Who Voted for Hitler?

by Richard F. Hamilton

Challenging the traditional belief that Hitler's supporters were largely from the lower middle class, Richard F. Hamilton analyzes Nazi electoral successes by turning to previously untapped sources--urban voting records. This examination of data from a series of elections in fourteen of the largest German cities shows that in most of them the vote for the Nazis varied directly with the class level of the district, with the wealthiest districts giving it the strongest support.

Genres: History, Politics

664 pages, Hardcover

First published July 21, 1982

Reviews

[Brook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very detailed, very well researched. I'd guess the only text this rigorous on the Weimar Republic's voting record. Hamilton first demonstrates that prevailing myths about who is "at fault" for Hitler are completely unsubstantiated despite their domination of the academy, the leads you through the largest cities and surrounding countryside which paint a diverse picture of voting tendencies, reporting, and struggles. Whether you ultimately agree with his final analysis that the election of the National Socialists was not structurally determined (he makes a great case unless you believe that a large war was required to reset capital back into a boom phase), it's hard to battle against his demonstration that structural arguments of class can not account unequivocally for what happened. Makes you wonder what would have happened if the left in Weimar was not so dogmatically attached to a misreading of Marx which told them socialism was structurally prophesied and farmers were reactionaries a priori and thus safely ignored or vilified.

Admittedly this was my first text on the German situation but it gives you a lot to work with.

[Wanda]

I didn't finish it, but what I read painted a picture that was disturbingly similar to the United States' 2016 presidential election.