Without hindsight,

[Boris]

Without hindsight, I would have supported the Nazis in 1932 but subsequently felt really bad once forced to tour the concentration camps by Allied occupation forces. I would have thus favored Adenauer's reparation policies as well as the liberalization of immigration laws which would welcome millions of people into West Germany regardless of their ethnic or religious background. The events of the 1972 Olympics would have brought back painful memories of 1945, with the Vietnam War and the German Autumn influencing my ideological drift to the left. By the late 1970s I would have supported the removal of all NATO nuclear weapons from West German soil. Regarded as an aged hippie with an admittedly troubled, dark past, I would have died peacefully in my sleep on a quiet, late afternoon in October 1989.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Without putting too fine a point on it, the demographics of this forum wouldn't be far off being tailor-made for Nazi electoral success. Perhaps it's more a question of who can probably be ruled out; Jewish posters, Catholic posters, lefties from working class backgrounds. Almost everyone else would be at risk, so to speak. Sobering thought?

     I'm a nonbeliever from a Catholic family. Would I be at risk?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Wasn't the NSDAP strongest in Bavaria and with elements of the working class?

[Gustaf]

No, Gustaf, I just don't feel like reading your slanderous posts accuse me of supporting genocide again. I know that as you're a moderator you're allowed to post whatever you'd like, so I'd prefer to just nip this conversation in the bud before I get infracted for calling you bad words.

If you want to try and defend the horrible positions you take with actual arguments instead of cute one-liners, name-calling or cowardly running away, there is nothing stopping you. But don't blame me just because you can't defend your own views.

-------------

Al, you're taking the purely demographic approach to it, which is a possible take. Isn't it a bit simplistic though? I mean, assuming that being upper-middle class protestant in country X entails the same values and attitudes as being upper-middle class protestant in Germany in the 30s might be a bit of a stretch.

But I am, predictably, taking a more individualist approach to this than you are.

[Torie]

I have this impression, without really knowing Germany that well, that the German as opposed to Anglo Saxon folk culture (the Anglosphere as it were), particularly pre WWII, was very different. The Anglos are much more suspicious of authority to start, and are not in love with tons of rules. This comes to my mind from talking to a Welsh magistrate in Hong Kong who has served there for about 30 years.  He said judges needed to be more circumspect in Hong Kong, because nothing they did was really challenged, and thus he felt a special responsibility to use his power more circumspectly. It was he who brought up the folk culture angle.  

So anyway, the idea that those raised in one culture, can just be teleported into another, and one can project how they would react to events on the ground, seems a highly speculative endeavor indeed.

[afleitch]

Given that I'm a gayer and stridently anti-clerical I think the Nazi's would have repulsed me. If anything given the politics of the day I could imagine myself being drawn towards the political left as my economic positions change with the economic climate but my social positions always remain firm. I can imagine myself being intrigued by Italian Fascism but very much repulsed by Falangism so if I had any sympathies at all they would have been dashed by 1936

The aesthetics of Nazism however were unintentionally homoerotic, not that eroticism of the human form was exclusive to just that movement.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The type of people likely to buy into Nazi rhetoric strike me as the same type of people who buy into the Tea Party rhetoric stuff. It's kind of the same thing, demonization of certain groups who supposedly are so hurting good hard working people like themselves...krazen probably would've loved the Nazis because they were willing to stand up to LABOR UNIONS, THE ULTIMATE EVIL OMG.

Also people who are really jingoistic and like to attack other people for things like making unpatriotic jokes, making fun of the military, etc.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Wasn't the NSDAP strongest in Bavaria and with elements of the working class?

No. In 1932 they were strongest in Prussia and the regions with 'Saxony' in the name and weakest in Bavaria and the Rhineland. Catholic areas I believe went for Zentrum or a monarchist party that had broken off from Zentrum. They were conservative but anti-Nazi for the most part. There's a pretty direct and obvious correlation between Catholicism and =/=Nazi voting on electoral maps from those elections.



Strongly Catholic areas voted against Hitler from the right (as it was perceived at the time, not necessarily in any objective sense) up until the very last election, and in that election they were still less Nazi than the rest of the country. Remember that at the time Nazism was not considered 'far-right'; it styled itself a syncretist ideology. Both the traditional left and the traditional right had reasons to oppose it at that point.

Al specified lefties from a working-class background as likely to be immune, so to speak. Those people were some of the last to succumb, although the areas they by and large lived in went before the conservative Catholic areas.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wasn't the NSDAP strongest in Bavaria and with elements of the working class?

Is it possible to be wronger about the social composition of Nazi electoral support?

(well, yes, but only if you try, I think).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Al, you're taking the purely demographic approach to it, which is a possible take. Isn't it a bit simplistic though?

It's extremely simplistic. Absurdly simplistic. But is a useful - and sobering - corrective of sorts.

[afleitch]

Catholics in Germany 1934 census



NSDAP vote in Germany 1932



So a very strong correlation between being Catholic and not voting NSDAP. However worth noting that the Zentrum Party voted through the Enabling Act which makes them somewhat passive 'HP's

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Only to the extent that all the old non-socialist parties (what was left of them by 1933) could be described in such terms.

[afleitch]

Only to the extent that all the old non-socialist parties (what was left of them by 1933) could be described in such terms.

Very true.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyways, what's this with Weimar election maps that aren't mine being posted?





etc.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=66004.0

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=103910.0

Need to add more stuff to the second thread at some point, but free time isn't what it used to be...

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Out of curiosity, did Hitler, as an individual, have any particular regional associations in these elections?

(Fun fact: Hitler wasn't actually a German citizen until February 1932.)

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Given that I'm a gayer and stridently anti-clerical I think the Nazi's would have repulsed me. If anything given the politics of the day I could imagine myself being drawn towards the political left as my economic positions change with the economic climate but my social positions always remain firm. I can imagine myself being intrigued by Italian Fascism but very much repulsed by Falangism so if I had any sympathies at all they would have been dashed by 1936

The aesthetics of Nazism however were unintentionally homoerotic, not that eroticism of the human form was exclusive to just that movement.

Beyond it making you more likely to be a member of the Left, what's the anti-clerical connection?

[SPC]

Even if my anti-authoritarianism slipped, I think my Jewish background would have precluded support for the NSDAP.