Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Brustein, William
• Ault, Brian

Titel

The Social Origins of Agrarian Nazism

Ist Teil von

• Political power and social theory, 1993-01, Vol.8, p.141-172

Erscheinungsjahr

1993

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The strong rural support for the German Nazi party (NP) cannot be explained solely in terms of a lower middle class protest vote theory, because there were other protest parties & the theory does not account for variations within class. It is more plausible that many rural Germans voted for the NP (not just against the Weimar parties) based on calculations of expected benefits & costs. County-level agricultural & electoral data from the July 1932 election are analyzed. After 1924, farmers experienced collapsing prices, rising debts, & a high rate of foreclosures. The NP had a specific agrarian strategy (even prior to its 1928 embracing of nonspeculative private property) to win the vote of the old middle class. The NP also addressed inheritance & resettlement & linked specific agricultural programs with Aryan virtues. Its 1930 agrarian program was particularly appealing to livestock farmers, who supported the party in greater numbers than grain farmers. The overall appeal was the promise of a better economic future & direct material benefits. 57 References. Adapted from the source document.