Weimar Political Party Support
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Author Topic: Weimar Political Party Support  (Read 1872 times)
DC Al Fine
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« on: October 30, 2012, 08:14:43 PM »

I'm trying to get an understanding of what the bases of the various parties in Weimar Germany were. Here's what I have so far:

NSDAP: Lower middle class types; small businessmen, low level civil servants, low level white collar workers etc.

SPD: Workers plus some progressive types.

KPD: Workers

Zentrum/BVP: Catholics of all classes

DNVP:] Landowners, industrialists, religious Protestants

DVP: Upper middle class professionals

DDP: Jews, Intellectuals

Questions:

1) Are any of these wrong?

2) What was the difference between a KPD & SPD voter?
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2012, 09:31:03 PM »

Maps and stuff from a while back:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=66004.0
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=103910.0

Anyways, more later, but the obvious point wrt the KPD is that they were especially strong in areas that were especially economically depressed. And were much better at appealing to working class voters from Catholic backgrounds than the SPD was. Also areas with heavy industry, but see point one.

Regarding the Nazis (very briefly), they were much more of a catch-all party than anything else. In practice this meant their electorate had a heavy lean towards being rural, Protestant and lower middle class (gap in the market) but lean is all. There were working class areas where the Nazis did well (the Erzgebirge is the classic example), while they also tended to poll well in outright bourgeois areas and so on.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2012, 11:27:57 AM »

I'm trying to get an understanding of what the bases of the various parties in Weimar Germany were. Here's what I have so far:

NSDAP: Lower middle class types; small businessmen, low level civil servants, low level white collar workers etc.

SPD: Workers plus some progressive types.

KPD: Workers

Zentrum/BVP: Catholics of all classes

DNVP:] Landowners, industrialists, religious Protestants

DVP: Upper middle class professionals

DDP: Jews, Intellectuals

Questions:

1) Are any of these wrong?
Depends. What year are you asking? Obviously the remnant DDP and DVP support of 1933 was very different in localization from their support in 1920, when many local Liberal and National Liberal machines from the Kaiserreich were still in existence and getting the vote out. By 1933, both parties were wholly upper-middle-class urban and probably quite heavily Jewish.

Add "tenant farmers under traditional landlord influence" to the DNVP, of course, right down to the end in some places.
And then there's the story of the CSVD, an Evangelical splinter off the DNVP that got attacked by the DNVP for voting (with the few seats it ever got anywhere) largely as if it were the Center Party's fringe organization for Protestants.
Also, the Center's position in the wholly Catholic areas eroded quite a bit during Weimar... partially covered up in national results by improvements in mixed cities, not all of it coming from Catholics - Brüning got a personal vote here in the final years, as basically the Bourgeoisie's last hope outside of embracing Fascism. The votes lost, of course, went very largely to the Nazis - by 1933 easily the least sectarian party in Germany, although this is due to a specific swing in that last election - but (not everywhere) also to the Commies. But not to any other party whatsoever. Whatever inroads the SPD had made among Catholics all dates from pre 1918.
And then there's the farmer's parties, BBB and Landvolk. And the WP, a more urban lower-middle/small-businessman protest party, not far right of official position but totally serving, it and the Landvolk both, as a way-station from DVP/DDP (for WP) / DNVP (Landvolk) to the Nazis, and completely annihilated in 1932.
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alexmanu
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« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2012, 09:36:08 PM »

2) What was the difference between a KPD & SPD voter?

The difference was that the SPD were more moderate and a pro-democratic reformist party. The KPD were radical communists and advocated violence as a way to obtain power. So really the SPD voter would be someone from the working class, but who was moderate in their views (as most people are) on the means of attaining power. Whereas the KPD would be populated with radical communists and desperate workers or ex-soldiers not afraid to obtain power through violent means.
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politicus
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« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2012, 04:03:42 PM »

2) What was the difference between a KPD & SPD voter?
KPD had a higher share of unskilled urban workers, whereas the SPD dominated among skilled workers.
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H. Ross Peron
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« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2013, 02:57:55 AM »

BTW was there ever Protestant support for the Centre? Once the liberal parties started declining, it seems to me that the Centrists were only moderate none-Socialist option.
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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2013, 08:24:57 AM »

BTW was there ever Protestant support for the Centre? Once the liberal parties started declining, it seems to me that the Centrists were only moderate none-Socialist option.

I don't think so. Most of the liberal parties' voters were bourgeois protestants, so them declining meant that those voters were becoming more extreme and voting DNVP or Nazi.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2013, 09:20:31 AM »

Actually, yes. Not much of it, but if you look through the results by locality, it's clear that the Center made some modest gains in mixed and majority-protestant cities in the 30s, while losing voters to Nazis and to a lesser extent Communists in the Catholic countryside.
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Kitteh
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« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2013, 01:07:05 PM »

Does anyone have a good link for results by locality during the Weimar years?
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2013, 01:16:54 PM »

Does anyone have a good link for results by locality during the Weimar years?

http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/

And specifically: http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/php/index.php
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