The Membership of the NSDAP 1925-1945. A quantitative, socio-historical analysis.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen W. Falter
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 252014619

The project is dealing with the NSDAP party members in the years 1925 to 1945. In 2012 a sample of 9.000 new party members for the years 1934 to 1945 was drawn from the so-called NSDAP master file located in the national archives in Berlin. In conjunction with an earlier drawn large sample of NSDAP members for the years 1925 to 1933 comprising more than 40.000 party members this sample represents a unique treasure of historically relevant data. To be analyzed in a theoretically and historically meaningful way this data still needs extensive cleaning and editing, that is the standardization and categorization of more than 2.000 different occupational labels, furthermore the correction and synchronization of the names of birthplaces, places of residence, names of party chapters and so on with data from my earlier Weimar election data project. This synchronization helps to win contextual data which is not included in the NSDAP master file, such as the confessional, economic and social context of localities where the party members grew up, lived and worked. Finally data errors need to be corrected such as transcription errors in regard to the eight digit party numbers, to birth dates, dates of entry, dates of leaving the party and reentering it and so on. In addition very time consuming completion work has to be done in regard to the more than 1.100 party members from the Sudetenland and the more than 1.000 party members from Austria. Regarding the data on Sudetenland party members it is to my knowledge the very first sample ever drawn from this regional group. So far there exist, again according to my knowledge, no scientific publications and absolutely no machine readable contextual data on the Sudetenland NSDAP party members. With the possible exception of three Austria data sets which Gerhard Botz drew in the late 70s of the last century our data set is worldwide by far the most encompassing since it contains practically all information contained on the NSDAP master file cards. After suitable treatment our sample will be a most informative data source on the NSDAP rank and file. Substantial analysis will be directed towards the regional distribution, the occupational composition, the age and gender of the NSDAP party members, the length of party membership, the confessional context of the place of birth and residence of party members, their economic structure, unemployment rate at different points in time etc. Our data thus will permit answers to questions which so far could only be raised but not be answered on a national level. In this respect the project I'm applying for is not only innovative but unique. It is aimed to represent a parallel project to my earlier research on Weimar elections and the voters of the NSDAP. This project completed since long was also in part financed by the DFG.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants