Who voted for the Nazis?

Essentially, Hitler did come to power via the ballot box. Just as he said he would. So, of course, who voted for him and the Nazis is of great interest. In this very short piece I am going to identify some factors that you might not have thought about but which are nevertheless important. I’m not going to go into detail, I think that is not necessary for IGCSE, but I do want to get you thinking nonetheless!

An important group were the small peasant-farmers and the lower middle class because they were amongst the first to turn to the Nazis and gave the party an impetus.

In looking at votes in the 1930 election, however, you might want to consider where the voters transferred from other parties. It wasn’t from the Communists or the Catholic Centre Party so the parties of the middle classes – liberal as well as nationalist, and the other party of the working class, the SDP, are important to think about. We know that, more than any other class, the Nazi Party appealed to the lower middle class, but they also appealed to increasing numbers of the working class, despite the dominance of the Social Democrats and Communists. Indeed almost 30% of the Nazi Party’s vote came from manual workers. They had to gain votes from this class – workers and their wives constituted nearly half the electorate in Germany.

But another significant factor to consider is that in 1930 some four million voters had come of voting age since the previous election just two years before. They didn’t all vote but almost one and three-quarter million voters in 1930 were first-time voters and roughly 25% of Nazi voters were first-time voters. Young Germans voted for other parties too but nevertheless they boosted the Nazi vote.

The female vote, like the young voter, was also significant as they had increased as a proportion of the total due to the loss of life in the war. This was particularly significant for the Nazis because women voted for them in larger numbers than men. They wanted jobs for their husbands and they liked the Nazi’s policies for the family.

So I hope this very short piece gives you something to think about and perhaps helps you to add that little bit extra to a possible exam question, thereby lifting your work to a higher level.