Reasons why the Nazis attracted little support during the 1920s?

Answer 1

There is a tendency, especially in popular history in the U.S. and Western Europe, to assume that throughout the Weimar period Germany was seething with nationalist discontent and straining at the leash to fight World War 1 again. This caricature is very misleading. In the 1920s the new republic did, on balance, enjoy support - though often of a passive kind. It was only when Germany was hit by the effects of the Great Depression (late 1929 onwards) that the country started to seethe. The main grievance for most voters wasn't Versailles, but the economy. Hitler succeeded in presenting himself as a man with mission ...

Answer 2

They did not exist before and were created this time! 1918/1919 there was a socialist revolution in Germany and Socialism was attractive in whole Europe because of the Russian Revolution 1917.

So on the 10 th January 1919 within the revolutionary Berlin about 50 Top German capitalists founded the so-called antibolshevism fonds with 500 millions of Reichsmark to support any anti-bolshevist group or project whatever they did. The money floated into the army, the private army, called Freikorps, even in to the Social-demcratic party. At first the Socialist leaders Rosa-Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were killed and later the Freicorps were sent to militaryly crash down any German town (the bigger 55) or states like Bavaria which were part of the Republic of worker councils.

They even founded "Worker parties", because their feudalist or capitalist parties did not attract voters - despite having names like German National Peoples Party (DNVP). They needed real worker parties. E.g. the bavarian capitalist society president took some railway workers to let them found the German Workers Party (DAP) Hitler this time lived from a spy job for Ernst Roehm who had access to money of the Antibolshevist fonds. Hitler was sent to a DAP meeting, joined the party with Roehm soon and early 1920 the DAP was renamed into NSDAP. NS means "national socialist" - both terms were attractive this time - but there were many parties of this type and the capitalists did not like the word Socialism. However the most clever ones , e.g. Hugo Stinnes already said I would like to make a Socialism with my workers - of course where he dictates.

This time capitalists did not like the Word Socialism so tehy were at least confused. So it lead to only medium support. But this finally changed when Hitler in a big capitalist meeting in Dusseldorf proclaimed he will crash down Socialists and the Unions. Even money from the USA (most famous: the Bush family and Ford especially) came. See the book "Wallstreet and the rise of Hitler" of Antony Sutton - its free in the web and YouTube has some videos of him.

Answer 3

The Nazi Party before Hitler's leadership was not popular. Even after Hitler became the party leader, the party remained a minor (but violent) political party. On 20 May 1928, The Nazi Party got only 3% of the vote in Reichstag (German parliament) elections. However in late 1929 the Great Depression took hold in Germany and in the rest of the world. The Depression caused an increase in pro-Nazi support. On 14 September 1930, The Nazi Party got 18.3% of the vote, which was a drastic increase over the prior election. On 31 July 1932, The Nazi Party got 37.8% of the vote, which was its high-water mark in elections.