Pandemic a Century Ago Fueled Nazi Rise

Nazis rose to power in Germany in part because of dislocations caused by a mass-death pandemic a century ago, research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Monday .

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The paper, written by bank economistKristian Blickle, examined how the German political system reacted to the influenza pandemic that struck the world between 1918 and 1920.

Those events have been back in the world’s consciousness as nations attempt to navigate the coronavirus crisis. The current crisis has resulted in large death tolls, profound economic dislocations and great political uncertainty, at a time when many nations have seen the rise of nationalist political movements that seek to reverse decades of economic and political international linkages.

A century ago, “influenza deaths themselves had a strong effect on the share of votes won by extremists, specifically the extremist national socialist party,” the paper said in reference to the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, who became chancellor of Germany in 1933.

“This effect dominates many other effects and is persistent even when we control for the influences of local unemployment, city spending, population changes brought about by the war, and local demographics or when we instrument for influenza mortality,” Mr. Blickle wrote.

The changed voting patterns specifically appeared to boost Nazis over other movements, the paper said. “The same patterns were not observable for the votes won by other extremist parties, such as the communists.”

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Germany’s economy was in terrible shape in the wake of World War I and its defeat. But it wasn’t just the economic environment that helped fuel the rise of the Nazis and the plunge of the world into a second global war.

Nazis got an electoral boost out of the pandemic in part from who was hit. Younger people fared worse in that crisis, and that “may also have spurred resentment of foreigners among the survivors (as has happened in past pandemics), driving voters towards parties whose platform matched such sentiments.”

The effect was also stronger in areas where anti-Jewish sentiment had deep roots. “The correlation between influenza mortality and the vote share won by right-wing extremists is stronger in regions that had historically blamed minorities, particularly Jews, for medieval plagues,” the paper noted.

So far, the influenza pandemic outstrips anything seen in the current coronavirus episode. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 50 million people around the world died from the illness. While estimates of the coronavirus crisis are hard to come by given still unsettled attempts to find out who is sick, nearly a quarter-of-a-million people around the world have likely died from Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.

But even as the death tolls are widely divergent, the coronavirus has yet to run its course, and there is no clarity on when it will.

At the same time, economies are reeling from attempts to limit the spread of the disease, with the U.S. on track to see levels of unemployment last seen in the Great Depression. Government finances are under huge strain, too, as heavily armed protesters have staged protests in state capitals that have alarmed many observers.

Write to Michael S. Derby at michael.derby@wsj.com