Thread by @AndyRowell

I googled "Hitler's polling" and it hit on the August 1934 Referendum (the last free election), where Hitler won 90% of the vote. The leader of the Hitler-supporting "German Christians" Ludwig Müller commented that "true Christians" voted for Hitler "to defend our religion."

Whereas one of my favorite stories about Dietrich Bonhoeffer is from a year earlier in Sept 1933 when he and his buddies were nailing theological flyers on trees from the trunk of his father's car *in Wittenberg* when Ludwig Müller got elected.

Minor correction to the process behind the tweet above: I googled "Hitler approval rating" (Not "Hitler's polling") and it took me to: quora.com/What-were-Hitl… and that took me to the 1934 New York Times article.

Here is someone making the connection more explicitly.

Bonhoeffer expert Stephen R. Haynes:

Here is how Masha Gessen and Timothy Snyder recommend resisting an autocrat or tyrant. (Whereas Bonhoeffer recommends the Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew 5-7, which has some similarities to what Gessen and Snyder say).

Conceivably a Christian could vote for a candidate because that candidate defends religious liberty. For example, last October, Alan Jacobs weighed that consideration in the case of Trump and found it an insufficient reason to vote for him.
blog.ayjay.org/the-most-impor…

Winston Smith is correct that the referendum was certainly not "free" and fair.

Here is my response.

I was thinking it was the last time we had anything like "polling numbers" for Hitler.

Adrian from Germany is correct that the Nazi Party received only 43.9% of the vote in March 1933.


The 1934 Referendum was not a "free" election and I regret phrasing it that way above. August 1934 was the last time Jews voted under Hitler.