With your art collective Centre for Political Beauty, you famously built a replica of the Holocaust memorial on a property next to an AfD politician’s home. Now you’ve written a history book about the Nazis’ rise to power. Don’t we already know everything there is to know about the 1932 elections, the Reichstag fire and the Enabling Act of 1933?
About three years ago I became interested in how Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ party (NSDAP) rose to prominence when Germany was still a democracy, because I hoped it could tell us something about the success of rightwing extremist movements today. From looking at historical sources, I realised that the Reichstag elections of 14 September 1930 were in many ways more important than what happened in 1932 and 1933. And I expected it to be an open-and-shut case. But the more I looked into it, the more I realised that most of the theories we have to explain the rise of the Nazis don’t make sense – the data tells a completely different, far darker story.
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Telling a darker story … Philipp Ruch. Photograph: Zuma Press/Alamy
Why were the 1930 elections so important?
The numbers behind the vote were astonishing. In 1928, the NSDAP got 800,000 votes and 12 seats in the Reichstag. A few weeks before the 1930 election, Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, history’s grand master of exaggeration, still thought they had a chance of going up to 50 to 60 seats at best. Yet on the night, the Nazis got 6.4 million votes and 107 seats. That’s a ninefold increase over the space of two years. In one night, a small splinter party from the political fringes overtook the three established parties of the right – the Centre Party, the DVP and the DNVP – coming in second place behind the Social Democrats. It was an enormous shock. It was the moment at which a racist sect of loudmouths and club-wielders, a party of absolute cranks, came to be politically legitimised.
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Out in front … Otto Wels, chair of the Social Democrats, in 1930. Photograph: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy
You call the NSDAP a “party of cranks”. Didn’t Hitler have a certain dark charisma?
Among German historians, this has long been the dominant theory to explain the Nazi party’s success: that Hitler had an irresistible inner aura that captured the masses. There’s a second theory that is very similar, the führerkult idea. It argues that the NSDAP was so irresistible because it had a leader that spoke to Germans’ yearning for authoritarianism. The problem is: I couldn’t find any evidence before the 1930 vote to support those theories. Because in 1930, every party was practising a star cult around their own political leader, even the Social Democrats. The Nazi party didn’t have a USP in that respect. And the Nazis didn’t even seem to be wholly on board with the führer principle themselves at this stage. Several people in the party complained about the “Byzantine” star cult around Hitler, which is also why the campaign wasn’t really tailored around him as a personality. Let’s remember that in 1930 Hitler wasn’t even on the ballot, because he wasn’t a German citizen: he was a foreigner who had a criminal record for trying to mount a coup and was at risk of being deported.
I had grown up seeing Hitler as a monster, but one with a certain political talent. And after 1930, that’s not entirely untrue. But when you focus on 1928 to 1930, even his biographer Ian Kershaw concludes that the NSDAP’s success had very little to do with Hitler. He was going through an absolute dip in form. He only held 29 speeches in 1929, half of what was customary, and 21 of them were all in Bavaria. In 1930 Goebbels spent half the year complaining about Hitler’s prevaricating: when he travelled to Munich to track down the NSDAP leader, he didn’t even bother looking at the party headquarters. “The Reich leadership is at [Hitler’s f“Or the cinema, or Café Heck,” Goebbels wrote sarcastically. In 1930, Hitler was not a political genius. He was a lazy criminal who slept until noon.
If not Hitler, was propaganda chief Goebbels the real force behind the Nazis’ rise? One explanation being revisited today is that political crises tend to go hand in hand with media crises: that the Nazis expertly seized on new media like illustrated news, radio, and film.
When we talk about the Nazis, everyone pictures a slick propaganda machine: the Nuremberg rally, the cathedral of light, all those awe-inspiring spectacles. It is true that before 1930, Goebbels put a lot of effort into building up propaganda newspapers inspired by American formats, such as Der Angriff, Völkischer Beobachter, and Illustrierter Beobachter. But early Nazi propaganda was an embarrassing, amateurish joke. I have looked through every edition of Illustrierter Beobachter, and the images they showed readers were laughable—such as SA men dressed as advertising pillars. It simply was not professional. The sales figures were pathetic: nobody was reading these newspapers. Compare that with what the other parties had at their disposal: they put up neon signs on street corners and hired planes for aerial advertising. Propaganda alone just does not explain the NSDAP’s success.
What about the economy? The Wall Street stock market had crashed a year earlier, German exports were collapsing, and unemployment was rising.
It is always tempting to fall back on economic factors when explaining the rise of fascist movements. We are hearing it again in Germany now: the economy is crumbling, the trains are not running on time, so people will fall for the fascists again. But if I look at historical sources from the run-up to 1930, I come away thinking that voters were not that stupid. Take the unemployed. Over the last 30 years, historians have built a fairly good picture of who voted for the NSDAP. We can say with certainty that in regions where unemployment was high, the Nazi party performed relatively poorly. If anything, unemployment was a factor that contributed to anti-fascist resilience. The same applies to the idea that the Nazis managed to attract young first-time voters: the NSDAP also performed badly in areas with high rates of first-time voters. The young were running away from this party too.
The global economic crisis may explain why the NSDAP managed to double its support in 1932 and reach 37.3% of the vote. But as an explanation for the ninefold boost in 1930, it falls short. Wall Street’s Black Thursday did not fully arrive in Germany until July 1931, when several major banks collapsed—10 months after the Nazis won 107 seats in the Reichstag. The Weimar Republic’s GDP went into a tailspin, collapsing by 36.6%, but only over the two years that followed. By the end of 1930, it had shrunk by only 7.1%, and we do not know how much of that was a result of the election outcome. There is a risk here of confusing cause and effect.
What if we look at the democratic parties instead?
One of the central tenets of the Nazi party’s campaign was the alleged corruption of the established parties, but there is very little evidence that this was actually the case. The most striking—and also the most puzzling—thing I learned was that all three of the big rightwing parties of the Weimar Republic had put political hardliners in charge between 1928 and 1929. If voters had really been desperate for tough rightwing policies, they could have voted for the Catholic Centre party, the nationalist liberal DVOr the monarchist DNVP – all parties in a strong position to turn their promises into reality. Didn’t they just go through what many conservative parties are discovering now: that when they copy the far right’s positions, voters tend to prefer the original?
I think that’s a cliché that simply isn’t true. Because in 1930 Hitler wasn’t the original; he was a watered-down version of what the DVP or the DNVP offered. The DNVP ran a more antisemitic campaign than Hitler, yet it was the biggest loser of the election, losing 7.3% of the vote. What seems much more important to me is credibility. In 1930, the nationalist-liberal DVP was attacked by its own party newspapers for betraying the legacy of its former leader Gustav Stresemann, who had died a year earlier. It’s similar to the situation with Germany’s Christian Democrats today: a party that under Merkel was firmly centrist and managed to keep loyal voters, but then chose a figure from its right wing, Friedrich Merz, as its new leader. And voters are switching to the AfD. The main lesson for me is that conservative parties can only win from the centre.
You say credibility is key. Then why do corruption scandals barely seem to hurt the modern far-right parties that rail loudest against ‘the system’?
It’s true that the NSDAP in 1930 was completely riddled with scandals: back-stabbing, power struggles, corruption, the whole spectrum. And many German journalists at the time believed they were just one more scandal away from total collapse. There were some excellent and brave journalists leading some really good investigations. But it didn’t work.
I look at far-right parties across Europe now, and I see undercover reporters revealing the AfD’s remigration plans, leading to the biggest protests in postwar German history. And these kinds of investigations are extremely important. But fascist or right-wing extremist parties seem to be immune to this kind of thing. They are like lightning rods: the scandal is a flash of energy that passes straight through them into the ground and then it’s gone. A corruption scandal might temporarily damage a party, like the “Ibiza affair” did to the Austrian Freedom Party, but five years later they are back at double their strength.
So why did the Nazis perform so strongly in 1930?
As paradoxical as it sounds, it might be for the same reason that voters turned away from the Nazis in 1928: its propensity to violence. Ever since Hitler had been in the NSDAP, he had talked about one thing: executing his political opponents. And the Nazi party remained absolutely consistent in that respect. In the run-up to the 1930 vote, it didn’t talk about social policy, it didn’t talk about building the autobahn. It just had murder plots.
View image in fullscreenBook cover: Philipp Ruch, Der Ruckfall. Photograph: Heyne
How does that help us understand the rise of fascist or right-wing extremist movements today?
It’s hard to admit this from a modern perspective, but historical fascism’s lust for violence didn’t make it repulsive but extremely attractive to a lot of German voters. And we are seeing similar things with the AfD today, where fantasies of violent retribution seem to be integral to campaign events on market squares. We are witnessing the poisoning of an entire society, and as a democracy we should ask ourselves whether criminal law shouldn’t apply when political parties communicate that way. Communication is one thing, political plans are another. The NSDAP had both. But we know that the AfD is a radical party that seems to want to ethnically cleanse Germany. If the AfD is voted into power, one of the most highly advanced economies in the world could experience something similar to what happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Philipp Ruch’s Der Rückfall (The Relapse) is published by Penguin
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the premise that Hitler was a lazy criminal who slept until noon and why much of what we think we know about the Nazis rise is wrong
Beginner Questions
Q Did Hitler really sleep until noon every day
A Yes for much of his time as Nazi leader especially before 1939 Hitler often stayed up until 2 or 3 am and slept until 11 am or noon He hated early meetings and rarely scheduled anything before midday
Q Was Hitler actually lazy
A In the traditional sense of holding a normal job yes He avoided regular work hours hated paperwork and left most daily administration to others But he was not lazy about power He worked intensely on speeches propaganda and political strategy when it suited him
Q If he was so lazy how did he become dictator of Germany
A Because being a dictator is not the same as being a hardworking bureaucrat Hitler was a skilled orator a ruthless political operator and a master of propaganda He delegated the boring work to men like Himmler Goebbels and Speer while he focused on bigpicture manipulation and fear
Q Why do we think of Hitler as a workaholic if he slept until noon
A Nazi propaganda created the Fhrer myth They showed him as tireless always working for Germany After the war some memoirs and films repeated that image In reality his daily schedule was chaotic and often lazy
Q What do you mean by criminal
A Hitler was a criminal in the plain sense he led a party that used violence murder and intimidation He was convicted of treason after the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch He later ordered the murder of political rivals in 1934 And of course he was the main architect of the Holocaust
Advanced Questions
Q How did Hitlers lazy daily routine actually help him gain power
A It let him avoid boring details and focus on what he did best emotional speeches backroom deals and creating crises While other politicians worked long hours on policy Hitler spent his time on propaganda and personal loyalty That turned out to be more effective for seizing power
