Referendum on the head of state of the German Reich

Banner in the summer of 1934 on a school building in Fürth :
"YES" to the Führer!

The referendum on the head of state of the German Reich took place on August 19, 1934. The then Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler had the German population confirm the merging of the offices of Reich Chancellor and Reich President into his person as Führer and Reich Chancellor . The vote resulted in clear approval, but this fell short of expectations and was lower than in 1933 .

prehistory

Reichsgesetzblatt of August 2, 1934: Law on the head of state of the German Reich .

On July 14, 1933, the National Socialist Reich government passed a law on plebiscite . This made it possible to vote on other “government measures” (including constitutional amendments ) in addition to laws . A simple majority of the valid votes cast was sufficient for approval. All barriers that were subject to a democratically legitimized legislative body and that had been imposed on this Reich government on the basis of the Enabling Act had thus been removed . Referendums should be held in order to ultimately show the apparent or actual unity between the leadership of the NSDAP and the national community it propagates .

Already on August 1, 1934, one day before the death of the independent Reich President Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, Adolf Hitler created the legal basis for the union of the offices of the Reich Chancellor, which he had held since January 30, 1933, and the Reich President . This law on the head of state of the German Reich came into force with the death of Hindenburg. After the last election in 1932, there was no new election, but the people were supposed to vote afterwards by referendum . The Hitler cabinet scheduled the referendum on the merger for August 19, 1934 by ordinance.

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  Paul von Hindenburg (1932), Reich President from 1925 to 1934

• 

  Adolf Hitler (1933), Führer and Reich Chancellor from 1934 to 1945

Vote and result

Print of the voting slip ( RGBl. I, p. 758)

The voting question on the ballot was:

“'The office of Reich President is combined with that of Reich Chancellor. As a result, the previous powers of the Reich President are transferred to the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. He appoints his deputy. ' […] Do you, German man, and you, German woman, agree to the regulation made in this law? "

The official final result was:

	be right	%
Yes	38,394,848	89.93
No	4,300,370	10.07
invalid / empty	873,668	-
total	43,568,886	100
Registered voters / turnout	45,552,059	95.65
Source: Nohlen & Stöver

In some cases it was subsequently possible to determine who had voted no. In Bad Dirsdorf in the Nimptsch district in Silesia, the no-voters were announced the day after the vote. According to Karl Dietrich Bracher , the results were meaningful despite all the restrictions; he saw in the different results the expression of the continued operation of traditional milieus , especially Catholicism and the labor movement .

consequences

Hitler renounced the official designation of the constitutional body "Reich President" because it was inseparably linked to the name of Hindenburg, and from then on he used the designation Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor .

According to the constitution of the Weimar Republic , the office of Reich President legitimized by popular elections included, among other things, the highest military command over the entire armed forces including the generals (commander-in-chief), which was thus passed on to Hitler.

Since the time for the preparation of the referendum was very short - from Hindenburg's death to the vote, just 17 days passed, including a week of state mourning - a longer period of time was planned for propaganda in the subsequent rounds of the Reichstag in 1936 and 1938 .

Compared to the referendum of 1933, the result of the vote appeared unsatisfactory, especially in larger cities, where in the extreme case less than 70% of the population had voted yes (e.g. Aachen or districts of Berlin ). This led to the fact that the instrument of the plebiscite was no longer used as originally intended, but was replaced by the more certain "decisions" of the one-party Reichstag.

See also

Calls in the Völkischer Beobachter to take part in the referendum:

• Appeal from the cultural sector , August 18, 1934
• German scientists behind Adolf Hitler , August 19, 1934

literature

• Gerhard Schulz : Germany since the First World War 1918–1945 (=  German history , vol. 10; Kleine Vandenhoeck series 1419), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1976, ISBN 3-525-33390-0 .
• Peter Hubert: Uniformed Reichstag. The history of the pseudo-popular representation 1933–1945. Düsseldorf 1992, pp. 273-275 and 281.
• Otmar Jung: Plebiscite and dictatorship: the referendums of the National Socialists. The cases "Leaving the League of Nations" (1933), "Head of State" (1934) and "Anschluss Österreichs" (1938) (=  contributions to the legal history of the 20th century; vol. 13). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1995, ISBN 3-16-146491-5 .
• Ian Kershaw : Hitler. 1889-1936. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1998, p. 661.

Web links

Wikisource: Law on the head of state of the German Reich  - sources and full texts

Wikisource: Decree of the Reich Chancellor on the implementation of the law on the head of state of the German Reich  - sources and full texts

• Nazi propaganda poster for the referendum , German Historical Museum
• Law on the head of state of the German Reich and decree of the Reich Chancellor on the implementation of the law on the head of state of the German Reich of August 1, 1934, August 1 and August 2, 1934 (PDF; 17 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Law on plebiscite of July 14, 1933:
   Ҥ 2. The majority of the valid votes cast decides in the referendum. [...] "
2. ↑ Elections 1933 to 1938: “You vote mi nich Hitler!” - The Reichstag elections and referendums of the Nazi dictatorship (1933–1938). www.geschichte-sh.de, 2018, accessed on March 17, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Law on the Head of State of the German Reich , August 1, 1934 ( PDF ; 51 kB):
   Ҥ 1. The office of Reich President is combined with that of Reich Chancellor. As a result, the previous powers of the Reich President are transferred to the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. He appoints his deputy.
   § 2. This law comes into force with effect from the time of the death of the Reich President von Hindenburg. "
4. ^ Ordinance on the implementation of the referendum on the head of state of the German Reich , August 3, 1934:
   "§ 2. The vote will take place on August 19, 1934."
5. ↑ Image of the voting slip. In: Database and search engine for direct democracy. May 2, 2016, accessed May 8, 2020 . 
6. ↑ Dieter Nohlen , Philip Stöver (Ed.): Elections in Europe. A Data Handbook , Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2010, ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7 , p. 762.
7. ↑ Expressly the word no , in: Der Spiegel 48/1949 of November 24, 1949, accessed on September 16, 2017.
8. ↑ Jung, p. 72 .
9. ↑ Law on the head of state of the German Reich and decree of the Reich Chancellor on the implementation of the law on the head of state of the German Reich of August 1, 1934, August 1 and August 2, 1934. (PDF; 17 kB) Frank Bajohr , accessed on March 29 2013 . 
10. ^ National Socialist Reichstag elections and referendums 1933–1938, the example of Schleswig-Holstein. (PDF; 81 kB) Frank Omland, October 2009, accessed on March 29, 2013 . 
11. ^ Bernhard Röhl: 190,000 votes against Hitler . In: the daily newspaper . ( taz.de [accessed on April 29, 2017]).
12. ↑ Jung, p. 69.
13. ^ Rainer Schröder: Otmar Jung, Plebiscite and dictatorship: The referendums of the National Socialists. The cases “Leaving the League of Nations” (1933), “Head of State” (1934) and “Anschluss Austria” (1938) . In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History. German Department . tape 115 , no. 1 , August 1, 1998, ISSN  2304-4861 , doi : 10.7767 / zrgga.1998.115.1.872 ( degruyter.com [accessed April 29, 2017]).