You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
Understanding why, in the depths of the Depression, millions of Germans cast their votes for the NSDAP is one of the central questions of twentieth-century history. It is also a question easily misunderstood. The Nazi rise was not simply the automatic product of economic crisis, nor merely the achievement of clever propaganda; rather, it reflected the interaction of deep currents in German society, the specific catastrophe of the slump, the appeal of a charismatic leader, and the failures of the Republic's defenders and the calculations of its conservative elites. This lesson examines the ideology, organisation and electoral appeal of the Nazi movement, and asks how far its rise can be explained by long-term factors and how far by the particular circumstances of 1929 to 1933. Throughout, the subject demands a sober, analytical treatment: the task is to explain a movement whose ideology and consequences were monstrous, and explanation must never become endorsement.
Key Question: Why did the NSDAP grow from a fringe movement into the largest party in Germany, and how should historians weigh ideology, propaganda, social grievance and leadership in explaining its appeal?
Key Definition: The NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers' Party) was founded in 1920 out of the earlier German Workers' Party (DAP). Despite its name, it was neither socialist in any conventional sense nor a workers' party; it was a radical nationalist, racist and anti-democratic movement that used 'socialist' rhetoric chiefly to draw support away from the left.
This lesson addresses the development and appeal of the Nazi movement within Part One of Option 2O: Democracy and Nazism: Germany, 1918–1945, the Paper 2 Depth study. It covers the specification content on the ideology, organisation, methods and electoral support of the NSDAP and on the reasons for its rise to prominence.
The movement that became the NSDAP began as one of many tiny nationalist and racist groups in the febrile atmosphere of post-war Munich, a city convulsed by the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919 and its bloody suppression, which left behind an intensely anti-communist and counter-revolutionary climate. The German Workers' Party (DAP) was founded in January 1919 by Anton Drexler, a Munich locksmith, as a small circle of nationalist agitators. Adolf Hitler — an Austrian-born former front-line soldier, embittered by the defeat and the revolution, and then employed by the army as a political informer — was sent in September 1919 to observe the group. Instead he joined it, discovered in himself a remarkable gift for demagogic oratory, and rapidly emerged as its most effective speaker, drawing ever larger crowds to the beer-hall meetings at which he denounced Versailles, the 'November Criminals' and the Jews. In 1920 the party was renamed the NSDAP and adopted the 25-Point Programme (February 1920), drafted chiefly by Drexler and Hitler. Its demands combined aggressive nationalism, racial doctrine and a strand of anti-capitalist rhetoric: the union of all Germans in a Greater Germany, the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, the exclusion of Jews from citizenship (defining citizenship in racial terms), the confiscation of war profits, and the creation of a strong central state.
The programme is revealing both for what it contained and for the tension it embodied. The 'socialist' points — attacks on profiteering, demands for land reform — appealed to anti-capitalist sentiment, while the nationalist and racial points defined the movement's true core. This tension between a 'left' and a 'right' reading of National Socialism would surface repeatedly, most importantly at the Bamberg Conference of 1926.
Exam Tip: Treat the 25-Point Programme as a source in its own right. Its mixture of nationalist, racial and pseudo-socialist demands shows how the NSDAP sought to appeal across social groups, but the racial-nationalist points, not the economic ones, defined what the movement actually was.
Nazi ideology was not a systematic philosophy but a constellation of interlocking obsessions, set out most fully in Mein Kampf and grounded in late-nineteenth-century racial, social-Darwinist and antisemitic thought. Its components reinforced one another to form what historians have called a coherent, if pernicious, worldview.
| Element | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Racial theory | A supposed hierarchy of races, with the 'Aryan' at its summit, framing Jews as a parasitic 'anti-race' |
| Antisemitism | Jews irrationally blamed for defeat, for Bolshevism, for capitalism and for cultural change alike |
| Lebensraum | The demand for 'living space' in the east, to be seized by conquest |
| Anti-communism | The conflation of Bolshevism with a supposed Jewish conspiracy ('Judeo-Bolshevism') |
| Social Darwinism | A view of life as racial struggle, in which war was natural and even desirable |
| Fuhrerprinzip | The 'leader principle': an all-powerful leader whose will was law |
| Volksgemeinschaft | The vision of a racially unified, classless national community |
| Anti-Versailles nationalism | The treaty to be destroyed and Germany rearmed and expanded |
These ideas were mutually reinforcing. Antisemitism supplied a single, all-purpose enemy onto whom every grievance — defeat, revolution, economic distress, cultural change — could be projected; social Darwinism justified the pursuit of Lebensraum as the natural right of the stronger race; and the Fuhrerprinzip licensed the dictatorship needed to accomplish these goals. The Volksgemeinschaft offered a positive, inclusive-sounding vision of national unity that was in reality defined by exclusion.
Key Definition: Lebensraum ('living space') was Hitler's concept of territorial expansion eastwards at the expense of the Slavic peoples and the Soviet Union. It became a central driver of Nazi foreign policy and led ultimately to war.
Ian Kershaw argues that, however repellent, Hitler's ideology possessed a terrible inner logic, in which the separate elements cohered into a programme. Richard Evans observes that Mein Kampf, far from concealing Hitler's aims, was a remarkably candid statement of intent — a point with sharp implications for how historians weigh the relationship between ideology and later action.
Exam Tip: Resist treating Nazi ideology as mere irrational hatred. Its danger lay precisely in its internal coherence: antisemitism, Lebensraum, social Darwinism and the leader principle locked together into a worldview that pointed logically towards dictatorship, war and persecution.
The failure of the Munich Putsch in 1923 taught Hitler a decisive strategic lesson: power could not be seized by force against the army and the state, but would have to be won, at least in form, through the ballot box and then subverted from within. This 'legality strategy' governed Nazi tactics after 1924 and shaped the rebuilding of the party into a formidable national organisation.
The reorganisation had several elements. The party was structured territorially through the Gau system, a network of regional branches under regional leaders (Gauleiter) that increasingly mirrored the electoral constituencies, giving the NSDAP a presence across the whole country. A web of specialist affiliated organisations — the Hitler Youth, the National Socialist Women's Organisation, leagues for students, teachers, doctors and others — extended the movement's reach into every social group and fostered a sense of an all-embracing community. The paramilitary SA (the brownshirts) provided muscle, marches and a visible street presence, while the elite SS, formed as Hitler's bodyguard and placed under Heinrich Himmler from 1929, began its rise. From 1930 propaganda was directed centrally by Joseph Goebbels as Reich Propaganda Leader, who brought a new sophistication and coordination to the party's campaigning.
A pivotal internal moment was the Bamberg Conference of February 1926, where Hitler confronted the more genuinely 'socialist' northern wing of the party associated with Gregor Strasser and his then-ally Joseph Goebbels. The northern leaders had pressed for a more anti-capitalist programme and even questioned aspects of Hitler's authority. By reasserting the primacy of nationalism, racial ideology and his own unchallengeable leadership, Hitler defeated the Strasserite tendency, won Goebbels decisively to his side, and confirmed that the NSDAP would be a movement of the racial-nationalist right rather than of anti-capitalist socialism. The conference also entrenched the Fuhrerprinzip within the party itself, establishing Hitler's word as final and binding on all members.
Exam Tip: The legality strategy is essential context for the events of 1932 to 1933. It explains why the Nazis pursued power through elections and ultimately accepted a constitutional appointment, and why the conservative elites could persuade themselves that a 'legal' Hitler chancellorship was containable.
The 'legality strategy' did not mean the abandonment of force; rather, the NSDAP pursued a dual strategy that combined the appearance of constitutional respectability with the reality of organised street violence. The instrument of that violence was the SA (Sturmabteilung, the 'brownshirts'), a mass paramilitary organisation that by the early 1930s numbered in the hundreds of thousands, far outstripping the regular army in size. The SA served several functions at once: it provided the manpower for marches, rallies and the projection of disciplined strength; it protected Nazi meetings and disrupted those of opponents; and it waged a campaign of intimidation and brawling in the streets, above all against the Communists, which fed an atmosphere of crisis and disorder.
This dual character was politically calculated. The street violence allowed the Nazis to present themselves simultaneously as the dynamic force of national renewal and as the only movement capable of restoring order — including order against the very chaos their own followers helped to create. The disorder of the early 1930s, to which the SA contributed heavily, strengthened the appeal of a party promising firm government, while the formal commitment to legality reassured the conservative establishment that the Nazis could be accommodated within the constitutional system. The tension between the impatient, revolutionary SA, which hankered after a violent seizure of power, and Hitler's insistence on the legal road was real, and it would resurface dramatically after 1933.
| Face of the movement | Instrument | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Legality | Electoral campaigning; acceptance of office | Reassure the elites; win power constitutionally |
| Violence | The SA in the streets | Intimidate opponents; project strength; foster the crisis that boosted the Nazi appeal |
Exam Tip: The dual strategy is a sophisticated analytical point. The Nazis benefited from disorder they themselves promoted, posing as the cure for a disease they helped to spread, while the veneer of legality disarmed the conservatives who might otherwise have resisted them.
Under Goebbels the NSDAP developed propaganda techniques of unusual sophistication for the period, designed less to argue a programme than to project an emotional impression of strength, dynamism, unity and national renewal. The methods were deliberately varied and targeted.
| Method | Detail |
|---|---|
| Mass rallies | Carefully choreographed spectacles with flags, music, uniforms and lighting to convey power and belonging |
| Posters and leaflets | Simple, striking, emotionally direct messages tailored to particular audiences |
| Newspapers | The party paper, the Volkischer Beobachter, and a network of regional titles |
| Radio and recordings | Hitler's speeches reproduced and, after 1930, more widely broadcast |
| Film | Newsreels and, later, the documentary films of Leni Riefenstahl |
| Hitler's image | Cultivated as war veteran, man of the people and national saviour |
| 'Hitler over Germany' (1932) | Hitler flown by aircraft to address rallies in several cities in a single day |
The genius of Nazi propaganda lay less in any single technique than in its flexibility and its matching of message to audience. To the unemployed it promised work and bread; to the farmer, protection and the dignity of the land; to the frightened middle class, a bulwark against communism; to the young, excitement and a cause; to the nationalist, the overthrow of Versailles. Above all it offered, amid the chaos and despair of the slump, the image of a disciplined movement that could restore order and national pride. The negative campaign was equally relentless, blaming the 'system' parties, the 'November Criminals' and the Jews for Germany's plight. Goebbels also grasped the value of repetition and simplicity, hammering a few emotive messages relentlessly rather than arguing a detailed programme, on the principle that the broad mass of people responded more readily to feeling than to reasoned argument.
Exam Tip: The crucial analytical point is that propaganda did not create grievances out of nothing; it was effective because it resonated with pre-existing anxieties intensified by the Depression. Always link propaganda methods to the social and economic context that made them persuasive.
The study of Nazism makes especially heavy demands on source evaluation, because so much of the surviving material is itself propaganda, designed to persuade rather than to inform. Consider, as a representative source type, a Nazi election poster from the early 1930s — for example one promising work and bread, or warning against the communist threat, treated here as an example of a propaganda image. How should a historian assess its value?
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.