In a pioneering work on the regional expansion of the Nazi party (NSDAP) in Schleswig-Holstein before 1933, Rudolf Heberle suggested that “if one wants to understand the reason for its final success, one should study the Nazi movement in its rural strongholds.”1 As early as 1928, the Nazi party could rely on rural strongholds, ranging from Schleswig-Holstein to Baden. The party received particularly firm support from small and medium-sized Protestant farmers. By July 1932 the NSDAP won over fifty percent of the popular vote, not only in the province of Schleswig-Holstein but also in many smaller rural Protestant electoral districts in Germany. Most historians have attributed this rural electoral swing to the NSDAP to a combination of factors which usually include the deterioration of the farmer's economic position, the farmer's alienation from the “Weimar System,” and the Nazi party's antiurban propaganda which appealed to “certain deep-seated resentments and sentiments.”2