The Nazi Party and the German New Middle Class, 1925-1933

In studies of the social origins of the German Nazi Party, the new middle class of white-collar employees and civil servants has received scant attention. This inattention is surprising given that the German new middle class was the fastest growing segment of the German population during Weimar. This article applies an interest-based model of political behavior to the German new middle class between 1925 and 1933 to assess the model's ability to explain the appeal of the German Nazi Party to joiners from the new middle class. The data for this study come from the Brustein-Falter sample drawn from the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) master file of 42,004 individuals who joined the Nazi Party between 1925 and 1933.