(iPoster) Mass Warfare and Political Extremism: The German Experience of WWI

• In Event: Poster Session: Politics and History

Abstract

Could the sacrifices minorities make during wartime mitigate the discrimination and hatred they experience? How do the experiences that veterans encounter during wartime affect the post-war nation-building process? To answer these questions, I examine the effects of WWI on German nationalism. The rise of nationalism in Germany after World War I has been a longstanding topic of interest in Political Science, attracting scholars who study Hitler's ascent in the context of the erosion of democracy. Separately, a substantial body of research has examined the role of the military during wartime in nation-building and state-building processes. In this paper, I interweave these two strands of inquiry. Following Germany’s defeat in the war, much of the nationalist propaganda at the time focused on the experiences and outcomes of World War I. German extremist politicians — including Hitler himself — articulated the Stab-In-The-Back Myth (Dolchstoßlegende), asserting that Germany was not defeated on the battlefield in World War I, but rather betrayed by factions within Germany, most notably the Jewish population and the Socialists. Therefore, I choose to study how variation in service experience in the German Army during the war affected the rise of antisemitism and support for Hitler in interwar Germany. Specifically, I examine the effects of these wartime factors on postwar political outcomes: the diversity of German veterans' military experiences and the local religious composition of wartime casualties. Drawing on newly collected historical micro-data, my preliminary findings indicate that towns with higher numbers of Jewish soldiers killed in action had lower levels of support for the NSDAP, and were less likely to experience antisemitic violence. Moreover, the particular battles in which local veterans participated shaped the postwar political climate. Taken together, these findings suggest that wartime experiences exert a lasting influence on political behavior and social attitudes.

Author

• Eran Rubinstein, Yale University