Ben Wilson

While on the other hand, we soldiers of the front were being ruled by a gang of exploiters ready to stoop to any means to seize the starvation wages of our suffering, duped comrades, it will become clear why a number of us welcomed the activities of patriotic groups, particularly those of the Hitler movement.

The combination of patriotic aims, along with social reform, led many an old soldier and idealist under the banner of the National Socialist Workers' Party.

Okay.

I want to repeat that.

The combination of patriotic aims along with social reform led many an old soldier and idealist under the banner of the National Socialist Workers Party.

All right.

Those are just two accounts, but that was the experience of millions of people, especially men, in the early 1930s.

The National Socialists didn't create those grievances, but they were positioned to capture them better than any other party in the picture at the time.

So in September 1930...

The NSDAP won 18.3% of the vote and 107 seats in the Reichstag.

Think about that rise from 3% to 18.3%.

They had increased their vote share eightfold in just two years.

the Nazi bandwagon was rolling.

As Ian Kershaw writes, what happened on that day was a political earthquake in the most remarkable result in German parliamentary history.

NSDAP advanced at one stroke from the 12 seats and near 2.6% of the vote gained in 1928 to 107 seats and 18.3%, making it the second largest party in the Reichstag.

Almost 6.5 million Germans now voted for Hitler's party, eight times as many as two years earlier.

Now, demographically speaking, Kershaw breaks down who these people were.

He says, quote, at least three quarters of Nazi voters were Protestants, or at any rate, non-Catholics.

Significantly more men than women voted Nazi, though this was to alter between 1930 and 1933.

At least two fifths of Nazi support came from the middle classes, but a quarter was drawn from the working class.