Hitler was Bismark's Baby.

With the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia, Bismark set upon a policy of reducing the influence of Catholicism in Germany. The policy, known as Kulturkampf, aimed to set about to place deliberate obstacles in the path of German Catholicism through institutionalised prejudice..  Whether one agrees with his policy or not, the following graphs would seem to suggest that it may have been responsible for Germany's calamities during the 20th Century.

It's hard to speculate as to what the current Germany would have been like if Adolf Hitler had not come to power. WW2 was a disaster for Germany on so many levels.  It's doubtful that Germany would have engaged in a world war if Hitler had not come to power and therefore the forces which gave rise to him are of significant interest. Germany was not committed to militarism, even after years of suffering under the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, but the treaty itself, and the Depression provided an environment in which radicalism could thrive. 

This next series shows the development of the Nazi vote from 1924-1934 within the background of the social forces previously mentioned.

Firstly, a graphic showing the distribution of  German Catholics vs Protestants int the 1934 Census.

The darker the area, the more Catholics. 

Next, the Nazi vote in;

1924:

1928:

1930:

 1932:

Here's the 1934 Census again. The darker the area, the more Catholic it is:

That's pretty impressive. Whilst the Nazi party did make inroads into Catholic Germany, its power base was Protestant. Anywhere between 30-50% of Protestants voted for the Nazi's. So who did else did they vote for?

The Centrist party represented the Catholic political force. They certainly did not get their vote.

The Communists, they seemed to get some love;

 But the other main competitor to the Nazi's for the hearts and minds of Protestants were: 

The Socialists!!

Here's the religious map again.

The Protestant vote was split between the powerful anti-traditional forces of Socialism and Fascism with a smattering of Communism.  Way to go Team Luther!! In fact, the Protestant vote for the Nazi's was greater in the July 1934 election, but it appears that they started to get a little scared of Hitler and when the November vote came, directed approx two million votes away from the Nazi's to the Socialists and Communists!

Only 10-20% of Protestants seemed to reject the new radicalism and directed their vote to the German National Peoples Party. This party was comprised of the deep social conservatives of Protestantism and it attracted about 10% of the vote up North.

It's party members were initially sympathetic to the Nazi's but after a while saw that they were completely nutty and crossed over to support the Catholics against Hitler!

The graphs were obtained from this site.

The 1932 German Election.

I was quite surprised at the electoral maps that I published in my previous post. I was able to find another one which illustrates the voting patterns more clearly. I'm sorry for the small size but I could not find a bigger version of it.

 

Now, the illustration breaks down the pre-WW2 map of Germany into electorates. The redder the electorate the more support the Nazi's had in it. Green areas are areas where Nazi's were unable to win seats. Now the taller the individual electorate, the higher the proportion of Catholics in it. Flatter areas are Protestant dominant.

Now, it's pretty obvious that Catholic areas tended to vote strongly against Hitler, whilst the Protestants tended to vote for him. Note, this does not mean all Protestants voted for him,[paging Wilhelm Ropke] just the majority of them. Likewise, the majority of Catholics voted against Hitler; not all of them.

More Paragraphs to Ponder.

Just a follow up to my previous post. Back in the comments thread over at Ferdinand's, I made this reply to commentator Thursday;

@Thursday

"There is this myth that formerly Catholic countries are somehow more immune to liberalism than those that were Protestant."

Catholic countries aren’t immune to liberalism, it’s just that when they succumb to liberalism it assumes a different form to that of Protestantism. When Catholics go liberal, their liberalism is much more openly hostile, there’s no “niceness” about it at all. It tends to be an all or nothing phenomenon with Catholics.

The largest communist parties in Europe were not in the Anglosphere, rather in Italy and France.

As mentioned previously, I've just discovered Erik Ritter von Keunhelt-Leddihn and whilst reading  through his book, The Menace of the Herd, I found this passage which I felt "synched" quite nicely with the above passage.

It must be borne in mind that democratism and leftism in Europe have two distinct branches, one in Catholic countries and one in Protestant countries. This is the reason why communistic tendencies in the Protestant world are a direct outcome of mammonistic democratism with the background of a  terrorizing society, while in Catholic and schismatic countries they are largely a reaction of anarchical liberalism. In the latter countries they smack often of undiluted and undisguised satanism. In Russia they may also be a reaction against the Manichaean tradition of the Eastern Church.* The frequency of parlor pinks in the large democratic domains of the Protestant world indicates the origins of  communism from an ultramammonistic and ultramaterialistic mentality 

This is also no doubt the reason why socialism and the more violent forms of ochlocracy and  superdemocracy — Fascism — have to blaze their trails into the Catholic world by revolts, revolutions, and assassinations. The deep antagonism between "backward" Catholicism and these new "progressive" philosophies make a compromise impossible. 

This can be easily illustrated and demonstrated by the manifold examples of revolutionary socialism in Spain and Portugal, from the socalled "Communists" of Andalusia and Catalonia in 1835 to the FAI, CGT, UGT, and POUM, the revolutionary socialism of Italy which reached its zenith in 1921, the revolutionary social democracy of Vienna with its two risings in 1927 and 1934, the sanguinary revolutions in Budapest (1919), in Munich (1919 and 1923), Paris (1792, 1830, 1848, 1871, 1934), and Baden (1848). We also find strongly revolutionary forms of socialism in the domains of the Eastern Church (Russia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greek Macedonia, and Thrace) as well as in Catholic Poland and Lithuania. In the Protestant countries on the other side we find socialism usually tame, bourgeois, and parlor pinkish. Only Berlin and Hamburg knew, apart from the central German industrial area, the meaning of revolutionary socialism, whereas the tributary parties of the II International in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, the United States, and Canada were all imbued by a nice sedentary bourgeois spirit. In Catholic Mexico on the other hand we see socialism closely connected with violence and terror.

Now, from what I've read of Von Keunhelt-Leddihn he does seem to overplay the pro-Catholic anti-Protestant thing. His analysis doesn't really account for the fact that, the U.S., a culturally Protestant nation, was the perhaps the most staunchly anti-communist nation of them all, still I think his analysis has some validity.

It's my contention that Protestantism's weakness is it's legitimisation of the Rationalisation Hamster, and it is this what makes "compromise" with the devil possible. However, the more scriptural a Protestant is, then it's much much harder to make the compromise. This would explain why the Anglicans are lefty while the Baptists push more to the right.

(Note to my Protestant readers. I'm not having a dig at you. I'm trying to be fair here. Catholicism, in its corruption, has its faults. It tends to deny empirical evidence, placing faith above reason, drifts towards superstition and tends towards authoritarianism. I think von Keunhelt-Leddihn tends to gloss over these points.)

Secular Calvinism

I was surfing the manosphere yesterday, when over at Vox's place I noted this comment by "artie" in response to Vox's  post, "Democracy vs Aristocracy".

It will be interesting to see how long this farce will go on.

I also on the sceptical side. The EUcrats always have the righist hammer to throw down to the people. It has been the most effective political weapon in Europe since the end of WWII.

That's why I think the work of Kuenehlt-Leddihn is so important....and ignored.

Now, I've never heard of Kuenehlt-Leddihn before and I thought I would read up on him.
His Wikipedia entry is here.

What a find!

He appears to one of those freaky bastards* that the educational system of the old Hapsburg empire seemed to produce. The last of the great renaissance men and a man who also liked to thump some of themes pushed by this blog. Anyway, he wrote a rather influential book in the 40's, The Menace of the Herd. It's available, from the Mises Institute, as a pdf here.

I was having a browse through the book, when in the appendix I noticed this:  



All I can say is wow!

It seems that whilst Hitler was a bad Catholic, all those nice Protestants really liked him........ a lot. Much more than his fellow Catholics actually. No seriously, I mean, WTF?

The reason I bring this up is because of a comment thread over at Ferdinand's. Commentator Thursday, for whom I have very much respect, says:

It is time to get off this “liberalism is the result of Calvinism/Christianity/Nominalism/whatever” nonsense.

Now, this is not a dig at Thursday but rather a spectacular demonstration of the opposite. I'm sorry but religion matters. Big time.

Kuenehlt-Leddihn was no fan of Protestantism, but he did recognise that sound Protestantism would have probably prevented the rise of Hitler. It's the watered down version of it that is toxic.

And by the way, Kuenehlt-Leddihn correctly diagnosed Nazism as a leftist phenomenon.