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The Parent Cell: Some Computer Notes on the Composition of the First Nazi Party Group in Munich, 1919–21

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Donald M. Douglas
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Extract

On July 29, 1921, Adolf Hitler assumed dictatorial authority over the young National Socialist German Worker's Party (NSDAP). There were at this point in the party's history some twenty-five local groups of the NSDAP scattered throughout Germany, but the party's base, its nerve center, and its strength lay in the Munich group. This parent cell from which so much was to develop should certainly be of interest to the historian and to the sociologist and political scientist as well. Yet little has been done in the way of a careful analysis of the membership of that group.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 55 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1977

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References

1. Hoover Institution, “Collection NSDAP Hauptarchiv,” roll 6, folder 141, contains a list of 25 such groups.

2. Franz-Willing, Georg, Die Hitlerbewegung, der Ursprung 1919–1922 (Hamburg and Berlin, 1962), pp. 129–30.Google Scholar

3. Maser, Werner, Die Frühgeschichte der NSDAP, Hitlers Weg bis 1924 (Frankfurt am Main and Bonn, 1965), pp. 254–55.Google Scholar

4. Hoover Institution, “Collection NSDAP Hauptarchiv,” roll io, folder 215.

5. Douglas, Donald M., “The Early Ortsgruppen: The Development of National Socialist Local Groups 1919–1923” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1968).Google Scholar

6. Gordon, Harold J. Jr., Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch (Princeton, N.J., 1972), pp. 68–87Google Scholar. The statistical data come from the “Gordon papers, card file, personalities,” which tells us little. If the file contains those “personalities” who were brought to the researcher's attention in the course of his work, it must omit the rank and file, and Gordon himself admits that the sample leans heavily toward the leaders and activists of the party. The file provides neither a complete membership list, a defensible cross section of the party, nor even an acceptable random sample. It contains 1,672 names with occupations listed for 1,126, and ages for 994. Generalizations about the occupational composition and age of a party with an estimated Bavarian membership of some 150,000 must therefore be very tentative.

7. Kater, Michael H., “Zur Soziographie der fruhen NSDAP,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 19 (1971): 124–59Google Scholar

8. Excellent accounts of this phase of party history are to be found in Franz-Willing, Hitlerbewegung; Maser, Frühgeschichte; and Gordon, Beer Hall Putsch.

9. Hoover Institution, “Collection NSDAP Hauptarchiv,” roll 2A, folder 230.

10. Maser, , Frühgeschichte, pp. 254–55.Google Scholar

11. Hoover Institution, “Collection NSDAP Hauptarchiv,” roll 10, folder 215.

12. For alphabetical list see Hoover Institution, “Collection NSDAP Hauptarchiv,” roll 8, folder 171.

13. “Auf Verlangen des Pg. Ludwig Ess (Mitglieds Nr. 1716) zum Zwecke der Aushändigung des Original Mitglieder Verzeichnisses an unseren Führer Herrn Adolf Hitler von Pg. Ludwig Ludwig, Kfm., (Mitglieds Nr. 929) & dessen Frau abgeschrieben.10. Mai 1933.”

14. Population figures were taken from “Verzeichnis der Gemeinden mit 2000 und mehr Einwohnern nach der Volkszählung vom 16. Juni 1925,” in Sonderheft, 1, Sonderhefte zur Wirtschaft und Statistik (Berlin, 1925), pp. 35–77. The following categories were used: (1) 100,000 or more, (2) 50,000 to 100,000, (3) 25,000 to 50,000, (4) 10,000 to 25,000, (5) 2,000 to 10,000, and (6) under 2,000.Google Scholar

15. The list contains 36 illegible entries, 42 for whom no address was given and 31 addresses which I have been unable to locate. Of the remaining 2,377 entries, 2,310 or 96.84%, list Bavarian addresses and 2,109 of these are in Munich, including 41 who list military addresses in Munich. The non-Bavarian members include 36 who listed Prussian addresses, half of these in cities of over 100,000 population. Of the remaining non-Bavarian members 16 came from Baden, 5 from Saxony, and 4 from Thuringia, 2 each from Hesse, Hamburg, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and one each from Wiirttemberg, Braunschweig, Anhalt, and Bremen. Most of these, however came from towns of 25,000 or less. Four members listed non-German addresses. Two of these came from the Sudeten region (Aussig and Eger), one was a Viennese, and one was a 36-year-old woman from Chicago, Illinois.

16. The totals for four categories in Table 1 may be somewhat inflated. Among those who listed themselves as merchants (Kaufleute) there were probably a number who really should be listed as sales clerks. Among the artists and students there may well have been some young unemployed people with vague aspirations, and among the soldiers there were no doubt men who, by mid-1921, had left the military and were engaged in other occupations. Nonetheless the figures do give a picture of self-identification with groups to which the fledgling NSDAP had a particular appeal.

17. Literally “middle estate,” a concept with implications of a preindustrial society organized in corporate bodies. Although Harold Gordon (Beer Hall Putsch, pp. 72–73) maintains that this nineteenth-century concept has no relevance in a modern industrial society, I am convinced of the validity of the viewpoint so cogently set forth by Lebovics, Herman (Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany, 1914–1933 [Princeton, N.J., 1969]) that the term Mittelstand can and does identify groups with a unity of aspiration and of fear for the future in a Germany whose societal structure in 1920 was still in the course of a swift and wrenching transition from a preindustrial to a modern industrial state.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. The cutoff date for this early membership list coincides with the assumption of dictatorial authority over the party by Adolf Hitler and the creation of the SA (Sturmabteilungen, or storm troops). It has been successfully argued that the nature of the party underwent a change from this point until the November 1923 Putsch attempt, thus the term “the first party.”

19. The totals are less than the total number of entries in the membership book since some of them omitted either the date of entry into the party, or the date of birth.

20. Franz-Willing, (Hitlerbewegung, pp. 129–235) lists the following percentages (he excluded from his figures the 10.5% of the party who were women): skilled worker and artisan, 33%; free academic professions, 14.5%; public officials and white-collar workers, 14%; soldiers and officers, 13%; merchants, 12%; business owners, 4%; students, 7%; unskilled workers, 2.5%.Google Scholar

21. Maser, (Frühgeschichte, pp. 253–55) classified the Munich group membership (including women members) as follows: skilled workers and artisans, 27%; academic professions, 8.5%; public officials and white-collar workers, 14.6%; soldiers and officers, 5.2%; merchants, 13.3%; students, 7.2%; unskilled workers, 2.9%; women, schoolchildren, and members who did not indicate occupation, 18.2%.Google Scholar

22. Kater (“Soziographie,” pp. 153–54) found the party to be 76% lower Mittelstand, including therein skilled workers, artisans, public officials, white-collar workers, merchants, and apprentices, 11.8% upper Mittelstand, including therein the leading (leitende) public officials and white-collar people, academicians, and students, with the remaining 12.2% classified as working class (Proletariat). These figures overstate the case as Kater has divided the artists, soldiers, housewives, and those not listing occupations among these three main groupings. Even without these prorated additions, however, the lower Mittelstand made up 62.6% of Kater's list

23. Kater, , “Soziographie,” p. 157.Google Scholar

24. Nolte, Ernst F., Der Faschismus in Seiner Epoche (Munich, 1963), p. 387. Nolte also provides concise and penetrating discussion of the mittelständische nature of Hitler's early support, pp. 386ff.Google Scholar

25. For an excellent recent survey of the Mittelstand and its problems see Herman Lebovics's opening chapters in Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes.