De electorale steun voor de Nationaal Socialistische Beweging in 1935 en 1939

Summary Electoral support for the National Socialist Movement in 1935 and 1939 What was the social background of the electorate of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) in the Netherlands before the Second World War? Passchier and Van der Wusten (1979) came closest to an answer when they compared Dutch municipalities according to assumed causes like urbanization, pillarization, unemployment, and wealth, and percentage of votes on the NSB. We re-test their hypotheses applying regression analyses and using the elections for the Provincial Estates in 1935 and unpublicized results of an election just before the war, the elections for the Provincial Estates in 1939. We also test four additional hypotheses, i.e., on migrants in a municipality, warnings by the churches for the hideous nature of the NSB, anti-Semitism and local presence of Jews, and finally, on lasting effects of early support for the NSB. Our study shows that a) wealth attenuated the positive effect of unemployment, b) wealth enlarged support for the NSB, particularly in urbanized areas, c) pillarization protected citizens from NSB-influence especially in the countryside, and d) pillariziation had a similar effect in poor municipalities. Warnings by the churches, especially by Orthodox Reformed Churches, halted the growth of the NSB whereas newcomers from elsewhere stimulated its growth. Anti-Semitism had an effect as a relative greater number of Jewish inhabitants correlated with more support for the NSB. And the NSB got more support in 1939 in municipalities where it had a larger share of the votes in 1935.