Elite Influence? Religion, Economics, and the Rise of the Nazis

Jörg Spenkuch and Philipp Tillmann

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Adolf Hitler's seizure of power was one of the most consequential events of the twentieth century. Yet, our understanding of which factors fueled the astonishing rise of the Nazis remains highly incomplete. This paper shows that religion played an important role in the Nazi party's electoral success -- dwarfing all available socioeconomic variables. To obtain the first causal estimates we exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the geographic distribution of Catholics and Protestants due to a peace treaty in the sixteenth century. Even after allowing for sizeable violations of the exclusion restriction, the evidence indicates that Catholics were significantly less likely to vote for the Nazi Party than Protestants. Consistent with the historical record, our results are most naturally rationalized by a model in which the Catholic Church leaned on believers to vote for the democratic Zentrum Party, whereas the Protestant Church remained politically neutral.

Keywords: religion; fascism; elite influence; Nazis; Weimar Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 N00 N34 N94 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Elite Influence? Religion, Economics, and the Rise of the Nazis (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:54909

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