THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST ELECTORAL BREAKTHROUGH: OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITS IN THE WEIMAR PARTY SYSTEM. A REGIONAL CASE STUDY OF FRANCONIA.
Item
-
Title
-
THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST ELECTORAL BREAKTHROUGH: OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITS IN THE WEIMAR PARTY SYSTEM. A REGIONAL CASE STUDY OF FRANCONIA.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8222989
-
identifier
-
8222989
-
Creator
-
WENNINGER-RICHTER, MICHAELA.
-
Contributor
-
Danwart Rustow
-
Date
-
1982
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Political Science, International Law and Relations
-
Abstract
-
This study reappraises a number of empirical and theoretical treatments of National Socialism by social scientists. All five authors studied in this work combine general theories of political extremism with empirical investigations of the NSDAP's electoral support.;Their respective contributions are here assessed through a detailed statistical analysis of the NSDAP's partisan support in one region, Franconia. This micro-approach takes into account those special local characteristics that facilitated or impeded the NSDAP's electoral expansion; it also utilizes regional sources showing how Weimar parties, including the NSDAP, functioned at the grass roots level and were perceived by voters.;This study makes extensive use of multiple ecological regressions. This technique provided estimates of continuity and defection rates for the supporters of a given party from one election to the next. Such regression estimates helped identify which voting groups supported the Nazis and which others resisted their appeal. Rather than concentrating on Nazi electoral surges after 1932, this study examines voting for all parties and blocs in Franconia during the Reichstag elections throughout the entire period between 1920 and 1933.;This study finds that party identification did not determine partisan behavior. Franconian voters showed no long-term attachments to individual parties. But they remained surprisingly stable in their commitments to larger party blocs. Even during the Depression, extensive voter movements rarely transcended the boundaries separating Catholic, socialist and Protestant bourgeois parties. Thus the NSDAP's growth was limited by long-existing class and confessional cleavages.;The NSDAP was largely unable to penetrate the Catholic and socialist electorates. Defections to the Nazis clearly came from within the Protestant bourgeois camp. Within this bloc, the supporters of the liberal parties showed the same disposition to vote Nazi as those who backed parties of the right and special intesest parties. Nor did formerly inactive voters contribute significantly to the NSDAP's electoral surges in 1930 and July 1932. Only in March 1933 election did previous nonvoters choose the Nazis in overwhelming proportions.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Political Science
