Reichstag election 1938

Election posters in Kiel

Election manifesto in Cameroon , the 1884-1919 German colony was

Ballot for the Reichstag election and referendum

Ballot for the supplementary election in the Sudetenland

The election for the Greater German Reichstag on April 10, 1938 took place at the same time as the subsequent referendum on the reunification of Austria with the German Reich . As in the two previous elections, only one National Socialist- dominated unity list was admitted , for which a few non - party members , designated as guests , were drawn up. It was therefore a sham election , as the result was already clear from the start: Both the election and the vote, like the previous elections, resulted in clear approval.

With the Sudeten German supplementary election of December 4, 1938 , the inhabitants of the Sudetenland also voted on their Reichstag deputies after this area had been connected as a result of the Munich Agreement of September 29.

Results

The NSDAP's unified list officially reached 99.1% of the votes, 0.9% were invalid (e.g. due to different markings on the ballot). There was one seat for every 60,000 votes cast , which is why 814 of the nominees on the unified list moved into the Reichstag . 803 were members of the NSDAP, eleven were designated as guests . There were no women among the MPs.

To what extent the results corresponded to the true opinion of the electorate is controversial in the specialist literature. Richard J. Evans points to massive intimidation and election fraud. According to the Gestapo , only a third of the population of Vienna should really have supported the connection. Heinrich August Winkler , on the other hand, refers to the election campaign with which the Austrian bishops and former State Chancellor Karl Renner (formerly SPÖ ) had publicly called for the vote to be yes. The Sopade reports on Germany reported from the Altreich “that the national high spirits are real” and only a minority have not let themselves be carried away by it. Hitler seemed to his voters to have completed the work of Otto von Bismarck by overcoming the break of 1866, the small German solution enforced in the German war . On top of that he seemed to have successfully overcome the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain and realized the right of Germans and Austrians to self-determination .

In the supplementary election, 41 MPs from the Sudetenland received a seat, so that the number of MPs rose to 855, including ten guests.

Further development

The first session of the new legislative period took place on January 30, 1939, the Minister of Aviation Hermann Göring was elected President of the Reichstag .

After that, several areas that had newly come to the Reich led to an increase to the final number of 876 MPs. For example, in April 1939, two MPs from Memelland were appointed.

On January 25, 1943, Adolf Hitler extended the electoral term of the Reichstag through the law extending the electoral term of the Greater German Reichstag until January 30, 1947. This avoided having to hold elections during the war . With the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945 ( VE Day ), the war in Europe ended and there were no further Reichstag elections in Germany.

In the Federal Republic of Germany , which was founded on May 23, 1949, citizens were called for the first time on August 14, 1949 for a federal election , which again complied with democratic electoral principles . In the German Democratic Republic , the first people 's chamber election took place on October 15, 1950 , but this election cannot be described as democratic.

See also

• List of members of the Reichstag under National Socialism (4th electoral term)
• Right to vote in the time of National Socialism

literature

• Gerhard Schulz : Germany since the First World War 1918–1945. Göttingen 1982, pp. 144-145.
• Heinrich August Winkler : The long way to the west. Vol. 2, Bonn 2005, p. 32f.
• Joachim Lilla : The representation of the “Reichsgau Sudetenland” and the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” in the Grossdeutsche Reichstag. In: Bohemia. Journal of the history and culture of the Czech lands . Volume 40, 1999, Issue 2, pp. 436-471 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Frank Omland: Elections 1933 to 1938: “You are voting for Hitler!” (Example Schleswig-Holstein).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Daniel-Erasmus Khan : The German state borders. Legal historical foundations and open legal questions (= Jus Publicum. Volume 114). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-16-148403-7 , p. 90 ; it is also written of “incorporation”, for example ibid., p. 97 .
2. ↑ Reichstag manuals, 1938/1: list of members of the Reichstag. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , accessed on September 4, 2012 . 
3. ^ Richard J. Evans: The Third Reich. Vol. II / 2: Dictatorship . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2006, p. 793.
4. ^ Heinrich August Winkler : The long way to the west . Volume 2: German history from the “Third Reich” to reunification. CH Beck, Munich 2000, p. 31.
5. ↑ Reichstag manuals, 1938/2: list of members of the Greater German Reichstag. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , accessed on September 4, 2012 . 
6. ^ Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , pp. 771f.
7. ^ Law on the representation of the Memel Germans in the Greater German Reichstag. www.verfassungen.de, March 21, 2004, accessed on September 6, 2012 . 
8. ^ Law on the extension of the electoral term of the Greater German Reichstag. Reichsgesetzblatt , Part 1, January 25, 1943, accessed November 26, 2016 .