Strukturwandlungen des österreichischen Nationalsozialismus (1904-1945)

Abstract

In the effort to determine whether and to what extent the Austrian National So-cialist Party was indigenous to Austria or primarily a German import, a quanti-tative analysis of party membership shows that the NSDAP in Austria was less attached to a specific social group than any other contemporary party. In a sense it was a "very modern political phenomenon," a conglomeration of nearly all classes, with those middle classes overrepresented, which had a certain anti-liberal tradition and felt extremely disadvantaged. Once it became a mass movement, it was an "asymmetrical populist party" that adapted its character according to the exigencies of time and place, except that it rarely appealed to the workers of the left.