‘Hitler was a lazy criminal’: New book challenges what drove the Nazis’ electoral breakthrough

German artist and writer Philipp Ruch argues in his new book that the rise of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) has been misunderstood by viewing its electoral breakthrough mainly through the later history of the Third Reich.

In an interview with The Guardian, Ruch said the Reichstag election of September 14, 1930 was more important to the Nazis’ rise than the elections of 1932 and the events of 1933.

He said he began studying the Nazi party’s rise because he wanted to understand how a right-wing extremist movement could gain prominence while Germany was still a democracy.

His research, he said, challenged several widely held explanations for the Nazis’ electoral success.

A dramatic electoral breakthrough

In the 1928 election, the NSDAP won about 800,000 votes and 12 seats in the Reichstag. Two years later, it secured about 6.4 million votes and 107 seats, winning 18.3% of the vote and becoming the second-largest party.

Ruch said the scale of the increase was far beyond what the party itself had expected. The result allowed the Nazis to overtake three established right-wing parties and become the largest opposition force after the Social Democrats.

He described the 1930 election as the point at which the NSDAP moved from the political fringes into the mainstream of parliamentary politics.

Rethinking Hitler’s role

Ruch challenges the long-standing interpretation that Hitler’s personal charisma or a cult of leadership was the main reason for the party’s breakthrough.

He argues that such explanations do not fit the evidence from before the 1930 election. At the time, he said, other political parties also cultivated strong personalities around their leaders.

Hitler was also not a German citizen when the 1930 election was held and therefore was not himself a candidate. Ruch said Hitler was comparatively inactive during the period in which the NSDAP made its dramatic electoral gains.

Citing the work of Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, Ruch said Hitler gave relatively few speeches in 1929, with most of them taking place in Bavaria. He also pointed to complaints from Joseph Goebbels about Hitler’s inactivity in 1930.

Propaganda and economic crisis

Ruch also questions the idea that sophisticated Nazi propaganda drove the party’s early electoral success.

He acknowledged that Goebbels invested heavily in newspapers and other forms of political communication, but argued that Nazi publications before 1930 were relatively amateurish and attracted limited audiences.

He also disputes the idea that the economic crisis alone explains the NSDAP’s breakthrough in 1930.

The Wall Street crash of 1929 had not yet produced its full impact in Germany when the September 1930 election was held. The most severe phase of Germany’s financial crisis came later, including the banking crisis of 1931. Ruch therefore argues that the economic collapse cannot fully account for the Nazis’ ninefold increase in votes between 1928 and 1930.

He also points to electoral data suggesting that the NSDAP performed relatively poorly in areas with high unemployment and among regions with large numbers of first-time voters.

Established parties and credibility

Ruch argues that the performance of Germany’s established right-wing parties also needs greater attention.

The Centre Party, the German People’s Party (DVP) and the German National People’s Party (DNVP) had all moved towards harder right-wing positions before the 1930 election, he said.

Yet the DNVP suffered a significant loss of support despite running a strongly antisemitic campaign. For Ruch, this suggests that the Nazis’ breakthrough cannot simply be explained by voters seeking more radical versions of established conservative policies.

Instead, he places greater emphasis on political credibility and the ability of parties to convince voters that they represented their stated positions.

Violence as a political appeal

Ruch’s central argument is that the NSDAP’s emphasis on political violence may have been more important to its breakthrough than previously recognised.

He said the party consistently promoted violence against political opponents and that this remained a central feature of its political messaging before the 1930 election.

Rather than focusing primarily on social policy or economic programmes, Ruch argues, the party’s campaign repeatedly presented violence and threats against its opponents.

He sees this as a possible explanation for the sharp contrast between the party’s poor performance in 1928 and its dramatic gains two years later.

Lessons for the present

Ruch also draws a connection between his interpretation of the Nazi rise and contemporary right-wing extremist movements in Europe, including Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD).

He argues that political violence and fantasies of retribution can play an important role in mobilising support for extremist movements and says conventional political scandals do not necessarily destroy such parties’ support.

Ruch’s comparison is part of a broader argument that understanding how the NSDAP gained electoral legitimacy during Germany’s democratic period requires looking more closely at the period before Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933.

His book, Der Rückfall (The Relapse), examines what he describes as the Nazi party’s rapid electoral breakthrough and its implications for understanding the rise of political extremism.