The simplest thing to say is that about a third of Germans supported Nazism, reflected by their share of the vote in the 1932 fall election.

But, that’s not entirely accurate, in part because of the difficulty of defining exactly what it was about Nazism that they supported. To speak about German support for Nazism begs the question whether they supported all, or parts of it. During the ascension of the party between 1930 and 1933, the Nazis leavened their rants about international Jewish conspiracies with the more popular denouncements of the effete and licentious modernity which the Weimar Republic seemed to have embraced. Throughout, their nearly singular focus was on the idea that Germany had been prostrated by international slavers who had sapped all pride and sovereignty from the German people.

Writing for the party newspaper in 1927, Joeseph Goebbel’s expressed the basic party platform as follows. “We demand,” he began, “a struggle against this condition of shame and misery” and “that the men in whose hands we put our fate must use every means to break the chains of slavery.” Enumerating the problems which Germany faced, he noted that “three million people lack work and sustenance” and thus demanded “the right of work and a decent living for every working German” as well as “demand homes for German soldiers and workers” and “land on which to grow the grain that will feed our children.” Liberal democracy is derided as a “strange and unreachable fantasy,” and of course Jews are identified as the root cause of Germany’s woes.

The point is that while anti-Semitism was no doubt prevalent in Germany, it was not necessarily the controlling factor that determined support for Nazism. At its heart, the Nazi party was reactionary. It stood against more than for, and consequently some of its most attractive platforms were those which spoke to the deep sense of German grievance regarding the international system which had reigned since the conclusion of the First World War. The greatest political success of Nazism was therefore their ability to mingle their particular anti-Semitism with the extant resentments towards capitalism and outright fear of communism without overwhelming the electorate.

It may seem silly in retrospect, but many Germans did not grasp the severity of the danger which Nazism’s millenarianism bore. Following Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellorship, one German woman by the name of Elisabeth Gebenslebens expressed a common sentiment in her letters to her daughter. “Finally,” she wrote after years of “struggle … the goal has been reached.” Regarding the active brutality of Nazi Stormtroopers, she acknowledged that “the ruthless intervention of the nationalist government might appear strange to some,” but nonetheless believed it was necessary to knock down the threats of communist revolution which she feared was imminent. Ultimately, she saw the Nazi government as an expression of German renewal.

But, her daughter who lived in Holland had greater concerns. What about the “mean,” “horrible” “campaign against the Jews,” she asked. Forced to reflect on the specific violence which the Nazis had carried with them into office, Elisabeth dismissed some of it as justified, some of it as unfortunate “excess,” but ultimately believed that it was not the Nazis who were at fault. It was “dumb kids,” she said, who had smashed up all the Jewish shops.

Now, Elisabeth Gebensleben was a committed Nazi and despised Jews, so to remark on her personal perceptions is not an absolution of German guilt. But, even among Germans who were not enamored by the Nazis' racial rhetoric, we see very similar thoughts about their potential to reshape the state and German life. Konrad Jarausch is a typical example. When Nazism did come to power. Konrad celebrated, as many others did, the prospect of a national renewal. He cheered it as a return to a “genuine state” which would put the “individual into the Volk.” But, his optimism was also tempered by concern that fascist dogmatism would bring about the “devastation of the church.” Among his circle of scholarly Lutherans, substantial confidence that the advent of Nazism marked an opportunity to again bring conservative values of family and faith to the center of public life coexisted with fear that the “dishonest” Nazi-sponsored German Christians threatened to “falsify or destroy the gospel.” Caught between hope for a new future and apprehension about its specific shape, Konrad resolved to work with and within the Nazi movement, but declined to join them formally because he “considered ‘the claim of [Christian] epiphany’ superior to the ‘ties or race, space and people.’” In this and many other ways the course of Konrad’s life was unremarkable. He lived as a typically conservative German Protestant who had been often buffeted by events beyond his personal control and was searching for deliverance, but was nonetheless wary of fanaticism.

He was, in short, the image of an educated and religious man who retained cultural and social restraints that might have inculcated him against Nazi extremism. Nevertheless, he submitted himself to its dictates.