August 19, 1934

1934 German referendum

Nazi Germany holds a referendum endorsing Hitler's assumption of presidential powers

More than four million Germans marked 'No' on a ballot conducted under a dictatorship — and the vote endorsed a transfer of power that had already happened seventeen days earlier.

19 August 1934: a vote on something already done

On 19 August 1934 the Nazi regime asked voters to approve combining the offices of Reich President and Reich Chancellor and transferring the presidential powers to Adolf Hitler as Führer and Reich Chancellor.

The ballot did not put Hitler in office. The merger law had already taken effect when Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August; the referendum was a retrospective endorsement of powers Hitler was already exercising.

The numbers, and what they measure

The preliminary nationwide count recorded 38,672,760 'Yes' votes, 4,294,654 'No' votes and 872,296 invalid ballots, from 43,529,710 ballots cast against 45,473,635 eligible voters. The famous 89.9% was the share of valid votes — not, as the old framing had it, 90% of Germany's population.

Hitler's result was far weaker in the cities: he received only about 80% in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne-Aachen.

Not a free vote

The plebiscite ran amid one-sided propaganda, pressure and fear that an unfavourable ballot might be discovered, backed by energetic SA activity — the U.S. embassy in Berlin reported both the totals and those conditions. One official radio story celebrated a sick elderly woman carried to the polls, who voted 'Yes' and then died.

The regime proclaimed an overwhelming mandate. The legal arrangement did not change that day; what the result supplied was propaganda legitimacy for a position Hitler already held.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 4 sources 3 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The date is secure. The quoted totals are the preliminary nationwide count reported by the U.S. embassy on August 21; the German Historical Museum independently gives the official favorable share as 89.9%.
The result cannot be interpreted as an uncoerced measure of public opinion, although contemporary and modern sources agree that Hitler also enjoyed substantial genuine support.