Harsch, German Social Democracy And The Rise Of Nazism

Abstract

In the 1928 Reichstag elections, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) won 29.8% of the vote and Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party (NSDAP) just 2.6%. But the German economic and political situation rapidly deteriorated, and in three elections between 1930 and 1932, the SPD's shared dropped to 20.7%, while that of the NSDAP rose to 37.8%, before slipping to 33.6% in November 1932. Similarly, in 1928, the SPD was the "largest, best organized. and most disciplined political party" in Germany with 937,000 members, and it was the hub of the "multispoked movement" called Social Democracy, which enrolled millions more in the Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (ADGB), the Reichsbanner, and various cultural and cooperative organizations.