Germany Summons You
Brochure for the NSDAP Plebiscite of November 1933
On 14 October 1933 Hitler proclaimed Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations and ordered the Wehrmacht to resist with force if an attempt were made to apply sanctions. In a radio address delivered that evening, he applied to foreign affairs the dual tactics which had proved of such value to him in domestic affairs: he masked his belligerence by a torrent of words and show of amicability. He decided to hold a plebiscite on the issue, the first of his regime, and one staged with an enormous display of propaganda. This is turn was combined with new elections. For the Reichstag that had been elected on 5 March was to some extent still anachronistically divided on the pattern that had prevailed under the Wieinar Republic.

Feelings of humiliation harbored for years, deep-seated resentment over the tricks by which Germany had been kept under since Versailles—all such emotions now broke forth and even critics of the regime hailed Hitler’s gesture.
Hitler himself opened the campaign on 24 October with a major speech in the Berlin Sportpalast. He announced that the plebiscite was to take place on 12 November, one day after the fifteenth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. Once more facing an electoral challenge, Hitler worked himself up into a trance-like paroxysm. “For my part I declare,” he cried out to the masses, “that I would sooner die than sign anything that in my most sacred conviction is not tolerable for the German people.”