Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (12 page)

Authors: Voting for Hitler,Stalin; Elections Under 20th Century Dictatorships (2011)

tion could no longer develop in the traditional manner, but rather was

modified purely through ideologically-motivated legal practice.14

Given the rapid dissolution of the concept of the plebiscite, it also does

not seem appropriate to speak, as Jung does, of a “factual abolition of the

referendum” (Jung 1995, 82) after August 1934, since, in the eyes of the

National Socialists, the 1936
Reichstag
election largely concerned a plebiscitary process identical with the two referenda. On the other hand, the last

instance of the use of a referendum in the Third Reich can be considered a

special case. Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, in his increasingly

desperate attempt to resist the National Socialist pressure on his govern-

ment, originally wanted to resort to the tool of the plebiscite and an-

nounced on March 9, 1938 that a referendum would be held four days

later. But then events came thick and fast, and Schuschnigg resigned two

days after his announcement in the face of new German threats of military

force. For Hitler, who then decided to carry out the immediate
Anschluss
of

——————

14 At the same time that Uhde’s dissertation appeared, Wilhelm Stuckart spoke of the

“fundamental philosophies of National Socialism, which had become common law”.

T H E S E L F - S T A G I N G O F A P L E B I S C I T A R Y D I C T A T O R S H I P

Austria, canceling the referendum would have meant taking a certain

propaganda risk. Therefore, he decided to hold a
Greater German
election to the
Reichstag
and two separate referenda—one in Austria and one in Germany—in order to legitimize the territorial expansion. With an election

turnout and approval quota of 99 per cent each, the NS regime once again

achieved superlative results. This was possibly due in part to a national

frenzy that had been stirred up by the propaganda. At the same time,

though, the results also posed the NS leadership with a problem of credi-

bility, since the figures “were no longer taken seriously—neither by the

majority of the population nor even by the regime’s own supporters”.15

And a further problem, of course, was that there was simply no more

room for improvement in the future.

In the first six years of his rule, then, we can say that Hitler employed

an instrument of plebiscitary self-staging that consisted of three elements:

referendum,
Reichstag
election, and speech before the
Reichstag
. Although the third was somewhat less useful than the other two in terms of its

propaganda effectiveness, all three had very similar goals: first and fore-

most, to demonstrate to other countries that the politics of the NS regime

were legitimate since they were approved of by the population. Further-

more, the referendum and the election, at least, were designed to mobilize

the German population and to demonstrate that the Nazi ideology consti-

tuted a popular political movement. And finally, mechanisms of inclusion

and exclusion determined who belonged to the racially defined
Volksgemein-

schaft
(people’s community) and who, as
Gemeinschaftsfremder
(aliens to the community), did not.

What had also become apparent to National Socialists in the first years

of the Third Reich, however, was that holding referenda and
Reichstag
elections was inherently risky, since they could not deliver results that were

predictable or that improved every time. Furthermore, they only allowed

symbols and rituals to be used to a limited extent. In other words, they

lacked performative potential, since the act of voting locally was very limi-

ted in terms of how it could be stage-managed or even emotionalized. In

the final analysis, this is the reason why an additional extension of the

plebiscitary instrument had to be sought, which is what happened at the

same time.

——————

15 With regard to the Sopade reports, see Jung (1995, 123).

M A R K U S U R B A N

Mass Rallies as an Alternative System of Plebiscitary

Acclamation

If we take Ernst Fraenkel’s thesis of the National Socialist
dual state
seriously, we can see that the development of the
Reichstag
and the referen-

dums, in spite of all their limitations, predominantly took place in the

sphere of the
normative state
(Fraenkel 2001). The
Weimar
constitution remained largely intact with its traditional plebiscitary elements and was also

only changed minimally by the
Gesetz über Volksabstimmung
. Bureaucrats

such as the Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick tried to bring the prac-

tice of the National Socialist exercise of power into line with the traditional

structure of legal regulations. In spite of clear breaches of law, he was suc-

cessful in most cases, even if Hitler’s spontaneous-opportunistic style pre-

sented a permanent endurance test and caused conflicts time and again.

The dictator himself, in spite of earlier intentions, could not bring himself

to push through a reorganization of constitutional law, although he was

dissatisfied with the current situation and kept feeling hampered in his

exercise of power.

Although the plebiscitary institutions of the
normative state
were not

abolished, they had already lost part of their relevance by the summer of

1934. At the same time, a shift took place with respect to the plebiscitary

element that strengthened those aspects of participation that must be at-

tributed to the sphere of Fraenkel’s
prerogative state
, which concerned an essential feature of the National Socialist dictatorship. On many levels, it

constituted a parallel structure to the
normative state
, existed in a perpetual state of emergency, and formed a “legal vacuum” (Ibid., 55).

In order to comprehend the features of the
prerogative state
with respect to the phenomena discussed here in all their complexity, it is essential to

engage in a broader understanding of the “plebiscite concept”, based on

Bracher’s 1962 definition (Bracher et al. 1983, 472). As Jung, in spite of his

general criticism of Bracher,16 correctly asserts, the term
Volksbefragung,
17

which was posited by leading National Socialists, not only meant “referen-

——————

16 Cf. Jung’s criticism of Bracher’s definition of a “system of plebiscitary acclamation”

(Jung 1995, 88, 90, 126).

17 This term, which aimed to level the differences between the individual plebiscitary elements, was introduced early on. Cf. “Richtlinien für die Pressearbeit zur Volksbefragung am 19. August 1934”, published by the
Reich
propaganda management of the NSDAP

(no year given).

T H E S E L F - S T A G I N G O F A P L E B I S C I T A R Y D I C T A T O R S H I P

dum” but comprised numerous additional phenomena, including, in later

years, the more or less voluntary fundraising campaigns as well as partici-

pation in marches and mass rallies. And we can actually conclude from the

development of the Nuremberg Party rallies that the large mass events of

the NS regime were staged increasingly as plebiscitary events.18

The National Socialist
Festfeuerwerk
of 1933 and the Nuremberg Rallies

in the Transitional Phase (1933–1935)

During their first few months in power, the National Socialists virtually

ignited a kind of
Festfeuerwerk
(firework of celebrations) (Freitag 1997, 18): all kinds of political festivities and public events that transcended the routines of everyday life and symbolized the transition to a new era, a transi-

tion that the originators of the “national revolution” claimed as their own.

A vast number of small, locally organized celebrations formed the basis for

this; they targeted the
Volksgenossen
(national comrades) and sought to

create an experience and feeling of participation for each and every indi-

vidual. Often these local celebrations occurred together with a centrally

organized mass rally such as the Berlin Celebrations on Labor Day (May 1,

1933), the
Reichserntedankfest
(
Reich
Harvest Festival) on the slopes of the Bückeberg near Hameln, or the Day of Remembrance of the failed
Putsch

of 1923, held on November 9 in Munich. These corresponded with Hitler’s

belief that the mass assembly is “the only way to have an effective, because

directly personal, influence by which to win over large factions of the peo-

ple” (Hitler 1933, 115).

The staging of the
Reichsparteitag
(Nuremberg Rally), which mobilized a

vast number of participants from various organizational divisions of the

Nazi-movement in the city of Nuremberg for several days, turned out to

be by far the largest event during the
Festfeuerwerk
of 1933. In the years following, the regime developed the Nuremberg Rally, which soon came to

last for a week, into the central mass event of the annual calendar of politi-

cal festivals. With respect to its aesthetics, it took on the character of a

model that the local organizers of smaller ceremonies tried to emulate.

What is important for our purposes is that the
Reichsparteitag
was already declared a plebiscitary mass event by several members of the NS regime as

——————

18 For more on this topic, see Urban (2007).