Agricultural structure and the rise of the Nazi Party reconsidered

Thurner, Paul W.; Klima, André; Küchenhoff, Helmut

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2014.08.004

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…This indicates that Hitler’s campaign trail usually stopped where smaller increases (or larger decreases) in NSDAP vote shares were to be expected. One interpretation of this result would be that, for infrastructural reasons, Hitler’s appearances were scheduled in more populous urban areas where the NSDAP tended to fare worse electorally for social structural and programmatic reasons (Heberle 1978; Thurner, Klima, and Küchenhoff 2015).…”

Section: Estimating Campaign Effects: Empirical Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All these factors—the number of eligibles, expected electoral support, and a party’s expected competitiveness—are potential confounders insomuch as they may also influence the outcome of interest. Applied to the present case, the size of the local electorate may be negatively linked to Nazi vote shares since rural areas were less populous and, at the same time, on average more supportive of the NSDAP than urban areas for programmatic reasons (Heberle 1978; Thurner, Klima, and Küchenhoff 2015). Likewise, the classical decision-theoretic model of voting suggests that a party’s expected competitiveness may directly affect the relative strength of parties through selective participation and strategic voting (Cox 1999).…”

Section: The Targeting Of Candidate Appearancesmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The latter would prevent us from disaggregating our study to the municipality level. Paul Thurner and his colleagues (2015) made a fresh geocoding effort, including all the counties and county boroughs. For the last-mentioned reason, however, we do not use their materials either.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933

Selb

Munzert

2018

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Hitler’s rise to power amidst an unprecedented propaganda campaign initiated scholarly interest in campaign effects. To the surprise of many, empirical studies often found minimal effects. The predominant focus of early work was on U.S. elections, though. Nazi propaganda as the archetypal and, in many ways, most likely case for strong effects has rarely been studied. We collect extensive data about Hitler’s speeches and gauge their impact on voter support at five national elections preceding the dictatorship. We use a semi-parametric difference-in-differences approach to estimate effects in the face of potential confounding due to the deliberate scheduling of events. Our findings suggest that Hitler’s speeches, while rationally targeted, had a negligible impact on the Nazis’ electoral fortunes. Only the 1932 presidential runoff, an election preceded by an extraordinarily short, intense, and one-sided campaign, yielded positive effects. This study questions the importance of charismatic leaders for the success of populist movements.

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Section: Estimating Campaign Effects: Empirical Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Targeting Of Candidate Appearancesmentioning

confidence: 88%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933

Selb

Munzert

2018

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Second, extending prior research on the nation-wide effects of WW1 on interwar Germany (Alcalde 2017;Ziemann 2006), we demonstrate that the geographical distribution of war fatalities had a substantial effect on nationalist voting. We document a sizeable electoral benefit of war deaths for the Nazi Party, thus adding to the socioeconomic, religious, and propaganda-related predictors of the Nazi vote highlighted in previous research (e.g., Adena et al 2015;Selb and Munzert 2018;Spenkuch and Tillmann 2018;Thurner, Klima, and Küchenhoff 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

War and Nationalism: How WW1 Battle Deaths Fueled Civilians’ Support for the Nazi Party

et al. 2023

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Can wars breed nationalism? We argue that civilians’ indirect exposure to war fatalities can trigger psychological processes that increase identification with their nation and ultimately strengthen support for nationalist parties. We test this argument in the context of the rise of the Nazi Party after World War 1 (WW1). To measure localized war exposure, we machine-coded information on 7.5 million German soldiers who were wounded or died in WW1. Our empirical strategy leverages battlefield dynamics that cause plausibly exogenous variation in the county-level casualty fatality rate—the share of dead soldiers among all casualties. We find that throughout the interwar period, electoral support for right-wing nationalist parties, including the Nazi Party, was 2.6 percentage points higher in counties with above-median casualty fatality rates. Consistent with our proposed mechanism, we find that this effect was driven by civilians rather than veterans and areas with a preexisting tradition of collective war commemoration.

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“…Applied to the present case, the size of the local electorate may be negatively linked to Nazi vote shares since rural areas were less populous and, at the same time, on average more supportive of the NSDAP than urban areas for programmatic reasons (Heberle, 1978;Thurner, Klima and Küchenhoff, 2015). Likewise, the classical decision-theoretic model of voting suggests that a party's expected competitiveness may directly affect the relative strength of parties through selective participation and strategic voting (Cox, 1999).…”

Section: The Targeting Of Candidate Appearancesmentioning

confidence: 88%

Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933

Munzert¹

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hitler’s rise to power amidst an unprecedented propaganda campaign initiated scholarly interest in campaign effects. To the surprise of many, empirical studies often found minimal effects. The predominant focus of early work was on U.S. elections, though. Nazi propaganda as the archetypal and, in many ways, most likely case for strong effects has rarely been studied. We collect extensive data about Hitler’s speeches and gauge their impact on voter support at five national elections preceding the dictatorship. We use a semi-parametric difference-in-differences approach to estimate effects in the face of potential confounding due to the deliberate scheduling of events. Our findings suggest that Hitler’s speeches, while rationally targeted, had a negligible impact on the Nazis’ electoral fortunes. Only the 1932 presidential runoff, an election preceded by an extraordinarily short, intense and one-sided campaign, yielded positive effects. This study questions the importance of charismatic leaders for the success of populist movements.

show abstract

Agricultural structure and the rise of the Nazi Party reconsidered

Cited by 5 publications

References 49 publications

Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933

Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933

War and Nationalism: How WW1 Battle Deaths Fueled Civilians’ Support for the Nazi Party

Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933

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