I wish to thank the Faculty Leaves Committee and Acting President Oliver of California State University, Chico, for leave awarded me in 1972 during which part of the research for this article was carried out. My thanks also to my colleagues Carl Hein and W. H. Hutchinson, for helpful comments on the manuscript.

1. See, among others, Maser, W., Die Frühgeschichte der NSDAP (Frankfurt, 1965),Google Scholar and Orlow, Dietrich, The History of the Nazi Party: 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh, 1969).Google Scholar

2. Allen, William Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1930–1935 (Chicago, 1965);Google ScholarHeberle, Rudolf, From Democracy to Nazism (New York, 1970);Google ScholarNoakes, Jeremy, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, 1921–1933 (London, 1971);Google ScholarRoloff, Ernst-August, Bürgertum und Nationalsozialismus: Braunschweigs Weg ins Dritte Reich (Hanover, 1961);Google Scholarand Pridham, Geoffrey, Hitler's Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, 1923–1933 (London, 1973).Google Scholar

3. Statistical data are drawn mainly from the publications of the Statistisches Landesamt of Baden, particularly Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Land Baden (Karlsruhe, 1930),Google Scholar hereafter cited as Stat. Jahrbuch Baden; Die Industrie in Baden itn Jahr 1925 (Karlsruhe, 1926),Google Scholar hereafter Industrie, Baden; and Die Religionszugehörigkeit der Bevölkerung in Baden (Karlsruhe, 1926),Google Scholar hereafter Religion, Baden. The Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich (Berlin, annually), hereafter Stat. Jahrbuch Reich, and the series Statistik des Deutschen Reichs (Berlin), hereafter Stat. d. Dt. Reichs, were also used.

4. It may be noted in passing that the Land Baden of the 1920's was also identical to the national electoral district (Reichswahlkreis) Baden, and to Gau Baden of the NSDAP.

5. The Amtsbezirk is the most useful unit for demographic and voting analysis. There were forty of them at this time, each named for its principal town (see map, Fig. 1). They will be referred to as Bezirk for short.

6. In distribution of persons among the major economic branches, Baden resembled the Reich quite closely: 36.9% in agriculture (Reich 30.5); 38.9 eg in industry (41.4); 14.1% in trade and transportation (16.5); and 4.0% in government and administrative services (4.7).

7. The EVD was the Baden branch of the Christlich-sozialer Volksdienst, a newly founded party which was meant to be the Protestant counterpart to the Center Party. It adopted a favorable attitude toward the Republic, and attempted to appeal to the small peasant, the small shopkeeper, and small industry. It did well for a year or two in some places, but never really got off the ground as a national party. See Opitz, Günter, Der Christlich-soziale Volksdienst (Düsseldorf, 1969), pp. 95–103.Google Scholar

8. All data on religious affiliation are taken from Religion, Baden, which reports the results of the census of 1925. For convenience, religious affiliation will be stated in terms of Catholic percentages; for all practical purposes, whoever was not Catholic was Protestant, other religions being largely absent.

9. Correlating the percentage Catholic with the percentage for the NSDAP for all forty Amtsbezirke, the coefficient was found to be–.67. I am indebted to the Computer Center of California State University, Chico, for producing these calculations for me.

10. Stat.Jahrbuch Baden, p. 19.

11. Ibid., pp. 16, 125.

12. Industrie, Baden.

13. There was no detailed official survey of agriculture in Baden comparable to that for industry cited above. Pollock, James K. and Thomas, Homer, Germany in Power and Eclipse (New York, 1952), pp. 616–21, offers a brief general survey, though not without some errors;Google ScholarMutton, Alice F., Central Europe: A Regional and Human Geography (New York, 1961) has several useful maps based on German data of the early 1930's.Google Scholar A number of local studies have some value: Kühne, Ingo, Der südöstliche Odenwald und das angrenzende Bauland: Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des badischen Hinterlandes um Mosbach seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1964);Google ScholarTheiss, Konrad, ed., Der Landkreis Bruchsal (Aalen/Würt., 1964);Google ScholarTheiss, K. and Baumhauer, Hermann, ed., Der Kreis Buchen (Aalen/Würt., 1964) (includes former Bezirk Adelsheim);Google ScholarTheiss, K. and Baumhauer, H., ed., Der Kreis Sinsheim (Aalen/Würt., 1964).Google Scholar

14. At this time four-fifths of the farm workers in Baden were members of the owners’ families: Wunderlich, Frieda, Farm Labour in Germany, 1810–1945 (Princeton, 1961), p. 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. See n. 2 above; also the reference in Heberle, p. 112, to “small farm proprietors, very much the rural equivalent of the lower middle class…which formed the backbone of the NSDAP in the cities.”

16. Except for Wertheim, Mosbach, and Kehl. See Table 3.

17. See, among others, Halperin, S. William, Germany Tried Democracy (New York, 1946), pp. 406ff.,Google Scholar and Eyck, Erich, A History of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 2: 280.Google Scholar This view has often been challenged, for example by Roloff, Ernst-August, “Wer wählte Hitler: Thesen zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Weimarer Republik,” Politische Studien 15 (05/06 1964): 293–300,Google Scholar and by McKibbin, R. J., “The Myth of the Unemployed: Who Did Vote for the Nazis?” Australian Journal of Politics and History 15 (1969): 35–40.Google Scholar

18. Hoffmann, W. G. and Miller, J. H., Das deutsche Volkseinkommen 1851–1957 (Tübingen, 1959), pp. 13ff.Google Scholar

19. Keese, Dietmar, “Die volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtgrössen für das deutsche Reich in den Jahren 1925–1936,” in Raupach, Hans et al. , Die Staats-und Wirtschaftskrise des deutschen Reichs 1929–1933 (Stuttgart, 1967), pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

20. Stat. Jahrbuch Reich, 1930, p. 324.

21. Stat. Jahrbuch Baden, p. 175.

22. This would apply to Baden's large tobacco industry, which was in serious trouble throughout the decade. The industry was partly located in the Nazi stronghold, but most of it was in areas which did not vote for Hitler to any marked degree. See Industrie, Baden, pp. 263–86; Kaiser, Wilhelm, Die Industrialisierung der badischen Agrarbevölkerung (diss., Heidelberg, 1926);Google Scholar and Bauer, Hans Th., “Zweijahrhunderte Handel und gewerblicher Wandel im Bruchsaler Kreis,” in Theiss, Landkreis Bruchsal, pp. 169–231.Google Scholar

23. McKibbin. One small example from Baden, admittedly by itself only suggestive, may be supplied. On Oct. 6, 1929, the Karlsruher Zeitung carried a story about the great Daimler-Benz auto factory in Gaggenau, near the city of Rastatt. The plant had recently laid off 600 workers, and was planning to release another 700 in the near future. This was one of the largest factories in Baden, and the layoffs would have been over 11 percent of all workers (Arbeiter) in Bezirk Rastatt; one might suppose this to have had an impact on the election. If so, it brought little comfort to the Nazis; in Gaggenau, as in Bezirk Rastatt, the NSDAP ran well behind not only the Social Democrats but the Communists as well, as it had in the past.

24. Short comment in Schoenbaum, David, Hitler's Social Revolution (New York, 1966), ch. 1.Google Scholar Also Wunderlich. Noakes details the nature of the crisis for one region. For Baden, see Kaiser, , and Kleinboeck, Erwin, Die badische Landwirtschaft in der Nachkriegszeit (diss., Giessen, 1927).Google Scholar

25. Wunderlich, pp. 120, 254–55.

26. See, among others, Striefler, Heinrich, Deutsche Wahlen in Bildern und Zahlen (Düsseldorf, 1946),Google Scholar and Loewenberg, Peter, “The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort,” American Historical Review 76 (1971): 1469.Google ScholarPubMed The simplistic view of the relationship between Nazi vote and increase in voting participation is critically analyzed by Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (Garden City, N.Y., 1963), pp. 148ff;Google Scholar see also Snively, W. Phillips, “Party Identification, Party Choice, and Voting Stability: The Weimar Case,” American Political Science Review 66 (1972): 1203–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. The increase for the Nazi stronghold, taken as a unit, was 1.6%.

28. The correlation between Catholicism and the Center Party vote in 1929 was 91.

29. Correlating voting increase with votes for other major parties in the same way, the results were: SPD, r = -.44; for the DVP, r = -.22; and for the DNVP, r = -.06. No party gained from the voting increase except the Center.

30. Baden was not unique in this respect. On Dec. 8,1929, a Landtag election was held in Thuringia (4.8% Catholic), where the Nazis won 11.3% of the vote, and gained thenfirst cabinet post in all Germany. This was an even bigger victory than that in Baden. But in Thuringia, both the total vote and the rate of voting participation were lower in 1929 than in either the Landtag election of 1927 or the Reichstag election of 1928. Stat. Jahrbuch Reich, 1939, pp. 582–83, and 1930, pp. 364–65 and 562–63.

31. I wish to thank all who gave most friendly assistance at the Bundesarchiv, in particular Archivoberamtsrätin Frau Kinder. I received help also at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, especially from Frau Karla Götz. The material in the Generallandesarchiv in Karlsruhe is substantially the same as that in the U.S. National Archive Microcopy T-81, reel 173.

32. No doubt much material has been lost, scattered, or destroyed, but it is probable that few records were kept at Gau headquarters in Baden during the early years. From the surviving documents it is quite clear that clerical skills were largely absent, and that action, not paperwork, was the forte of the original cadre.

33. Gauleitung Baden, Gaugeschäftsführung, to Hauptarchiv der NSDAP, Jan. 29, 1937 (unsigned). Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as B A), Hauptarchiv der NSDAP (NS 26)/132. Citations from the Bundesarchiv will initially identify the file by name and number, and thereafter give just file and folder number.

34. Moraller, F[ranz], “Robert Wagner,” in Ekkehard, Klaus, ed., Die Rekhsstatthalter: Ein Volksbuch (Gotha, n.d. [1934?]), pp. 26–30;Google Scholar also Das Deutsche Führerlexikon (Berlin, 1934).Google ScholarGordon, Harold J. Jr., Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch (Princeton, 1972), passim, mentions Wagner's role in the Putsch and trial.Google Scholar

35. Table summarizing the careers of the Gauleiter in Tyrell, Albrecht, ed., Führer befiehl… (Düsseldorf, 1969), pp. 372–78. Wagner was tried and shot by the French in 1945 for war crimes.Google Scholar

36. Schäfer, Wolfgang, NSDAP (Hanover, 1956), p. 12.Google Scholar

37. Information on the Führer comes from a file (incomplete) of the newspaper in the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe, and from a special series in 1937 commemorating the tenth anniversary of the founding date, to be found in BA, NS 26/1014.

38. Report on circulation for the period 1927–34, from the Führer Verlag GmbH, in BA, NS 26/1014.

39. The Sklarek brothers were Jewish merchants in Berlin who were found to have made improper gifts to a number of prominent politicians, including the mayor (a Democrat). The Nazi press found endless possibilities in this issue, and made the name of Sklarek a byword in their invective.

40. Goebbels recorded two trips to Baden in 1926, when he spoke in Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, and Weinheim. Goebbels, Joseph, The Early Goebbels Diaries (London, 1962),Google Scholar entries for Mar. 21 and May 29, 1926. On the former date there is a reference to “Neulussheim. A National Socialist village.” This little place, in Bezirk Mannheim, gave some forty percent of its vote to Hitler in 1925, 1928, and 1929.

41. See Orlow, ch. 5. Orlow lists (pp. 129–30) a number of areas in Bavaria and northern Germany where the rural vote was strong; these figures were exceeded, in all but two instances, by some of those in Baden (Wertheim, Mosbach, Kehl).

42. An account of this in the Führer, Nov. 12, 1937, p. 3, in BA, NS 26/1014.

43. Letter, Wagner, Robert to Rudolf Hess, May 3, 1929, in BA, Reichsorganisationsleiter der NSDAP (NS 22)/1044.Google Scholar Wagner, in discussing the forthcoming elections to the Landwirtschaftskammer, claimed that “we now have substantial portions of the Badenese peasantry in our ranks.” In June, Karl Lenz, of the Propaganda-Abteilung of Gau Baden, wrote to Gregor Strasser that the Democrats (DDP) “are dying out. Their life-savers are the Badenese school teachers, who are however about to wake up.” BA, NS 22/1044.

44. Turner, Henry Ashby, “Big Business and the Rise of Hitler,” American Historical Review 75 (1969): 59: “the Nazi party did receive a share of the funds that Hugenberg [head of the DNVP] helped to raise at that time.”Google Scholar

45. Gregor Strasser's office to Gauleiter Wagner, Sept. 4, 1929. BA, NS 22/1044.

46. Wagner to Hauptgeschäftsstelle der NSDAP, Sept. 6, 1929. BA, NS 22/1044.

47. The postelection statement in the handbook for Nazi legislators claimed that the party had held “more meetings than all our opponents put together.” Mitteilungsblatt der Nationalsozialisten in den Parlamenten und gemeindlichen Vertretungskörpern, 2. Jahrgang (n.p. [Munich], 1928/29), p. 89. Newspaper accounts all agreed that the Nazis were very aggressive.

48. Organisations-Abteilung der NSDAP [Gregor Strasser] to Gauleitung Baden, Sept. 11, 1929, BA, NS 22/1044, complains about the lack of information on local issues furnished to the “dozens of speakers coming from outside” to help in the campaign. No mention of Hitler himself as a speaker in Baden was found.

49. Durlacher Tagblatt, Oct. 26, 1929, p. 1.

50. Karhruher Zeitung, Oct. 29, 1929, p. 2.

51. Some contemporary cartoons in this vein reprinted in the Führer, Nov. 1, 1937, p. 7. BA, NS 26/1014.Google Scholar

52. Karlsruher Zeitung, Oct. 18, 1929, p. 2.

53. Völkischer Beobachter (Bayemausgabe), Nov. 1/2, 1929, p. 1.

54. “It does not matter whether they [the bourgeois press] laugh at us or abuse us… the main point is that they talk about us.…” Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf (Volksausgabe) (Munich, 1943), p. 544.Google Scholar

55. Reinhardt was named by Franz Joseph Schmitt, state president of Baden, in a radio address refuting the publication. Karlsruher Tagblatt, Oct. 17, 1929, p. 2. Schmitt said that the pamphlet had been distributed in the schools of Baden (see n. 43 above).

56. Karlsruher Zeitung, Oct. 10, 1929, p. 3. For a sketch of Münchmeyer's career, see Noakes, pp. 122–23. Pridham, pp. 88ff., shows him carrying on in the same way in Bavaria later in 1929.

57. Karlsruher Zeitung, Oct. 16, 1929, p. 3.

58. Karlsruher Tagblatt, Oct. 25, 1929, p. 2.

59. Durlacher Tagblatt, Oct. 26, 1929, p. 8. Striefler, p. 21, referring to the women's vote, says, “In Protestant districts after 1930 the NSDAP also began to appear to women as a Christian party.” The religious theme may have been stressed at this time in Baden as a counter to the appeal of the EVD, which gave the Nazis strong competition in some areas in this election.

60. Noakes, p. 152, mentions the distribution of aluminum coins with Hitler's head and the message “vote NSDAP,” “a technique which had apparently paid off in the preceding Baden election [of 1929].”

61. Schwarz, Max, MdR: Biographisches Handbuch der Rekhstage (Hanover, 1965), pp. 233–34.Google Scholar

62. “Die Freiherren Göler von Ravensburg,” in Kreschke, Ernst Heinrich, Allgemeines Deutsches Adeh-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1920), 3: 562–63 (reprint of the edition of 1870).Google Scholar

63. Like others of Hitler's opponents, the DNVP was riven by internal dissension. See Freiherr, FriedrichGartringen, Hiller von, “Die deutschnationale Volkspartei,” in Matthias, Erich and Morsey, Rudolf, Das Ende der Parteien (Düsseldorf, 1960);Google ScholarChanady, Attila, “The Disintegration of the German National People's Party, 1924–1930,” Journal of Modern History 39 (1967): 65–91;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Leopold, John A., “The Election of Alfred Hugenberg as Chairman of the German National People's Party,” Canadian Journal of History 7 (1972): 149–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64. Rusch, Otto, Geschichte der Stadt Kehl und des Hanauer Landes von den ältesten Zeiten bis heute (Kehl a. Rh., 1928), pp. 220–22.Google Scholar

65. Heberle; see table, p. 99.

66. Report on circulation in BA, NS 26/1014.

67. Rohrdanz, Günther in the Führer, Nov. 9, 1937, p. 3. BA, NS 26/1014.Google Scholar

68. Orlow, p. 158, n. 100: “…the social homogeneity of the hamlets often resulted in unanimous votes for the NSDAP.”

69. Orlow describes the method used by Hitler, Himmler, and Hess in preparing for an election in Saxony several months before the one in Baden. Ibid., pp. 161–62.

70. Allen several times mentions the importance of local notables in making the Nazis “respectable” in “Thalburg.”

71. Tingsten, Herbert, Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistics (Totowa, N.J., 1963) (a reprint of the 1937 edition), ch. I,Google Scholar and Bremme, Gabriele, Die politische Rolle der Frau in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1956), pp. 24–67, passim.Google Scholar

72. The census of 1925 showed, for the Reich, a surplus of 2,156,000 women over men of age twenty and over. Stat. Jahrbuch Reich, 1929, p. 15.

73. Baden, , Statistisches Landesamt, Die Wahlen zutn Badischen Landtag am 30. Oktober 1921 (Karlsruhe, 1922), pp. 148–49. Later publications on the Baden election do not include such figures.Google Scholar

74. In 1929, in the city of Offenburg, women cast 54.1% of the votes. The voting index (female votes per 100 male votes) for the Center was 196.4. Other women's parties were the EVD, with an index of 211.8, the DNVP with 116.5, and the DVP, index 112.5. Hitler's party produced an index of 63.9, the lowest of all. The same preferences were revealed in the city of Karlsruhe, though exact figures are not available. Karlsmher Zeitung, Oct. 30, 1929, p. 4, and additionally for Karlsruhe, Bremme, p. 248.

75. Tingsten, pp. 43–53.

76. For example, a curious letter from Wagner to the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP of Sept 26, 1928, in which Wagner pleaded with party headquarters not to order uniform shirts for the girls’ branch of the Frauenorden: “It may be possible in Italy to outfit women's and girls’ groups in the Fascist shirt, but in Germany, according to our experience and convictions, this would have a repellent [abtossend] effect.” BA, NS 22/1044.

77. On these two related problems, see O'Lessker, Karl, “Who Voted for Hitler: A New Look at the Class Basis of Nazism,” American Journal of Sociology 74 (1968–1969): 63–69;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSchnaiberg, Allan, “A Critique of Karl O'Lessker's ‘Who Voted for Hitler?’Google Scholar “ Ibid., pp. 732–35; Jones, Larry Eugene, “‘The Dying Middle’: Weimar Germany and the Fragmentation of Bourgeois Politics,” Central European History 5 (1972): 23–54;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWinkler, Heinrich August, “Extremismus der Mitte?” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte (hereafter VfZG) 20 (1972): 175–91;Google Scholar and Burnham, Walter Dean, “Political Immunization and Political Confessionalism: The United States and Weimar Germany,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (1972): 1–30.Google Scholar

78. Kater, Michael H., “Zur Soziographie der frühen NSDAP,” VfZG 19 (1971): 141.Google Scholar

79. For all Baden, there was a correlation of. 73 between the Nazi vote in the Landtag election and the favorable vote on the anti-Young Plan proposition. For the Center, the correlation was –.51.