Hitler's Approval ratings

[queentonic]

[Note the last sentence]

Spartacus Olsson, Passionate history documentary producer - especially the WWs
Answered Apr 24

What were Hitler’s approval ratings?

There are indicators that Hitler’s popularity peaked in 1939 at somewhere close to 80, or 90% just before the war and fell well below 50% as the war progressed.

At Machtergreifung (Nazi seizure of power) in 1933 Hitler was already very popular - despite the Nazis, not being in majority by themselves, a vast majority agreed to transfer dictatorial powers to him in what could loosely be called the last ‘free’ referendum.

After that it declined somewhat, but in 1938 and 1939 his popularity rose steadily through bravado actions, such as the Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of the Sudetenland.

However, the decrease in popularity was swift and came more, or less directly in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland. Even early “successes” in Poland and France did not help the fact that people in general did not want another war.

There are obviously no polls to go by (Nazis and totalitarian systems in general tend to frown on those sort of things - to not mention that responding the wrong way might get you killed). But… there are some ways to find out more than just guesses and assumptions.

About twelve years ago the historian and journalist Götz Aly together with students at the Fritz Bauer Institut in Frankfurt, found an innovative method to retro-analyse approval ratings in Nazi Germany. They looked at:

the rate of children named with popular Nazi names
the number of people leaving the church
changes in private savings behaviour
the number of executions of ‘true’ Germans (as defined by the Nazis)
how often Führer and party was mentioned in obituaries of fallen soldiers

They deduced that Hitler’s approval rating fell below 50% during the invasion of Russia in 1941 and continued to decline from there. The chart showing popular Nazi name giving from 1932 to 1945 is telling of the general pattern:

Another source of popularity mesaurement is a publication created by the Nazis themselves, "Meldungen aus dem Reich" (Reports form the Reich), which was a top secret aggregation of information and impressions to see how well the NSDAP propaganda machine was working. It was compiled by the party and state intelligence agencies for the eyes of the top echelons of the NSDAP only. Although this doesn't deliver any hard data, it does corroborate the findings of Aly et al. anecdotally and with examples. Moreover, it shows that the majority of the population in Germany was indeed very well informed about things the Nazis tried not to advertise with the public too much, such as the mass murder of Jews and other minorities.

All in all you can conclude that starting in 1939 at the latest, the Germans knew full well what was going on, didn't necessarily like it, but could, or would not do anything about it.

[dembotoz]

1. interesting

[Wednesdays]

2. Link?

This is really interesting, and I'd love to read more.

[queentonic]

3. Sorry about that

I posted a thread last night with a link at the bottom and got busted because it had spam in it. So I'm being more careful by just posting the text. I would suggest doing a Google search on the source.

[emulatorloo]

5. DU could get sued. That's why Admins require you to post links and no more than 4 paragraphs

In fact DU has been sued before, that's why those rules are in place

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=termsofservice

Respect copyrights
Excerpts from copyrighted sources must be no more than four paragraphs and include a link to the source. See our DMCA Copyright Policy for more information.

I recommend you edit your OP down to 4 paragraphs and provide a link.

[unblock]

4. Much too late for any opposition to do much by 1939

The resistance was underground.

My grandparents (and my mother as an infant) were evicted from their apartment in Vienna in 1938 after the SS took the Jewish families away. A fortuitous misunderstanding led the SS to leave after taking 3 Jewish families from 2 apartments, not realizing my family was in a third apartment.

When the building owner realized my family was still there, he immediately evicted them for fear of his own life, as the SS might well have shot him on the spot if they thought he had lied to them to save some Jews.

Fact is, evicting them was as much help as he could be expected to do. The alternative was turning them in.

There were certainly some Germans and Austrians who risked their lives sheltering Jews, and others who helped smuggle them out (that's how my family got out) but that did nothing to kick the nazis out of power.