y became known as the Nazi party.
When Adolph Hitler first joined the party, it was widely considered to be little more than a group of malcontents based in Munich. It swiftly grew in popularity, however, becoming the largest mass movement in German history just 14 years later. Despite the party's name, urban workers had originally not been heavily represented within the Nazi party. It was proportionately dominated by white-collar workers and members of the middle-class in relation to the total German population (Broszat, 1981, p. 30). Urban workers tended to belong to the Social Democratic Party. Nazi attempts to win the allegiance of the working class did not really begin succeeding until after 1933. But the party's popularity expanded nonetheless. By 1932, nearly 14 million Germans voted for the Nazi party. In the March 1933 election, the last free election before the war, 17 million Germans, or 44% of the electorate, voted for the Nazi party. Several million more Germans voted for other nationalist political parties.
The traditional Nazi doctrine that found so much popularity among the German white-collar workers and middle-class (and eventually all social classes) has been widely viewed among scholars as more than a revival of antiliberal ideas and poor social conditions in German life. In the traditional view of Nazism, National Socialism means carrying these antiliberal ideas to extremes. Instead of reacting against the excesses of rationalism, Nazi ideologists are seen as rejecting the very principle of rationalism. The Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, for example, is frequently quoted denouncing Socrates as the originator of rationalism because Socrates preached that differences should be settled through dialogue rather than force. Contemporary scholars often argue that Nazism in fact carried antiliberalism far into nihilism, rejecting all Western values about individuality, religion and democratic social institutions...