Citation

O'Lessker K. Am. J. Sociol. 1968; 74(1): 63-69.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1968, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/224585

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

No agreement yet exists among social scientists as to sources of naziism's sudden electoral surge in 1930 and 1932. One widely held view, stressing the importance of the "outcast and apathetic," has been sharply challenged by S. M. Lipset, who argues that electoral support for Hitler was essentially a middle-class phenomenon. But on the basis of a new analysis of the voting returns, I conclude that a combination of former non-voters and traditional Rightists gave naziism its first great success, and the bulk of the middle-class vote went to Hitler only after the Nazis had established themselves as the largest non-Marxist party in Germany.