Hitler Became Führer of Germany via Plebiscite

When President Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, the office that had nominally checked the chancellor vanished. Hitler’s cabinet had passed a law the day before merging the posts of Reich President and Reich Chancellor into a single role, and within hours Hitler assumed the president’s powers as Führer und Reichskanzler.

To dress the seizure in legitimacy, the regime staged a national plebiscite on 19 August 1934, asking voters to ratify the merger after the fact. Roughly 90 percent of valid votes approved, amid heavy propaganda, intimidation, and documented fraud.

The vote confirmed that no legal or constitutional limit remained on Hitler’s authority.

The result handed Hitler the combined powers of head of state and head of government, including supreme command of the armed forces, whose members soon swore personal loyalty to him by name. A democratic republic had been converted, by ballot, into an absolute dictatorship.