AQA 7042 · 2O · R10 - The appeal of Nazism and Communism; the tactics and fortunes of the extremist parties, including the role of propaganda
Compare Nazi and Communist appeal, campaigning and electoral fortunes in 1928–32. Explain how propaganda worked through economic crisis and social loyalties, then use a contemporary KPD programme to distinguish its intended message from its effect on voters.
Fortunes in four elections
In 1928, neither the Nazi Party (NSDAP) nor the Communist Party (KPD) was new. What changed after 1929 was the scale of their support. Germany's economic depression, mass unemployment and increasingly ineffective parliamentary government gave both parties opportunities to present the Weimar Republic as incapable of protecting ordinary people.
Extremist party
In this setting, a party committed to replacing pluralist parliamentary democracy rather than governing within it. The label does not mean that the NSDAP and KPD had the same ideology, methods or objectives.
The NSDAP sought a racist, antisemitic and authoritarian national community under Hitler. The KPD sought a Soviet-style system based on proletarian, or working-class, dictatorship. Both rejected Weimar democracy, but their imagined replacements were fundamentally different.
Here, a party's fortunes means its changing electoral support, Reichstag representation and political position:
| Reichstag election | NSDAP vote and seats | KPD vote and seats |
|---|---|---|
| May 1928 | 2.6%; 12 | 10.6%; 54 |
| September 1930 | 18.3%; 107 | 13.1%; 77 |
| July 1932 | 37.3%; 230 | 14.3%; 89 |
| November 1932 | 33.1%; 196 | 16.9%; 100 |
Three patterns matter. First, Nazi growth was explosive: the party moved from the margin in 1928 to become the largest Reichstag party in July 1932. Second, Communist growth was slower but continuous. Third, the Nazi rise was not inevitable or uninterrupted: the NSDAP lost more than two million votes and 34 seats in November, while the KPD advanced again.
After the July election, NSDAP and KPD deputies together held 319 of 608 seats. This created a negative majority able to obstruct a stable parliamentary government. It did not create an alliance: the parties remained violent ideological enemies. Nor did 37.3% give Hitler an electoral majority; most voters had still chosen another party.
Why Nazism appealed
Nationalism is the belief that the nation should be the principal political community and should secure unity, sovereignty and collective interests. Nationalism was not automatically Nazi. Nazi nationalism was a particular, extreme form: it promised national rebirth and unity while defining the German national community in racist and antisemitic terms and excluding Jews and other people whom Nazis classified as outsiders.
After the poor result of 1928, Nazi organizers deliberately broadened their targets. Speakers and local campaigns addressed farmers worried about debt and prices, small shopkeepers threatened by larger firms, white-collar employees fearful of downward social mobility, young people seeking purpose, some workers and unemployed people, and conservatives frightened by Communism. Messages were adjusted to local audiences. The party could therefore sound anti-capitalist before workers while reassuring property owners that it opposed Marxist revolution.
Several appeals reinforced one another:
- Material recovery: Nazis promised work, economic revival and protection for groups who felt abandoned. The promises were deliberately less precise than a workable economic programme, allowing different audiences to hear what they wanted.
- National rebirth: attacks on Versailles and reparations connected economic hardship to alleged national humiliation. The promise of a Volksgemeinschaft, or national community, claimed to overcome class and party division, but it was racially exclusionary rather than inclusive citizenship.
- Authority and leadership: propaganda presented Hitler as a dynamic leader above selfish party bargaining. This appealed to some voters frustrated by short-lived governments and presidential rule.
- Enemies and fear: anti-communism appealed to property owners and conservatives, while antisemitic conspiracy theories falsely blamed Jews for contradictory problems. Such scapegoating was not an incidental addition; it was part of Nazi ideology even when campaigners tactically softened its visibility for some audiences.
- Movement and belonging: rallies, uniforms, youthfulness and local activism offered identity and participation as well as policies.
This was broad appeal, not universal appeal. Nazi support was generally weaker in strongly Catholic communities and in organized Social Democratic or Communist working-class milieus. Some unemployed voters chose the NSDAP, but electoral research does not support the simple claim that “the unemployed voted Nazi”; the KPD was especially strong among sections of the industrial working class and unemployed. Voters also supported the Nazis for different, sometimes incompatible, reasons.
A careful causal claim therefore links condition → message → response. Depression and political deadlock created insecurity; Nazi organization translated that insecurity into targeted promises of work, order and national renewal; some voters then abandoned older parties. The crisis opened an opportunity, but Nazi activists still had to organize and persuade, and many Germans remained unconvinced.
Why Communism appealed
The KPD entered the Depression with a much stronger base than the Nazis: it already held 54 Reichstag seats in 1928. Its core message interpreted unemployment, wage pressure and welfare cuts not as temporary policy failures but as evidence that capitalism itself had failed. It promised a revolutionary transfer of power to workers, expropriation of large economic interests, expanded social provision and a Soviet-style political order.
That message had particular force in some industrial cities and working-class neighbourhoods. The KPD offered a disciplined community of party branches, newspapers, demonstrations, workplace activity and mutual solidarity. Its militant style could make supporters feel that they were acting against poverty rather than waiting for parliamentary compromise. By late 1932 the party had about six million voters and 100 Reichstag deputies.
The KPD's appeal was class-centred, but it also tried to compete over the national question. Its August 1930 programme attacked Versailles and the Young Plan and promised both social and national liberation. This did not turn the KPD into a Nazi party: it still rooted national liberation in international working-class revolution and alliance with the Soviet Union. It does show, however, that nationalist language was a contested political resource rather than a Nazi monopoly.
KPD tactics also created limits. Under heavy influence from the Communist International, the party treated the SPD leadership as “social fascist” and frequently attacked Social Democrats as its principal rival for workers. It built Communist workplace organizations and pursued a “united front from below,” intended to detach rank-and-file workers from SPD leaders rather than form an equal party alliance. This sharpened the KPD's revolutionary identity and could win disillusioned SPD voters, but it deepened division within the labour movement and obstructed sustained joint resistance to Nazism.
The KPD also possessed a militant street tradition. Its Red Front Fighters' League (RFB) had used uniforms, flags, marching music and political education before being banned nationwide in 1929; it continued illegally, and Communist militants fought Nazi SA members in street and meeting-hall clashes. Violence displayed commitment to supporters but also intensified public disorder and could repel or frighten possible voters.
It is therefore too simple to say either that the KPD rose only because of poverty or that its hostility to the SPD by itself caused Hitler's success. Economic hardship, class organization, revolutionary propaganda and tactical choices interacted. Decisions by Social Democrats, conservatives and presidential governments also mattered beyond this row.
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