Hitler Named Fuhrer: Germany's Plebiscite Approves

German voters approved the merger of the offices of president and chancellor by a margin of 89.9 percent on August 19, 1934, handing Adolf Hitler absolute power under the title of Fuhrer und Reichskanzler. The plebiscite, held two weeks after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, completed a transformation that had begun 18 months earlier. In January 1933, Hitler had been an appointed chancellor constrained by a conservative cabinet. By August 1934, he was the unchallenged dictator of Europe's most powerful industrial nation. The speed of the consolidation was breathtaking. The Reichstag fire in February 1933 provided the pretext for emergency decrees that suspended civil liberties. The Enabling Act in March gave Hitler the power to pass laws without parliamentary approval. Trade unions were dissolved in May, opposition parties were banned by July, and the Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party. The Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934, eliminated potential rivals within the Nazi movement itself, as Hitler ordered the murder of SA leader Ernst Rohm and scores of others. When Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, Hitler moved immediately to absorb the presidential powers, including supreme command of the armed forces. The military's oath of loyalty, previously sworn to the constitution, was rewritten to require personal allegiance to Hitler. This was not a formality. When officers later contemplated removing Hitler, the oath weighed heavily on men raised in a tradition of military honor. The August 19 plebiscite was neither free nor fair. Opposition voices had been silenced, the press was controlled, and voters marked their ballots under the watchful eyes of Nazi Party officials. Yet the 89.9 percent approval was not entirely manufactured. Unemployment had fallen dramatically, public works projects were visible everywhere, and Hitler's foreign policy had restored German pride after the humiliations of Versailles. Many Germans voted with genuine enthusiasm for a leader who appeared to be delivering on his promises. The catastrophe that enthusiasm enabled would kill approximately six million Jews and engulf the world in a war that claimed 70 to 85 million lives.