Painting the walls with your brains is inspired literary genius but when it is directed at a fellow DAWG fan it could be out of line. Not for every DAWG fan though. I have a list
@FireCohen and inspired literary genius. Strange bedfellows.
Painting the walls with your brains is inspired literary genius but when it is directed at a fellow DAWG fan it could be out of line. Not for every DAWG fan though. I have a list
@FireCohen and inspired literary genius. Strange bedfellows.
But is it technically gifted? That is the question
The Nazis in Nazi Germany got along great. So it stands to reason that the Nazis here should too
The Night of the Long Knives (German: About this soundNacht der langen Messer (help·info)), or the Röhm Purge, also called Operation Hummingbird (German: Unternehmen Kolibri), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization. Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm Putsch.
The primary instruments of Hitler's action, which carried out most of the killings, were the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service (SD) and Gestapo (secret police) under Reinhard Heydrich. Göring's personal police battalion also took part in the killings. Many of those killed in the purge were leaders of the SA, the best-known being Röhm himself, the SA's chief of staff and one of Hitler's longtime supporters and allies. Leading members of the leftist-leaning Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Bavarian politician Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The murders of SA leaders were also intended to improve the image of the Hitler government with a German public that was increasingly critical of thuggish SA tactics.
Hitler saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. He also wanted to conciliate leaders of the Reichswehr, the German military, who feared and despised the SA as a potential rival, in particular because of Röhm's ambition to merge the army and the SA under his own leadership. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. In Röhm's view, President Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933 had brought the Nazi Party to power, but had left unfulfilled the party's larger goals. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate German critics of his new regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, as well as to settle scores with old enemies.[a]
At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds,[b][c][d] with high estimates running from 700 to 1,000.[1] More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested.[2] The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the Wehrmacht for Hitler. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extrajudicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government.[3] It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his July 13 speech to the Reichstag.
Before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to the purge as Hummingbird (German: Kolibri), the codeword used to send the execution squads into action on the day of the purge.[4] The codename for the operation appears to have been chosen arbitrarily. The phrase "Night of the Long Knives" in the German language predates the killings and refers generally to acts of vengeance.
Contents 1 Hitler and the Sturmabteilung (SA) 2 Conflict between the army and the SA 3 Growing pressure against the SA 4 Heydrich and Himmler 5 Purge 5.1 Against conservatives and old enemies 5.2 Röhm's fate 6 Aftermath 6.1 Reaction 7 SA leadership 8 Legacy 9 See also 10 References 11 External links Hitler and the Sturmabteilung (SA)
Hitler posing in Nuremberg with SA members in 1928. Julius Streicher is to the left of Hitler, and Hermann Göring stands beneath Hitler President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor on January 30, 1933.[e] Over the next few months, during the so-called Gleichschaltung, Hitler dispensed with the need for the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a legislative body[f] and eliminated all rival political parties in Germany, so that by the middle of 1933 the country had become a one-party state under his direction and control. Hitler did not exercise absolute power, however, despite his swift consolidation of political authority. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a highly respected veteran field marshal. While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army, a return to conscription, and a more aggressive foreign policy, the army continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime.
To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organization, remained somewhat autonomous within the party. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. The Freikorps were nationalistic organizations primarily composed of disaffected, disenchanted, and angry German combat veterans founded by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution when it appeared that there was a lack of loyal troops. A very large number of the Freikorps believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. Hence, the Freikorps were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic, which was born as a result of the November Revolution, and whose founders were contemptuously called "November criminals". Captain Ernst Röhm of the Reichswehr served as the liaison with the Bavarian Freikorps. Röhm was given the nickname "The Machine Gun King of Bavaria" in the early 1920s, since he was responsible for storing and issuing illegal machine guns to the Bavarian Freikorps units. Röhm left the Reichswehr in 1923 and later became commander of the SA. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties, especially those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Also known as the "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers," the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists.[5] The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of Germany's inter-war experiment with democracy, the Weimar Republic.[6] In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were more than 400 street battles, resulting in 82 deaths.[7]
Hitler's appointment as chancellor, followed by the suppression of all political parties except the Nazis, did not end the violence of the stormtroopers. Deprived of Communist party meetings to disrupt, the stormtroopers would sometimes run riot in the streets after a night of drinking; they would attack passers-by and then attack the police who were called to stop them.[8] Complaints of "overbearing and loutish" behaviour by stormtroopers became common by the middle of 1933. The Foreign Office even complained of instances where brownshirts manhandled foreign diplomats.[9]
Hitler's move would be to strengthen his position with the army by moving against its nemesis, the SA.[10] On July 6, 1933, at a gathering of high-ranking Nazi officials, Hitler declared the success of the National Socialist, or Nazi, brown revolution. Now that the NSDAP had seized the reins of power in Germany, he said, it was time to consolidate its control. Hitler told the gathered officials, "The stream of revolution has been undammed, but it must be channelled into the secure bed of evolution."[11]
Hitler's speech signalled his intention to rein in the SA, whose ranks had grown rapidly in the early 1930s. This would not prove to be simple, however, as the SA made up a large part of Nazism's most devoted followers. The SA traced its dramatic rise in numbers in part to the onset of the Great Depression, when many German citizens lost both their jobs and their faith in traditional institutions. While Nazism was not exclusively – or even primarily – a working class phenomenon, the SA fulfilled the yearning of many unemployed workers for class solidarity and nationalist fervour.[g] Many stormtroopers believed in the socialist promise of National Socialism and expected the Nazi regime to take more radical economic action, such as breaking up the vast landed estates of the aristocracy. When the Nazi regime did not take such steps, those who had expected an economic as well as a political revolution were disillusioned.[h]
Conflict between the army and the SA
SA leader Ernst Röhm in Bavaria in 1934 No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper put it) than Röhm.[i] Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper.[12] Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism, and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.
At least he built the Autobahn’. Many Germans remember this phrase from conversations with parents and grandparents pointing to how the Nazi regime could receive such widespread support. The regime’s overwhelming popularity at home was essential for its policies, from the aggressive pursuit of war abroad to genocide. The building of Germany’s motorway network has survived in popular memory as a palpable, unambiguously benign accomplishment of the National Socialist government; in retrospect, it serves as a ready explanation for the regime’s genuine popularity from 1933 onwards.
Can infrastructure spending really win ‘hearts and minds’? Are the ready explanations of elderly Germans merely an excuse – or do they capture an important reason for the Nazi regime’s early political success? Empirical studies typically find only weak support for the notion that infrastructure projects increase support for a government – spending is often targeted where it is most needed: in districts where electoral defeat threatens. Examples of papers that find some effect of pork-barrel spending include Levitt and Snyder (1997) and Manacorda et al. (2011). Berman et al. 2011 show that during the US occupation of Iraq, areas with large infrastructure spending saw reductions in violence. On the whole, however, economists and political scientists are skeptical whether pork-barrel spending works in practice (Stein and Bickers 1994, Feldman and Jondrow 1984).
Examining road-building in Nazi Germany is useful because the effectiveness of pork barrel spending under a dictatorship has not been examined systematically (Voigtländer and Voth 2014). Also, the regime’s rise in popularity is not well-explained. Even in March 1933, with the Hitler government already in office, ‘only’ 44% of Germans voted for the Nazi party. Nonetheless, within a few years, all the reports by opposition groups and by the regime’s own security service indicate very high approval rates (Evans 2006). How did the Nazi regime grow in popularity so quickly?
Building the Autobahn
Road-building received highest priority under the Hitler government. Within a few weeks of taking office, the regime introduced subsidies for car ownership and outlined an ambitious programme for the German motor industry. Within six months, a new company charged with building the world’s first nationwide highway system was set up; within nine months, the first stretches of motorway were under construction (Vahrenkamp 2010).
Despite claims to the contrary, military considerations never played much of a role. The Autobahn plans were partly based on plans drawn up by a think tank and a private company that had mapped out road trajectories in the 1920s (the Stufa and the Hafraba projects). The new roads used much of the earlier planning, but deviated in some parts.
Instead of gradually connecting metropolitan areas, road-building began on 17 sites simultaneously, traversing 131 out of the 901 electoral districts. Opening the first stretch of motorway therefore took longer; but its progress was visible in many more parts of Germany. Throughout the planning and building process, Nazi propaganda showcased the Autobahn as an important achievement. The first sods of earth were turned by Hitler himself in September 1933 – less than nine months after coming to office. For the November election, the event provided the main campaign image. Every opening of a new segment turned into mass events, with people lining the roads as the cars of party leaders drove by triumphantly. By 1935, the first stretches of motorway were open; by 1938, 3,500 kilometres of road were complete (Vahrenkamp 2010).
Measuring support
We ask if voters in districts where roads were being built supported the Hitler regime to a greater extent. But how can we know, given that free and fair elections were no longer being held? The regime did hold elections with some frequency to demonstrate its popularity. These were neither free nor fair. Storm troopers were present at the polling stations, and there was pressure to vote in public – voting in secret was optional, but frowned upon. Spoiled ballot papers were often counted as ‘yes’; the old and infirm were transported to the voting stations. In some places, voting papers were marked before being handed out so that voting behaviour could be tracked. Support was very high on average, but it would be absurd to claim that 90% or more of Germans from November 1933 onwards were all fully behind the regime; the true level of support cannot be established from these voting results.
Instead, we argue that we can analyse changes over time – that a significant decline in the level of opposition in one district, over and above general shifts in behaviour, can be taken as an indicator of changing support for the regime. The reason for this approach is that there was important variation at the local level. For example, in the 1934 plebiscite that vastly expanded Hitler’s powers as head of government, 24% of people in Aachen voted ‘no’; in Nuremberg, on the other hand, only 4.6% voted against the government proposition.1
To compare like with like, we examine the reduction in opposition to the regime between two elections – November 1933 and August 1934. In November 1933, new elections for the Reichstag were held, with the NSDAP the only party on the ballot paper. The 1934 plebiscite occurred after the death of President Hindenburg, and authorised combining the powers of Chancellor and of President in the hands of Adolf Hitler.
The impact of road-building
We compare electoral districts traversed by the Autobahn with those without road-building. In general, opposition to the regime declined slightly between November 1933 and August 1934.2 Where a district saw road-building, the shift was markedly larger (Figure 2). We plot the distribution of votes against the regimes; the dashed line shows the pattern for areas with motorway construction, and the solid line, for areas without. As is readily apparent, where the motorways were being built, the level of opposition was lower – the whole distribution is shifted to the left.
Why it worked
The Nazi regime prioritised road-building as an economic stimulus measure. Original plans were for 600,000 workers to be employed; the actual maximum figure was 125,000. Recent analysis suggests that aggregate economic effects were modest (Ritschl 1998). The benefits in terms of transport were also minimal – Germany had one of the lowest rates of car ownership in Europe (Evans 2006).
Nonetheless, it is possible that local effects were much larger. Workers were initially housed in private homes in the villages and towns where the roads were being built; barracks were only built later. Those employed in building the road also spent money in inns and shops; construction crews organised film showings, and construction sites became minor local attractions – a popular destination for weekend trips (Eichner-Ramm 2008).
In modern democratic elections, ‘political budget cycles’ may be driven by politicians’ need to signal their competence. Similarly, the Autobahn served as a convincing proof of Nazi Germany’s ability to get things done – a project to showcase the ruthless energy and organizational capabilities of the new regime, as Hitler promised in his speech inaugurating the project. Sold as a key factor for economic revival, the rapid fall in unemployment after 1933 convinced many that road-building had ‘worked’. After the perceived incompetence and gridlock of Weimar politics, many Germans were undoubtedly impressed by the rapid progress in road-building. The propaganda machine took particular care to connect the roads in the public imagination with Adolf Hitler himself – the motorways were called ‘roads of the Führer’, piggybacking off the leader’s popularity and enhancing his image still further. While these effects would have affected voting in the country as a whole, it is plausible that the regime’s accomplishments in building the Autobahn were more salient for voters in districts where the new roads were taking shape (Gennaioli and Shleifer 2010).
Conclusions
Long before the Nazi regime committed its singular crimes, it had become remarkably popular in Germany (Evans 2006). Voting records from 1933 and 1934 reveal the effect of one factor that, according to many historians, boosted support for the regime – the building of the Autobahn. Using detailed information on the geography of road-building, we isolate the effect of construction on voting behaviour by analysing the ‘swing’ in favour of the regime over a nine-month period (November 1933 to August 1934). We find that opposition declined much faster where the new ‘roads of the Führer’ ran.
Direct economic benefits for residents in Autobahn districts may have played a role, but they were probably small. More importantly, the new roads provided concrete proof of the regime’s actions, delivering on its promise to get ‘Germany moving again’. Within a couple of months of taking power, a highly ambitious highway construction project was under way at 17 different locations all over the country, affecting more than 100 electoral districts. In other words, the visible progress of road construction made the regime’s ability to follow through on its promises salient for many Germans.
Combined with effective propaganda trumpeting the regime’s successes, the roads succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of many Germans. Nor were they the only ones to be impressed. When the US Army rolled into Germany at the end of World War II, one of the officers taken with the ease of transport on motorways was Dwight D. Eisenhower. When he became President of the United States, he lead the initiative to built the country’s interstate highway system.
I’d been looking at Kobe stuff on twitter for hours before I saw that tweet. Not one other person had said anything about that. That guy is such a stupid piece of shit. About as tone deaf as they come. He’s gotta be on the spectrum.
I’d been looking at Kobe stuff on twitter for hours before I saw that tweet. Not one other person had said anything about that. That guy is such a stupid piece of shit. About as tone deaf as they come. He’s gotta be on the spectrum.
Stand up to @MessiahDawg which is a God tier unclaimed alt.
Comments
Found his YouTube.
The primary instruments of Hitler's action, which carried out most of the killings, were the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service (SD) and Gestapo (secret police) under Reinhard Heydrich. Göring's personal police battalion also took part in the killings. Many of those killed in the purge were leaders of the SA, the best-known being Röhm himself, the SA's chief of staff and one of Hitler's longtime supporters and allies. Leading members of the leftist-leaning Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Bavarian politician Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The murders of SA leaders were also intended to improve the image of the Hitler government with a German public that was increasingly critical of thuggish SA tactics.
Hitler saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. He also wanted to conciliate leaders of the Reichswehr, the German military, who feared and despised the SA as a potential rival, in particular because of Röhm's ambition to merge the army and the SA under his own leadership. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. In Röhm's view, President Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933 had brought the Nazi Party to power, but had left unfulfilled the party's larger goals. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate German critics of his new regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, as well as to settle scores with old enemies.[a]
At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds,[b][c][d] with high estimates running from 700 to 1,000.[1] More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested.[2] The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the Wehrmacht for Hitler. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extrajudicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government.[3] It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his July 13 speech to the Reichstag.
Before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to the purge as Hummingbird (German: Kolibri), the codeword used to send the execution squads into action on the day of the purge.[4] The codename for the operation appears to have been chosen arbitrarily. The phrase "Night of the Long Knives" in the German language predates the killings and refers generally to acts of vengeance.
Contents
1 Hitler and the Sturmabteilung (SA)
2 Conflict between the army and the SA
3 Growing pressure against the SA
4 Heydrich and Himmler
5 Purge
5.1 Against conservatives and old enemies
5.2 Röhm's fate
6 Aftermath
6.1 Reaction
7 SA leadership
8 Legacy
9 See also
10 References
11 External links
Hitler and the Sturmabteilung (SA)
Hitler posing in Nuremberg with SA members in 1928. Julius Streicher is to the left of Hitler, and Hermann Göring stands beneath Hitler
President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor on January 30, 1933.[e] Over the next few months, during the so-called Gleichschaltung, Hitler dispensed with the need for the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a legislative body[f] and eliminated all rival political parties in Germany, so that by the middle of 1933 the country had become a one-party state under his direction and control. Hitler did not exercise absolute power, however, despite his swift consolidation of political authority. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a highly respected veteran field marshal. While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army, a return to conscription, and a more aggressive foreign policy, the army continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime.
To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organization, remained somewhat autonomous within the party. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. The Freikorps were nationalistic organizations primarily composed of disaffected, disenchanted, and angry German combat veterans founded by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution when it appeared that there was a lack of loyal troops. A very large number of the Freikorps believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. Hence, the Freikorps were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic, which was born as a result of the November Revolution, and whose founders were contemptuously called "November criminals". Captain Ernst Röhm of the Reichswehr served as the liaison with the Bavarian Freikorps. Röhm was given the nickname "The Machine Gun King of Bavaria" in the early 1920s, since he was responsible for storing and issuing illegal machine guns to the Bavarian Freikorps units. Röhm left the Reichswehr in 1923 and later became commander of the SA. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties, especially those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Also known as the "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers," the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists.[5] The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of Germany's inter-war experiment with democracy, the Weimar Republic.[6] In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were more than 400 street battles, resulting in 82 deaths.[7]
Hitler's appointment as chancellor, followed by the suppression of all political parties except the Nazis, did not end the violence of the stormtroopers. Deprived of Communist party meetings to disrupt, the stormtroopers would sometimes run riot in the streets after a night of drinking; they would attack passers-by and then attack the police who were called to stop them.[8] Complaints of "overbearing and loutish" behaviour by stormtroopers became common by the middle of 1933. The Foreign Office even complained of instances where brownshirts manhandled foreign diplomats.[9]
Hitler's move would be to strengthen his position with the army by moving against its nemesis, the SA.[10] On July 6, 1933, at a gathering of high-ranking Nazi officials, Hitler declared the success of the National Socialist, or Nazi, brown revolution. Now that the NSDAP had seized the reins of power in Germany, he said, it was time to consolidate its control. Hitler told the gathered officials, "The stream of revolution has been undammed, but it must be channelled into the secure bed of evolution."[11]
Hitler's speech signalled his intention to rein in the SA, whose ranks had grown rapidly in the early 1930s. This would not prove to be simple, however, as the SA made up a large part of Nazism's most devoted followers. The SA traced its dramatic rise in numbers in part to the onset of the Great Depression, when many German citizens lost both their jobs and their faith in traditional institutions. While Nazism was not exclusively – or even primarily – a working class phenomenon, the SA fulfilled the yearning of many unemployed workers for class solidarity and nationalist fervour.[g] Many stormtroopers believed in the socialist promise of National Socialism and expected the Nazi regime to take more radical economic action, such as breaking up the vast landed estates of the aristocracy. When the Nazi regime did not take such steps, those who had expected an economic as well as a political revolution were disillusioned.[h]
Conflict between the army and the SA
SA leader Ernst Röhm in Bavaria in 1934
No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper put it) than Röhm.[i] Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper.[12] Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism, and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.
Can infrastructure spending really win ‘hearts and minds’? Are the ready explanations of elderly Germans merely an excuse – or do they capture an important reason for the Nazi regime’s early political success? Empirical studies typically find only weak support for the notion that infrastructure projects increase support for a government – spending is often targeted where it is most needed: in districts where electoral defeat threatens. Examples of papers that find some effect of pork-barrel spending include Levitt and Snyder (1997) and Manacorda et al. (2011). Berman et al. 2011 show that during the US occupation of Iraq, areas with large infrastructure spending saw reductions in violence. On the whole, however, economists and political scientists are skeptical whether pork-barrel spending works in practice (Stein and Bickers 1994, Feldman and Jondrow 1984).
Examining road-building in Nazi Germany is useful because the effectiveness of pork barrel spending under a dictatorship has not been examined systematically (Voigtländer and Voth 2014). Also, the regime’s rise in popularity is not well-explained. Even in March 1933, with the Hitler government already in office, ‘only’ 44% of Germans voted for the Nazi party. Nonetheless, within a few years, all the reports by opposition groups and by the regime’s own security service indicate very high approval rates (Evans 2006). How did the Nazi regime grow in popularity so quickly?
Building the Autobahn
Road-building received highest priority under the Hitler government. Within a few weeks of taking office, the regime introduced subsidies for car ownership and outlined an ambitious programme for the German motor industry. Within six months, a new company charged with building the world’s first nationwide highway system was set up; within nine months, the first stretches of motorway were under construction (Vahrenkamp 2010).
Despite claims to the contrary, military considerations never played much of a role. The Autobahn plans were partly based on plans drawn up by a think tank and a private company that had mapped out road trajectories in the 1920s (the Stufa and the Hafraba projects). The new roads used much of the earlier planning, but deviated in some parts.
Instead of gradually connecting metropolitan areas, road-building began on 17 sites simultaneously, traversing 131 out of the 901 electoral districts. Opening the first stretch of motorway therefore took longer; but its progress was visible in many more parts of Germany. Throughout the planning and building process, Nazi propaganda showcased the Autobahn as an important achievement. The first sods of earth were turned by Hitler himself in September 1933 – less than nine months after coming to office. For the November election, the event provided the main campaign image. Every opening of a new segment turned into mass events, with people lining the roads as the cars of party leaders drove by triumphantly. By 1935, the first stretches of motorway were open; by 1938, 3,500 kilometres of road were complete (Vahrenkamp 2010).
Measuring support
We ask if voters in districts where roads were being built supported the Hitler regime to a greater extent. But how can we know, given that free and fair elections were no longer being held? The regime did hold elections with some frequency to demonstrate its popularity. These were neither free nor fair. Storm troopers were present at the polling stations, and there was pressure to vote in public – voting in secret was optional, but frowned upon. Spoiled ballot papers were often counted as ‘yes’; the old and infirm were transported to the voting stations. In some places, voting papers were marked before being handed out so that voting behaviour could be tracked. Support was very high on average, but it would be absurd to claim that 90% or more of Germans from November 1933 onwards were all fully behind the regime; the true level of support cannot be established from these voting results.
Instead, we argue that we can analyse changes over time – that a significant decline in the level of opposition in one district, over and above general shifts in behaviour, can be taken as an indicator of changing support for the regime. The reason for this approach is that there was important variation at the local level. For example, in the 1934 plebiscite that vastly expanded Hitler’s powers as head of government, 24% of people in Aachen voted ‘no’; in Nuremberg, on the other hand, only 4.6% voted against the government proposition.1
To compare like with like, we examine the reduction in opposition to the regime between two elections – November 1933 and August 1934. In November 1933, new elections for the Reichstag were held, with the NSDAP the only party on the ballot paper. The 1934 plebiscite occurred after the death of President Hindenburg, and authorised combining the powers of Chancellor and of President in the hands of Adolf Hitler.
The impact of road-building
We compare electoral districts traversed by the Autobahn with those without road-building. In general, opposition to the regime declined slightly between November 1933 and August 1934.2 Where a district saw road-building, the shift was markedly larger (Figure 2). We plot the distribution of votes against the regimes; the dashed line shows the pattern for areas with motorway construction, and the solid line, for areas without. As is readily apparent, where the motorways were being built, the level of opposition was lower – the whole distribution is shifted to the left.
Why it worked
The Nazi regime prioritised road-building as an economic stimulus measure. Original plans were for 600,000 workers to be employed; the actual maximum figure was 125,000. Recent analysis suggests that aggregate economic effects were modest (Ritschl 1998). The benefits in terms of transport were also minimal – Germany had one of the lowest rates of car ownership in Europe (Evans 2006).
Nonetheless, it is possible that local effects were much larger. Workers were initially housed in private homes in the villages and towns where the roads were being built; barracks were only built later. Those employed in building the road also spent money in inns and shops; construction crews organised film showings, and construction sites became minor local attractions – a popular destination for weekend trips (Eichner-Ramm 2008).
In modern democratic elections, ‘political budget cycles’ may be driven by politicians’ need to signal their competence. Similarly, the Autobahn served as a convincing proof of Nazi Germany’s ability to get things done – a project to showcase the ruthless energy and organizational capabilities of the new regime, as Hitler promised in his speech inaugurating the project. Sold as a key factor for economic revival, the rapid fall in unemployment after 1933 convinced many that road-building had ‘worked’. After the perceived incompetence and gridlock of Weimar politics, many Germans were undoubtedly impressed by the rapid progress in road-building. The propaganda machine took particular care to connect the roads in the public imagination with Adolf Hitler himself – the motorways were called ‘roads of the Führer’, piggybacking off the leader’s popularity and enhancing his image still further. While these effects would have affected voting in the country as a whole, it is plausible that the regime’s accomplishments in building the Autobahn were more salient for voters in districts where the new roads were taking shape (Gennaioli and Shleifer 2010).
Conclusions
Long before the Nazi regime committed its singular crimes, it had become remarkably popular in Germany (Evans 2006). Voting records from 1933 and 1934 reveal the effect of one factor that, according to many historians, boosted support for the regime – the building of the Autobahn. Using detailed information on the geography of road-building, we isolate the effect of construction on voting behaviour by analysing the ‘swing’ in favour of the regime over a nine-month period (November 1933 to August 1934). We find that opposition declined much faster where the new ‘roads of the Führer’ ran.
Direct economic benefits for residents in Autobahn districts may have played a role, but they were probably small. More importantly, the new roads provided concrete proof of the regime’s actions, delivering on its promise to get ‘Germany moving again’. Within a couple of months of taking power, a highly ambitious highway construction project was under way at 17 different locations all over the country, affecting more than 100 electoral districts. In other words, the visible progress of road construction made the regime’s ability to follow through on its promises salient for many Germans.
Combined with effective propaganda trumpeting the regime’s successes, the roads succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of many Germans. Nor were they the only ones to be impressed. When the US Army rolled into Germany at the end of World War II, one of the officers taken with the ease of transport on motorways was Dwight D. Eisenhower. When he became President of the United States, he lead the initiative to built the country’s interstate highway system.
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