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Joining the Nazi Party before 1930

Material Interests or Identity Politics?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Brian Ault
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Extract

The development of theNazi Party from 1925 to 1933 serves as fertile ground for studying what social movement researchers have identified as generic issues of micromobilization, the array of processes employed by movements in attracting, enlisting, and activatingmembers. Formally known as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), the Nazi Party was, of course, a political party in contention with other parties of theWeimar Republic until wresting state power in 1933. The lion’s share of empirical research on the NSDAP has been by way of electoral studies done by political sociologists, political scientists, and historians. However, if one draws back the historical frame and looks at the period from 1920 through 1933, the Nazi Party in its incipient stages (Orlow 1969: 40–45) behaved quite overtly like some of the disruptive, militant socialmovements illuminated in contemporary social movement literature, culminating in the failed November Putsch of 1923 and Hitler’s subsequent imprisonment.

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Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer 2002 , pp. 273 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2002 

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