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The Nazis always stressed that they were an unstoppable movement, different from the parties in the Weimar “system”. Weimar, they suggested, was inorganic and mechanical, an alien intrusion into a more spiritual and race-driven German history based on the deeds of great men.
Their extremist sect, led by a stateless foreigner with a criminal record – Hitler was only naturalised in 1932 after giving up his Austrian citizenship in 1925 – succeeded in diverting several tributary streams into a fast flowing torrent. Acting in its favour was the fact it also had the religiosity of a cult, as many clergy eagerly acknowledged.
But the Nazi’s electoral history during those crucial four or five years before the dictatorship was declared was far more volatile than this metaphor suggests.
For like any political party, the Nazis suffered loss of momentum, diminishing ticket sales for meetings, falling party newspaper circulations, an exodus of members, and splits and schisms. The leader of a putative Nazi left, Gregor Strasser, even presumed to challenge the rattled Führer. The super-confident Hitler had his moments of black despair, up to and including threats to shoot himself, and many highly informed commentators believed he and his party were an evanescent busted flush.
It was against the backdrop of economic chaos caused by the crash in 1929 that the Nazis first managed to make an impact. Their vote rose from 2.6% in 1928, to 18.25% in 1930, and then 37.27% in the first of two elections (in July) 1932. In the second poll of that year (in November), though, they lost 34 parliamentary seats and their vote fell to 33.09% of the whole. And even when they could deploy the powers of the state to influence the last semi-free election, in March 1933, it is worth noting that nearly sixty per cent of Germans did not vote for them.
So who did? The single greatest common denominator was middle-class, small-town and rural Protestants in northern Germany who detested the ostentatious immorality of Berlin and other major cities. The only major Catholic exceptions to this rule were the Palatinate and Silesia where bad blood with France and Poland weakened their immune systems. Over time, the Nazis would tack Left to pick up some working-class support, and Right, to lure the upper classes, but that core vote remained.
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