The Nazi Party: The Anatomy of a People’s Party, 1919–1933. By Paul Madden and Detlef Muehlberger. Berne: Peter Lang. 2007. Pp. 329.Cloth E77.30/$94.97. ISBN 978-3-03910-542-7.

摘要

A quarter century has passed since the publication of Richard F. Hamilton’sWhonVoted for Hitler? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), which shooknthe foundations of the hallowed, originally Marxist-based, assumption thatnNazism was essentially a movement of the “middle classes” with only verynminimal involvement of the “proletariat” of factory workers or the uppernclasses. While Hamilton and the quickly following The Nazi Voter: The SocialnFoundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933 by Tom Childers (Chapel Hill,nNC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983) broke open the old taboo, annumber of others had prepared the way, including Michael Kater’s critical quan-ntitative studies of the social composition of Nazi organizations and voters and thendoctoral research and first publications by the two authors of this book. A wavenof empirical studies followed, based on statistical data that demonstrated that thenNazi Party, had, in fact, been what it had claimed, namely a true mass party thatnappealed to voters from all classes—a critical factor in its success. Oddly, as thenauthors point out, the new view of the party’s make-up was actually a rediscov-nery, which mirrored the perceptions of contemporary observers. Opponents andnrefugees of the Nazi regime had already noted the breakdown of class loyalties—nmost famously Hannah Arendt in her chapter “A Classless Society” in ThenOrigins of Totalitarianism—albeit not supported by sophisticated quantitativenanalysis. Labor leaders in exile such as the Bavarian Social Democrat and laternMinister President Wilhelm Hoegner felt deeply betrayed by large numbers ofnworkers who voted for the Nazis