the middle class was the chief target group of NSDAP propaganda until 1932". The initiative for this propaganda effort towards workers came in the mid-1920s from North German Nazis operating in an area much more industrialised than Bavaria. An example of such propaganda was this statement of Strasser's:

We are socialists, we are enemies, deadly enemies of the present economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its unjust means of reward, with its immoral valuation of people according to their possessions and money... and we are resolved to destroy this system in all circumstances."

Göbbels went still further: "We want to make a socialistic national state out of Germany... We want justice. We are no charitable society but a revolutionary socialist party." Stennes, an SA leader who eventually fell out with the NSDAP, published a newspaper called Workers, Soldiers, Peasants, in direct imitation of the Russian Soviets. One Nazi factory bulletin had the inexplicable title The Revolutionary and the subtitle 'The Militant Voice against Fascism'! During April 1932, in the important Prussian Landtag election, the Nazis' slogan was "Work, Freedom, Bread". This was also the motto of the SPD. In 1924 it had been used by the KPD and was obviously reminiscent of the Bolshevik slogan "Peace, Bread, Land".

In July 1928, in Göbbels's Gau of Berlin, the National Socialist Organisation of Factory Cells (NSBO) emerged. This claimed to stand for "the genuine trade union idea for which the National Socialists must prepare the way." By 1929 the NSBO had been officially adopted as a NSDAP affiliate and in 1931 was launched the "Hib-Aktion" or "into the factories" strategy. As part of this NSBO members participated in strikes. When 40,000 metalworkers were locked out in Bavaria in March 1931 one of its leaders declared: "If we German workers want to see our strike efforts really crowned with success, then the only way is through a General Strike...". Between April 1932 and January 1933 the NSBO claimed to have participated in 117 different strikes.

Before getting the impression that the Nazis had suddenly been converted from fundamental counter-revolution, Hess's fund-raising tour of businessmen, at the very time the NSBO was being established, provides the necessary antidote.

Hess had less to say that he had to show. He pulled two sets of photographs out of his pocket: one set consisted of turbulent revolutionary scenes (Red flags, mass demonstrations of Communists); the other showed marching Stormtroopers, SA men falling in for roll call, the SS with their select "human material" - in short, formations of "discipline and order."

He passed these two sets around among the assembled businessmen, waited patiently until they had all seen them, and then spoke. He uttered at most ten sentences, along the lines of: "Here, gentlemen, you have the forces of destruction, which are dangerous threats to your counting houses, your factories, all your possessions. On the other hand, the forces of order are forming, with a fanatical will to root out the spirit of turmoil... Everyone who has must give lest he ultimately lose everything he has!

Turner makes great play of the way businessmen were frightened by Nazism's radical rhetoric. But this was relative. It did not prevent the NSDAP being invited to be part of the "National Opposition" or the Harzburg Front of right-wing pro-capitalist forces. It did not prevent the donation of millions of marks, or the friendship of the bourgeois press. Clearly sections of the upper class were either able to see through the smokescreen and ignored the radical rhetoric or were calmed by Hitler's periodic assurances of his real counter-revolutionary intentions.

The unscrupulous dishonesty of the Nazis and their promises of absolutely conflicting policies to different target audiences could have curious results. This was illustrated by the clash between the Nazi workers' organisation, the NSBO, which claimed it was not a strike-breaking organisation, and the SA, which clearly was. On more than one occasion NSBO members themselves became victims of the strike-breaking activities of the SA, while an employer at a striking AEG factory described the behaviour of Nazi employees in this way: "One group showed itself more radical than the Communists and perfectly prepared to smash the machines, the other group by contrast acted as strike-breakers."

Nazi radicalism, even when directed towards workers, was given a particular twist. It started with genuine grievances as the hook, but reeled supporters in to reactionary politics. Ordinary members might get involved in strikes, but the leaders' aim was to blunt workers' action. For example, during the Berlin transport strike of late 1932 the Volkische Beobachter declared:

The strike today is the last resort of men who wrestle for their lives and the lives of their families. Only when those responsible for the system of impoverishment... have been dismissed, is the way free for the National Socialist Reich under the leadership of Adolf Hitler... And under this state the strike will have become superfluous as a means of struggle.

THE MIDDLE CLASS IN NAZI PROPAGANDA

Despite its heterogeneous and self-contradictory character, there was a reactionary core appeal to be found in much Nazi propaganda. Guerin describes it as a form of petty bourgeois anti-capitalism "quite different from socialist anti-capitalism":

Fascism thus kills two birds with one stone: on the one hand it flatters the middle classes by becoming the faithful interpreter of their most reactionary aspirations; on the other, it feeds the working masses, and particularly those categories of workers lacking class consciousness, with a utopian and harmless anti-capitalism that turns them away from genuine socialism.

The fact that the Nazis put out "catch-all" propaganda does not mean the Party was a neutral institution for two important reasons. Firstly, the Nazis privately admitted that their propaganda did not reflect their actual nature. "As Göbbels himself remarked with cynical candour, even the German people would never have voted for the Nazis if it had known what they intended to do." Secondly, Nazi propaganda could not ignore the reality of class. Much propaganda was framed with specific class groupings in mind, even if the cumulative aim was to win maximum votes overall and even that which claimed to be above class in reality targeted mainly the middle class.

ANTI-SEMITIC PROPAGANDA

We have already considered the link between anti-semitism and counter-revolutionary thought in Nazism. However, another issue arises. To what extent did the Nazis gain a mass following through anti-semitism? If this was the vehicle by which the NSDAP won support from other parties, then the view of Nazism as primarily a racist rather than a social/class phenomenon would be justified.

In fact, the role of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda before 1933 was surprisingly restricted. This does not mean that there were not disgusting publications such as Streicher's grotesque and pornographic Der Stürmer. However, until after the assumption of power, when its circulation soared to almost 500,000, it was a minor publication, which even provoked opposition among Nazi ranks. A survey of NSDAP members' and their reason for joining found 60% of respondents making no reference at all to anti-semitism, while 4% openly expressed disapproval of it in terms such as this: "Only their statements about the Jews I could not swallow. They gave me a headache even after I had joined the party."

Analysis of Nazi posters in the period from 1928 to 1932 has revealed the following:

Enemy groups targetted by NSDAP posters, 1928-1932

The subjects chosen for front page headlines in the official daily, the Volkische Beobachter between the crucial July 1932 election and Hitler's installation in power, confirms the picture:

Subject matter of lead headlines in Volkische Beobachter (Berlin edition) 1 August 1932 to 30 January 1933

Kershaw argues that "anti-semitism was quite secondary to Nazism's electoral success" and "the main appeal of the NSDAP [lay] in its claim to be the most powerful adversary of Marxism and the most radical and forthright exponent of the belief in national and social renewal (the 'national community' idea, which was itself of course in essence outrightly anti-Marxist)."

The majority of Volkische Beobachter headlines crudely combined the demand for power with counter-revolution: "Papen's cultivation of Bolshevism alarms the world"; "the government fails to take seriously action against Bolshevisation of Germany by the bullyboys of the SPD and KPD"; "Where bourgeois reaction rules Marxism thrives. Where Marxism thrives, the people are ruined.". Others insisted that "We hunger while the bankers earn millions" and stressed the Nazi plans for job creation. The emphasis was very much on contrasting the government, portrayed as a "posh gentlemen's club" with "the will of the people"

The Nazis may have claimed that they were a protest movement against society. In fact, hatred against organised workers was the central pivot of Nazi propaganda. The aspects of "society" they protested against were the high level of workers' organisation. The economic crisis itself was blamed on the workers and the "November system" which their revolution had inaugurated.

It is now necessary to ask how important was Nazi propaganda to its success? One view emphasises: "The incredible success of this conglomerate of ideas" and their "astonishing effect". This showed "inspired handling of new techniques of opinion-making. But at the same time, it was a truly religio-psychological phenomenon." If such statements are correct Nazi success was not class-based but due to media manipulation.

The 1930 Reichstag election, which saw the NSDAP emerge from obscurity to become the second largest party, is a good test of whether such an assessment is accurate. A study of the Swabian district of Günzburg has shown that "despite the limited propaganda effort in this locality, the NSDAP made massive gains." Indeed, the party "scored its greatest successes in the small communities which had been relatively neglected in its campaigns as far as meetings, marches, and the usual propaganda razzmatazz was concerned." The impression that propaganda played a less than decisive role is echoed by several historians: "In the agrarian-rural regions the NSDAP succeeded more than the average without having a particular organisational and propaganda presence... Although there was practically no party organisation in the South Hesse Dreieich District, the NSDAP achieved peak returns of up to 28 per cent."

If propaganda was not always instrumental in mass conversion to Nazism, this suggests that the ideological groundwork for the movement was prepared within German society rather than being won by the brilliance of media technique: "it was not that the NSDAP won over their voters, but rather that the voters sought out their Party" Further reinforcement for this view comes from the fact that the Nazis did not begin using their lying propaganda in 1930 but long before, yet they remained a marginal sect. It was social crisis and consequent class polarisation that was the driving force behind its growth, not a sudden display of propagandist genius.

NAZI VOTERS

So the focus must shift to the question of who was susceptible to Nazism and who was resistant. Oceans of ink have recently been spilt claiming it was a "catch-all" party. Complex computer calculations have been performed on election results and membership data; local studies, regional studies, analyses of individual groups have been devised to justify this position.

Let us begin with national election results. To clarify matters party support has been grouped under four major headings - 1. the left parties, mainly supported by workers; 2. the Catholic parties, backed by a cross-section adhering to that religion; 3. the parties with mainly middle class support excepting the NSDAP and; 4. the bourgeois and petty bourgeois votes plus the NSDAP.

NATIONAL PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS, 1919-1933 (IN PERCENTAGES)

Given the extraordinary upheavals that rocked German society from the 1918 revolution, through the roaring twenties, to the depths of the Depression, these voting patterns are far less volatile than might have been expected. There were three great political blocs - workers, Catholics and middle class. Let us consider each in turn.

For the left parties, hopes aroused by the revolutionary period 1918-1923 produced radicalisation of sections of white collar workers and broke down barriers between the social groups. But when hope of radical change evaporated support was reduced to the core working class. From then on the vote remained fairly constant at a little over one third of the total. Though voting is a highly passive expression of views, given the almost unbelievable ineptness of the SPD and KPD leaders (the subject of the next chapter), this resilience is remarkable testimony to the dogged determination of millions of workers to stay loyal to their traditional parties. Indeed, the actual number of left voters increased by 800,000 between 1928 and July 1932 (although the left's percentage share declined because of a larger poll).

The Catholic parties, gathering votes across the social spectrum, retained an almost unchanging level of support of just under one fifth because of the durability of religious affiliation.

The third group of parties, which embodied varieties of middle class supporters, showed the most internal fluctuation. Once the revolutionary wave of 1918-1923 had passed, its share of the popular vote stood in the middle to upper 40% region. However, the portion going to the non-NSDAP segment plummeted from a total share of 41.7% to just 10.4% between May 1928 and July 1932. Where did the 30% or so of votes go? Barring the improbable scenario that masses of these voters suddenly veered to Socialism or Communism at the same time as equal numbers of KPD and SPD voters switched to Nazism, the evidence for a redistribution of votes within the bloc is overwhelming. It supports the view that from 1930: "The National Socialists were, as representatives of middle class political demands, flesh of flesh of the German middle class movement." The NSDAP were the beneficiaries of an electoral movement away from traditional middle class parties.

A tendency in this direction was visible even before the Nazi electoral breakthrough in 1930 with the growth of the "others" category shown in the above table. Since the hyper-inflation traditional middle class loyalties were crumbling. "Others" included bodies such as the Real Estate and Homeowners Party, the Reich Association for Revalorization, the Tenants Party and the Reich Party of the Middle Class whose titles betray their class character. Childers writes that:

Individually these splinter parties were small and insignificant, but together they had outpolled the two liberal parties and almost matched the conservatives... These parties spoke for a sizable segment of the bourgeois electorate which had been alienated by the traumas of the inflation and stabilization period... Without the destabilization of traditional voting allegiances within the middle-class electorate, the spectacular rise of National Socialist fortunes after 1928 is hardly conceivable.

At this point it is necessary to briefly discuss the concept of class. The voting pattern shown in Table 1 arises from class identification, something which is subjectively determined. This in itself does not fully settle the nature of Nazi support. Historians who describe Nazism as a "catch-all people's party" use different criteria to prove their point on the grounds that it is not possible to determine class simply by party allegiance. They employ an alternative perspective, considering class in its objective aspect - not what people considered themselves to be, but what they were in reality.

This is a valid approach.

WORKING CLASS VOTERS

Returning to the statistics for Germany; while the evidence for the NSDAP being a mainly middle class electoral force is irrefutable from the point of view of "subjective" political identification by its voters, it remains to be seen whether the same is true when the alternative approach is applied. A popular view today has been promoted by Falter who suggests that "Contrary to received beliefs... a particularly marked resistance by workers in general or industrial workers in particular towards National Socialism, does not seem to have any empirical foundation".

However, his evidence disproves his own case. First there is his the definition of a "worker" which is that of the census and was extremely wide. Consequently, as he admits:

The range of living and working conditions concealed behind the collective term 'worker' was huge... The foreman who had worked in the same Württemberg family firm for thirty years was as much a 'worker' according to the census as the young labourer in an Upper Silesian ironworkers, the homeworker... or the daily help in a villa in Berlin-Zehlendorf.

The definition is so broad that it cannot produce valid conclusions about the working class. As Manstein observes: "To proceed with the theme 'the NSDAP was backed by the workers' almost amounts to a clumsy conjuring trick: attention is focussed on the industrial working class, while the rest are concealed from the analysis..."

If a Marxist understanding of class is used to break Falter's statistics into meaningful categories such as "agriculture", "handicrafts", "industry" and the "service sector" a clear pattern emerges: "The higher the proportion of agricultural workers in the electorate the better the NSDAP's performance". With workers in crafts and industry "the position is exactly the reverse", while the service sector occupies a middle position. Out of the broad definition of "worker" the group least likely to vote Nazi was the industrial worker, the most likely - the agricultural worker.

Other influences can be observed: the larger the town the smaller the proportion of NSDAP votes. Unemployment gave "a remarkable degree of immunity from the NSDAP..." Falter finds it "quite astonishing" that "in all elections after 1930 the NSDAP fared on average, significantly better where unemployment was lower and vice versa. The contrary is true for the Communists." The mass unemployment of the early 1930s struck workers with much greater force than white collar employees. Those classified as workers constituted half of the population but made up over four fifths of the unemployed. So how did the mass unemployment of the crash influence support for the Nazis? Falter continues: "Voters for Natinal Socialism must have been mainly people who felt threatened by unemployment and the radicalisation of many unemployed to the left..."

The only significant factor that cuts across the class issue is Catholicism. The Catholic vote, much of which was centred in Southern Germany, had been hardened into mistrust of the centralised German state in Bismarck's day. Consequently, "the NSDAP had a much harder time of it [in] Catholic areas."

Alas, Falter concludes from this evidence that Nazi "electoral successes were nourished by so many different sources, that the NSDAP [was] socially balanced." Apart from Catholicism (which offered a cultural allegiance resistant to external challenge), is there not a distinct class pattern in Falter's figures?

There was a spectrum of responses to Nazis appeals. The strongest rejection came from industrial workers, living in larger towns and most prone to unemployment. In-between were those working in the craft or service sector, in medium sized towns and less affected by unemployment; finally come the least resistant - agricultural or rural labourers living in small communities.

How big was the core working class, that group which fitted the pattern of most resistance to Nazism? Official figures from 1925 show that 17 million people (or 53% of the economically active population) were officially classified as "workers" using the very broad census definition. Of these 11 million (or 34% of the population) were wage workers 'in capitalist enterprises'; 7 million of these (21% of the population) were in enterprises employing more than 50 people.

It would be ridiculous to say that every industrial worker withstood Nazi propaganda and voted SPD or KPD. Much depended on the actions of those parties as to whether they could retain worker loyalty and it is difficult to imagine that either the SPD or KPD could have pursued worse strategies than they actually did. Even so, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the consistent mid-30% of the electorate which supported workers' parties roughly coincided with a core of industrial workers (employed and unemployed) identified above. Equally, while there will have been many Nazi voters classified as "workers" by official data, these will have tended to come from groups on the margins, at points where working class shaded into the middle class, or from isolated sections with little or no contact with labour organisation.

MIDDLE CLASS VOTERS

Here too a class pattern was visible. It has commonly been assumed that the Nazis "gave the most blatant expression to the fears and prejudices of the middle- and particularly the lower-middle-classes", while leaving the most respectable pillars of society relatively untouched. The reality was different. Just as the pattern in the working class could not have been deduced from prestige or income (after all, agricultural workers were the worst paid with the lowest incomes, yet more prone to voting Nazi than industrial workers) so with the middle class the determining factor was not social standing but something more complex.

The author of the "cath-all" thesis is Childers. He considers three groups: an old middle class of artisans (often self-employed), shopkeepers and farmers; a rentier group living off petty investments and pensions; and, finally, a new middle class of white collar workers (including civil servants).

In regard to the old middle class, he notes that "well before the onset of the depression" there were signs of a NSDAP electoral advance at the expense of middle-of-the-road parties. This was the first group to show Nazi sympathies. By 1930 the Nazis had also broken through into the "rentier" vote - those who had lost their petty investments during the hyperinflation. This group overtook the old middle class in strength of commitment to Nazism to become "the strongest predictor of the National Socialist vote in July 1932."

The "lower middle class thesis" would predict that the relatively secure civil servants with their firm social status, job security and higher educational attainments would be less prone to Nazism than the "new middle class" of white collar employees, many in firms crippled by the Depression. The opposite is true:

Instead of rallying to the National Socialist banner, white-collar employees appear to have scattered their votes across the rich and varied spectrum of Weimar politics... A much stronger relationship [with] National Socialist voting... is found when one turns from the white-collar population to the traditionally conservative civil service.

Even in the turbulent and changing situation of 1932:

There is little convincing empirical evidence to support the traditional view that white-collar employees flocked to the NSDAP in 1931-32. ... Support appears to have been far more concentrated in the traditionally elitist civil service than in the socially heterogeneous but largely lower-middle-class.

White collar workers were in a different position. Before the war, as a commentator in the 1920s put it:

White-collar employees dressed better, lived in nicer homes, possessed higher quality household goods, pursued educational opportunities, attended lectures, concerts, or theatrical performances, and read good books. Their standard of living approximated that of the propertied class, not perhaps in range and freedom but in type.

However, this golden age disappeared even before the 1929 crash. Changing methods wrecked a once cosy existence through unemployment and "the enormous intensification and mechanization of white-collar work [which] results in a doubling of the energy output required..." The write added that this brutal reality clashed with "the wishful dreams of bourgeois ideologues". However, white collar workers did not move to supporting the parties of the industrial working class: "Obviously this comparison has not yet taken hold among the majority of white-collar employees..."

The white collar worker could have found common cause with the industrial working class. A sign of this was the level of white collar union organisation which, in 1932, stood at 43% of all employees, outstripping even the industrial labour force with its union density of 34%. However, the peripheral advantages of white collar employment (such as pay and holidays) over manual labour maintained a gulf which was not overcome. That it could have been overcome is proved by the evidence given earlier of trade union organisation and left-wing militancy in 1919 when socialist revolution seemed an immediate prospect. Failure to carry this through meant that the AfA-Bund, the socialist affiliated federation declined from its 48% share of the unionised white collar workers in 1920, to 33% by 1930. By contrast the DHV, which was closer to the Nazis, expanded from 32% to 41% of the total. Class development meant that the vote of the white-collar workers was disputed territory.

The same could not be said of the classic petty bourgeoisie in farming. Here the Nazis scored their most striking successes. The Depression cut farm-sale proceeds by 35% while the cost of servicing debt rocketed. In 1932 a wave of rural riots against evictions swept Schleswig-Holstein. Tax offices and town halls were burnt down or blown up. Once again, detailed examination reveals a class pattern. Heberle's contemporary study of this area found that industrial villages and working class communities "on the outskirts of the larger cities... show low Nazi and high Socialist and Communist percentages." The agricultural areas divided into two basic types - rich farms (operating in a highly commercial context or on landed estates), and the Geest consisting of small peasant family farms on the other. In the former there was a tradition of class hostility and consequent class political organisation that kept both workers and rich farmers locked into their political allegiances (SPD and DNVP). In July 1932 the Geest voted by a staggering 78.7% for the Nazis. Heberle puts this down to a weak tradition of political organisation among these middle class voters.

Before concluding this section it is important to note the change in the number of individual electors voting in Reichstag elections. These increased from 37 million in 1919 to 44 million in 1932. The Nazis did particularly well in attracting the new voters. This qualifies, but does not undermine, our general argument. The SPD and KPD followed disastrous and self-defeating policies and therefore often failed to attract those who were unorganised, new to politics, and looking for a dynamic way out of the crisis.

Hamilton's work on the social composition of different party votes lets us locate support quite precisely. Even using a broad definition of "worker", the position is clear when a comparison between the different parties is made - the SPD/KPD bloc showed a marked working class preponderance; the liberal DDP/DVP parties had a disproportionate share of new middle and old middle class support; the NSDAP occupied roughly the same social territory as the reactionary, traditionalist DNVP, inheritor of the German Conservative tradition dating back to Bismarck's time.

Social composition of votes of different parties (in percentages) in July 1932 election.

As Hamilton concludes in Who voted for Hitler?: "Support for the National Socialists in most towns varied directly with the class level of the district. The 'best districts' gave Hitler and his party the strongest support."

NAZI ORGANISATIONS

Electoral statistics show who voted for Nazism. What about those who actually joined the NSDAP and its affiliated organisations? Recently several academics have insisted on the significance of workers in the Party. In an essay entitled "A Workers' Party or a 'Party Without Workers'" Mühlberger estimates the proportion of "workers" in the NSDAP to be "40 per cent of members in the period between 1925 and the end of January 1933". The notion of the NSDAP as a workers' party is questionable.

Of course there were workers in the Nazi party, as there were in all the other parties; but this does not mean that the party had a working class character or offered workers a real political home. The testimony of the Gauleiter of Hamburg, though impressionistic, brings this out. He writes that despite the "socialist" elements the NSDAP put to the German worker:

he wouldn't buy it. Even in the public meetings he was hardly to be seen... except when he showed up as a part of the heckling squads organized by both Marxist parties. And among the actual party membership, workers played no role at all down to 1930-31, except for a few rare instances.

If social composition does not directly determine the political character of a party (especially one as non-democratic as the NSDAP), it does tell us about the sort of person a party tends to attract, an important issue in itself. Many different historians have considered Nazi party membership, and while the criteria used vary, the pattern conforms to that seen in the electoral statistics. Kater provides information for 1933, comparing those who joined the NSDAP that year and the general population:

Percentages of NSDAP joiners in 1933 and general population

So compared to the general population, workers were under-represented by almost half (44%), the lower middle class was over-represented by one third, while there was a fourfold over-representation of the elite (438%).

As with the electorate, factors such as the distinction between industry and agriculture or urban size play a part. In Germany as a whole those employed in industry and crafts outnumbered those in agriculture by a ratio of 8:5. Yet within the NSDAP (in July 1932), the ratio was 3:5 Again, the larger the town, the weaker the Nazi membership. One striking feature was the very low proportion of women who joined the NSDAP. Between 1925 and 1932 they formed just 7.8% of all joiners, falling to just 5.1% by 1933. This was partly due to the extreme male chauvinism of the NSDAP which never allowed women to occupy any position of leadership. Another feature was the young age of many of those who joined, a factor linked both to the Party's dynamic image and the lack of previous attachments amongst this section.

If workers were under-represented in the NSDAP, the fact remains that some were present. Who were they? Mühlberger provides valuable information. His study shows immediately that within the broad definition of "worker", the NSDAP's membership was skewed. In the general working population the unskilled outnumbered the skilled by two to one, yet: "unskilled blue-collar workers were a comparative rarity within the Nazi Party, accounting for less than one fifth of the total blue-collar membership." In addition there "is the consistently strong over-representation within the Nazi Party of workers associated with traditional artisanal occupations such as tool-makers, painters and decorators, bakers, butchers and shoemakers." The most strongly over-represented element of all were "workers in food preparation and processing industries... in the ratio of 3 to 1..." By contrast, "in every region" the consistently under-represented groups were likely to be in larger units more divorced from employer influence such as miners.

Though limited in the size of its sample, Fromm's survey of German workers conducted in 1931 suggests a fundamental gulf in attitude separated the between NSDAP worker and that of the left wing parties. To the question - "Who in your opinion, has the real power in the State today?" - the following answers were given (in percentages):

Another question raised the issue of individualism versus social influence on ordinary life: "Do you think the individual has only himself to blame for his own fate?" Here is the response (in percentages):

"How do you get on with your colleagues at work (in comparison with superiors)?" provided interesting answers. Nazis were more than three times more likely than Communists to have a better relationship with their superiors than their own workmates.

Nazis and left-wing workers held an entirely different world view on a whole range of issues; the key difference being that the former demonstrate an almost unquestioning acceptance of an individualistic and racist ideology, while the former held an collectivist viewpoint. If workers joined the NSDAP because they thought it was a "party of protest", it would seem clear from this evidence, that their protest had little to do with a socialist values.

This is borne out by the fact that it was not those who were the worst victims of the economic crisis who joined the NSDAP. This is not to say that the 1929 crisis did not influence the growth of the Party. Hitler held membership number 55 when he joined in 1919. Before the depression the figure stood at 96,918, but by 1933 it had reached 849,000. However, it was:

those least affected by the depression, who were attracted to the NSDAP. And among the workers it was those living in country areas, where dislocations were least likely to occur, who joined the NSDAP in greatest strength... The workers, who suffered most from the depression, continued to be underrepresented; the lower and upper middle classes, which suffered less, continued to be overrepresented.

How is this paradox to be explained? It was fear of the disruptive consequences of the crisis (and their place within that system) that seems to have motivated those who joined after 1929, not a rejection of the system which caused the crisis. This was qualitatively different to, and indeed, opposed to the arguments of the left parties and the organised working class which backed them.

Before concluding this study of Nazi membership, two specific organisations are worthy of attention - the SA (stormtroopers) and the NSBO. The SA was a vast organisation, and by the early 1930s, on occasion actually outnumbered the NSDAP's membership. Due to its function the Stormtroopers' organisation was different in key ways from its parent It was overwhelmingly composed of young men. Four fifths of its members were under 29 years of age, the biggest single group (41%) being aged between 20 and 24. Further, although precise figures are lacking, the bulk of the SA were unemployed, the proportion nearing 70%. Part of its attraction for the young unemployed, many of whom failed to qualify for any unemployment benefits, was its provision of soup kitchens, clothing - uniforms and boots, and hostels. In 1932 its units were described as being "composed solely of unemployed. For these men in particular, the creation of SA hostels was especially fortuitous. For many... these hostels became their real home."

In terms of social composition the SA was quite different to the NSDAP. Its paramilitary character meant that many of its leaders were noble ex-officers clearly distinguishable by the 'von' in their names, from the overall chief (until his replacement by Röhm), Captain von Pfeffer, to deputy leaders respectively for West, Central and South Germany - von Ulrich, von Killinger, von Obernitz. Its leading ranks also included the Kaiser's son Prince August-Wilhelm, Prince Friedrich-Christian of Schaumbeurg-|Lippe, Prince Philipp of Hesse, Duke Euard of Saxe-Coburg - and the list goes on. Among the lower ranks the situation was reversed, the presence of workers being far more significant than in the NSDAP itself. A comparison of SA members with Germans of the same age shows the following:

Occupational background of stormtroopers and for male working population, 1929-30 January 1933 (in percentages)

To a certain extent the character of the SA can be explained by the circumstances of the time and its role. Unemployment affected manual workers more severely than other sections, and many SA unemployed were attracted by food, warmth and a roof. The life of an active streetfighter (as opposed to aristocratic "commanders of men") may have been a less acceptable choice for those from "genteel" backgrounds. One difficulty in tracking social composition of young people just entering the labour market is that immediate economic circumstances may distort the picture. Although not conclusive, it is interesting to note that "many more stormtroopers' parents were apparently middle class than were the stormtroopers themselves." Finally, while a gulf separated Nazi workers from those of the organised left, it seems that the SA was sometimes an exception to this with examples of KPD members crossing over to join the SA, transfers also taking place in the opposite direction.

So the SA was more working class in composition than the NSDAP. If the general argument about the Nazis being an all-class movement were correct, then we would not expect the social distinctions between the SA and the parent body to cause tension between the two. In fact there were a multitude of differences which culminated in the bloody slaughter of the SA leadership by Hitler's SS henchmen in the "Night of the Long Knives" of 1934. Interestingly, the SS was, in social terms, largely drawn from elite social groups. However, dissent between SA and NSDAP was developing much earlier than 1934.

First of all, fewer than half of the stormtroopers actually belonged to the Nazi party. This suggests a lack of commitment to the party's aims and outlook. Secondly, the SA's ideology was rather different from that of the parent body. In one sense it is a mistake to dignify the ragbag of ideas circulating in the SA with the term ideology. If there was a greater emphasis on socialism, this amounted to little more than:

a series of passionate, radical, and often pugilistic remarks by various leaders on the necessity of smashing Marxism, the Republic, and Jews and of creating some sort of ill-defined egalitarian Volksgemeinschaft [people's community]... It was a force designed to capture and dominate the streets. Ideology mattered little in these circumstances, and the socialism it is supposed to have possessed amounted to little more than the ability to organize soup kitchens, shelter, and clothing for sections of the working-class unemployed...

There does seem to have been a vague common attitude amongst SA members: "Most were convinced that as long as the Weimar Republic's political institutions survived, and as long as the socio-economic order remained the same, they would never work again. The 'system' as they described it, had to be destroyed."

The political tensions between the SA and the NSDAP led to a number of high profile disputes. In April 1931 there was the so-called Stennes revolt. Stennes was leader of the important Berlin SA who resented that the policy of 'legality' prevented his men from fighting on the streets. When he was sacked he declared that "the revolutionary force of the SA has been saturated with bourgeois liberal tendencies" and led a forcible occupation of the Der Angriff newspaper offices, Göbbels's Nazi daily. The police were called in and Hitler sarcastically dismissed Stennes as a buffoon of "salon-bolshevism and salon-socialism... who played the role of socialist revolutionary against the capitalistically thinking [Nazi] party bosses..." The difficulties did not stop with the defeat of Stennes. The Boxheim documents caused embarrassment. Two days before the November 1932 Reichstag election an East Prussian SA leader announced: "We are ready with a million rifles. We will see a revolution after 6 November which we shall launch together with the Communists." In April 1933 disappointment with Hitler even led to an open gun fight between SA members. The KPD was wrong to imagine that such events meant that "the proletarian elements are in revolt against the capitalist leadership of the NSDAP". They were mainly expressions of impatience and wishful thinking; yet the SA, with its unusual social composition, caused more headaches for the NSDAP leaders than any other grouping under its umbrella.

If the SA was, in a sense, the exception that proved the rule of Nazism's class character, then what of the NSBO - the Nazi factory cells organisation which claimed to be closest to the working class? One writer accurately sums up the sort of workers who were attracted to Nazism in these terms:

Those industrial workers who did find their way to Hitler were invariably located, for one reason or another, outside the mainstream of working-class organizational, and ideological development, and in some instances, were drawn from the lumpen proletariat. A small labor aristocracy of skilled workers, dependent craftsmen, and workers with responsibility, such as foremen, were as likely to end up voting for Hitler as not... They were joined by another set of workers who did live in small towns or the countryside and who, if employed, were not subject to the supervisory control of a trade union or other kind of workers' group. Most of them were employed in a semiskilled or nonskilled capacity in small businesses and family concerns, such as handicrafts, where the influence of the master/owner and his family was often decisive. These workers lacked, therefore, a developed proletarian consciousness, which prevented them from identifying with the traditional working-class movement.

The notion that there was no qualitative difference between Nazi workers and the rest of the class was rejected by the unions which certainly thought there was. The NSBO's members were expelled during 1931. NSBO leaders were compelled to raise wage and other issues and pose as a "genuine trade union organisation" to retain its membership. In this limited sense it is true that to a degree "it was unavoidably driven in the direction of classical trade unionism", or rather had to pretend to be so driven. Like the SA it was prepared to use left-wing phrases such as: "Struggle for German socialism" or "only Hitler will bring you real socialism" But the Nazis cynical use of radical phraseology to win support should not be underestimated and there were other sides to the NSBO. It was conceived as a means of hitting at the root of left-wing workplace organisation. In 1932 Göbbels launched the slogan "No workplace without a Nazi cell". The target was the trade unions, not the employers, as proved by the fact that bosses' organisations, often anti-union in the extreme, requested that the NSBO recruit the unorganised. The Arbeitgeber (Employer) journal writing shortly after Hitler's assumption of power bemoaned the fact that the NSBO, as "a quite new weapon of the movement... has still be rewarded with the full fruits of its work... The bulwark of Marxism in the workplace has been shaken, but it is still not annihilated."

How much support did the NSBO enjoy in the working class? Though slow to take off, by the beginning of 1933 the figure had risen to 294,000. Despite claims to the contrary this was fewer than the Communists' union wing, the RGO and a mere fraction of the SPD affiliated ADGB:

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF TRADE UNION MOVEMENTS

The puny size of the NSBO was also reflected in elections to factory councils. At a time when the Nazis had gained 18.3% of the vote in Reichstag elections, in factory council elections the NSBO won just 710 of the 138,418 representatives (or 0.51%)!f In Berlin, where Göbbels, the propaganda wizard was Gauleiter, in 1931 the ADGB won the election of 6583 stewards; the RGO 733; the NSBO just 36. In the metal industry the NSBO took just 1.74% of the mandates. The NSBO counted the Ruhr among its "successes". In 1931 it managed 4.1% of the mandates, compared to the RGO's 29% and ADGB's 36.4%. Even after the Nazi government was formed the council elections of early 1933 gave the NSBO' a derisory 7.7% of the total vote.

However, if the NSBO had failed to make major inroads into the organised working class, it is notable that its few successes confirm the middle class dimensions of Nazi support already described. Firstly, the NSBO found it easier to build among white collar sections than industrial labourforces, taking a 30.2% share of the vote in workplace elections in early 1933. Secondly, among blue collar workers it influenced those who lacked a tradition of organisation. The Ruhr collieries were an example. Here there was a low union density with only 60,000 of the 415,000 miners in the ADGB (in 1927) and just 2,000 Communists. By March 1933 the NSBO was scoring up to 55% in pits like the one at Dinslaken. The fact that the pit was owned by Thyssen, the pro-Nazi businessman was probably a factor.