Replication Data for: War and Nationalism: How WW1 battle deaths fueled civilians' support for the Nazi Party

Can wars breed nationalism? We argue that civilians' indirect exposure to war fatalities can trigger psychological processes that increase identification with their nation and ultimately strengthen support for nationalist parties. We test this argument in the context of the rise of the Nazi Party after World War 1. To measure localized war exposure, we machine-coded information on all 8.6 million German soldiers who were wounded or died in WW1. Our empirical strategy leverages battlefield dynamics that cause plausibly exogenous variation in the county-level casualty fatality rate---the share of dead soldiers among all casualties. We find that throughout the interwar period, electoral support for right-wing nationalist parties, including the Nazi Party, was 2.6 percentage points higher in counties with above-median casualty fatality rates. Consistent with our proposed mechanism, we find that this effect was driven by civilians rather than veterans and areas with a preexisting tradition of collective war commemoration.

战争能否催生民族主义？本研究认为，平民间接接触战争阵亡事件，可触发特定心理进程，提升其对民族国家的身份认同，并最终强化对民族主义政党的支持。我们以第一次世界大战后纳粹党崛起为研究情境，对这一核心论点进行实证检验。为衡量本地化的战争暴露程度，我们对一战中所有860万名负伤或阵亡的德国士兵信息进行了机器编码。本研究的实证策略借助战场动态特征，该特征可在县域层面的伤亡死亡率（即阵亡士兵占所有伤员的比例）上产生合理外生的变异。研究结果显示，在两次世界大战之间的间期，伤亡死亡率高于中位数的县域，其右翼民族主义政党（包括纳粹党）的选举支持率高出2.6个百分点。与我们提出的作用机制相符，我们发现该效应仅由平民群体驱动，而非退伍军人群体，且仅存在于此前已有集体战争纪念传统的地区。