'There can be no doubt that the NSDAP recruited across a broad social spectrum. However, its support was not random. We have already noted the over representation of Protestants, rural areas and small provincial towns, as well as of the Mittelstand [middle class], in Nazi support and there was a similar structure tot he movement's working class cosntituency. The working class, however, was under-represented in the Nazi ranks when compared to the German population as a whole.'
Dick Geary 'Who Voted for the Nazis?', History Today, October 1998
To my mind Geary gives too much ground to the thesis of working class support for the Nazis, but his own research does show that where the working class was organised in larger towns it proved fairly resistant to Nazi penetration. By contrast the NSDAP's basis amongst the middle class, peasantry and professions is well-documented, and indicated not least by teh fact that the ris in teh Nazi vote is paralleled almost exactly by a proportionate fall in the vote of the main middle class parties.
The picture is confused by Hitler's own perception of what he was doing - getting working class support for radical nationalism as a counter- weight to socialism. Whilst that was the party's conscious strategy, what they succeeded indoing was something different - getting the support of those classes who were most immediately threatened by the rise in working class militancy, the middle classes. -- Jim heartfield